The devil's advocate

End #2

2009-11-01T21:13:00.001Z

Well, you maybe already thought that this blog was over... Now it's official.

18th century realism

2009-07-22T20:45:00.000+01:00

18th century realism: Some things have real existence outside the mind.

Against: It doesn't matter if things exist outside the mind, because, if you're thinking about an existing singular thing, there are people that don't know that it exist, people that think it like a singular thing, people that think it like many things.

Introduction #2

2009-07-20T23:29:00.003+01:00

The aim of the blog changes a bit. Since now I'll try to confute the main philosophical theories.

I'll move on a purely theoretical level, avoiding any consideration about the historical context in which theories arise.

To start, I'll consider the theories listed in the page about "Philosophy" in Wikipedia (I'll use the revision that is live now).

All the other things that I've written in the first introduction stand:

In any case, I'm not taking a position.
My confutations will be very brief.
I'll try to reply you.
The basic outline of a post is: thesis, then confutation.
Every post will be tagged with the name of the confuted position.

End

2009-07-20T10:45:00.003+01:00

This project ends here.

Edit: The project does not end here! See the next posts.

Evolution of tactics

2009-07-18T18:22:00.001+01:00

Inverting the pyramid, prologue: a perfect tactic doesn't exist, because the efficacy of a tactic depends (on the players and) on the stage of football evolution.

Against: The only reason to assert that the efficacy of a tactic depends on the stage of football evolution is that we see that tactics have never stopped to evolve. But the main reason for this evolution is that implementing a new tactic needs years of practice. It also needs years of probable losses, so managers are pretty conservative in tactics, because they can't lose too many matches without being fired.

Tactics and history

2009-07-17T21:30:00.002+01:00

Inverting the pyramid, prologue: a perfect tactic doesn't exist, because the efficacy of a tactic depends (on the players and) on the stage of football evolution.

Against: In every game there is an optimal way to play (maybe more than one, but still a finite number), so the same should be true of football as well.

Beautiful physical play?

2009-07-15T14:06:00.002+01:00

Inverting the pyramid, prologue: History of tactics depends on two independent tensions: aesthetic vs. result; skill vs. physical play.

Against: Physical play can only be finalized to result, not to aesthetic. So there is just one tension skill finalized to aesthetic vs. physical play finalized to result.

New book: Inverting the pyramid

2009-07-15T07:19:00.003+01:00

I'm now reading:

Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the pyramid. The history of football tactics, London (Orion) 2009 (first edition: 2008), 384 p. ISBN: 1409102041.

Player and context

2009-07-15T07:15:00.001+01:00

Rules of play, section 3: the experience of a game is both the player's free movement inside its structure and the relationship between the structure and the context (i.e. the outer world).

Against: The player is a particular instance of the context, and the context can relate to the game only through players: so there is no point in distinguishing player and context.

Structure and movement

2009-07-13T21:00:00.001+01:00

Rules of play, section 3: play is free movement inside a rigid structure.

Against: You can find free movement inside a rigid structure everywhere. But only in games the structure (i.e. rules) does not exist without the movement (i.e. play).

Games and context

2009-07-13T15:50:00.002+01:00

Rules of play, section 3: From the point of view of the player's experience, the game is (also) a relationship between the formal structure of the rules and the outer world.

Against: While what really happens is that the player's experience is influenced by the context, what should happen is that we should try to experience the game in itself. E.g. the game of go is better experienced not as a simulation of war or as the historical product of horoscopes, and maybe not even as a model of reality, but as a game with its own forces.

General or special social theory

2009-07-04T23:57:00.002+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 28: Every time a group of players plays a game, a social community is born, and social relationships among the players emerge. Social interactions are either internally or externally derived.

Against: Many kinds of communities have the same features that are here attributed to play communities. So we need either to develop a more general sociological theory about all these communities or to find some specific features of play communities.

Micro-communities

2009-07-04T23:56:00.001+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 28: Every time a group of players plays a game, a social community is born, and social relationships among the players emerge. Social interactions are either internally or externally derived. In the first case, there is a social contract.

Against: The best way to frame play communities is as composed by micro-communities (couples, etc.) that interact.

Inner social community

2009-07-04T23:51:00.003+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 28: Every time a group of players plays a game, a social community is born, and social relationships among the players emerge. Social interactions are either internally or externally derived.

Against: The most important aspect of games is not about communities that are internal or external to the game. What is most important is that games often remove the "social community" that exist inside every single player.

Numerical simulations #2

2009-06-28T16:26:00.000+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 27: Simulations are numerical.

Against: Simulations are not always numerical. E.g. a man can simulate a dog's smell thinking that he's seeing different smells instead of different colors.

Double consciousness

2009-06-27T15:36:00.002+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 27: a game player on the one hand identifies himself with the simulated reality, on the other hand is aware that the game is a simulation.

Against: More precisely, players of simulation games feel the objects (with which they are playing) like real, but the actions (that they are doing on these objects) like impossible in reality. These actions are also a reason of their pleasure that is not contemplated in Rules of play, chapter 24.

Numerical simulations

2009-06-27T09:48:00.001+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 27: Simulations are numerical.

Against: Simulations are not always numerical. E.g. playing with water guns simulates war, but it's not a numerical or digital simulation: it's an analogical one.

Limited simulations

2009-06-26T23:11:00.001+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 27: Simulations are limited.

Against: Some simulations tend to be as complex as the aspects of reality that they simulate: e.g. to forecast weather you want as many data and formulas as you can manage.

Games that are not simulations

2009-06-26T21:43:00.002+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 27: All games can be understood as simulations.

Against: Some games are simulation, some aren't. Both Football Manager and Unsophisticated Prediction Contest are games about football (i.e. that exploit football's possibilities), but the former is a simulation of a lot of aspects of football, while the latter doesn't simulate anything (not even being a fan, because you support a different team every time).

Games as simulations

2009-06-26T13:44:00.001+01:00

Rules of play, chapter 27: All games can be understood as simulations.

Against: Games are simulations only in a sense that makes everything a simulation. Games, like every other thing, exploit some possibilities that exist in reality (to produce new possibilities).

First book: Rules of play

2009-06-25T23:47:00.000+01:00

I'm now reading:

Katie Salen - Eric Zimmerman, Rules of play. Game design fundamentals, Cambridge (Mass.) (Mit press) 2004, 672 p. ISBN: 0262240459.

Introduction

2009-06-25T23:16:00.000+01:00

In this blog, I'll try to confute the main theses of the books that I read.

Given that I read only books that I like, I'll practically play devil's advocate (hence the name of the blog). So let's remember that I indeed prefer books' theses to what I write against them.

My confutations will be very brief (one sentence, or little more).

I'll try to reply to your eventual feedback.

The basic outline of a post will be:

Book title, chapter: thesis.
Against: my confutation.

In the first post about a book, I'll write its bibliographical details. Every post about a given book will be tagged with the title of that book.