Yes, you are mostly right, but it’s still interesting (and positive!) that the community landed on an “anything goes so long as you are honest” set of norms.
As someone without much (well, any) interaction with speedrunning communities, it’s still fun to see how other internet communities have codified or tacitly established their operating procedures, expectations, norms etc.
You are, again here, despite trying to deny it elsewhere in this thread, claiming the “anything goes” part within the bounds of the game and within the rules of the competition is somehow reflecting on the community norms and making this “interesting”.
It’s like trying to say “Oh wow it’s so interesting that marathon runners have their own ethics; they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts”.
In fact that is not how marathon running works. If you take certain drugs that is frowned uppon, even if you are honest about it. Similarly you can’t break the legs of the competitors. That is heavily frowned uppon even if you are honest about it.
These are not obvious. There could be a full-doping version of marathon running but there isn’t. There could be a combined martial art&marathon running competition where you try to hurt your opponent without getting hurt while running a marathon distance but there isn’t.
There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if anyone actually wanted that. And that still wouldn’t demonstrate any unique community norms or change my point at all.
You seem to be proving the other poster’s point that people interested in marathons landed on a class of rules that is specific and that nobody wants the alternatives.
It’s the difference between that and the speed-running community’s “anything goes, we’ll just classify it” rules that people find are finding interesting.
The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general. “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect. It’s interesting to me that people would assume otherwise.
Sure. First, I'm going to leave 'assault' because I think it sort of changes the mapping between marathon running and speedrunning in an analogy-breaking way and adds ethical concerns that aren't really relevant to the point and practically don't exist for speedrunning anyway. I understood what the poster was saying, but I think it's not a great example.
Second, I'm going to suggest that like speedrunning, a marathon run is really against the clock. This isn't strictly true, but it's true enough for the analogy to work.
With all that in place, the apparent universality of 'no doping' is half the point. There are no marathons where you can choose to dope or not dope and they simply categorize you that way. Doping has a fair chance of ruining a career and disqualifying the participant from future marathons.
The other half of the point is that it doesn't have to be this way. We could have separate marathons for dopers, allow them to race together with non-dopers but categorize them differently, or even have specified paths to run but no organized marathon and allow people to get creative in speedrunning them. We could allow people to find shortcuts on trails to improve their time and then categorize them differently from those who follow the proscribed path. Yet we don't do any of it.
In contrast, speedrunning does allow this sort of activity. Tools are okay, but now you're categorized as TAS. You don't have to 100% the game, but now you're doing an Any% run. This does not exist in marathons. You can't take a short cut and get an "Any%" time, for instance.
Simply put, if a speedrunner finds a shortcut it is celebrated, but if a marathon runner happens to find a path down a vine that saves him 10 minutes of running, he's a cheater. These are two different ethical systems.
> The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general.
As you can see above, I disagree with this statement. I haven't read all the sibling and cousin posts, but neither the poster you responded to nor the top poster said the ethical system was bad; in fact both found it interesting. Both the marathon system of ethics and the speedrunning system of ethics seem to have the same moral or ethical basis in fairness, but the approach is different and therefore is the ethical system.
> “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect.
This is not my interpretation of the top post and I think it's extremely ungenerous. He expressed surprised that a system designed to work around the rules still develops a system of ethical rules. His edit then points out that honesty is a core tenet of the ethics of the group.
I can see why you’re dropping assault now, since it undermined @krisoft’s argument. It was a mistake to defend it. And as for doping, you agree with me that anti-doping rules are universal? Okay so marathoners don’t have different norms than other sports, or at least you’ve run out of examples.
I disagree with your equating of TAS and doping. But that’s mostly irrelevant anyway. There is no ethics of TAS outside of a competition that disallows TAS. The only ethics we’re talking about is the ethics of cheating, which is universal; whether or not the agreed upon rules were broken. It’s the same for speed runners as it is for marathoners.
I have only read the edited post and don’t know if in addition to the addendum he also edited the original post. If that is the case then there may be context here I don’t have, so feel free to educate me there, but I stand by my interpretation of what I’ve read here. I think you might be confused and trying to make this personal between us doesn’t convince me otherwise.
BTW, you lobbed an ad-hominem with “extremely ungenerous” which is why you got my retort that was edited out. Maybe you didn’t realize you were already making it personal yourself?
Personally, I think you’re confused about the difference between rules and ethics. Yes, we’re talking about different sets of rules. But we have not been talking about different sets of ethics. The difference between a speedrunner’s shortcut being good and a marathoner’s shortcut being bad is rules, not ethics.
Then you edited your post completely to essentially attack a point that wasn’t really mine, that you wouldn’t see the way it was actually meant, and that I was already conceding for expediency since you yourself claimed you didn’t understand. I posted to you because regardless of who posts you seem to not understand their point of view and want to “debate” about things they didn’t say or if they did say them they didn’t mean them the way you took them.
You’re doing this in several response not just to me. But I’m sure it’s just because I don’t understand the intersection of rules, ethics, and morals. I’m just confused.
Have a nice life.
Yes. That is what I'm saying. Thank you for repeating it.
> assault is both against the rules and also straight up illegal.
This is coupled. What is or isn't assault depends on the rules of the sport. What is absolutely a-okay in boxing would be considered assault in other situations.
If there would be thousands and thousands of people with long history who think it is just and right to do a kind of marathon where they stop occasionally and have a kickboxing match on the side of the road then it would not be considered assault to participate in it.
> Maybe you should read some marathon rules
Doesn't appear that we have a disagreement on marathon rules. So why would I?
My point is that in marathons the people running and organising them have very specific ideas about what is or isn't a valid kind of marathon. "Doping-allowed marathon" is not a thing, even if all participants were honest about it. "boxing while distance running" events are not a thing.
The norm "anything goes as long as you are honest about it" has two parts. Part 1 "anything goes". Part 2 "as long as you are honest about it". You think part 2 is the curious thing. What I'm pointing out is that Part 1 is the curious thing. In most kind of competitions people are a lot lot more picky about the circumstances which they feel "okay" to compete under.
> There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if anyone actually wanted that.
And that is my point. People don't want that. People are repulsed by the idea and feel a strong disdain towards others who would participate or organise a "doping-allowed marathon". If such an event were ever contemplated very likely there would be protest and pressure on the organisers to abandon the plan. Do you agree with that?
In other words in long distance running they do not have a norm of "anything goes as long as you are honest about it". Not because they are not honest, or don't require honesty (part 2). But because they all agree to a sufficient degree that "anything does not go" (part 1). Therefore the curious thing is part 1 in speed running. That they celebrate, and consider to be appropriate, a much wider variation of circumstances than in other competitions.
Outside of fighting sports, assault is default illegal and considered unethical, and there are very few exceptions for it. Importantly, a sport’s rules must make an explicit exception for assault because it’s illegal, otherwise assault is not allowed. Marathon isn’t a fighting sport, and like any sport it does not need to state that assault is not allowed. Marathon’s ethics on assault match society’s ethics on assault, and therefore the marathon does not have unique ethics when it comes to assault.
Boxing is an interesting example, one where the sport’s rules do bend social ethics. Speedrunning is not an interesting example, as glitch exploits and tool assisted speedruns aren’t considered unethical outside of competition - they don’t harm anybody. The only ethical question anyone’s raised so far about speedrunning is whether the speedrunners have followed the competition rules, or whether they’ve cheated.
There is chess boxing, which is perhaps similar to your idea of a boxing while distance running event. People have suggested doping-allowed sports https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/30/sport/enhanced-games-olympics...
Looks like the people in the article objecting are people who make a living doing sports, so perhaps unsurprising. The primary objection to doping is that it’s unfair to competitors. I’m not sure the general public would be repulsed. Whether doping is generally unethical is debatable since outside of competition, the main harm a doper does is to themselves. Some ethicists consider self-harm a type of social harm, but it’s different than directly harming others, and challenging the right to self-harm may raise ethical questions about freedom of choice. But, if you’re right about people considering doping to be generally unethical, then that means it’s in the same bucket as assault, and so does not help support the idea that speedrunning represents unique or flexible ethics.
Anyway, there are no competitions where anything goes, they all have rules. Most of the rules aren’t based on ethics, they’re just rules. When rules do bend society’s ethics, I agree it can be interesting. When rules don’t bend normal ethics, then we’re only talking about a different competition and not a case of flexible ethics. I think video game speed running falls in that latter group, and I haven’t yet seen any examples or reasoning here that demonstrate otherwise.
Because I think what we are talking about here is not ethics. Do note that I haven't used that term at all. What I'm talking about is the participants shared sense of "what goes" and "what doesn't". What I'm talking about is norms. Norms of the activity. vanderZwan uses the word "ethics" in quotes, but from the context, and the quotes, I think it is clear that it's not about literal ethics.
> Anyway, there are no competitions where anything goes, they all have rules.
Of course. The observation is about what kind of things are okay according to the shared sense of the participants. In some activities this space is very narrow, in some it ends up much more expansive. In my observation it seems speedrunning has a more expansive notion of "a-okay rules" than what I have experienced in other activities. I find this interesting. You don't find this interesting.
It sounds like you want to litigate this and convince those who find this interesting that it is not interesting. That's a fool's errand.
This is why I said your argument is a straw man in relation to mine. I am and always was talking about ethics, because that’s what the top comment said. The top comment used the word “ethics”. You jumped into a conversation about ethics and without being clear until now and tried changing topics to the ill-defined “norms”, which is why we have some miscommunication. I assumed incorrectly that your use of norms meant ethics, because we were talking about ethics from the start.
> It sounds like you want to litigate this and convince those who find this interesting that it is not interesting. That's a fool's errand
SMH You’re here debating too, I didn’t ask for you to misinterpret and try to contradict me. I’m not trying to convince you about what you find interesting, I’m pointing out that speedrunning is not interesting from an ethical point of view. I don’t think it’s particularly interesting from a norms point of view either, but you do you. I don’t feel like you’ve even demonstrated that speedrunning competition rules represent norms at all, your argument is making more unstated assumptions.
Yes. In quotes. Which I think means something other than ethics without quotes.
> You’re here debating too,
I'm not really. I'm chatting with you and others. Not everything is a debate.
> I’m pointing out that speedrunning is not interesting from an ethical point of view
And you won that argument. Your internet points will be transferred to your permanent record within one to two days.
You’re absolutely right that not everything is a debate, but your very first sentence in reply to my comment was argumentative, and it was followed by several more. Feel free to reflect on that.
> Your internet points
Doesn’t using snark kind of undermine the claim that you’re just chatting? I would have loved to actually hear some definition around and justification about norms and get to something interesting. I finally feel like what I (and top comment) said was understood correctly and don’t have to keep trying to explain it.
Although the games I've done are very niche and have small moderation teams.
For a given game there are often multiple categories. With rules for each. Some forbid some exploits, some complete game as fast as possible some 100% it.
When a new tech gets discovered there might be a debate if it belongs to certain categories or not.