Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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Papus79
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Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by Papus79 »

If I'm understanding ridicule right it seems to be a system of agreements where if anyone steps far enough out of line someone will give them a shot and invite laughter of the group against that person.

I was playing a game with some friends which was an all-against-all card game (or at least we didn't team up). I had a guy I just met trying to get me into alliance (ie. Chthulu salvation) and since he offered it I took him up on that, attacked whoever looked strongest but also went out and attacked him while he was trying to take on the other two guys. Mainly being new and not having great cards I decided that the best way to make them game interesting - for me - was to just attack whoever had power and was overextended / tapped attacking someone else, rinse and repeat with the plan to bring everyone else down to my level - leveraging that I'm not a threat.

I'm realizing just how much strategy games like that really teach game theory and I had the additional idea - what if strategy games had formal ridicule? That would be agreed upon and coopted rules which would add a new element to the game. My idea was to make ridicule be of blunt / trope social strategies and if someone pulls that card on another person that mean that the person they were looking to manipulate or intimidate gets 5 mana in the game if they agree to 'own' the behavior from their aggressor and then manipulate them in a counter-game). The idea is that this sort of thing encourages penalties for underhanded strategies.

This where I saw that it needed rules for this to work. Infinite use of these cards means 80% of the game or more would be people maxing their turns out with name-calling. There would need to be a limited number of pointers someone can pull - in my example (in a four on four card game) one use per epithet - not per person but per game. It's there to be a disincentive, sort of like if you do 'x' first you take the bullet first'. The other part - it has to be a rule that participants have actually agreed to. Ridicule can be misused when it's firing on someone with orthogonal values and hence it's extractive ridicule rather than character criticism).

I'm just thinking - applying framings like these to things like ridicule makes it more possible to formalize it and spot well-aim / well-used vs. mis-used or escalating. The more I think about it the more this actually sounds like something George Lakoff would be into.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Cambridge Dictionary wrote: Ridicule n. unkind words or actions that make someone or something look stupid.
This about says it all. Your OP seems to hint at an attractive or positive side to ridicule. I can't see it.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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Butter. Reminds me of Logarithmia.

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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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Papus79 wrote: September 26th, 2022, 9:58 am Butter. Reminds me of Logarithmia.
Sorry? 🤔❓
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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Pattern-chaser wrote: September 26th, 2022, 10:06 am
Papus79 wrote: September 26th, 2022, 9:58 am Butter. Reminds me of Logarithmia.
Sorry? 🤔❓
Nah you caught it right - just realized that dropped in the wrong thread. :oops:
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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Pattern-chaser wrote: September 26th, 2022, 9:56 am
Cambridge Dictionary wrote: Ridicule n. unkind words or actions that make someone or something look stupid.
This about says it all. Your OP seems to hint at an attractive or positive side to ridicule. I can't see it.
The positive side of ridicule - people can get away with any behavior that's legal. Certain things that probably should be illegal can't be made illegal because the nuance required would be impossible. Machiavellianism's a great example of an optimizing strategy that, taken up by enough people, yields dystopic results and attempts to regulate the behavior legally does the same. If a behavior both can't be made illegal for logistical reasons and can't be allowed without causing fractal defection ridicule is one of the few tools that properly makes up the difference.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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The important thing is putting parameters and rules on ridicule to tax 'stab the other guy in the legs if he's a faster runner' kind of stuff.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by AverageBozo »

Papus79 wrote: September 26th, 2022, 10:19 am The important thing is putting parameters and rules on ridicule to tax 'stab the other guy in the legs if he's a faster runner' kind of stuff.
You seem to be arguing for boundaries of meanness. Stabbing a faster runner in the leg makes a victim, not a fool.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

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AverageBozo wrote: September 26th, 2022, 4:46 pm You seem to be arguing for boundaries of meanness.
I'm going to try and extend the concept so you can see what kind of spectrum we're working on.

Ridicule can either take the form of prosecuting the misuse of power and levying a tax on its abuses, or it can be purely exploitative such as bullying in the blunt sense, or it can be slandering / libeling your enemies.

I'm almost strictly interested in the first of those three.

I really think you could say that ridicule of the first variety mentioned is at the close / enacted / organic end of a spectrum that, as it's opposite end, has law and jurisprudence. Law is an extreme form of the first form of ridicule in that it's deciding on your rights based on accused behavior, evidence, witnesses and experts, jury, etc. - ie. it's high stakes and accordingly to not be misused it needs very careful scrutiny.

It's closer to making an argumentative case and presenting it in pithy snippets. People pay attention to it because their interaction with it is salient as it pertains to status, ie. it's friends keeping friends in check when it can be used in that manner.

The reason why I'm actually recommending it at this point - physical violence is the next tool available in line. I'd rather see society hold than fall into barbarism.
AverageBozo wrote: September 26th, 2022, 4:46 pm Stabbing a faster runner in the leg makes a victim, not a fool.
I'm hoping it didn't sound like I was endorsing that sort of thing, I was talking about because that sort of behavior is a shocking and appalling part of our social landscape but it happens a lot.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by AverageBozo »

Papus79 wrote: September 26th, 2022, 5:20 pm
AverageBozo wrote: September 26th, 2022, 4:46 pm You seem to be arguing for boundaries of meanness.
I'm going to try and extend the concept so you can see what kind of spectrum we're working on.

Ridicule can either take the form of prosecuting the misuse of power and levying a tax on its abuses, or it can be purely exploitative such as bullying in the blunt sense, or it can be slandering / libeling your enemies.

I'm almost strictly interested in the first of those three.

I really think you could say that ridicule of the first variety mentioned is at the close / enacted / organic end of a spectrum that, as it's opposite end, has law and jurisprudence. Law is an extreme form of the first form of ridicule in that it's deciding on your rights based on accused behavior, evidence, witnesses and experts, jury, etc. - ie. it's high stakes and accordingly to not be misused it needs very careful scrutiny.

It's closer to making an argumentative case and presenting it in pithy snippets. People pay attention to it because their interaction with it is salient as it pertains to status, ie. it's friends keeping friends in check when it can be used in that manner.

The reason why I'm actually recommending it at this point - physical violence is the next tool available in line. I'd rather see society hold than fall into barbarism.
AverageBozo wrote: September 26th, 2022, 4:46 pm Stabbing a faster runner in the leg makes a victim, not a fool.
I'm hoping it didn't sound like I was endorsing that sort of thing, I was talking about because that sort of behavior is a shocking and appalling part of our social landscape but it happens a lot.
About 9 or so posts back from here, PC gave you the Cambridge definition of ridicule. I wonder if you’ve read that yet.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by Papus79 »

AverageBozo wrote: September 26th, 2022, 7:57 pm About 9 or so posts back from here, PC gave you the Cambridge definition of ridicule. I wonder if you’ve read that yet.
That's true if they're stripped of healthy context.

Also Merriam Webster:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ridicule
ridicule

2 of 2
verb
ridiculed; ridiculing
transitive verb

: to make fun of
'To make fun of', IMHO, is more a much more appropriate definition of the space.
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by AverageBozo »

Papus79 wrote: September 26th, 2022, 9:02 pm
AverageBozo wrote: September 26th, 2022, 7:57 pm About 9 or so posts back from here, PC gave you the Cambridge definition of ridicule. I wonder if you’ve read that yet.
That's true if they're stripped of healthy context.

Also Merriam Webster:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ridicule
ridicule

2 of 2
verb
ridiculed; ridiculing
transitive verb

: to make fun of
'To make fun of', IMHO, is more a much more appropriate definition of the space.
Don’t you think that to make fun of a person is to make that person appear to be a stupid fool? How does stabbing (just for example) make fun?
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Re: Formal understanding of Ridicule and it's place in politics

Post by Papus79 »

AverageBozo wrote: September 27th, 2022, 11:02 am Don’t you think that to make fun of a person is to make that person appear to be a stupid fool? How does stabbing (just for example) make fun?
I'd have to know where I claimed that stabbing was either good, making fun of people, or both. So far I don't follow the line of inquiry.

The only thing I can perhaps do is repeat what I said earlier in slightly different phrasing (if I'm lucky) and see if what I'm intending to say here is clarified:

1) The need to check other people is a function of preventing exploitation by bad actors.

2) Law is the ultimate net for catching exploitative behavior and has rather absolute parameters as to whether someone's going to prison and losing their freedom, if not at least paying damages to the plaintiff.

3) There are seed problems, seed instigations, where people playing exploitative social games are able to make the social landscape, and in its worst case the social commons / town square, uninhabitable by reasonable people (reasonable social discourse gets destroyed by 'gamified discourse').

4) The only way to deal with such problems, before they pass some provable legal threshold, is to find some way of making bad behavior too expensive to perform in public.

5) The right kind of ridicule, ie. appropriately formed and aimed - toward people who are behaving in a predatory manner, is one of the only tools we have for cleaning up the commons.

6) Ridicule would then need to be almost scientifically examined, have stronger philosophic and cultural theories framing it, and probably have a lot more rules to where people get called out - fast - for misapplying it.

7) Between name-calling and knives, bullets, and military munitions, I'd rather we stick to name calling because without name-calling we result to bullets. It's effectively something that has to happen to prevent problems from getting out of hand early.

The point then is to examine ridicule and see in what ways it can be sorted out, cleaned up, and actually understood with respect to what sort of game-theoretic checks and balances it's actually supposed to perform when done right.

If there are any big words or lyrical / metaphoric 'waxing' (I hear that's one of my bigger communication issues) please ask me to expand or define.
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