Now I’m not an MMORPGer (for the non-nerds out there, MMORPG is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons ported to the Internet with pretty graphics.) This is not because of some inherent virtue. I might be very well have become one if I had a little more free time in my life or if I had started taking amphetamines, since God only knows I can’t really sacrifice anymore sleep than I already do. But that is another rant.

But I disagree with this screed about MMORPGs (the World of Warcraft specifically) and think some of the issues are wrong headed. A lot of the ideas are infused with ideas from libertarian and Ayn Randians philosophies, which I think are rather flawed. While I don’t like the government digging through my shit, and think that a small government is more ideal than a big government, I really don’t buy the myth of the rugged individualist. Human beings have evolved to be social creatures. Without the adaptation of socialization, our ancestors would’ve been rendered extinct by clearly superior predators like lions and tigers and wolves. Without socialization and altruism, we wouldn’t’ve ever gotten to the point where we could’ve developed weaponry, and without weapons, we ain’t shit. And, finally, if human beings didn’t need other people, then we wouldn’t be dependent on sex for procreation. End of story. But anyway.

The idea I most disagree with is “skill > time.” While I do agree that giftedness and creative genius will never be surpassed by a million monkeys typing randomly on a million keyboards (hence, the reason why a “man-month” is a myth) I do think it’s bullshit to think that hard-work and determination can’t ever surpass skill (so maybe I’m not talking Einstein-like genius here, I’m talking more like IQ 120-130, but chances are, you ain’t Einstein) This idea is, after all, embodied in a rather old fable—the Tortoise and the Hare.

The other thing is that skill really does get better with continued experience. Maybe not in the linear fashion that occurs in RPGs. True, you don’t accumulate experience points. But it is quite obvious in, for example, surgery, where they have actually studied this closely, that the guy who has done ten thousand herniorrhaphies will generally be better at it than the one who has only done one thousand. Now does this mean one is a better surgeon than the other? No, not necessarily, after this is only one type of surgery, and the techniques necessary to perform different surgeries vary greatly. The realm of such skills is actually very circumscribed. And is there such a thing as a born surgeon? I seriously doubt it. I doubt there are people who by the age of 3 are skilled at doing exploratory laparotomies. Advanced skills like these are quite obviously learned. And you have to be taught these skills. You can’t hope to just walk into an operating room, pick up a scalpel, and start cutting away and think you’re going to do a stand-up job.

So I guess the moral here is that, unless your talent truly exceeds two standard deviations from the norm, you are probably not going to get very far without hard work. If I wanted a safe bet, I would easily put my money on a hard worker rather than someone who had some moderate skill in something. The hard worker can always learn whatever needs to be learned. The guy who thinks he has some skills is more likely to give me attitude. And he or she is probably going to be less adaptable, relying on his/her skill. I think one will find that prospective employers also tend to think this way.

Going off on a tangent, I think that’s what’s wrong with the libertarians and Ayn Randians I’ve met. While your premises might be right if you possessed the brain of Stephen Hawking or the dexterity of Kobe Bryant, believe me, you ain’t that good. Statistically speaking, you’re probably going to fall within two standard deviations from the mean, and that isn’t that big of a spread. And when the differences aren’t that big, your inherent talent isn’t going to be that important. You really shouldn’t buy into the myth of your inherent superiority.

Anyway, that’s my own rant for the day.