The following article contains information, assumptions, and opinions that may attempt to persuade the reader to the author’s biased views on the subject.

Knowledge is a vast field that is constantly expanding exponentially. Every day, new information is released, and old information is reviewed, revised, and changed. Our world is constantly setting our standards to new levels, and our expectations are constantly rising.

Likewise, the amount of information we are constantly bombarded with, intended to improve our lives, can make decisions and understandings difficult. This effect has been popularized by the term “information overload”

But, is what we are seeing today an effect to counter “information overload”?

To see exactly what I mean by that statement, let’s view a car ad from roughly 85 years ago.

In high school economics, we learned that using advertising wisely is an excellent method for making good decisions and obtaining product information when making any sort of purchase, giving leeway for biased information, granted.

Let’s compare that Essex coach advertisement to one of the car advertisements you would find in one of today’s magazines or other publications.

How is it that 85 years ago, it was thought that an advertisement should persuade a consumer by providing self serving, bias, and technical information? But in today’s informationaly overloaded society, we can make a decision based upon a reference and a few simple words based on little to no meaningful information whatsoever? This isn’t the only example.


Or, is this an attempt to try and balance the effects of “information overload” Is providing less information more appealing to the reader? Why is it that the first thing my high english teacher told us was that “If you ever have intentions of anyone actually reading and understand what you are writing, you have to write as little as possible.” Does this not present a fundamental issue with the very basics of language and learning?

A quick search of the internet, shows the phrase TL; DR (Too long; Didn’t read) appears roughly 10.4 million times. Is the quality of information in an article beset by the length, or the placement of a short summary? Is the information that is provided subject to be discarded when an overview of the subject can be provided? Why do authors and bloggers encourage this sort of behavior by placing a short synopsis of their information at the bottom of the subject?

Humans have a natural, innate, and objective sense, which allows us to choose the most logical path or direction to fulfill our needs, wants, and tasks. History has proven this time and time again, by technological advancements, from hunting with our fists versus using primitive weaponry, to writing a document by hand, versus using a word processing device or program.

These decisions both produce a similar result, but the true relationship factor relies in the effort to time and quality ratio. Imagine given a task to chop down a tree, given an axe, or a chainsaw (fully prepared to operate), the logical choice would be to use the chainsaw to complete the task in a faster, higher quality method, while requiring less effort and completes the task with a similar result.

This scenario can be applied to a classroom setting as well. Take for instance, given a simple mathematical equation, say, 4532 divided by 8, and given the opportunity to use a calculator, the logical choice would be use make use of the calculator over figuring the answer of 566.5 by mental math means. Both methods should produce the same result, but using a calculator results in a faster, higher quality (less erroneous) method, while still requiring less effort.

From this we can conclude that our statement describing human nature as “In general, humans have a natural sense to strive to make decisions that result in a better outcome, in faster time, with less effort.” This is the very basic idea of technological advancement.

Pulling this back to the initial topic of advertising, we can use this statement to draw a few conclusions. First, 80 years ago when information was less easily accessible, more effort was directed to informing the consumer about the product when the opportunity arisen. Second, given advancements in technology, better means of communication, and a surplus of information, it became less critical to provide a large overview of the product, but a more condensed surplus of unnecessary information that the uninterested consumer would still read, but may inspire the interested consumer to do additional research.

We can also apply our conclusion of human nature to draw a few assumptions from the subject of “writing as little as possible” and TL; DR. First, given our daily surplus of information, it becomes easier for the reader to simply read a two sentence overview of the topic, as apposed to reading the documentation in its entirety. Secondly, it requires less time to read a two sentence overview versus an entire document. Thus it appears to comply with our conclusion. By simply reading a short paragraph on what an entire article is about, we are using less effort, less time, and… withdrawing higher quality information?

That’s were issues start coming into play, when our high technological limits, which save effort and time, begin diminishing the quality of information or results. When offered a choice between reading an entire blog post, or just the summary at the bottom, your choice involves giving up less time and less effort for more information, or giving up less information for more time and effort.

This isn’t just an effect that occurs online either, this is prominent in publications, schools, media, office, business, industry, and just about very possible human venture thinkable.

For instance, why is it that in high school geometry, students learning about right triangles are taught about the six trigonometric ratios before being taught about the law of sines, from which the trigonometric ratios are derived, and when teaching about the law of sines, the relationship is briefly touched upon, or not mentioned at all? Surely the omission is not in an attempt to hurt a student’s education. Is it a fact that students simply do not care or not want to know how the formulas came about, and would prefer just to have the simplest method of obtaining the correct answer? This saves time and effort, but again, creates a large gap in understanding, and the quality of education.

So how does this relate to BYOND?

Most notably, our simple statement of human nature can be applied to probably the single largest, most conversed about topic on BYOND. Rips.

A search of the BYOND member blogs shows that the amount of posts that contain the word “rip” is in surplus of 470. This is an indicator that, although intended word usage wasn’t confirmed, rips are a constant topic of importance. In January of 2011, BYOND released its new site format, designed to focus on building original games, while hiding games of ripped nature from noteworthy view. But, nine months after the release, we are still seeing games, ripped in nature, being rejected on the submissions tractor. This suggests that, although successfully tucking ripped games away, they are still being created and released at a similar rate as before.

The source of the issue of rips has been reiterated time and time again, in a variety of posts all taking their own stance and offering their own suggestions.

But, despite all of these opinions, why are rips still being produced?

It’s because of our conclusion of human nature, that we will, in general, be opted to take the way that requires the least amount of effort, the least amount of time, and produce the results needed to complete a need, want, or task.

Putting it in practicality. Given the desire to build, release, and own a game, and given the information required to learn how to code, or given a fully fledged source code, containing all of the mechanics, features, and operations, which makes the most logical sense according to our conclusion of human nature? By choosing the source code over learning how to code, we have saved time, effort, but, sacrificed knowledge (and general BYOND community approval).

How is it that although we made the “most logical choice” given the two options, we made the wrong decision?

The answer is as follows: In today’s technologically advanced world, we can no longer simply assume that the decision that results in the highest satisfaction of a combination of time requirements, effort requirements, and quality requirements is the best choice. We have to insure that the quality requirement is the utmost, upheld and is the single most important dedication. Failure to do so, results inevitably in the wrong decision, which has plagued our society for years.

Solution? We can’t simply discourage this kind of behavior. It just won’t work, and has proven not to be effective. Why? This sort of behavior has been, largely unintentionally, reinforced, conditioned, and encouraged in all of us, every single person has this natural desire to follow this consistently, and we have to start actively thinking against it to advance from where we are. Not just as an online community, not just one of us, but as an entire race, as educators, officials, leaders, followers, publishers, and individuals. I give permission on every public article I present to be permitted to allow this content to be reproduced on any form of media, with or without credit, because, similar to how a warrior can not win a war alone, a single writer can’t convince anyone alone.

Although other issues on BYOND are stemmed directly from the same human nature that has been over-depicted in this article, they are not relevant to the majority of our community and, although free to be discussed in the comments, will not be brought up in this article.



---Some questions to think about and consider commenting on.---

- Is the human behavior depicted in the above article accurate, and why does it matter?
- Should this behavior continue to be tolerated, or modified?
- How does this behavior effect what happens on BYOND?
- How does this behavior effect what happens anywhere else? How is it enforced?
- What additional conclusions can be drawn from this article?
- Do you feel that this article made reasonable answers as to why rips exist on BYOND.
- Do other significant issues related to innate human behavior exist on BYOND? In life?

Additional information

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