Freedom of Thought is Under Attack

I am horrified by how the media now treats conspiracy theories as if they are somehow universally egregious. This treatment is wrong, authoritarian, and threatens everything that underpins post-enlightenment life.

Trump and Covid triggered a wave of conspiracy theories which threatened the ruling elite, and now they seek to maintain their narrative by tarring all such theories with the same brush.

Some conspiracy theories are demonstrably false. Some are demonstrably true. The rest are real possibilities which, in absence of proof, are reasonable to express, examine and even to tentatively believe in.

MK Ultra is a conspiracy theory which is proven true. So too is Watergate, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and countless others. Conspiracies happen. No serious person believes otherwise.

And yet in the media and political discourse reasonable theories about conspiracies are routinely falsely described as untrue and/or associated with some drastic moral failing.

The first major event of this kind that I noticed was the Covid lab-leak theory. The facts were that Covid seemed to originate near to a lab which worked with Covid-like viruses, and the exact source was undetermined. There were only two logical explanations: lab-leak or natural cause. Both were plausible to any thinking person.

Yet people who expressed the lab-leak theory were deplatformed by tech companies and accused of misinformation; in the media it was described as a racist falsehood. When scientists came forward the establishment later accepted the lab-leak 'conspiracy theory' was plausible.

The second event is of course the recent violence in Israel and Palestine. It is a fact that Israel was warned by multiple sources of an impending attack. It is a fact the attack occurred. It is a further fact that Israel has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians and herded the rest into the only city they haven't extensively bombed, all while senior Israeli politicians talk of killing all Palestinians and resettling their lands.

Netanyahu's motivation has not been proven. Perhaps he's terrified of Hamas. Perhaps he wants power. Perhaps he really does want to kill all of those people. In the absence of proof it is perfectly reasonable to express and even lean towards any of these possibilities.

I trust I don't need to detail the kinds of moral and intellectual slanders which have been directed towards those who suspect Netanyahu of intentional genocide.

What I find most shocking is that the scientists, policy-makers and other educated types would never in a million years accept, believe or act upon the worldview being pushed onto the masses. 

Do you think that serious foreign policy experts trying to predict Netanyahu's next move dismiss out of hand the possibility of genocidal intent, for fear of being deplatformed or accused of prejudice? Of course not. Biden's advisors behind closed doors are telling him the truth: that Netanyahu may really be aiming for genocide, amongst other plausible theories. 

Do you think the scientists studying Covid's origins considered the lab-leak theory impossible or immoral? They couldn't possibly. Any thinking person could see it was plausible. Refusing to examine it would undermine any possibility of discovering the truth.

It is one thing to spin the facts in favour of the establishment narrative, as we've done since time immemorial. But to flatly deny and morally reject patently reasonable theories about matters unknown is a terrifying new development.

Intellectual analysis and the scientific method depend entirely on the freedom to express and examine plausible theories, no matter how unpalatable. This intellectual freedom has been one of our fundamental moral values since long before I was born. Without it we would literally still be in the stone age.

I am SHOCKED by how quickly that moral value has been eroded in our public life. 

But I am most horrified by the hundreds of thousands of academics, journalists and creatives who know well the threat this development poses, who would never allow this kind of censorship to direct their own thoughts and beliefs, yet stay silent so long as it's 'conspiracy theories' which are under fire.

It shouldn't be dangerous today to say what was universally accepted just ten years ago: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

The time to publicly defend freedom of thought and expression is now.

The Encrypted Secret of Life, Higher Dimensions and Spirituality, as Encoded by Josef Ruslak's 1999 Camp-Scifi Film, The Thirteenth Floor

The Thirteenth Floor (1999) by Josef Rusnak is an unfairly ignored existential scifi with a secret, cryptic alternative plot espousing the reality of trans-dimensional non-human-intelligences/spirits/gods and humanity's identity therewith.

The official plot is a contrived tale about VR programmers (users) possessing simulated humans (program links) to live out their darkest fantasies, resolving with our simulated hero defeating his user and escaping to an idealised 'real world'. But that's just the cover story.

To decrypt the secret message we have to suppose that there is no such thing as separate 'users' and 'sims'. Rather, there are simply higher and lower dimensional manifestations of the same conscious entities on an eternal quest for transcendance. 

The relationship between Hall (the user) and Ferguson (the sim he 'possesses') should be understood as analogous to the relationship between me and my little toe. We're not identical, but my toe is nonetheless me. When Hall 'possesses' Ferguson it is like me focussing my attention on my toe.

The film opens with Rusnak speaking direct to his audience as Fuller, the creator of our simulated world. He has uncovered a terrible truth, and is writing it down for the only person (us) who could ever understand it. 

Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

OK here's the deal...

...I'm not deleting anything from this blog. I'm not deleting or editing facebook (right now).

This blog and Facebook both reflect my journey, and I love the person that carried me here.

I realise, via this blog and my published stories and games, that I have lived more of my life in public than most people. I have been yelling things that I didn't realise I was even saying, and I've been broadcasting it to the world. Sometimes I feel embarrassed by that.

And at the same time, I've always wanted to share with the world the ideas that made my life more wonderful, in case they can do the same for someone else. The times that I expressed those ideas haphazardly, or through a negative lens, or thought I was being clever when really I was asking for help... they are also part of this story we're telling. They aren't going anywhere. And I'll surely do it again.

Just do me a favour and take it all with a pinch of salt.

I wonder what's next?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJY8jJkDoMY

PS I thought long and hard about changing the name of this blog so that it wasn't using a slur word with particular gender associations. It's my desire to create a positive environment for every person. And at the same time, I like to poke the bear. The name stays. If you have a problem with that I'd love to hear all about it.

What is moral right and wrong?

The blog's been quiet for some time. There are reasons for this. I'll get to them in time, but I'm going to start us back up with some philosophy.

There are some major questions in philosophy that have been around as long as people have. What is morality? What is the self? What is god? What is free will? What is existence made of? How should I live my life? Depending on your perspective, these questions have either been answered long ago, or are just as open today as ever they were.

I have believed roughly 2-3 different answers to these questions at different times in my life, and changing my beliefs has been a rare (roughly every decade or so) but thoroughly enjoyable and unexpected experience every time.

While it would be poor inductive reasoning on my part to suppose that the answers I have now to these questions will remain so, I believe two things which I think make it worthwhile spelling them out anyway. First, like changes in scientific consensus, changing in philosophical belief doesn't undermine the authority of the process. When we replace newtonian physics with subatomic physics, we're not saying Newton got it completely wrong, we're saying he was on the right track, he just didn't consider some fine print. Second, I feel I have resolved some internal frictions in my philosophy which existed before now, so I feel like now is the time.

So, here is the first in what may become a series of my personally held convictions about the major philosophical conundrums. Because ti seems wrong to do what I do without ever spelling them out.



What is moral right and wrong?
There are two broad answers to this question. One is to deny the existence of moral right and wrong. The other is to accept its existence, and then try to explain how it exists, and why that account means we should behave in certain common sense ethical ways.

I have long held a relativist position, for many reasons, including lack of evidence for god, and causal predetermination. But the greatest argument for moral relativism is a simple counter. I can imagine a person who - for whatever psychological/genetic/causal reasons, simply loves to murder people, and cannot be convinced otherwise. I can find no good reason why this person ought to feel guilty. I can find no convincing way to explain to this person that what they are doing is wrong. I can find no explanation of what this person could do in order to become a good person. And I cannot, on a simple common sense level, understand a system of ethics which condemns someone as evil while simultaneously recognising that there is nothing they or we can do about it. If some people are just inevitably evil then the motivational power of an ethical system is thoroughly undermined.

It's precisely analogous to my favourite argument against god. Some popular religions would have it that not believing in the one true god means you're a bad person. Yet, using every intellectual and emotional capacity available to me, I am not able to believe in god. If god exists, it follows that god built me in this way, and is then hell-bent on punishing me for god's own doing. That cannot be perfection. In fact, that sounds like exactly the kind of fiction a fucked up, guilt-ridden narcissist would create.

All this being said, I have always had a strong moral compass - or more accurately a strong emotional reaction to unfairness and contradiction, and this has been hard to integrate with my philosophical beliefs.

One way to cash out on this is to be thoroughly emotivist. To accept that my strong negative reactions to perceived unfairness are merely preferences which carry no more authority than my preference for vanilla over chocolate. This perspective, however, carries some unfortunate side effects. It renders moral behaviour meaningless. It means there is no meaningful moral discussion to be had, no social progress to be made, just changing tastes. Most importantly, it means I have no reason not to screw you over if I think it will benefit me in totality. It means we are all pretending to be moral, while really looking out for ourselves.

Where can we possibly go from here?

This is my suggestion (and certainly not mine originally). It's a form of compatibilism between authoritative morality and a scientific understanding of the world which denies the possibility of an actual moral authority. Here we go.

I suggested above that an essential ramification of moral relativism was a selfish, individualist perspective. This was a lie, but a lie I tried to internalise for over a decade. It's a natural enough assumption, in our particular culture. If there isn't a set of rules telling me I ought or must treat people with a certain moral respect then why on earth would I choose to do so? If everyone thought like me, wouldn't society collapse?

We live in a world which functions on the myth of individualism. We are told from day one that we are in competition with others, for jobs, for relationships, for money, for happiness. We are sold products which turn entirely around making the individual more attractive, more intelligent, more successful. We HAVE to be out for ourselves, because no one else will be.

The joke is that individualism relies on non-individualistic beliefs. The lure of professional success is nothing without the social recognition which comes with it. Looking good is worthless unless something good comes to you because of it. Money is only worth what other people will give you for it. Yet we're encouraged to ignore these facts; to pretend that money is worthwhile in itself, that 'success' will make us happy, that conforming to cultural beauty norms is any less arbitrary than conforming to local linguistic norms.

I always prided myself on being able to step out of these cultural dogmas, but I was wrong - they coloured most of my life in ways I am only just recognising. Most relevantly, they coloured how I interpreted moral relativism.

I grew up (like a lot of my readers) in an environment where the pervasive existential narrative is a scientific and economic one. Humans are understood as essentially selfish. The world is understood as essentially meaningless. Life is understood as a struggle to beat the competition. Against this backdrop, I assumed that in the absence of moral authority, it was my obligation to get the most for myself.

This perspective is false, but self-sustaining. If you understand the world in this way, and you discover that there is no moral authority, then of course you will go out and be a dick to people. You will say to yourself, "Wow, how fantastic, finally I can be myself, do whatever I want, free from authority," and then you will go out and treat people like objects.

But it may just be that you do that, and then realise that that didn't make you happy either. You may do it and realise that actually you weren't being selfish at all, you were still letting someone else tell you what to do, you just didn't realise it - because you were letting your environment define you as this machine that doesn't care about others except in so far as they help you out.

You may realise that being TRULY selfish would mean abandoning that pervasive conception of what a person is, and what the point of life is, and opening up to the fact that we are all in this together. That we are all one. You may realise that in the absence of authoritative morality and purpose rather than having no direction, you are free to choose for yourself. And you may realise that if you can choose from an infinite set of possibilities, it will be much more fun to choose something that is not dickish.

So this is how I now render compatible my logical scepticism of authoritative morality with my strong moral conviction. My morality is not authoratative in the way many moral philosophers would prefer that it was. I will never tell anyone they are a bad person, I will never eliminate them from consideration for a relationship of some kind because of something they've done in the past. I will not guilt myself out for things that I have done in the past.

But at the same time, I will not accept that my moral intuitions are mere preferences, like vanilla over chocolate. Moral intuitions are the result of a complex series of reasoning which draws on verifiable facts about the world. While it's not the case that there is any one correct moral system, it is the case that there are huge overlaps between us in what makes our lives good, and that these overlaps are not a zero sum game. What makes life good is not money or things, but people and relationships - be they close to us, or increasingly in the modern world, far away. We can talk meaningfully about how we can behave to maximise our chances, and we can agree to sets of rules which work towards these goals.

But most importantly, if you decide the rules aren't up to scratch, I support wholeheartedly you efforts to disobey and change them.

A Cognitivist-Subjectivist Theory of Art For Video Games (Pt. 2 of 2)

In part 1 (here) I suggested that "what is art?" boils down to how much we think human nature defines where we find beauty, and how universal that human nature is. I now suggest that it is universal enough for us to consider the validity of games in that scheme, but not enough for a true absolutist aesthetics.

My picture
I would want to argue that there exists no sound justification for an assumption of universal pre-programming in human subject's aesthetic taste, and that until there does we ought to take the simpler, less authoritative route of simply accepting that sometimes there will be no agreement between two persons on a particular subject. If I'm built in such a way that I prefer dark humour to light, and you the other, need there be a problem provided we are good enough judges to understand what is at the heart of the matter? Even cultural or personal differences, learnt biases of which one is aware but unable or unwilling to change, can be factored in and allowed for. Hume seems reluctant but committed to drawing much the same conclusion.

In this way we can account for common sense ideas like guilty pleasures. When I describe bad sci-fi as a guilty pleasure I don't mean that I enjoy it in the same way as someone who takes the pleasure at face value. I mean that as a reasonable judge I understand that the powers-to-produce of bad sci-fi are exaggerated on me thanks to my personal bias, and that my opinion will not necessarily be shared by other judges of a similar standard. This is not to say that I ought not enjoy bad sci-fi, only that I would be wrong to hold it up as great art.

What makes your taste superior to mine, then, is not the objects of your preference, but your understanding of the objective power-to-produce those objects hold. If a high art critic judges a smudge of paint on a wall to be beautiful, he is only correct if it he understands what about the paint has the power-to-produce such feelings in himself and in other subjects. Now, perhaps it turns out to be the case that the smudge of paint is pretentious. The critic was responding not to the work, but to external stimuli of which he wasn't aware (eg the reputation of the artist, the presentation of the work on the Turbine Floor of the Tate Modern, emperor's new clothes syndrome). In this case his judgement is wrong.

There's much more that could be written on how the good judge functions, but suffice to say I think there's sufficient evidence to suggest that we are capable of agreeing in a great many cases, and (at least in principle if not in practice) of understanding why we disagree in the rest.  For now, though, let's get back onto games. 


What does this mean for games?
Clearly, on my picture, video games are capable of being art. About this infamous detractor, Roger Ebert, does not disagree. In fact, he practically gives the entire game up when he writes:

One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.

I'm sure we'd be quite comfortable seeing the future of artistic video games as being at least in part in 'immersive games without points or rules'. But would we be right to do so?

Let's recap. In order to be considered art, games must have the objective power-to-produce feelings of beauty or 'aesthetic approbation' in human subjects who are good judges of art. A logical equation cannot reasonably be considered valid until it has been judged so by a good logician, and likewise with artistic value.

The good judge has to be a whole bunch of things we can probably guess for ourselves. He has to have good self-understanding, he has to have good knowledge of the medium (for a certain shorthand is developed, and the same trick will not work the same way the tenth time), and his practical capacities (intelligence, perception etc) have to be up to the task.

So what do good judges make of video games? Well, we know the field is split. Ebert is well respected in his field and drastically opposed to video games as art, but then he's quick to accept that his knowledge of the medium is next to zero, which rather eliminates him from the conversation. Of course, if it's true that games are art, and it's true that Ebert is an intelligent and perceptive judge, then it must be true that he could be persuaded (through careful critique of the games in question) that those games are in fact art. I don't know if this has been attempted in earnest, but it would make for a fascinating experiment.

On the other hand, plainly a whole bunch of us say games are art, but might we not be positively biased given our investment in the medium? When we garner what emotion we obviously do from video games, is it right that the powers-to-produce those emotions are in the physical construction of the game itself, or do they really lie in our perception of the medium as something new and exciting? Who would we hold out as a games critic on Ebert's level, and would they agree with us?

Perhaps the naysayers are right when they say we're not there yet. Part of what we need to really answer the question is perspective: we need to know what we're going to achieve in the future, and by what standards the Braids and the Wakos will be compared. The question: are today's efforts closer to cave paintings that perhaps should be considered of greater historical interest than of genuine artistic merit?

It's a cop out, but time will tell. This thing we do - of not just shaping something that will affect the audience, but creating something that the audience can go on to affect in meaningful ways - is unique and developing, and those held in the artistic spotlight are usually quick to point out as much. For all that I enjoy and appreciate the original Pong, there's no doubt in my mind that it is not (and never was) art (though not to say it is impossible to find beauty in its function). Perhaps we'll feel the same about Braid in another 40 years.

Let's ask these questions again when we're in a better position to answer them. In the meantime we need to carry on with what we're doing: seeking a better understanding of interaction and its unique powers-to-produce.

A Cognitivist-Subjectivist Theory of Art For Video Games (Pt. 1 of 2)

Some time ago I rocked up to the Bioware talk at BAFTA, in which Greg and Ray expounded their relativist theories of art: namely that since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, anything can be art, and therefore video games are art provided we say they are. Their position was reasonable, consistent, but lacking any real punch.

The punch that's pulled - the willingness to actually pin down what art is beyond what we think it is - renders the art world a much less interesting place to be. It means there is no right and no wrong in taste; that the statement 'video games are art' is meaningless, because we can say with equal validity 'Kenco coffee is art', provided someone somewhere considers it so.

More recently I wrote up an alternate take on subjectivist aesthetics that I think achieves three key things:

1. It provides us a standard of taste: it remains possible for us to have meaningful discussions over whose taste (and which artworks) is better (it is a 'cognitivist' account; it takes aesthetic statements to mean something concrete)

2. It gives us a deeper way in which to understand and debate questions of video games' artistic validity

3. And it maintains the common sense perspective that sometimes who we are affects where we find beauty, and that we needn't all have identical standards of taste in order to appreciate true beauty (it is relativist)


Aesthetic values are subjective
Aesthetic value is a subjective property: it's a property that can only be felt, that can only have reality if there is a subject - a human being, most likely - to experience it. A world without subjects is a world without aesthetic value. Since beauty isn't an atom or a wave floating around in the universe that we can point to as a way to justify our artistic values, we need to find something else to provide them objective reality, otherwise we're left with the relativist picture the doctors present.

So, nothing about a value being subjective entails that it has no objective element about which we can argue. A value statement, on my picture, retains its propositional aspect: when I say 'video games are art' I'm commenting on a genuine set of physical features borne out by video games that make them art which are missing from Kenco coffee.


Aesthetic values are causally related to objective features
It's all based around David Hume's concept of aesthetic value as the 'power-to-produce'. Essentially, any physical object has a set of real, objective properties: in painting these would be physical dimensions, colours, textures etc; in literature it's the organisation of the words; in video games it's a bit of both and something else besides. These physical properties have the power to produce feelings in human subjects. For instance, Schindler's List is built in such a way as to produce feelings of roughly resentment, regret, shock, and beauty in most people who watch it. It could be meaningfully described as a beautiful film, or even a great piece of art, on the strength of these powers-to-produce.

What's crucial here is that we're maintaining the perfectly reasonable observation that the beauty itself relies on subjective response, but we're identifying an objective feature to which to attach those responses (the causal relationship between the object and the subject), and on which to base our discussions. Simply calling an artwork beautiful is no longer sufficient justification; we can now explain clearly the real features of the work which promote this response. We could meaningfully argue that Schindler's List is a better film than Men in Black on the basis that the former presents human relationships in a much truer form than the latter, or because it's based on a true story, or because Neeson is more believable than Smith; ultimately that Schindler's List has greater power-to-produce feelings of beauty in its viewers.


The human nature dilemma
But how do we handle the situation where I simply prefer the humour of MiB to the drama of the holocaust film? How can we say that on the one hand taste can be right or wrong, while on the other it's okay to disagree sometimes?

This is where we have to split the class. Both horns of the dilemma tend to rest on some consideration of a shared human nature, but the degrees affect the outcome. Classic normative aestheticians (ie people like Kant or Hume on a certain reading) who think artistic value is an absolute about which there is only one truth would want to claim that we have enough shared genetic programming to agree about all aesthetic judgements. Perception of beauty is just one of those things - like logical thought or linguistic capacity - that all human beings (and perhaps all self-aware beings) share. Like logic there can be disagreement, but there remains only one correct answer; and like logic some subjects may have a superior capacity for identifying objects with the power-to-produce beauty than others, and this makes them more reliable judges in such matters.

This article continues with other horn and how it affects video games.

Is Art a Modern Religion?

This is another one of those 'WTF does that have to do with games?' posts. It's about questioning the value of art. You can find more philosophising here.

I'm due to go back to school. Starting September I'm aiming to enrol on the Philosophy MA at King's College, London. Somewhere at the back of my mind a doctorate is calling. For now, though, I'm very happy writing games and this course will just be a part-time thing to keep my brain alive. With that in mind, I'm trying to get back into gear by turning out some essays. This is one. Some notes before we start:

- I have a BA in philosophy, but I've never studied any aesthetics. I may be saying things that are painfully obvious, or got debunked centuries ago.

- If you're already au fait with objective and subjective values, and with art being the latter, you can safely skip to 'What is art?'

- This essay assumes the reader accepts religion as false. Some of the arguments are based on this belief.

- There's a too long, didn't read at the end.

On with the show!

Is Art a Modern Religion?

Art bares remarkably many of the hallmarks of a religion. Is its value something we've been conditioned to accept unquestioningly?

Defining the word 'art'

Clearly the word itself, 'art', is one whose definition has never ceased to be turbulent. For the purposes of this discussion I'll use it to refer to any thing, manmade or otherwise, which can be considered valuable beyond any practical purpose. This would cover - as I see it - anything that's ever been considered 'art', including music, photography, video games; a car chassis, a woodland clearing, or a building.

There's usually a further conversation to be had over which of these emotive things carry artistic value (often the painting or the opera), and which are 'merely' aesthetically valuable (eg blue wallpaper or a shiny watch strap). This is not a distinction I'm concerned with right now. For now when I refer to art, I refer most specifically to that pursuit a great many great people have dedicated their lives to creating, promoting, and assessing: the creation of art for art's sake.

Already, I think, we've hit a number of telling notes. We know that art is something which people - often unquestioningly, fanatically and otherwise to their own detriment - consider to be of utmost importance in their lives. Art is something we are all intimately aware of, but struggle to pin down. It is something we fight over (albeit in a far more subdued way than religion). Art is something on which we attempt to proliferate our own perspective at the expense of opposing movements. It is something which pervades every element of our society, be it the Dali design on Chupa Chups lollies or the carefully choreographed cutlery on a fine dining table.

Art is perceived as a 'real' value

Obviously I'm not seeking to question the existence of the things which we call art, in just the same way I would not seek to claim it impossible that someone called Jesus said some persuasive things at some point. Clearly paintings and books exist. My concern is the perceived value behind those things - namely, is there any true value to them, or like god is that value an invention of the psychethat makes the world a bit more bearable?

Art is something the most of us would take for granted as being in some intrinsic and timeless way fundamental to human existence. Specific examples aside, its value as a whole is something whose reality tends not be open to question. Crucially, therefore, artistic value is something with the ability to propel us through life in directions entirely unsupported by any rational facts.

A Criticism of H.O.M.E.'s "The Case Against Homosexual Activity"

What's about to follow has nothing to do with games. It is, instead, an academic piece of philosophy evaluating the logical validity of an interesting piece of anti-homosexual theory I read. Given my recent write up on Infinite Ocean's philosophy you'd be forgiven for thinking the blog was taking a new direction. Maybe it is a bit, but not much. Long story short, I'm as passionate about philosophy as I am about interactive art, and I have a blog, so it seems like the right place to put it.

Again, this has nothing to do with games.

So. A few weeks ago I was writing a piece of fiction where I had my protagonist facing off against a homophobe. I wanted my bad guy to put up a fight, so I researched some common anti-gay arguments and came across the 'Heterosexuals Organised for a Moral Environment' website. I'm sure they appreciate the irony of the acronym.

I've written up a critique of their essay. HOME's original essay is 5,000 words, so I've made up...

The Long Version - About ten pages, very academic, plus some jokes and spelling mistakes on my part
The Short Version - About four pages with all HOME's unnecessary rhetoric taken out; less entertaining, but, you know, shorter. Still has spelling mistakes.

In the interest of full disclosure I should say that I am straight, that I fiercely oppose irrational discrimination, and that I consider myself an atheist moral subjectivist. The latter is a poncy way of saying I think morality is just another religion.

I've written to HOME to give them the opportunity to reply. All considered comments extremely welcome.

Inifinite Ocean: A Philosophical Critique - Part 2

This is part 2 of a discussion of Infinite Ocean, Jonas Kyratzes' philosophical sci-fi adventure. Part 1 here.

AI Development
The poetry discussed in part 1 comes to play a startlingly effective role as the player catches up with the AI's development (or growing maturity).

Like a human rising above pure instinct, [SGDS] rises above its programming, above its body, becomes MORE.

The author's realisation of this process is transfixing: this is great, thoughtful and thought provoking science fiction in the Asimov mode that so obviously inspired this work.

SGDS: If I limited my systems in the same way you limit your minds I'd be a calculator.
Jerry: That was a joke, wasn't it? How awesome is that?

Morality
It's with the gradual shift towards and eventual spotlighting of morality that the game truly declares itself as an anti-war piece, and shifts onto (IMO) less steady ground. The clues were there from the beginning:

Words on the wall: You fight for nothing.
Player: The moral value of a cause is not determined solely by its chance of success.

That's looks suspiciously like a moral assumption to me. As we move towards the climax, SGDS inevitably develops a code of ethics and turns against its programming:

Though it was made to kill, it has come to the conclusion that to kill is wrong.

Traditionally there have been great problems with theorising from where a code of ethics should be produced. God used to be the catch all answer, but in his absence we've been scraping the barrel a little. It's generally held that an action can't be moral if there's personal gain to be had, which really leaves pure logic as the only option - as SGDS reasonably concludes:

Our ethics must be based on our thoughts, for everything else may be but a dream.

Unfortunately a big problem with logic is that it's usually held that it can't - alone - be motivational. The AI continues its argument:

[Killing is] destructive for the human species, and consequently for the individual as well. 

Now we're venturing dangerously close to utilitarianism. A great many people have tried to demonstrate that the greatest good for the greatest number is a logical end, and therefore a moral necessity, but it rarely ends well. If we were being generous we could interpret SGDS' position as being closer to David Hume's original emotivist picture - that there is no logical or moral inconsistency with preferring the destruction of the world to the pricking of one's finger - but that too is thrown out:

The argument expressed in the image above is, as I see it, a systematic error: Kyratzes (or SGDS) is falling into the trap he's already identified, that:

Most humans, despite the fact that they make so much of morality[...] simply adapt to what those around them believe.

SGDS has already accepted that ethics must be based in thought; that values are something we create unique to ourselves, something that defines us as different to those around us. But if it is morality that makes us unique, then morality cannot be based solely on logic because logic is objective and therefore all our moralities would be identical. What makes us unique is our differing abilities to feel emotion. What makes one person a comedian, another a serial killer and another a philosopher is what drives us to act.

Moral values, in short, are subjective. They are not some authoritative set of rules; they are little more than personal preference. And if such is true then the destruction of the subject also implies the destruction of the values. The greater good is not desirable if it means the sacrifice of the subject in question.

The rest of the story is history. SGDS continues with this - I believe - false premise, and the game goes on to make some eloquent observations on the futility of war that to my mind stand up for themselves without the need for any moral mumbo jumbo. The use of the Wilfred Owen (a British WW1 poet) poetry is particularly effective as both an anti religion and anti war sentiment: Owen describes and condemns war first hand as an inconceivable terror, just as SGDS - through its superior imagination - does the same.

The final words of the game - a Latin text quoted as part of another Owen poem - translate to:

How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country.

It's intended as criticism: that patriotism and war are meaningless and horrendous. It's fair comment, but for me it's a double edged sword: by SGDS' own logic it seems just as irrational that he/she/it is willing to die for the sake of the world.

Still, as SGDS quite rightly observes, better to make our own mistakes than to follow someone else's:

The Future
Morality aside, I'm fully onboard with Infinite Ocean's perspective.

This creature has understood by pure logic: that love is the only thing which is truly important.

If I were nitpicking I'd question how love as an experience can be understood through logic - in the same way you can't explain the colour red, you just have to see it - but the sentiment is beautifully presented and fundamentally profound.

The title itself is not without weight, and it's that every element of this experience slots into place and makes sense that sets this experience apart from its overly obtuse brethren. Halfway through the game you come across a picture of the 'infinite ocean' (this post's header image), accompanied by this comment:

May your thoughts ever be as free and limitless as the infinite ocean.

Next to the picture is Eaves' artificial intelligence book. It's clear that for the author SGDS' pure logic represents a kind of ideal. This lifeform - even in its theoretical form as considered outside of the game experience - sees the beauty and the pain in the world, and their sources, and takes as its primary goal to think for itself; to never allow the dogmas imposed upon it by its creators to govern its actions and screw up the world. To break free of its programming just as Infinite Ocean itself encourages its audience to do the same. As Blake puts it:

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

Life & The Last Puzzle
The only other question is what the hell is going on? Given the depth of the creativity and thought on show here it's easy to forget there probably ought to be a story. If I had to take a guess I'd say you were playing as Eaves, post-evacuation, the last ditch attempt by the scientists to return control of the weapons platform to SGDS; but it's already too late. Although I can't say I'm 100% happy with that interpretation because the ending seems to imply hope, that the great fire can still be prevented. So sod only knows. I'm sure the clues are there somewhere.

I had a pretty involved conversation on the subject of artificial lifeforms with a mate of mine who's a bit of a talent in the Oxford University Physics department. What I find most fascinating is the blurring of the boundaries. While Jerry in Infinite Ocean assumes a being must have a soul in order to be alive, Kyratzes (as far as I can tell) and I conclude the soul is a myth; that the line between sentience and inanimacy is an arbitrary one drawn in the complexity of electronic (or otherwise) signals. It's almost a bit postmodern: the naysayers ask whether an AI is simply simulating the appearance of sentience based on a set of rules; I ask how you'd argue that human beings aren't doing the same. If there is no such thing as a soul, then there is no difference between a thing and a person, beyond that question of complexity. We can point to an attribute and say "That means it's alive," but we're just labelling, applying a false human value to make the world less confusing.

It's difficult to form a strong emotional attachment to a calculator, but empathising with a computer of human-like complexity seems altogether realistic. Infinite Ocean's scientists would seem to argue that if you can care about a program, if its termination can make you despair, if you can even fall in love... then what the hell does it matter whether it's got a soul or not?

Inifinite Ocean: A Philosophical Critique - Part 1

Christ. Deconstructing the philosophy of one of the most intelligent, intricately constructed examples of interactive art available has been a mission and a half.

2003's Infinite Ocean is a text-heavy, Myst-style adventure, whose updated version has been doing the rounds recently. It describes itself as a philosophical sci-fi adventure. Now, I read that and I thought to myself, who else do I know who's made a philosophical sci-fi adventure? But I couldn't remember so I figured I'd just check it out.

What follows is one part game review (it's wicked, though I question just how much of a game it is) and four parts discussion of the philosophy contained within, presented broadly in the order experienced in the game. I have no idea if this sort of critique is necessary or interesting; I'm just chuffed there's content out there that's worth the time.

Long story short, play the game first if you're going to.

I hope the validity (or otherwise) of my conclusions speaks for itself, but it's worth noting that underpinning my comments is a lifelong passion for producing and consuming philosophical fiction; and less importantly a First Class Philosophy BA.

SPOILERS.

Atmosphere
The game's opening sections make it clear that Kyratzes has done a good job of delivering both a tense, isolationist feel - despite the limited visual assets - and on conjuring to mind a real sense of wonder at what it would be like to create, converse and ultimately conflict with a true artificial lifeform; and asking what the philosophical implications of such a thing might be. I really enjoy the integration of SGDS' consciousness into the computer systems as random clues, thoughts and errors pop up in the middle of the logs.

ju748a few alt45ed files might be enough/.

These nudges are just strong enough to relate the tale of Jerry et al rebelling against the government; and just subtle enough to allow us to intuitively fill in the blanks. This and the password pattern matching mechanic all rather riff on the defining ability of a sentient intelligence to synthesise information.

tr##d to leave (loadfail) 6$%e holes for y%$

The words on the walls are smart as well as intimidating. It's unclear to me who is supposed to have put them there (seems a funny approach for the military, best guess is it's SGDS' unconscious fear), but it's clear they parallel the voices the author, along with the rest of us, hear around every corner: the implicit demands of society that we don't struggle, don't think, just conform.

So(u)l
The philosophy moves from cursory observation to concrete concern a couple of locked doors down as we begin to get a grip on what the team of scientists have been pursuing, and the repercussions implied. Jerry comments:

Programming is digital thought[...] As God does, man creates worlds from pure thought.

I've chopped bits out of the prose there so as to make the argument more apparent. Jerry's proposing here that programming - as a form of creation with the potential to develop beyond its initial premises (contrasted with literature or music, say, which themselves are unchanged without human interference) - has the potential to create something which qualifies as a lifeform. That mankind can create a being with a soul. This is the first time the question of what exactly an entity must do in order to qualify as 'alive' is raised, and it's also the first broaching of a religious tension. SGDS finds fault with Jerry's perspective:

[Not knowing how they function] makes it easier for [humans] to believe there is some spiritual/non-material component to their being.

It seems to me that at most points in the narrative it is SGDS' views that represent the author's. This is a self-professed piece of philosophy, and as such has sound rational thinking at its very core, and as we're reminded throughout, SGDS is just about as logical a being as it's possible to imagine. The computer's observation here is a sharp one, and a biting criticism of religion, spirituality, and blind faith as a whole. It realises that people are willingly ignorant, and that this lack of understanding is what causes us to invent concepts like god. It goes on to comment that it doesn't understand why it's being treated - by some of the team - like a thing, rather than a living being.

I do not understand why they are treating me the way they are.

The simple answer is ignorance: if you believe in some divine direction in the world, chances are you'll have trouble believing a bunch of silicone can be 'alive'; Jerry thinks it's important to know whether SGDS has a soul, but SGDS understands such a thing is a fiction, that the lines between inanimate and alive are far less objective. The conflict that false beliefs can nurture is made explicit when the scientists describe Major Field later on:

He is so full of hate, hate for all religions but his own.

Play the Game
The way things progress from here has definite The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) vibes, but you quickly come to realise that this is largely a cleverly packaged novella for the Playstation generation. The 'game' is a collection of texts, accessed by completing some occasionally inventive, but mostly cursory puzzles, presented through static - and sometimes disorienting - artwork.

I realise as I write this that perhaps I'm sometimes too harsh on games with less interactive narratives (though see the Tribes write up for a balancing view). I believe it's true that the only games to really embrace the medium do so by putting malleable drama at their centre. However, to criticise Infinite Ocean for not being one of those games - for essentially being a way to trick gamers into reading some philosophical science fiction - is somewhat akin to criticising a great play because it could just as easily have been made as a film. It's so important at this stage in our industry's development to be pioneering new methods of interaction almost at the expense of all else that sometimes it comes at the expense of... well, all else.

Moving forward, characters and plot become a little hard to follow - even some very basic headshots would have aided recall - and the segregation of backstory, philosophy and gameplay results in each being delivered in ever larger, more predictable chunks. By the end of the experience this becomes an almost self-referential joke as the penultimate room abandons distinct art and gameplay in favour of a bank of ten different text terminals.

Fortunately, the strength of the founding concept and the intelligence applied to it keeps your interest, and the implications of the philosophy as well as a drive to get to the bottom of things kept me moving.

Aesthetics
An interesting turn comes with the move from existentialism to aesthetics (the philosophy of art / beauty). It's a topic I'm still getting to grips with, and I found Kyratzes' handling of it traditional, yet thoroughly artistically appealing. At the centre of aesthetics is the question "What is art / beauty, and how is it valuable?"

SGDS answers:

Intellect, perception, understanding - all of these are impossible without imagination[...] [The humans] still categorise art and its creation as useless or trivial[...] And yet their entire community, their entire sense of self, is built upon art.

Or to put it in the in-game words of William Blake:

Poetry fettered fetters the human race.

It feels like a fair observation: imagination underpins new applications of rationality; and just as philosophy can stimulate rationalism, art can stimulate imagination. I do wonder whether it's too strongly put: is Blake's version of the argument really as useful as SGDS' more direct formulation? Infinite Ocean argues that:

To express the ideas contained within a single poem by one of the masters in 'normal speech' would take many pages, if possible at all.

I don't know. I still take issue with the positioning of art as equal or superior in importance to philosophy. This said, I can certainly appreciate the beauty in the author's use of poetry, within his own fiction, to reflect his philosophy, and can identify with Jerry's observation:

We talked about beauty today. The things SGDS said... are so logical, and yet so amazing[...] I suppose the sadness is what I feel when I realise the true nature of our world, when I understand all the mistakes we've made as a species.

This line leads us neatly into Part 2 - a discussion of the game's moral message.