Scientific Denialism and Feast

[MayuAmakura]

Love these bait topics, but feast was garbage. Just a reminder that even for today's Crystaline Conflict, this same thing happens.

[SyferU]

Veteran feast players crashed the economy so we would pay attention to inflation instead of asking to get feast rewards re-released.

[YumieYumiki]

When I see people saying it's impossible to get top 100 in Feast without wintrading or botting, dismissing what Feast vets tell them, saying that the Feast vets are lying and are wintraders themselves trying to lie to you...

I am reminded of just how far we have fallen as a society. Scientific denialism is everywhere now. When have we stopped trusting the experts, in every sphere of society? Just like how antivaxxers believe that the "globalists" are out to get you, installing microchips into your bloodstream, people skeptical of Feast think everyone playing it is in a cabal of wintraders and every Dreadnaught is an indication of cheating. They collude, getting their t100 items, and try to prevent anyone else from getting it.

The unfortunate reality is that conspiracy theories and scientific denialism are always based on a small smidge of truth. SE hardly does anything to control wintrading and cheating, which is why the community, which back then was Paissa, patrolled itself. But of course the most that can be done by the community is to ban them from a Discord and let each other know, which hardly does much.

Because we have the occasional doctor colluding with big pharma to sell drugs that the patient doesn't need, we assume that every doctor is engaged in medical malpractice. We don't understand what the experts are doing, and we rely on hearsay to judge their virtue. There is no way for us to independently verify whether what a Feast vet says is true, because we've never reached t100 and we can't tell which of the t100 is being honest.

So now, just as we as a society distrust doctors, distrust economists, distrust even mathematicians, we trust people with no knowledge instead, we trust the podcasters or what a friend tells us. A society with low trust starts having knowledge breakdowns, as the cost of reaching a shared episteme, a shared ground truth becomes asymptotically high. Misinformation starts flying around, like the idea that everyone or even most of the t100 are wintraders and cheaters. No amount of explanation from the "experts" can convince anyone of anything. The experts are the enemy after all.

I honestly should have seen it a long time ago. The malaise in this community is the exact malaise that afflicts society. At least in this game the only negative outcome is that a few thousand people no longer have exclusive rewards. In our real life though, millions of deaths, runaway inflation, and the brink of civil war.

[Brandr]

The one saying it's possible to win the Feast without cheating is a cheater!!! What a plot twist!!!!