The Overpoliticization of Gameplay and Defender Deceit

[Semper Vivum]

I've watched invasions, since there was such thing as invasions, and they tend to target regions simply because they're founderless. Once they're there they like to yank the chain of any active nations in the region and some regions react more than others. I would say that many invaders will more frequent regions where they get a reaction to their actions, but I wouldn't say that any mainstream invaders pick raids on the basis of hating any particular real life ethnicity, religion, or nationality (although a few smaller groups over the years have stated that they specifically target democracies).

I have seen invaders go on a series of theme raids, but that was years ago when they suddenly got a taste for sci fi themed regions. Part of that was because a lot of sci fi themed regions had inactive founders (as they shows they were based were cancelled or became less popular) around the same time and part of that was because some invaders got a taste for raiding sci fi themed regions. Early in the game there were invaders who targeted each other based on ethnicity and nationality (Soviets versus Americans, Soviets versus Nazis, British versus Irish, etc), but that hasn't been the case for nearly a decade.

Indeed. In fact, some of the greatest, if not the greatest battles in Defender/Invader history typically go down on geopolitical and religious lines. For instance, the Ireland (and North Ireland conflict). I believe the largest invader/defender action to date still is the Battle of Palestine between the combined RLA/ADN/EAA/TITO/GLA forces and the Union of Sovereigns + Invaders.

I made a list in a post here: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=8428107#p8428107

Most of the greatest/largest invader/defender actions to date have involved imperialist regions, and I've been involved in most of them, on the side which organised the action. I don't think RL political or religious reasons have ever been a reason I've chosen a particular target, nor have they been a reason why the majority of people have picked one side or the other. It's just invaders versus defenders. The fact some of the names have a religious or political context is merely a coincidence, in that the vast majority of regional names in Nationstates are either geographical, religious or political - ie. they refer to some kind of distinct grouping. The occassional battle has occurred in like "made up" names too, but I recall there were a fair few "sci-fi" themed raids earlier this year and people started alleging there was targetting going on lol. This is the same sort of thing, but obviously more serious, because of the RL connotations of anti-islamic behaviour etc.

-NES

[General Halcones]

Eist why on Earth are you asking questions that you already know the answers to?

Frankly I'm somewhat surprised that TBR didn't begin to target Muslim regions as a response to these allegations.

We may well do that, actually.

[Cromarty]

Frankly I'm somewhat surprised that TBR didn't begin to target Muslim regions as a response to these allegations.

Instead they've essentially confirmed these allegations were true by modifying their behaviour and targets.

[North East Somerset]

Frankly I'm somewhat surprised that TBR didn't begin to target Muslim regions as a response to these allegations.

Instead they've essentially confirmed these allegations were true by modifying their behaviour and targets.

No such confirmation exists by any standard of logical analysis. In other words, there is no reason to think that because now there is alleged to be a deliberate non-targetting of Muslim or Middle Eastern themed regions, that there before existed a deliberate targetting of them. It is perfectly plausible, and even likely, that there existed a natural incidence of targetting before, and the change of behaviour indicates a desire to avoid the damaging accusations made by defenders of islamophobia. This may change again if this situation is not behaviourally rewarded, either back to the previous status quo of no targetting, or even to a deliberate targetting due solely to the aforementioned falsifications by defenders irritating raiders.

[Frattastan]

Frankly I'm somewhat surprised that TBR didn't begin to target Muslim regions as a response to these allegations.

Instead they've essentially confirmed these allegations were true by modifying their behaviour and targets.

... which means you would've seen a confirmation of anti-Islamic behaviour anyway, no matter what they did, be it keeping targeting Middle Eastern regions or changing their targets. Since your claims cannot be refuted under any possible scenario, there's no way to rationally "prove" these allegations.

They could stop raiding at all, and it would be only because they want to hide their Islamophobia.

[Wopruthien]

No such confirmation exists by any standard of logical analysis. In other words, there is no reason to think that because now there is alleged to be a deliberate non-targetting of Muslim or Middle Eastern themed regions, that there before existed a deliberate targetting of them. It is perfectly plausible, and even likely, that there existed a natural incidence of targetting before, and the change of behaviour indicates a desire to avoid the damaging accusations made by defenders UDL of islamophobia..

Fixed, the FRA doesn't believe TBR is islamaphobic, they strike any region they can in their mindless pursuit of 'fun' regardless of the history or standing of said region. I doubt they have any political motivation for what they do other than to set 'new records'.

[North East Somerset]

No such confirmation exists by any standard of logical analysis. In other words, there is no reason to think that because now there is alleged to be a deliberate non-targetting of Muslim or Middle Eastern themed regions, that there before existed a deliberate targetting of them. It is perfectly plausible, and even likely, that there existed a natural incidence of targetting before, and the change of behaviour indicates a desire to avoid the damaging accusations made by defenders UDL of islamophobia..

Fixed, the FRA doesn't believe TBR is islamaphobic, they strike any region they can in their mindless pursuit of 'fun' regardless of the history or standing of said region. I doubt they have any political motivation for what they do other than to set 'new records'.

My apologies, and yes I suspect you are absolutely right about that.

[Gest]

Frankly I'm somewhat surprised that TBR didn't begin to target Muslim regions as a response to these allegations.

Instead they've essentially confirmed these allegations were true by modifying their behaviour and targets.

Nonsense the PMOI is the good old friendly MEK terrorist group/cult.

Christmas celebrates the birth of a Middle Eastern Carpenter.

Clearly the Crusade continues.

[Zaolat]

Instead they've essentially confirmed these allegations were true by modifying their behaviour and targets.

Nonsense the PMOI is the good old friendly MEK terrorist group/cult.

Christmas celebrates the birth of a Middle Eastern Carpenter.

Clearly the Crusade continues.

MEK? >_>

[North East Somerset]

Is apparently being removed from the terrorist list so it's all fine.

[Hungry]

Instead they've essentially confirmed these allegations were true by modifying their behaviour and targets.

Nonsense the PMOI is the good old friendly MEK terrorist group/cult.

Christmas celebrates the birth of a Middle Eastern Carpenter.

Clearly the Crusade continues.

Technically, According to Muslims, Christmas Celebrates the birth of Isa (Jesus) who was a Muslim Prophet. So, yes it does continue.

[Guy]

I say we report TBR to the SPLC, NAACP, ACLU, ADC and the FBI, due to the gravity of their crimes.

[Not actually threatening anyone with legal action]

[Swift Sure]

I'm not sure why anyone takes what the UDL says seriously, it's just political propaganda and should be taken as seriously as people take Fox News.

[A Million Voices]

I'm not sure why anyone takes what the UDL says seriously, it's just political propaganda and should be taken as seriously as people take Fox News.

To be fair, it is not really the UDL as a whole, but a handful of defenders who happen to be mistaken. Even when Unibot uses the UDL announcement thread to promote his ideas he isn't really speaking on behalf of every UDL member.

[Lyanna Stark]

I'm not sure why anyone takes what the UDL says seriously, it's just political propaganda and should be taken as seriously as people take Fox News.

To be fair, it is not really the UDL as a whole, but a handful of defenders who happen to be mistaken. Even when Unibot uses the UDL announcement thread to promote his ideas he isn't really speaking on behalf of every UDL member.

This. The claim that everyone in UDL believes the exact same thing is just as silly as the claim that everyone in TBR believes the exact same thing (with respect to Islam or otherwise).

[Whiskum]

Whether or not everyone in the UDL shares the same view, Unibot is the head of their organisation and he is even utilising UDL announcements to talk about the 'hatred that runs deep in the Black Riders squadron for Islam and the Middle East': even if he is alone in the UDL in holding those views, if he is the head of that organisation and using that organisation's formal communications to promote his views, then they have to be taken as that organisation's official position while he remains the incumbent head of that organisation without having retracted that official position clearly. Furthermore, we are not dealing with a minor point of practice, but an extremely serious issue: it is unethical for Unibot to make unfounded allegations of Islamophobia, which he cannot substantiate, through official means or not, and that kind of unethical conduct is something UDL members should be concerned about. Frankly, if his members don't agree with him, then they should have a serious problem with him because this behaviour is deceitful and immoral.

Unibot has been asked four times, twice by me and also by the next two members in TNI's chain of command, in this thread, to either justify or withdraw his allegation that he has 'seen time and time again, raids not only by The Black Riders, but The New Inquisition, that seem to go the "extra mile" to make lives difficult for the natives of Islamic or Middle Eastern founder-less regions.' True or false, that statement is extremely and intensely serious. In light of the record I examined above, it is nonsense, as since the start of 2011 (when our formal records began) TNI has only tagged three Islamic/Middle Eastern regions, never led any occupation of an Islamic/Middle Eastern region during said time period and responded to the request to reinforce the Region of reunited muslim states in the same way we responded to requests to reinforce Catholic and Atheist Empire. If Unibot has something that suggests a contrary analysis, then he has been asked to present it, but as it is he has just called the region of TNI Islamophobic and then failed to back it up with anything whatsoever. Given Islamophobia is deplorable and dangerous, making a false allegation of Islamophobia without even attempting to justify it when challenged is unethical and if the UDL is an ethical organisation it should not tolerate that of any member of its band, never mind its leader, behaving in such an outrageous manner, in the same way that if a TNI soldier was either Islamophobic or behaved similarly to Unibot, we would throw them out.

[A Million Voices]

Whether or not everyone in the UDL shares the same view, Unibot is the head of their organisation and he is even utilising UDL announcements to talk about the 'hatred that runs deep in the Black Riders squadron for Islam and the Middle East': even if he is alone in the UDL in holding those views, if he is the head of that organisation and using that organisation's formal communications to promote his views, then they have to be taken as that organisation's official position while he remains the incumbent head of that organisation without having retracted that official position clearly. Furthermore, we are not dealing with a minor point of practice, but an extremely serious issue: it is unethical for Unibot to make unfounded allegations of Islamophobia, which he cannot substantiate, through official means or not, and that kind of unethical conduct is something UDL members should be concerned about. Frankly, if his members don't agree with him, then they should have a serious problem with him because this behaviour is deceitful and immoral.

Unibot has been asked four times, twice by me and also by the next two members in TNI's chain of command, in this thread, to either justify or withdraw his allegation that he has 'seen time and time again, raids not only by The Black Riders, but The New Inquisition, that seem to go the "extra mile" to make lives difficult for the natives of Islamic or Middle Eastern founder-less regions.' True or false, that statement is extremely and intensely serious. In light of the record I examined above, it is nonsense, as since the start of 2011 (when our formal records began) TNI has only tagged three Islamic/Middle Eastern regions, never led any occupation of an Islamic/Middle Eastern region during said time period and responded to the request to reinforce the Region of reunited muslim states in the same way we responded to requests to reinforce Catholic and Atheist Empire. If Unibot has something that suggests a contrary analysis, then he has been asked to present it, but as it is he has just called the region of TNI Islamophobic and then failed to back it up with anything whatsoever. Given Islamophobia is deplorable and dangerous, making a false allegation of Islamophobia without even attempting to justify it when challenged is unethical and if the UDL is an ethical organisation it should not tolerate that of any member of its band, never mind its leader, behaving in such an outrageous manner, in the same way that if a TNI soldier was either Islamophobic or behaved similarly to Unibot, we would throw them out.

Oh no, I certainly share your sentiment, I was just clearing up a bit of confusion in my last post.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

I'm not sure why anyone takes what the UDL's news service, run by Unibot and hence not necessarily an indicator of more moderate factions within the UDL's opinions (see the "SWEET JESUS, PEOPLE RAIDING WITHOUT DAMAGING? UNFORGIVABLE!" Cat Burglars situation) says seriously, it's just political propaganda and should be taken as seriously as people take Fox News.

Fix'd.

The people at the top of the UDL are the ones who largely control the UDL's visible policies on a number of things. The whole Cat Burglars situation seems to suggest to me that not all (in fact, probably not many) within the UDL agree with Unibot on everything he says.

[Alyekra]

I'm not sure why anyone takes what the UDL's news service, run by Unibot and hence not necessarily an indicator of more moderate factions within the UDL's opinions (see the "SWEET JESUS, PEOPLE RAIDING WITHOUT DAMAGING? UNFORGIVABLE!" Cat Burglars situation) says seriously, it's just political propaganda and should be taken as seriously as people take Fox News.

Fix'd.

The people at the top of the UDL are the ones who largely control the UDL's visible policies on a number of things. The whole Cat Burglars situation seems to suggest to me that not all (in fact, probably not many) within the UDL agree with Unibot on everything he says.

Actually, it's TITO that's giving us a hard time for having members of Cat Burglar in our ranks.

That or I misinterpreted what you meant by that.

[Kanaia]

I'm not sure why anyone takes what the UDL says seriously, it's just political propaganda and should be taken as seriously as people take Fox News.

To be fair, it is not really the UDL as a whole, but a handful of defenders who happen to be mistaken. Even when Unibot uses the UDL announcement thread to promote his ideas he isn't really speaking on behalf of every UDL member.

Is it a handful of defenders, or a handful of prominent UDL members? Just so we are clear on who is making the accusations.

[Belschaft]

To be fair, it is not really the UDL as a whole, but a handful of defenders who happen to be mistaken. Even when Unibot uses the UDL announcement thread to promote his ideas he isn't really speaking on behalf of every UDL member.

Is it a handful of defenders, or a handful of prominent UDL members? Just so we are clear on who is making the accusations.

I am not aware of any formal discussion or consultation of the UDL officer staff, either the Lt.'s or Chiefs, by Unibot before he made the accusations in question. He may have talked with some of my colleges in a non-formal manner, but, as I say, I am aware of no policy meeting or discussion of this matter.

As such, I would suggest any statements made by Unibot on this matter be considered his own opinion, and not that of the UDL, its members, or officers.

[Sedgistan]

Well he did say it in an official UDL statement, so the confusion is understandable.

[Belschaft]

Well he did say it in an official UDL statement, so the confusion is understandable.

And not just for the opposition, I assure you. I have been equally bemused by this.

[Feuer Ritter]

Like I said, I'm the only islamophobic in TBR, I always try to target at least 3 muslim regions in one tag run
So leave the other out of this.

[Osiran MythBusters]

During the past week, Unibot has, on multiple occasions, made the claim that The Black Raiders (TBR) are an Islamophobic organization, by virtue of the regions they select as targets for their raids. A similar claim was made in an update released by the United Defenders League (UDL) on September 19th, 2012. Below, we take an investigative look at these claims.

We begin by examining the data that has been presented by both sides involved in the argument, either in support or against it. Or, to be more precise, the lack thereof, as both sides have failed to make a concrete quantitative argument. By dissecting Unibot’s posts, it appears that he attempts to say the following: TBR raids more Islam-themed regions than would be expected given the number of such regions relative to the overall regions that can be used as targets.

Based on this, we describe and perform an experiment for answering the following question of fact: is the number of Islam-themed targets selected by TBR statistically significantly different than what it would be if TBR selected their targets randomly from the pool of available target regions?

Before answering this question, we need to discuss some details of our methodology.

• A definition for “target regions” is required. We count as such all regions without a founder, without a password imposed, and with either no delegate or one with less than or equal to eight endorsements. This of course excludes, possibly password-protected, regions that have been infiltrate; but given the small number of such regions overall relative to the total number of raids conducted by TBR, it is a reasonable approximation.
• A definition for “Islam-themed” is needed. This is a more subjective characterization, and therefore an exact definition cannot be provided as before. We use our own subjective judgment to identify such regions from their name alone, without taking into account other criteria such as regional flag, flags of member nations, WFE, RMB posts and language.
• From the list of TBR raids, we exclude those where they were assisting some other group, as in those cases the target selection most likely was not done by TBR members.
• It is important to highlight the standard against which we compare: selecting regions at random from the pool of targets we defined above. This is not a realistic standard, as several tactical factors are usually taken into account in selecting targets. We discuss this issue in greater detail later in the document.
• The NationStates world is not static; any statistic fluctuates from update to update. In our case, some of the data we use corresponds to a period spanning the current calendar year (January-September 2012). Other correspond to counts of regions collected approximately seven days ago. This results in some discrepancies, such as some regions raided by TBR no longer being present in the list of target regions. We assume that, given the scale of the problem, such discrepancies are negligible to good approximation.

Given the above, we collected the following data: since January 2012, TBR has raided 223 regions, 14 of which are Islam-themed. There are 890 target regions, 24 of which are Islam-themed. (We can make the lists of regions we used to collect these statistics available at request.) This means that selecting Islam-themed target regions at random from the target pool corresponds to a ratio of 2.70%; whereas the ratio of Islam-themed regions raided by TBR over the total number of regions raided by TBR is 5.83%.

In the question we posed and set to answer, we also raise the issue of statistical significance of this difference. Given the formulation of our problem, we can model that the selection of targets by TBR is a sampling experiment from a Bernoulli distribution. This is essentially a “coin-tossing” distribution: with some probability q you get heads, and with probability 1 - q you get tails, q being a non-negative number smaller than 1. For a fair coin, q = 0.5. In our case, heads will be the event that a region drawn from the target pool is an Islam-themed region, and tails that it is not. If TBR is selecting regions at random, then p should be close to the ratio of Islam-themed regions in the target pool, which we found above to be 2.70% (q = 0.027). We label this the null hypothesis. Otherwise, q should deviate from that ratio significantly. We label this the alternative hypothesis. The basic methodology used in many scientific fields for deciding between such hypotheses is called statistical hypothesis testing; you may have heard of this in the several recent news articles covering ongoing research at CERN. (We will not go into details over the merit of this approach, or get involved in frequentist vs Bayesian arguments; we will defer these to any solid Statistics course at the undergraduate level. We also forgo any discussions related to the statistical power of the tests we use.) In our case, given the Bernoulli distribution model, we can answer the question by performing what is called a binomial test.

Doing such a test tells us that we can reject the null hypothesis at a 1% confidence level (the p-value is 0.0032). Or, coming back to the question we asked at the beginning, the number of Islam-themed targets selected by TBR is statistically significantly different than what it would be if TBR selected their targets randomly from the pool of available target regions.

The point of this analysis is to highlight the sort of quantitative evidence that, at the very minimum, one would expect to have been presented during the ongoing debate of Unibot’s claim. The onus is, of course, on Unibot to compile this evidence, given that he made the claims in the first place. Instead, he has either vaguely alleged to this evidence, or only provided anecdotal or otherwise incomplete versions of it.

So, we have answered a question of fact, using some standard statistical analysis. What can we infer from that? More to the point, can we infer that TBR is islamophobic, as Unibot has done? The answer to this question is no. Not unequivocally and, in fact, not persuasively either. We explain this in a series of arguments below.

First of all, let’s take a look at the hard numbers themselves. Of all the regions TBR has raided, 5.8% of them are Islam-themed. This is, for all practical purposes, minimal. If an organization was truly selecting their targets based on ideological reasons, one would reasonably expect a much larger percentage of their raids to be against regions fitting that ideology. Consider, for instance, the examples of anti-Nazi or anti-Fascist raider regions whose percentages can be reasonably expected to be at least 25-50%.

This argument in our case can be easily refuted, again by looking at the absolute numbers: there are only 24 Islam-themed regions in the list of available target regions, whereas TBR in the span of seven months has performed more than 200 raids. Therefore, there just are not enough Islam-themed regions for TBR to be exclusively raiding those. However, if this is the case, one would expect a group driven by an Islamophobic ideology to have prioritized such regions. In TBR’s case, given how overwhelmingly larger their overall number of raids is relative to the total number of Islam-themed regions, one would reasonably expect them to have quickly raided all 24 such regions. This contrasts the fact that only 58.3% of Islam-themed regions have been raided.

We hear you saying “hey, 58.3% is a large percentage, what’s up with that?” It does appear to be large, indeed. But, let’s take another look at the data. If we consider alliances, TBR has raided 13 out of 24 such regions, or 54.17%. If we consider space-themed regions, TBR has a score of 13 out of 26, or 50%. Or, we can isolate regions with star-related names, in which case TBR has a perfect score, 4 out of 4. Given the total number of raids, 223, and target regions, 890, these samples are already small enough to make the differences (plus or minus one region) negligible. In fact, all of these groupings of regions pass the same test as that we provided above, at the 1% confidence level. Would anyone use this data to infer that TBR is space-phobic, anti-alliance, or hates stars? We doubt so.

That said, there still needs to be some explanation for the increased ratio of Islam-themed targets (or other categories of targets, such as those listed above). These deviations can be explained if one considers how raiders select target regions: selection is not done at random from the target pool, as all of the statistics cited above implicitly assume. There are several tactical factors involved. Here is a standard, but certainly non-exhaustive, list:

• Regions with larger populations are preferred as targets, due to being considered more “prestigious.
• The placement of a region in the update schedule is very important. Regions that update very closely after feeders are usually avoided, because of large variance. Sometimes, regions near the beginning of update or towards the end of it are preferable, either for convenience or to allow for more data-gathering.
• Related to the above, with the proliferation of large cascades of “tag” raids, raiders search for sequences of regions with “compatible” update times (not very far apart, not too close).
• Certain unfounded regions have more active Delegates than others, and naturally do not make for good targets.

All of the above provide plausible explanations for the deviations observed in the data. They also do not result in the conflict we observed above: that given similar (and statistically identical) data for regions themed after something other than Islam, one would not be willing to infer a corresponding phobia.

More importantly, though, these other arguments all correspond to well-established strategies, followed by professional raider groups and by TBR, and are therefore of universally-accepted plausibility. They do not require that we come up with new assumptions to explain the observed data. They contrast, in this aspect, with Unibot’s offered explanation that imposes on us the assumption of Islamophobia. We are then compelled to use Occam’s razor and adopt the alternative justifications we have offered, unless it can be proven that they cannot explain the data. Again, the onus is on Unibot to prove this. Until he does so, though, the fundamental law of parsimony requires us to reject the extraneous hypothesis of Islamophobia.

Concluding our analysis of the results of our quantitative experiment, we want to point out a common fallacy that has also manifested itself in the case at stake. Unibot has used whatever data he provided and his line of reasoning to infer that the group TBR as a whole is Islamophobic. He failed, then, to consider the alternative; that only certain high-ranking members of TBR involved in target selection are Islamophobic, and not the group overall. This sort of erroneous inductive reasoning is common in NationStates; indeed, many have identified Unibot’s claims of TBR Islamophobia as the official policy of the UDL, a mistake that we have meticulously tried to prevent ourselves from committing in this document. It is also commonly encountered in the ongoing US Presidential election campaign: several commentators use aggregate statistics to make inferences at state-level, without considering the very uneven effect small groups of population, not representative of the state, can have on those statistics. Andrew Gelman, a well-known statistician and social scientist from Columbia University, aptly illustrates this issue in his blog.

Finally, we address another argument that Unibot has used some to justify his claims. In the UDL update cited earlier, a post by Halcones on Iraq’s RMB stating “you better not detag this” was interpreted as “demonstrating the hatred that runs deep in the Black Riders squadron for Islam and the Middle East”. What about the much more reasonable and likely interpretation, that Halcones was just taunting defenders, in the same way raiders routinely do? As r3n deftly put it through example: “If I tell my labmate, ‘hey, you'd better not touch this pudding I just left here’, am I a pudding-phobic, or an Indian-phobic (if he is Indian)?” Or, Halcones may have done it to irritate Unibot & company, or to make a point, as some raiders have said they have a belief of “f*** defenders”. This reaction would have no basis in religious philosophy.

Every claim made by Unibot is intended to support the theory that certain raids conducted by TBR are ideologically motivated, perpetrated by islamophobes. He has provided incomplete, if any, statistical and factual evidence to support his theory. He has not, at least in public, given substantial thought to any other possible explanations for this evidence. The existence of simpler such plausible explanations, like those we pointed out above, and the epistemological principle of succinctness require that we reject his theory.

Writers Note: This post is not meant as an attack on UDL or on Unibot---it is meant as a fact checker regarding a claim.

This post brought to you by the Osiran MythBusters: r3naissanc3r, Earth, Tim, Biyah, and Neavilos.