I read this post about NPCs not being people by Devon Erikson, by way of Rudd-O.com . For those not aware, NPC stands for “Non Playable Character” and refers to those characters you come across in video games which are computer driven. Characters that follow a script, but are not played by a human player. The idea is that some people themselves are like this, and follow their programming, indoctrination, or their master, rather than think for themselves. There is truth to this, but that is not the point Devon’s post was making.

Devon was arguing that NPC’s aren’t just people who sub-contract their thinking in various domains to others, but that they aren’t people!

The entire post is worth reading, because despite one fundamentally wrong conclusion about peoples consciousness and person-hood, good points are still made, and this is something that is thought through.

We assumed all humans were people.

Why?

Because they could use language.

Since we had never witnessed a non-biological machine having anything resembling a real conversation, most of us just assumed, without thinking about it too hard, that if language use was proof of sentience.

That if someone could talk, there was self-awareness looking out from behind his eyes.

But sometimes, that’s just not true.

We can know that because we’ve created something, a device, a toy, that isn’t a person, doesn’t have a literal or metaphorical soul, and yet it can use language just fine.

This is true. The Turing tests usefulness has been shattered. Alan was wrong on this matter. Intelligence is not required to use language, and the ability to fool a human into thinking it is intelligent does not prove intelligence. Large Language Models have demonstrated it can be done by employing a statistical model fed masses and masses of data.

But this got me thinking…

Some humans aren’t people. They don’t have opinions, thoughts, or consciousness of their own. Anything that comes out of their mouths is a reflexive reaction to their programming. All of their words and actions are the mechanical result of processes that originate outside their heads.

From this follows the belief that not all humans are equal, and some are better equipped, naturally, to wield power and shape society, and others really should never be in that position. He calls into question egalitarianism, and whether this idea should be a factor of future society.

I don’t disagree with this assessment, it is one that is self-evident and no person honestly thinks otherwise. Everyone who is against discrimination and ranking people, discriminates and ranks people. Without exception.

But the idea that some people are literally not people, a fundamentally different type of human, that doesn’t seem likely even though I, and other people I know, have come to similar conclusions over recent years, that there is something decidedly odd, robotic, mechanistic about some peoples thoughts, as if they are following a program, rather than actually thinking. Cursory observation seems to support this argument, but a deeper look shatters it.

Discussing this with a friend last night over dinner, we came to discuss why it is that many independent people have come to this belief that the “normie”, the “NPC” is an unthinking automaton, and we discussed society itself, rather than NPCs being a fundamentally different type of person. It isn’t just Devon that is wrong, the entire “NPC” meme is backwards.

How we interact with the world shapes how we see it and judge it, and what conclusions we come to about people. This is what I think has changed, and why we see more “NPCs”. There are three big relatively recent social changes which have occurred.

The first is that Millennial’s, and those younger, are more conservative. Not politically conservative, just more conservative in terms of lifestyle. They drink less , with drinking rates dropping generation to generation, they have less sex , hook up less , do less drugs and in general seem to be more concerned about values, ethics, not offending people and being responsible citizens, sometimes to an insufferable degree. These declines are not necessarily bad, but there is also within this an increased desire to conform, adhere to common values and not be a social outlier. Social Media gives grave consequences for those who do flirt with dangerous ideas, or out-of-line behaviour. A Baby Boomer could get away with a bit of petty malfeasance and it would not follow him around, but today’s generation can pay a hefty price just for saying something controversial online. My generation simply did not have that risk growing up. Also, the corporate world, and the government, have thrown a lot more weight around in shaping the values, ideas, speech and attitudes of those they think they have authority over and are more paternalistic overall. The first few companies I worked for, which were not small, either did not have an HR department at all, or HR was just one guy. That easy going middle aged Aussie bloke that drives a Holden is not going to care about banter in the canteen. Now HR is mostly AWFLs (Affluent White Female Liberals) who take a keen interest in micromanaging company culture, and want to shape the world as well and see themselves as societies leaders. Lord help us!

These changes, along with other similar changes, create an environment where you cannot be yourself at work, you can’t say whats on your mind, and a situation where it is safer, and better, to conform and simply repeat what HR or the government states is right. These are people, but their interest is not politics, and they’ve grown up learning that playing along leads to rewards, promotions, and that being a contrarian curmudgeon leads to ostracism and punishment. Our modern world restricts our behaviour, our speech, and is far less tolerant of many human aspects of our nature. It expects us to be robots, without loyalty, without desire, without discrimination, without history, without anger, without a sense of duty and without love. The world is just more conformist and boring. Houses are drab, colourless, bland blocks. Urban design is joyless and Communistic in its aesthetic. Safe. No risk. Our nations are built for robots, fungible deracinated human capital, is it a surprise people begin to reflect that?

The second factor is the breakdown of society, in particular social clubs, meetups, the loss of third spaces, the decline of church and special interest groups and clubs. People go out less and have less friends . Up until the late 20th century, there were many social clubs which would have functions and events which where well attended where people could mingle, chat, and be themselves. They are mostly gone now and it is difficult to get people to come if you host one yourself. People are busy, the distances across the city and traffic make getting there difficult. People are also less family oriented too. However, people are still working, and doing so in more and more “managed environments”. The end result here, is that peoples overall interaction with other human beings has shifted, and a greater and greater proportion of human interaction is “transactional”. It is dealing with the colleague at work about the update to a specification. It is dealing with the retailer, or the cashier, or tech support, or the barista, or the insurance representative where these people also have been trained to act a particular way. They are trained to project a specific image, the one the company wants. It is not “professional” to be yourself. So with this comprising a greater and greater proportion of human interaction, it is no wonder that people are seeing others as NPCs.

Lastly, technology does play a role. Today, a lot of people have a lot of interaction with others online. Online places are replacing real world places, and surely this too makes people seem robotic. They are just text on a screen, which as we now know, is what “AI” can do too. Online is no substitute for the real world.

It is these changes which I think make people see others as “NPC’s”. After all, if you are thinking that it is other people who are NPC’s, wouldn’t you wonder why you’re lucky you are not one yourself? Wouldn’t you wonder why your good friends who you talk to and share an interest in world events aren’t NPCs? What a coincidence! Wouldn’t you wonder why the more you get to know people, actually know them, and not just through very limited work small-talk, they seem to no longer be NPCs? And lastly, maybe their opinion about COVID and lock-downs is straight up narrative, but surely you too have subjects where they may be important, but you don’t know them, and would just default to the mainstream view, or, default to a specific contrarian view that you’ve just adopted without much scepticism.

These arguments make more sense than the argument that some people literally not people, or are fundamentally incapable of thought. What makes someone an NPC, is that they don’t particularly care to invest the mental energy and time into something you don’t think is important. I know people who will bitterly lament that some people have taken a “default” position without considering alternative views in various matters, but then I could judge them likewise. Maybe for taking the “default” position and using MS Windows, without even considering using Free Software or even looking into how switching to Free Software or a configurable freedom respecting system could change things for them. I’m sure, they would find something about me, where I bafflingly to them, took a default position without really putting thought into exploring options, on something they thought was important. We fail to accept that other people have different values, and different priorities. The problem with egalitarianism, and here I agree with Devon, is that someone who has an interest in politics, philosophy, who is well read, understand history, should be the one to whom those aren’t interested or know how all that works, defer their decision making too (assuming other personality traits are suitable too). The “everyone has a right to an equal opinion” doesn’t fall flat because some people simply lack a fundamental aspect of human nature, but falls flat because some aren’t inclined to care, aren’t in a position to do anything about it, but are being held to a standard as if they were ruling the world.

I think that if we connected with people more, more often, in person and to a deeper degree, had a culture which was less rigid, more forgiving and gave people more licence to act like themselves, and stopped being so uptight about what other people believed, and accepted that its OK to defer decision making to others who are better mentally equipped, many of us may not be as plagued by the sense that people are NPCs, but we’ll see them as people again.

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