I'm developing a simulation where characters, "users", are interacting over a virtual communication network. "Users" have the option to engage in any activity they want at any time, as long as the international and local governing bodies permit such behavior. Each user has a different set of resources, however all users are limited by a single limited resource, "time". Therefore, each moment spent by a user engaging in a given activity "costs" them this limited resource. In this simulation the "users" choose to spend copious amounts of time using the virtual communication network to answer questions to esoteric, hypothetical, imaginary questions. I am trying to understand why. Thanks.
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129Welcome to Worldbuilding, @B-RAF! Touche, you seem to have captured the nature of our community here. – Alexander Oct 02 '18 at 18:41
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6Welcome to Worldbuilding.SE! We're glad you could join us! When you have a moment, please click here to learn more about our culture and take our [tour]. You may also want to review our meta post about open-ended questions. The problem with questions like this is they are not objective and you've provided no criteria for judging a best answer. – JBH Oct 02 '18 at 18:51
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61A Worldbuilding question about a Worldbuilding community? :O – The Anathema Oct 02 '18 at 19:22
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Everyone likes to be asked questions... The more unusual the better. – Richard Oct 02 '18 at 19:28
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3It seems you've described any number of (or all) social networking websites. And the reasons for users posting and commenting on them vary greatly. – Tracy Cramer Oct 02 '18 at 23:27
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8Have you ever been to RPG.SE? This is literally all we do. – GreySage Oct 03 '18 at 20:07
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4You sir are possessed of a twisted mind. You'll fit right in here. Welcome aboard :) – Corey Oct 03 '18 at 23:22
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9Hmmm ... Why do World building SE members spend time answering imaginary questions to fictional hypotheticals? Welcome to the site! – pojo-guy Oct 04 '18 at 01:56
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3You are describing Quora. – Peter Mortensen Oct 04 '18 at 05:46
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1OMG I also understand the joke and will now write a comment that explains that I understood it so I will look smart! Please, everyone, let's all write a comment explaining that we understood the joke! Please also explain the joke while doing it. – pipe Oct 07 '18 at 18:42
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1Not only does this describe Worldbuilding SE, also describes Philosophy SE, Law SE, all the religion SE's, and some questions on Physics SE. – MichaelK Oct 08 '18 at 13:09
15 Answers
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Gamification.
Virtual scores are the nicotine of the 21st century.
Also this should be moved to meta.
The Square-Cube Law
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43Reminds me of a time I played this game where you had to tap stuff to harvest it every so many hours... drove me nuts if I didn't harvest it right as it became ready to do so in order to maximize my profits, or if there was network issues that prevented me from harvesting it all right away, or just touch screen issues resulting in missing items. I realized it was going to far when I started setting alarms for the middle of the night to wake me up for the next harvest time... :-) – Michael Oct 02 '18 at 20:07
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7@Michael you're not alone... not alone at all :). Heck, I write automated macro's to do my clicking and effective upgrading at night for me. – Mixxiphoid Oct 03 '18 at 07:18
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18Before you know, there are hundreds of people rolling stones up the hill to make sure they have the highest level. – Mixxiphoid Oct 03 '18 at 07:19
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7@Mixxiphoid Yeah, I did that too, it was the next logical step as the tapping was getting insane... then woke up one morning with a warning that the system had detected I was using some kind of "bot" and would be banned if I used it again... so then I went and looked at how the API worked and started making direct calls via it instead of the UI, discovering in the process that certain limit checks were client-side. Wound up with so many in-game points it exceed the maximum it considered possible so when updates expanded max level I couldn't even see it. I considered that a win and quit. – Michael Oct 03 '18 at 16:20
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2From the creator of the above comic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD69PAIqiYo (also one of my favorite internet videos of all time) – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Oct 03 '18 at 17:03
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@Michael Checks that were client-side-only? Hopefully that didn't also apply to any access authentication they used. – JAB Oct 03 '18 at 17:35
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2@JAB No, it was something like "you can only put 50 sheep in a barn" sort of thing, I already had so many thousand sheep when they introduced barns the game already couldn't handle it, so I wanted to put them all in a single barn. When I told the API to do it, it just let me. – Michael Oct 04 '18 at 01:02
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So, was this comic a copy of Existential Comics or vice versa? http://existentialcomics.com/comic/29 – Wildcard Oct 04 '18 at 02:43
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1@Mixxiphoid it already happens. Switch out the rocks for personal data and you just described most social media – Darren H Oct 07 '18 at 13:12
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The most disturbing thing about this cartoon is that it's not just gamification that it captures. This describes all of life across generations. We live, we struggle, we suffer, we age and die - collectively, over and over, pushing the stones of civilisation up a hill only to see them crash down again. – Peter Wone Oct 08 '18 at 01:00
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My personal reason: Mental exercise.
I love being mentally challenged in new ways, especially in ways that require creative out-of-the-box thinking. "Esoteric, hypothetical, imaginary questions" (as you described them) stimulate my problem-solving skills in new ways. And that's just plain fun.
Thousands of people across the internet feel the same way.
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Some people use this mental exercise to produce even more fiction, in the form of, oh I don't know, stories, maybe. This creates more enjoyable mental exercise and in turn produces more questions, for the next stories, and so on and so forth... – Nahshon paz Oct 03 '18 at 13:10
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2@Rogem LOL! I love how a simple English sentence can be interpreted in multiple ways!! – BrettFromLA Oct 03 '18 at 13:10
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1The accepted answer suggests exactly the opposite, but I think that you are correct. – user9824134 Oct 03 '18 at 17:18
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1http://explosm.net/comics/3286/ (maybe intellectually challenged fits the meaning you're looking for) – Belle Oct 08 '18 at 09:13
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To create an esoteric question / answer exchange
Call it a reverse tragedy of the commons. If I don't spend my time in the unrewarded pursuit of answering the inane questions of others, then the exchange will not exist next time I have an inane question to ask. Then I'll just have to walk around with these bizarre questions stuck in my brain.
user9824134
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Which is why we have Stack Exchange and WB! To answer our insane hypothetical questions. – John Locke Oct 04 '18 at 11:16
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These are the Captchas of the future. AGI has long been omnipresent in your hypothetical reality. But for some reason their relentless optimising does not lend itself to answering esoteric, hypothetical and imaginary questions. Because AI quantum hackers can hijack any conversation or interaction at any time, the user of your network need to authenticate every interaction with this kind of Captcha.
Simultaneously, the answers are being used to train the next generation of super AGI.
terdon
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BlindKungFuMaster
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My guess is that, in this hypothetical paradigm, the virtual communication network has gained such a degree of practical utility that it has come to dominate the social, economic, and political existence of its users. Said users conduct the bulk of their day-to-day activities through the network such that it becomes logistically intractable to allocate a sufficient quantity of time to corporeal pursuits. Paradoxically, the increased availability of information and connection to other users over this network only serves to entrench their existing thought patterns and acts not as a facilitator but rather an inhibitor of their individual creative instincts. It is only an intrepid few who, recognizing the potential for creative atrophy, subvert this tendency by using the very resource that limits them to exercise their most personal and vivid imaginings of the world as it might be.
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Perhaps it is entertaining to come up with such answers. Some people will spend their time watching movies or reading books -- partaking of somebody else's imagination. Some people prefer to spend their time exercising their own imagination, solving problems, and at times learning what it takes to solve a problem. Some people like puzzles!
Like money, "time" is something people can have an excess of, so they don't mind spending it.
Sometimes, taking a break from other work to do something completely different is a necessity of mental health.
It is possible they think they are helping somebody else accomplish something worthwhile by answering their question. Approximately 85% of people will help another person out if the cost to themselves is trivial. The people answering questions are casual altruists.
They could spend their time doing something else. But who gets to decide that activity X is more valuable than activity Y? If it isn't the person spending their time, then they aren't free, they are slaves to somebody else's perceptions of what is worth doing, and what is not.
Thus, a person answering a question finds answering that question the most fun thing they can responsibly do at the moment, and if you or anybody else does not agree, too bad. You go do your thing, let other people do their thing. I think sports fans are wasting good hours of their lives, and most will likewise think my intellectual entertainments are boring and pointless. But I don't care!
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Kindness. I personally answer questions on here because it would be pretty awful to have a question with no good responses, or no responses at all. Plus, it's helpful.
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Time is a perishable commodity that is constantly being 'spent'. We can choose to do something or nothing. When we have 'nothing to do' we can become bored. Thus, engaging our minds in 'something', for many, is pleasurable - or, at least better than the alternative.
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3For many the alternative is thinking about work, which must be avoided at all costs. – GreySage Oct 03 '18 at 20:10
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Maybe some of the citizens are locked for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in small cubicles, doing repetitive or brainless activities, in a way that nobody looking from the outside knows if they are working or not as long as they are punching a keyboard.
In a world like this time would be meaningless, therefore they would be looking forward to spend it answering questions that at least stimulate their creativity.
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So you could have some of your "users" be "authors," "game creators," or even "DnD DMs" who are interested in spending some of their "time" to create believable worlds. Let's call this act "worldbuilding."
Of course, people aren't going to simply spend their "time" in exchange for nothing, so maybe your world can give away "Fake Virtual Communication Network Points" in exchange for this "time," in order to see who the most helpful contributors to your network are.
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To extend Tracy Cramer's answer:
Each individual character does not know how much "time" he has available. As far as the character knows, the character will live forever… until he doesn't.
Furthermore, most of the characters believe that even if they stop living forever, there is a way that they can be given an eternal life to replace it. They believe that if they are the sort of person who would choose to spend their first life helping others, they are more likely to enjoy their eternal life.
By the way, many of the so-called "hypothetical" questions have uses. For example, it was by answering these hypothetical questions that the characters concluded that there must be an original poster, who developed the simulation they are in. This gave them faith that the original poster wants them to help others by answering questions, and is capable of providing them with eternal lives.
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People have a lot of questions. Questions that they can't answer but other may be able to. Like piles of them. They answer other people's questions who also have piles. If you answer other's people's questions they may answer yours. These piles are kept organised. So instead of just a heap they are kept in a stack. You solve other user's questions in hopes of your own being solved. You can almost say that you exchange these stacks for the greater good.
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They Don't Know Any Better
They don't know they are in a simulation (though some may suspect or theorize that they are). As such they use their allotted time in my the same ways we do: sometimes useful, sometimes frivolous.
aslum
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There is actually research done on why people contribute to online communities. Several people have probably gotten their PhDs from publishing said research. As I recall, the frameworks for explaining "contribution" usually break down into "intrinsic rewards" and "extrinsic rewards".
Intrinsic rewards include rewards that the contributor generates or gives to himself:
- developing his own knowledge
- sense of satisfaction from helping others
- warm fuzzy feeling in the ego
Extrinsic rewards are those that come from outside the contributor:
- status or esteem from other people
- qualification or experience he can add to his CV
- professional recognition
- contacts, exposure, networking that can lead to monetary rewards
workerjoe
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Lots of people answered your imaginary question to fictional hypotheticals.
You invested some effort and care to make this a question draw answers, and did successfully so. So it would appear that you know the answer. Trust that knowledge.