God's Imitator

Huang Shengjie looked puzzled, ”So you actually support the Community Speaking Rule?

”Why?

”Isn’t it an infringement on our rights? I assumed you’d be especially sensitive to that kind of thing and would vote against it.”

Qin Cheng looked at him with mild exasperation, ”Shengjie, I’ve never said our rights are absolutely inviolable.

”It depends on what surrendering a right actually gets you.

”If something is simply taken away without any return, then of course that’s unacceptable. But if giving up a small right gains you something genuinely valuable, like safety, then it can be a reasonable exchange.

”Rights that are given up aren’t necessarily gone forever. They can be reclaimed later.”

Huang Shengjie looked taken aback, ”Is that really how it works? But what did this speaking motion actually give us? All I can see are downsides.”

Qin Cheng asked, ”What downsides do you see?”

Huang Shengjie lowered his head in thought, ”Give me a moment.”The most basic one: it means losing the right to silence. That’s correct, isn’t it?

”Before, I could stay quiet whenever I didn’t have anything to say. Now I’m being forced to speak.

”Even if the act of speaking itself doesn’t cost me anything, being compelled to do something I don’t want to do is inherently bad.

”But the more I think about it, the worse this motion seems.

”Take today’s debrief of the ‘King’s Judgment’. Something felt off to me.

”We’ve done many debriefs before, and the ‘King’s Judgment’ is a higher-quality game than anything we’ve looked at previously, but the time spent on the debrief, and the actual analysis that came out of it, was less than usual, wasn’t it?

”We were supposed to be breaking down an S-tier Judgment Game to improve ourselves, but the debrief felt more like a tribute session for the Imitator who designed it.

”That’s a very strange outcome.

”The only explanation I can think of is that certain key people deliberately said less, or steered away from the more substantive points.

”Yao Yuan and Sister Ye Lin, for instance. What they noticed about the game surely went beyond what they said.

”I think the way they behaved is directly connected to the new motion.”

Qin Cheng gave a slight nod, ”Yes, I think so too.”

Huang Shengjie looked a little energised, ”Right? You agree?

”On the surface, both of them had their own individual reasons for saying little.

”Yao Yuan gave the impression of deliberately testing whether the motion would be automatically enforced by the community, so he kept his contribution under a minute on purpose.

”And Ye Lin may have been expressing silent protest against the motion by not engaging deeply.

”She said a fair amount, but nothing with much depth.

”If that reading is correct, does the same apply to other players?

”In other words, during today’s debrief we effectively split into two groups: players without the ability who genuinely had nothing significant to contribute, and players with the ability who were deliberately holding back.

”Why hold back?

”I can think of three possible reasons. First, not wanting their analysis to benefit the Imitator in the community, or players they’re in conflict with. Second, wanting to share that information only within a trusted inner circle, or to trade it for something. Third, worrying that saying too much during a debrief, and showing too clear an Imitator-like way of thinking, might make them look more suspicious.

”So the motion may have produced exactly the opposite of its intended effect.

”That feels like a serious problem.”

Qin Cheng gave a nod, ”Yes, there’s something to that.

”Beyond that, the process through which the motion was introduced was also full of problems.

”Have you considered that the Community Speaking Rule might easily have failed to pass?

”Ye Lin wasn’t idle. She had quite likely already secured enough opposing votes in private.”

Huang Shengjie paused, ”I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

Qin Cheng explained, ”When the vote count appeared, Lu Bingjun looked mildly surprised.

”But I’m inclined to think that was an act.

”He had already anticipated that Ye Lin might quietly persuade others to vote against it, so he made advance arrangements in how he structured the motions.

”Two motions were presented together: one mildly encroaching on rights, with benefits that appeared to far outweigh the drawbacks, the Community Speaking Rule, and one severely encroaching on rights, which some might see as doing more harm than good, the Community Trial Rules.

”The first only requires us to speak. The second could result in deaths within the community.

”Initially, everyone’s attention concentrated on the Community Trial Rules. That rule felt unacceptable, and if it had been put to a vote at that moment, it almost certainly wouldn’t have passed.

”But with the Trial Rules set aside for now, looking at the Speaking Rule on its own, suddenly it seemed completely reasonable.

”This is essentially the classic technique of proposing something extreme first to make a moderate proposal seem acceptable by comparison. If you want to take out a window, everyone objects. But if you first propose tearing down the whole house, and then scale it back to just removing the window, people find that much easier to accept.

”Ye Lin had probably gone to every player she thought she could win over, and believed she had secured enough opposing votes to block the motion with some margin to spare.

”And if the motion had failed, Lu Bingjun would have had to acknowledge that openly, and it might have been a very long time before he could raise it again in any legitimate way.

”But Lu Bingjun had anticipated this possibility, and through the pairing of the two motions, managed to change the minds of players who might otherwise have voted against.

”And the interaction between the two motions doesn’t stop there.

”Right now, the Trial Rules are driving the Speaking Rule to pass.

”But before long, the Speaking Rule may turn around and drive the Trial Rules to pass as well.”

Huang Shengjie paused, ”Why?”

Qin Cheng explained patiently, ”Because of the broken window effect.

”Originally, everyone was sensitive about surrendering any rights at all. But the Speaking Rule passing has broken that first window.

”People will start to feel that giving up a small, seemingly inconsequential right wasn’t actually so frightening after all. Nothing terrible happened.

”And it did bring a sense of security in return.

”There’s a hidden Imitator in the community. They’re dangerous. We may not be able to expose them immediately, but if we do nothing at all, the fear will keep building.

”Doing something, anything, makes people feel better.

”The Speaking Rule is exactly that kind of action. The sense of security it provides may be an illusion, but it still has a real effect.

”And if surrendering a small right can buy a sense of security, then surrendering a bit more might buy even more.

”Once people have adjusted to the Speaking Rule, some players may find their thinking starting to soften and slide. They’ll no longer feel that giving up rights is such a frightening thing. And from there, they’ll be more likely to vote in favour of the Trial Rules when it comes up.”

Huang Shengjie looked struck, ”I hadn’t thought through any of that.”

He absorbed it quickly, but a new question surfaced almost immediately, ”But if it’s really the way you’re describing, shouldn’t you have made the same choice I did?

”Shouldn’t you have voted against from the start?

”Do you actually want to see the Trial Rules pass? Do you want to see us killing people within the community?”

Qin Cheng turned the question back on him, ”Why is it that killing someone within the community is necessarily off limits?”