The only thing that aligns it with the pogroms is the involvement of physical violence—and even then, I’d suspect most people would plot ‘punch in the arm’ closer to ‘annoyingly loud music’ than to ‘mass murder’ on the scale of harms.
A friend of mine recently suffered a concussion after being punched on the street. It was cognitively compromising for a couple of weeks. Maybe you just think he’s oversensitive and that if he got concussed more often he’d learn to just roll with it, but if you’re willing to accept for the sake of argument that perhaps a particularly hard punch can cause substantial physical injury worth worrying about, it seems pretty bad to play a game that trains people not to react to street assault.
Also, loud parties generally don’t come with a no-loudback rule.
“A punch” and “a punch in the arm” are quite different, largely in that the latter is unlikely to cause brain injury.
(Posted early by accident, ETA:)
That said, I get the argument about training people to ignore street violence. I’m a bit doubtful of the effect size here, given that I think there are clear markers of a friendly hit, but I could be persuaded otherwise.
As for no loudback: suppose a neighborhood had a policy against loud noise unless you register a party. Only one party can be registered per night. Registration is first come first served. Tell me how this “no loudback” role changes anything?
Alternatively, would you withdraw your objection if the game were “punch bug maybe punch back”, where the punched party is allowed to return the punch if they wish?
suppose a neighborhood had a policy against loud noise unless you register a party. Only one party can be registered per night. Registration is first come first served. Tell me how this “no loudback” role changes anything?
That seems like a really weird policy for a neighborhood to have, given diminishing marginal cost of noisy parties, and I’d be really confused about what incentive gradient they were following. I don’t currently see a way that would be a problem, though.
(NOTE: The interpretive framework I just used is the one that generates the objection to “punch bug.” Rules aren’t totally arbitrary; they’re things particular people institute and enforce for particular reasons in particular contexts, and this—and how they play out—contains important information beyond the formal content of the rule!)
Part of the difference is that retaliatory violence is part of how people police their boundaries. If you’re not allowed to opt out, and you’re not allowed to punch back, then there’s no interface by which to do that. Likewise, for something I don’t mind so much, and definitely don’t consider to be violent for the most part: I’m all for chilling out about casual touch among people who interact repeatedly, but it would be pretty terrible if people who aren’t up for that couldn’t opt out except in their ghettoes. [ETA: Duncan strongly disputes the “ghetto” characterization. I don’t see how else the “safe spaces” proposal would work out, but “ghetto” is an inference I’m drawing, not the literal text of the OP.]
Alternatively, would you withdraw your objection if the game were “punch bug maybe punch back”, where the punched party is allowed to return the punch if they wish?
I wouldn’t like that proposal, I would still object to it, but it wouldn’t seem terrifyingly creepy in the same way. It would just seem a bit unpleasant.
A friend of mine recently suffered a concussion after being punched on the street. It was cognitively compromising for a couple of weeks. Maybe you just think he’s oversensitive and that if he got concussed more often he’d learn to just roll with it, but if you’re willing to accept for the sake of argument that perhaps a particularly hard punch can cause substantial physical injury worth worrying about, it seems pretty bad to play a game that trains people not to react to street assault.
Also, loud parties generally don’t come with a no-loudback rule.
“A punch” and “a punch in the arm” are quite different, largely in that the latter is unlikely to cause brain injury.
(Posted early by accident, ETA:)
That said, I get the argument about training people to ignore street violence. I’m a bit doubtful of the effect size here, given that I think there are clear markers of a friendly hit, but I could be persuaded otherwise.
As for no loudback: suppose a neighborhood had a policy against loud noise unless you register a party. Only one party can be registered per night. Registration is first come first served. Tell me how this “no loudback” role changes anything?
Alternatively, would you withdraw your objection if the game were “punch bug maybe punch back”, where the punched party is allowed to return the punch if they wish?
That seems like a really weird policy for a neighborhood to have, given diminishing marginal cost of noisy parties, and I’d be really confused about what incentive gradient they were following. I don’t currently see a way that would be a problem, though.
(NOTE: The interpretive framework I just used is the one that generates the objection to “punch bug.” Rules aren’t totally arbitrary; they’re things particular people institute and enforce for particular reasons in particular contexts, and this—and how they play out—contains important information beyond the formal content of the rule!)
Part of the difference is that retaliatory violence is part of how people police their boundaries. If you’re not allowed to opt out, and you’re not allowed to punch back, then there’s no interface by which to do that. Likewise, for something I don’t mind so much, and definitely don’t consider to be violent for the most part: I’m all for chilling out about casual touch among people who interact repeatedly, but it would be pretty terrible if people who aren’t up for that couldn’t opt out except in their ghettoes. [ETA: Duncan strongly disputes the “ghetto” characterization. I don’t see how else the “safe spaces” proposal would work out, but “ghetto” is an inference I’m drawing, not the literal text of the OP.]
I wouldn’t like that proposal, I would still object to it, but it wouldn’t seem terrifyingly creepy in the same way. It would just seem a bit unpleasant.