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Alex
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About PG

Excuse typos; I'm at a party.

If you've only just booted up, PG is Psychological Gaming, modeling fictional or real role models to experience, copy and learn their skills. Chapter 6 of ICMM will give you all the details of how modeling works in NH.

The advantage of doing this in a group is that you get treated as your character which gives you invaluable practice AT their skills, while at the same time helping others just by responding with your characters pov to their characters.

Why its a good idea to try PG

Firstly, the research is in and we know that the modeling effect works regardless of real life face to face meetings or whether we believe in it or not. It's how kids can learn to ride a horse just by watching Indiana Jones even though they never met him (or a real horse). Its why professional athletes spend so much time on VR/imaginary workouts.

Sure, every step towards full reality is better; videos are better than just words, PG is better than just imagining on your own, real people are better than videos. But as far as I'm concerned, any tool that works will do, and words are better than nothing at all.

Secondly, PG is fun, teaches us about dealing with anxiety in social interactions in a sandbox where we can practice safely and no real people can get offended or hurt if we fuck up, it enables us to encounter characters we would never normally encounter (such as computers, aliens, animals who talk, movie characters or famous historical figures.) It's a playground for practising real life communication, play, cooperation, modeling, imagination and interaction skills. That's a pretty cool tool.

The only sensible reason for avoiding any kind of healthy interaction we haven't tried before is that doing it currently makes us anxious, and that just means we're not ready for that particular kind of interaction right now. If we've tried something and didn't like it, then we learn why and move on. But we can't sensibly judge any experience before having it*.

The idea of doing it making us anxious is no excuse. Only if we try it and find it raises anxiety too much right now do we have a sensible reason. We can go in as cynically as we like, absolutely convinced it won't have any effects on us at all, (to save time, try the same approach to alcohol and see what happens)  :  ) A good way to tell reality from fiction is that reality doesn't go away, even if nobody believes in it.

Problems can occur! If a player doesn't have enough awareness of the NH process they can start losing the boundaries of in game/out of game, which spoils it for everyone else. It's fine writing to Mr Spock on a PG forum. It's not fine emailing Leonard Nimoy and asking for Spock's land line number since you are getting along so well online, it's not fine thinking you really are Spock.

Although this sounds obvious, because you cannot break out of character and have to make it as real as possible for it to work, people can become confused.

So if you are going to play PG, make sure you know what the hack is and how it works, because if you know that it doesn't matter if you fuck up; you can creatively think your way out of it  :  )
Best,
AR

*Excepting time lords and a few of their friends  :  )



Edited By:  Alex
Sep-03-11 17:26:30

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sirhinojo
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Re: About PG

Sounds awesome.  I want to do it.  The only thing is I have to think about a character role.  hmmmm

Dont know what all the warnings are about, it seems you are talking about seriously unstable people.  I dont know, I guess I am glad I am not relating to this.  I dont have the experience of doing such a thing online, but it seems it's true that there are some "special" people out there who are seriously on the edge or something. 

Anyways, I am looking forward to doing this.  I listened to Chapter 6 of ICMM twice now.  One more go before I go to bed.

greetings,

daniel


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Sakiro
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Re: About PG

sirhinojo wrote:

Sounds awesome.  I want to do it.  The only thing is I have to think about a character role.  hmmmm
I want to interect with a character with 100% F score in all networks, operating from N6!! .. some people call him GOD .. LOL =)

Now, joking apart, makes sense that someone can only "simulate" a char that has enough points of similarity from oneself?

I mean, if i have a terrible low n5 network, i probably don't do a good work playing Mr Spock? etc.


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Alex
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Re: About PG

sirhinojo Wrote:
... Do I log in as "Captain Kirk" and say hello and then see what happens?

That would be absolutely appropriate, as long as you introduce yourself. It's handy to have a cover story for what you are doing on the forum, but if you were someone as well known as Jim Kirk you'd probably find others joining in as Scotty or Spock  :  )

If you want to stay absolutely anonymous in PG, rejoin the group with a different username & email for each character.
Best,
AR


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Alex
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Re: About PG

Sakiro wrote:
I mean, if i have a terrible low n5 network, i probably don't do a good work playing Mr Spock? etc.

I played Spock for years with bugger all N5  :  )  I was doing it to learn N5 skills by 'behaving as though'.

It's good to play characters who have the skills you don't yet have. I know this sounds odd, and it's true that your chosen character does need to have some points of similarity to you, but the very idea is to learn new skills by practising thinking and behaving like your character. You have to imagine how the character would respond to situations. If you're not sure, you need to go study the character more.
Best,
AR


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Alex
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Re: About PG

Hi dudes,
This is REALLY IMPORTANT!

Sirhinojo wrote:
Dont know what all the warnings are about, it seems you are talking about seriously unstable people.

PG can push slightly unstable people (eg, most people) into deeper unbalance, hence the warnings. But at some point we have to come to terms with the idea that most people really are not very well. Not one or two odd 'on the edge' nutballs, but around 95-97% of the 'normal' population. If we don't consider this as a possibility at this stage, we are in for some unpleasant surprises later on.

I know of at least one death due to badly-handled PG, and it was not a suicide.

The victim I will call 'AD' had the following history: He was deprived of oxygen at birth when his umbilicus was cut too soon. One of the results was 'nervous asthma'; that is, the fear of anoxia causing asthmatic symptoms whenever the person is anxious. The relaxation response can totally cure this type of asthma if practised regularly.

His GP's response was to prescribe an asthma inhaler at age 6 to be used 'when he has an attack'.
His anxious parents' response was to tie the inhaler in a pouch around the kid's neck and tell him repeatedly to use it 'whenever he got breathless' and then 'if you're doing anything that might get you out of breath and might cause an attack.' Chronic overuse resulted.

So by the age of 15, AD was totally dependent on this stuff and his lungs were producing mucus all the time. He was also getting into games like Dungeons & Dragons because he couldn't tale part in physical games as he might get out of breath.

In his D&D adventures, AD became very close to a shaman character who advocated clean living and the great outdoors. One adventure was restricted to those who “Had not taken any king of drug for seven days”.

AD got stuck in such a panic attack between his imagination desperately wanting to take part in the game and his poor abused body desperately needing his steroids that he had a severe asthma attack that the medication was too weak to counter and he died. He was 29 years old.

Never underestimate anxiety.

I know how counterintuitive this idea can seem, and I also know we don't really 'get it' until we've experienced it first hand. Most people really do live right on the edge of sanity and it can take only a small push for them to go right off balance.

The other reason we give warnings is that we get bored with getting death threats from those who have.
Best,
AR


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