The Oracle Paradox

"This sentence is false"

Solve it. Good luck.

 

The Oracle is a machine, an AI.
It doesn't care about or even understand what truth is.
Because of that, "she" has no ill intent, it can't have one unless it's being manipulated somehow.

There you have my theory, i hope it's not a spoiler but i also hope i'm right about it! (That's a paradox)

 

And being so quick to judge... this is virtuous?

Does the Oracle lead by example? Or is she a hypocrite? Is she a fallen "demiurge" seeking to control people through false promises of "rewards" for exhibiting Virtue?

I think it's funny and awesome how players are already polarizing around her... some to the point that they are freaking out that they can no longer see their Virtue scores, and are upset that they might accidentally do something to ruin their "perfect" Virtue. Running around touting their Virtue with their new shiny cloaks...

(You guys realize I am role-playing around this, right?)

 

Spoiler: Don't click me

Spoiler: Seriously, don't

Yeah, sure.

 

I will not click that, @Katrina Bekers. NO!

 

You made me click

 

Nope. Forums are OOC for me.
IC i'm afraid of those metal things and avoid them if i can!

 

The oracle is one creepy looking mechanical device and the bugs are just down right annoying.

 

We have had a new player who hasn't gotten any gold from the Oracle and is convinced that it's because she didn't "like" his answer, even though he thought he answered accurately.

Does she *not* give any gold if she thinks the answer is wrong? Or is that a bug? Will she only give gold if she thinks the answer is accurate?

 

I almost submitted a bug report on this, but yes, it's a bit challenging for a new player that doesn't understand how this works. It took me a bit to work through the sequence of dialogue before getting my gold.

 

And she has red eyes... red eyes...

 

What I mean to say is that my character is role-playing around the Oracle in-game.

And yes... those Watchers are super creepy, which leads me to believe they are intended to cause one to question the Oracle's true intentions...

 

Well we know that the Watchers communicate via WAN. And we also know they can be hacked.

Maybe the Oracle has also been hacked.

 

The Oracle will be getting some love in R35... both functionally and from a narrative aspect.

 

She does not give gold if your answer does not agree with her assessment.

It's hard to say if something buggy is going on, or if the new player did something unintentionally to make their Virtue go negative...

 

Uninhibited by any religion, No puritan education, She was born free.
~Time Lord~

 

Oh no Time Lord. Not this scene from Barberella

 

Actually the paradox is that the Oracle protects players from attacking other players, and provides this as a free service. You don't even need to visit or commune with the Oracle for this to work.

@Lum, it would make more sense to require all players to agree to this protection during character creation. It would also make more sense if the Oracle was performing this feat via some mechanical means, or at least through some kind of explained pseudo magic.

But the free service that so many players rely on for them to even exist in this world (since many would not exist in the world if the service were not available) is what the true paradox is. Why would the Oracle provide this service, and why would it remove it upon request? I assume that PVP is not a part of the calculation that the Oracle is making, and therefore it is not interested if you have a flag on or off. But if that's correct then this would be a good example of how ineffective the Oracle is at judging virtue. PVP in and of itself may not be a good or bad sign of someone's virtue, but it certainly presents a greater sample size that would be unrecorded by the Oracle. Because it would be very difficult to gauge intention in PVP, my guess is that it has been purposely excluded from the virtue calculation. However this is a cop out because PVE is no more or less complicated to judge virtue and the same problems exist in both (they're both equally difficult). So the exclusion of PVP is really just so people that don't like it don't have to deal with it (i.e. meta gaming and poor design). I don't like PVE but it's ok for me to be forced to grind endlessly. (#completedoublestandard)

There are other questions that one might ask as well...

1. Where does the Oracle get all this gold from? Too bad we can't crack it open like an ATM.
2. Why does the Oracle care if you answer correctly if the Oracle already knows the correct answer?
3. How can the Oracle expect you to know the correct answer if you don't know what the formula is? An obvious conclusion might be to assume the Oracle puts a premium on self awareness, but I find that to be a very odd form of self-validation by a machine. Hello, I'm a machine that tracks Virtue. What is your Virtue? You're right, therefore I must be doing a good job tracking your Virtue! Or, You're wrong, therefore I must be doing a good job tracking your Virtue!

It does make sense that the creators of the Oracle might want to reward people (with gold) for using it. More carrot less stick. So far there doesn't appear to be a stick, but that doesn't mean there isn't one or that there won't be one. It just means that right now the Oracle presents itself as a "free lunch".

If I were a developer, I don't think I'd use this particular approach to get people to buy my "free lunch". I'd try to have it make more sense, a lot more sense. I'd try to make the Oracle appear less suspicious, less cryptic, and more useful.

Without getting political, I highly suspect that the Oracle is actually meant to be a creative parallel for the societal freedoms much of the 1st world has given up in the name of "national security". Now things like wiretapping, drone strikes, and unilateral attacks made by nation states have become common place. A community in fear (of the Obsidians, after a Cataclysmic event) might very well turn to a draconian solution (in this case a machine that can see and judge everything you do).

If I'm correct, that would be a good background for the story, but it doesn't in and of itself make a good story. I think we're still lacking there when it comes to the Oracle.

No, you're wrong or ignoring reality. You may have only meant to be speaking about getting 500 gold for answering correctly, but the Oracle most certainly DOES judge Avatars based on what they do. That's the entire understood purpose of what the Oracle is. It calculates your Virtue score as a byproduct of this judgement. It also provides you with information (counseling) and tells you what to do and what not to do. This is not debatable, you can't complete quests without doing what the Oracle says to do. The Oracle tells you to commune with it. Tells you to answer accurately. Tells you to seek paths to Truth, Love, and Courage. Yes, you're free to ignore that, but that doesn't change that the Oracle is telling you what to do. It's a fact.

What remains to be seen is what happens to those that do not do what the Oracle tells them. If the answer is nothing, that's a horrible game design, in my opinion. It would be like making Wasteland II where the designers said "if you choose to ignore all the quests and just randomly kill stuff and level, that's fine. The game will just ignore you right back." Good stories are not written that way. There should be consequences for our actions. I'm not saying that every quest should be mandatory. I'm saying that if you choose to go down the path of ignoring the Oracle, there should be more to your personal story than just "that's fine with us, the game will ignore you right back".

At this point in time, I'm convinced there isn't anything more than that. I'm convinced that the design is not that sophisticated and the Oracle is not that dynamic. I believe there are 3 quests and the Oracle points you towards them, gives you gold, and is nothing more than a score card for where your Virtue is at any point in time.

What I feel hasn't been established AT ALL, is the following...
1. Why I should give a rat's nest what the Oracle thinks about anything?
2. Why I should care about Virtue in general?
3. If I did care about virtue, why would I believe that it was being accurately assessed by the Oracle?

There's simply nothing in this game that I've experienced that answers very basic questions like this. Nothing is established, nothing is explained, nothing is supported by evidence. It's a world that I can't believe in because the fundamental building blocks of the story (behind the Oracle) are lacking in severely important ways. Which is why it's so effortless for me to ignore and scoff at the Oracle both in-game and out.

Now, I didn't just write all of this because I'm a blow hard. Like most of what I write on these forums I did it because I want it to result in something better. I did it because just sitting back and accepting this poorly designed mechanical improbability is not going to make this a better game. In fact I think it will make the story worse. But hey, maybe there's far more too it than we've seen yet. Maybe the Oracle is a deep and robust character in this storyline that has yet to truly reveal itself. Maybe all of my questions will be answered over time. Maybe my observations are incorrect due to facts that have not been made public. We'll see.

 

I think it will be interesting to see how the narrative develops. I have my own ideas about where the Oracle and her anachronistic technology originate... could be "wrong" but that's OK... my character is a little bit "crazy" and so that offers plausible deniability for anything she believes or says...

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I think it is interesting that RG decided to bring back anachronistic technology... where did it come from?

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Kobolds? C'mon... they might be adapting technology but they didn't create it...

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I'm guessing that technology came from somewhere "off-world"...

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And it didn't come from Earth because all the Outlanders enter Novia without any weapons or other technology...

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Could it be...

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Extraterrestrials...?

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Feline extraterrestrials...?

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Is the Oracle protecting players from attacking others? Or is she protecting players from being attacked? Or is she protecting players from themselves? Or is she protecting her own interests, which are hidden? We don't really know... which is what I think creates the very kind of ambiguous tension that forms a solid basis for a "discussion" about ethical behavior. The "discussion" is the game itself, not necessarily our conversations (or lack thereof) with the Oracle.

But is it truly free? Isn't one immediately sacrificing their freedom to have the "protection" of the Oracle thrust about them without their consent, or even possibly awareness? If so- what does that say about the Oracle? Is she your friend? Does she have "authority" over you? It's up to you to decide... and that is where your true freedom lies.

Exactly. So it's not a choice. At least at first. But the choice only becomes available if one first becomes aware that they have a choice. It's a paradox.

I can understand why you might say that the "default" setting should be for PvP. Is that what you are saying?

Control. And more control.

Why would you assume this?