Thread by @AlexandraErin

There are exceptions and nuances, because there are almost always those (mostly the Sith deal predominantly but not exclusively in absolutes), but generally speaking, the answer to any question of "But isn't X just Y?" will be no.

No, X isn't just Y.

It's not just a distraction, it's not just the same old story, it's not just an excuse, it's not just outrage marketing.

Call it the Just World Fallacy... wait, that one is already taken.

Call it the Simple World Fallacy.

Is this just about the people talking about The Hunt being literally the same as The Most Dangerous Game?

No, it's about that. But it's not just about that.

The human brain, one of the ways it has to wrap itself around new ideas is to find relations between things it already knows. Points of comparison. Things it relates to.

Which is good! It's literally part of how we learn.

But... learning is not *just* that.

One reason I don't talk about gamedev more often is that there's a lot of people on here whose habitual response to a description of a game concept is to reply "Isn't that just [other game]?"

And as I've noted before, most of them don't mean it dismissively!

That is, they're pepared to hear how it's different. They're usually intrigued by the similarity and now they want to understand how my idea exists apart from it.

Except, as they're asking, I've already told them.

So all I can really do is just repeat things I've already said, which they ignored, paring things down until they found a reference point to something they know.

Nutshell thinking.

Nutshell thinking is the idea that a thing is the same as its summary, which I guess is another variation on map-territory confusion.

Nutshell thinking. We can say that Trump's conduct generally betrays his oath office. His oath of office binds him to defend and uphold the Constitution. The Constitution is the highest law in the land.

If we simplify enough we can say Trump being a jerk is an impeachable crime

And while that specific example is a bit reductionist... that kind of logic does assail resistance quarters quite a bit. There are whole liberal "news" blogs that operate on that kind of relational logic.

E.g., way back in 2017, a Republican lawmaker made a lukewarm "Well, if the president goes too far, I guess maybe we'll have to talk about some consequences." comment, and one of these blogs crowed "REPUBLICANS HINT AT IMPEACHMENT!"

Because impeachment is a consequence.

My point here is not "don't compare things to things" but to be careful that you use it as a starting point, not an ending point. The words you choose to use can both reflect and shape your thinking, and affect how your ideas are perceived by others.

Even if your goal in asking "Isn't X just Y?" is to find out what differences exist, or to make a comparison, that phrasing doesn't really convey those things.