Stephen wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:37:23 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> 
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> My point was that to break up a prisoner's dilemma situation, 
>> Or, to clarify with an example:
>>
>> Cheating:  I get $100, costing you $200.
>> Government: I fine you more than $100 for cheating, so it isn't worth it.
>> Religion: I reward you with more than $100 for not cheating, so it isn't 
>> worth it.
>>
>> The idea comes from my attempts to write a constitution for my own little 
>> island empire based on sound reasoning and logic. :-)
> 
> You forgot, "or you will BURN IN HELL!"  :-)
No, what he forgot is the catch-22 of religion, which is, "Someone else 
will reward you more than $100, and some unspecified time, but I can't 
and won't tell you how much, or even if its money, except that its a 
'lot' more, so, according to me, its not worth it to annoy this other 
person, by doing it."

The flaw of course being, how do you trust that a) this other person 
exists, b) tell which of the various things they claim is cheating is 
actually cheating, c) tell which of the various things people claim is 
"THE" reward, or not, and d) which one of the myriad people that make 
the claim actually know what this person will give you, why, when, or 
how much? Since none of these things are knowable, and often by the 
definition of the very people insisting that he "does" know it, yet this 
other person's plans, intentions and behavior is, at the same time, 
unknowable (always good for a groan), how do you even know that you can 
trust the person telling you not to cheat? You know the cops will haul 
your ass to jail, since you have **seen** cops. All you have is the word 
of one of million of people with tens of thousands of contradictory 
definitions of what constitutes, "Things this other guy, whose name, 
size, shape, powers, interests, dislikes, desires, and nature we can't 
even all agree on".

Its a bit like saying that the intent of someone with a fishing pole, 
and someone with a butterfly net is the same, when both are trying real 
hard to catch fish in a river. However, the question isn't if the 
"intent" is the same, its which one catches the biggest fish (or any), 
and which one just brags about the one that they "almost got, but it got 
away from them".

D&D is a different way of "knowing" in the same way religion is, and 
like religion, its only applicable to the imaginary universe that it 
describes, and then only when you premise that the world is real, and 
that "other" real world explanations for Dragons, Troll regeneration, 
and the mystical properties of bags of holding a) can't be explained by 
naturalistic methods (duh!), and c) there is something profound that 
will change reality as we know it, if scientists just stopped being so 
closed minded and took amazing spells like Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound 
seriously. The consequences for doing something wrong, in terms of both 
are similar too. Either nothing happens, or people insist that you have 
to wait to find out, or that you didn't do it right, and, in the later 
case, if you **did** the results would be, "truly profound!". If it also 
happens to be something we deemed illegal, then something entirely 
unconnected to the imaginary consequences happens, such as an arrest. 
Sadly, the sort of people that take this stuff seriously will quite 
often attribute the ability of the cops to figure out who did it, find 
their house, bust down the door, and, all without divine intervention, 
arrest them, as, "a miraculous punishment from my favorite DM." lol

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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