Since I’m in another thread doing a thing that’s sort of weirdly adjacent to supporting Duncan’s post, let me say what I think of it overall.
I played a bit of Punch Bug as a kid (actually, it was ‘Punch Buggy’ where I grew up). In my social circles the punches weren’t hard, it was basically a token gesture to make spotting a Beetle first into a form of ‘winning’. I’d compare it to nonviolent games such as jinx or five minutes to get rid of that word). Personally I found all of these a little fun, a little annoying, no big deal either way.
I don’t think my opinions of these games has changed much since then. I wouldn’t particularly mind getting randomly hit lightly in the arm, and I might enjoy the little victory of being the one to make a spot. Duncan has my permission to play Punch Bug with me if we ever meet IRL (not that he cares).
**But**, what I personally think of the game does not dictate my opinion. People differ a lot, and it strikes me as an egregious and reckless typical mind fallacy for Duncan to assume that everyone would experience the game the way he does if they gave it a chance, no matter how much they say otherwise. I’m guessing that his evidence for his beliefs is an observation that people who play Punch Bug are more resilient overall. This is probably true, but can be fully explained by causation in the other direction. And not only would many people experience the game as a net negative, but also a significant tail would experience *outsized* negative impact, often to the point of not being able to travel a public road in company at all.
Moreover, it’s quite easy for this to be an opt-in game. If Duncan were proposing that people consider for themselves whether they want to train their micro-resilience by opting in, I’d have no problem with his post. But instead he wants to overrule the judgment of people who think the Punch Bug game would be bad for them, in the hopes of building a world more to his liking. This is an indefinite linear combination of dangerous epistemic arrogance and solipsistic disregard for others’ well-being,
Since I’m in another thread doing a thing that’s sort of weirdly adjacent to supporting Duncan’s post, let me say what I think of it overall.
I played a bit of Punch Bug as a kid (actually, it was ‘Punch Buggy’ where I grew up). In my social circles the punches weren’t hard, it was basically a token gesture to make spotting a Beetle first into a form of ‘winning’. I’d compare it to nonviolent games such as jinx or five minutes to get rid of that word). Personally I found all of these a little fun, a little annoying, no big deal either way.
I don’t think my opinions of these games has changed much since then. I wouldn’t particularly mind getting randomly hit lightly in the arm, and I might enjoy the little victory of being the one to make a spot. Duncan has my permission to play Punch Bug with me if we ever meet IRL (not that he cares).
**But**, what I personally think of the game does not dictate my opinion. People differ a lot, and it strikes me as an egregious and reckless typical mind fallacy for Duncan to assume that everyone would experience the game the way he does if they gave it a chance, no matter how much they say otherwise. I’m guessing that his evidence for his beliefs is an observation that people who play Punch Bug are more resilient overall. This is probably true, but can be fully explained by causation in the other direction. And not only would many people experience the game as a net negative, but also a significant tail would experience *outsized* negative impact, often to the point of not being able to travel a public road in company at all.
Moreover, it’s quite easy for this to be an opt-in game. If Duncan were proposing that people consider for themselves whether they want to train their micro-resilience by opting in, I’d have no problem with his post. But instead he wants to overrule the judgment of people who think the Punch Bug game would be bad for them, in the hopes of building a world more to his liking. This is an indefinite linear combination of dangerous epistemic arrogance and solipsistic disregard for others’ well-being,