Reality is Broken - or not

Reality is broken is an interesting book.  From the taglines and reviews it is the sort of thing I would expect to really like but as is so often the case the devil is in the details.  The basic idea behind it is that the real world is very bad at entertaining and engaging people and that games and lessons from games can be used to make the world a better place because games are so good at entertaining and engaging people.

The trick is that the basic premise of looking at popular games to understand what motivates people and trying to use those motivational techniques for good works is a fine one.  Wikipedia is a good example of this; there are rankings and levels and fights and bad guys to fight and an endless world to explore... and because of this some 100 million hours have been poured into the project entirely by volunteers.  The problem is when the author gets overexcited and begins to overgeneralize and wildly exaggerate the facts, possibilities and potential benefits of 'gamifying' the real world.

The best example of this is when McGonigal makes use of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours benchmark for being good at things.  She suggests that since high schoolers these days are graduating with 10,000 hours of video gaming under their belts they are all prodigies at collaborating.  According to her hours spent playing video games can all be considered extensive training at collaboration with others.  I will admit that I learned a lot from leading WOW raiding guilds, recruiting and maintaining online relationships... but I also spent a hell of a lot of time murdering demonic cows in Diablo 2 and crushing enemy civilizations in CiV and those hours were not remotely useful for collaboration.  I would also suggest that I am by far not the norm in this; after seeing how fragile and disastrous most online groups are in nearly any game you can name I would say that collaboration is, if anything, greater outside of games than in.  In most games you can utterly ignore everyone around you if you want to and are rarely forced to compromise and negotiate, which are things that the real world has in abundance.  Not to say there aren't games that do encourage collaboration, because there are, but I would be shocked if you found that hardcore gamers are actually better at collaborating than nongamers.  When I think about the greatest lessons in collaboration that I have received they are all from situations where I was forced to work with a particular person on a challenging project where we did not agree on how the project was to be tackled and all come from real life.

There is also a heavy reliance on silly or meaningless statements like "Reality is stuck in the present, but games let us see the future."  What does that even mean?  This sort of thing makes me dismiss the argument entirely because it is based on generating good feelings with ill defined, ambiguous terms.  I could just as well argue that "Love is the greatest force in the universe" and aim for high emotional impact with no useful content.  The book isn't useless by any means - outlining the things that make people happy and elaborating on how to tap into people's unused energy in ways that benefit us all is a good goal and worth pursuing.  I find McGonigal's analysis of ways in which we can use games to hack our lives to make both ourselves and everyone around us happier to be intriguing and insightful.  In the end the book has many good points but they are drowned out by the overuse of repetitive examples and pretty but meaningless sound bites.

A life of reading online humour

Late last week I found Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for the first time.  Since then I have been maniacally consuming the years and years of comics and videos posted there punctuated by grinning, snorting and howling with gales of hideous, unstoppable laughter.  The comics are drawn by a man of similar age to me on the topics of religion, science, math and sex and reflect a worldview notably similar to my own so it is no surprise that I enjoy them so.  This desperation to read all 2,000+ comics and view all of the dozens (hundreds?) of videos got me to thinking about creativity and what sort of life is worth living.  A few times in my life I have found a new internet site and been inexorably sucked into it, spending days at a time reading everything ever posted there.  Xkcd, Sluggy Freelance, Order of the Stick and now SMBC all grabbed me and I could not let go.  These insane, temporary addictions are wonderful and finding people of like mind amidst the wasteland that is most of the internet is great but is this something that is really worth doing?  Particularly I was thinking about the situation of finding a brilliant webcomic that had literally unlimited archives such that I could look at them forever and the content would never run out - what would I do and what should I do?

I wonder if I would be addicted in the same fashion if there were no end in sight.  I have a drive to consume it all, see it all, experience everything but I don't do that for movies or TV shows even though there are some really good ones out there.  The biggest difference between these two situations is that even if I wanted to watch every really good movie ever I could not do so - there simply isn't enough time left in my life given how fast these things are produced and how big my backlog is.  Those projects simply feel impossible and the glorious feeling of learning it all isn't achievable.  When I am viewing webcomics though it is entirely possible to read every good webcomic I have ever found and the dates and numbers even tell me exactly how far through the list I am.  Maybe it has something to do with watching numbers get bigger and wanting to level up my virtual reading score or somesuch... I don't pretend to entirely understand my own urges.

I begin to think of how these authors turn their desire to entertain into a successful business.  I have no desire for commercial success and no drive to bet my happiness on the success or failure of a business venture so even when I do build something I don't really consider hunting for fame and fortune in the way that many do.  Given that, is there any point in creating the things I create?  If the goal is simply to pass the time and have fun then might I not be just as well served reading webcomics and watching movies endlessly?  The amount of good writing and interesting content on the internet might as well be infinite at this point given how fast it is produced so is blogging like I do even making anything better?  I guess I do slightly improve the signal to noise ratio but that seems like a pretty miniscule benefit considering the size of cyberspace.  The great Stoics would probably tell me that becoming the best person I can be is the most worthy goal of all but is that better achieved by considering the creativity and insights of others or by creating things myself?

I'm am fine, and how are you?

The obligatory exchange of

"How are you?"
"Fine, how are you?"
"Good"

makes me completely insane.  The fact that so often my entire exchange with people I deal with is encompassed by these few words that pretty much boil down to obligation and lying makes my head hurt.  Imagine how I would answer this question if I had just suffered a personal tragedy yesterday like losing my job or having someone close to me die - I would say "Fine".  Then imagine how I would answer if I spent the previous night winning huge amounts of money off rubes while playing poker - I would say "Fine".  There are people in my life who I wish to discuss these things with but they rarely have to ask "How are you?" because they actually have some idea of who I am and can ask something topical!  They could inquire how my blog is going, what games I am playing these days or what grade Elli is in, for example.  Almost universally when someone resorts to "How are you?" it is an admission that they don't know anything about me and almost certainly don't want any information beyond "Fine".

Handshakes are the same.  The theory as I understand it is that a long time ago shaking hands showed that you didn't have a weapon in that hand and thus is was a gesture of mutual trust.  Whether or not that is true it certainly isn't relevant now and today handshakes are just a great way to pass on germs and annoy me.  There are plenty more examples that are the same way of course as my family in law demonstrates at most gatherings.  They have the hilarious unspoken tradition that when someone is leaving the gathering everybody crowds to the front door of the house for goodbye handshakes and hugs.  Of course because there is a mob of people trying to exist directly beside the door it takes 20 minutes for the folks leaving to just put on shoes and go while I stand there trying desperately not to order them all into the spacious living room where goodbyes could take place without causing an incredible traffic jam of people.

Ziggyny commented awhile ago that he absolutely hates mandatory gift giving.  I happen to agree but I think I take it a little further than that because I hate obligatory social rituals.  If I am seeing a good friend after a long time apart and I give them a hug (or a much more manly chest bump) it is an honest representation of my feelings and has some meaning.  The clerk at the grocery store saying "How are you?" on the other hand is the most absurd kind of timewasting ritual - it isn't like I am suddenly fooled into thinking they want an answer.  "How are you?" and the mandatory responses to it are just a way to fill space when no one has anything to say and somebody lacks the fortitude to remain silent.  I assume that these things do in fact nicely grease the wheels of social interaction and that for many people they are innocuous or even enjoyable but all I want is either meaningful interaction or simple silence.

How did I ever get into sales as a career anyway?

Stubborn

I am standing on the sidewalk glaring at Elli while she glares right back at me.  We have a long walk ahead of us and I have told her that she can have a ride on my shoulders for part of it - but not until she has walked 4 blocks on her own.  She has decided that walking 20 meters is plenty and now she is entitled to be carried the rest of the way home.  Somehow although I feel like I should be able to address this situation calmly and rationally I just can't and my mind is filled with twisted visions of punting a unruly child into traffic.  I have tried asking, I have tried giving her time to come around to my point of view and I have tried explaining.  Nothing has worked.  Finally I end up tossing her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry and walking down the road.  My mind churns with doubt - what exactly should I do?  She is screaming and wailing the whole way but would rather be carted than walk so I am really faced with either standing on the street corner until she is willing to move on her own, carrying her home over my shoulder or initiating some greater level of violence.

It is amazing how *trapped* this makes me feel.  I will not live my life as a parent a slave to my child's whims so I simply will not sit on the sidewalk waiting for her to decide to obey.  Never mind the fact that she would use this as leverage to do absolutely anything she wanted and make my life a misery but I would be entirely derelict as a parent; children must have boundaries.  On the other hand I absolutely hate the idea of constantly carting Elli around over my shoulder with her screaming and attacking me.  This isn't good for her or me to say nothing of the passerby.  Just putting her on my shoulders is just as bad since then I have established that she has absolute authority over my body and that tantrums on the sidewalk are a great tactic.  I know I can just grab her ear, twist it around and drag her along with me.  This is how things would have been done in years past and after a fairly short walk with her ear feeling like it was going to be ripped off I am confident she would walk on her own... but I really don't want to be inflicting serious pain on her multiple times a day to get her to obey basic instructions.

My natural inclination is toward demanding obedience by any means necessary.  Something very deep in my brain insists that she must obey and violence in the pursuit of obedience is acceptable.  This creates so much conflict because Wendy and I often don't see eye to eye on these things.  Wendy is the softy of the two of us and wants love, patience and a gentle touch to solve all problems while I instinctively play the hardass.  I know she would find ear twisting and dragging to be unpalatable at best and although I usually do things more her way than mine there are times when my spirit of compromise is very severely tested.  Is it okay to have a different set of rules entirely when Mom is around and when she is not?  How do I balance my own gut instincts and the compromises we reach when both of us are around?  The rest of the world has opinions on the subject but quite frankly it is challenging enough making rules between just two parents and one child - I have no intention of giving anyone else a vote.

I stand in front of a pouting child and I am thinking about the fact that she makes me so frustrated, that she has cost us $225,000 so far at age 4.5 (I calculated it one day awhile ago) and that she creates conflict in my marriage.  I need to be thinking of how to calm her down and jolly her along and my mind just can't focus on those things with all the messes swirling around in there.  The trouble with raising children is exactly this I think; you might be able to sit around and come up with ideal solutions but you don't make decisions in ideal situations.  You end up having to decide what to do when you are hungry, late, mad at someone else, and tired.  You fight because you are just so mad that the little person won't or can't notice that *you* need a little slack right now!  That slack and those ideal conditions are not the norm in real parenting though because children act up at the times you most wish they would not and then you must come to grips with the fact that you lack the implacable will and unending patience you imagined you possessed.  Child rearing is very much about good enough for right now and not so much about perfection, which is hard when you have as much of a perfectionist streak as I do.

Justice or Compassion

Since the election I have been wandering around the internet a bit to see what sorts of things people are saying about the results.  Of course most of the comments out there are the usual partisan talking points and have little enough of interest but I did find some intriguing patterns in the justifications people used for supporting their particular group.  The main thing I saw was that people supporting the Conservatives (right wing) were very often focused on Justice as the overriding reason for doing things and those supporting the NDP (left wing) focused instead on Compassion.  As an example the Conservatives support tough on crime laws that put more people in jail for longer while the NDP lean more towards rehabilitation and programs designed to prevent crime in the first place.  It certainly is just that those that commit crimes pay dearly for doing so and unjust that citizens who do not commit crimes pay for those criminals to receive benefits not available to those who obey the law.  On the flip side it is compassionate to accept that many criminals are not a danger and to try to give them all a chance to reform their behaviour and also to work as hard as possible to give people opportunities to not become criminals in the first place.  As another example right wing parties tend to be against gun control and yet support the harshest penalties for those who end up using those guns on others.

Obviously every society needs some combination of justice and compassion.  We generally don't think that people who speed or embezzle should be shot but we do think that some punishment should be levied against them - we are all searching for a middle ground.  It is a matter of emphasis, of course, a matter of finding the right spot where the punishment is significant enough to deter the crime but not so much that we end up destroying good people's lives for minor mistakes.  As far as I am concerned the trick to finding the optimal approach is to set aside these relatively arbitrary notions of compassion and justice and instead focus on the known effects of specific actions.  We know, for example, that the death penalty is not any greater deterrent to murder than life in prison.  Nobody commits murder calmly weighing the benefit of killing vs. the penalty of a lifetime behind bars.  If the penalty for murder were instead imprisonment for a month though I think there would definitely be murders committed where the murderer honestly decided their actions warranted the punishment.  What is necessary is to evaluate how significant the punishment needs to be such that nobody who actually believes they will be caught would commit murder thoughtfully.  We can't prevent murders of passion anyway so ratcheting up the punishment further is not helpful to prevent them.

That is the sort of thinking that goes on a lot in government bureaucracies but not as much in election campaigns. Calm, rational assessment of cause and effect doesn't make good press and doesn't get people excited about voting.  Invective about injustice and callousness make great headlines though and get people involved.  You can easily see this by looking at the sorts of things the NDP and Conservatives said in their platforms.  The Conservatives emphasized punishing those who are criminals and repeated used the phrase 'law-abiding citizens' to suggest that people who have not yet violated laws should be let alone to do whatever they please.  The NDP on the other hand talked about helping those who needed it and about protecting people who would otherwise be marginalized.  Neither justice nor compassion can be ignored when making laws and decisions but rhetoric based on only one or the other is a poor excuse for an informed, rational choice.

Canadian Election Results - Good and Bad

The election is over and the results are in.  As is so often the case there are some pieces of good news and bad news but unfortunately I think the bad outweighs the good this time.

Conservative - 167 seats - Majority Government
NPD - 102 seats - Official Opposition
Liberal - 34 seats
Block Quebecois - 4 seats
Green - 1 seat

The Good:

The Block Quebecois got ruined and is down to 4 seats.  Having a large party in the House which is explicitly dedicated to promoting one province and in fact to promoting that province's secession is a disaster.  I have nothing against Quebec in general but separtist parties getting 5% of the vote and having 15% of the seats is a real detriment to democratic rule.  I can only hope that next time around we get rid of them entirely instead of just marginalizing them.

The NDP got 102 seats out of 308 which is an all time high for them.  I think this is fantastic.  I didn't vote for the NDP but I think shaking up the old parties and and showing how well a third party can do with a positive campaign strategy is great.  Two party politics is a recipe for cronyism and corruption because you *know* you will get back into power once the people get sick of the current government so I heartily approve of a viable third party. I liked the Liberal platform better but I think everyone involved will benefit from increased competition.

The Green party won a seat!  Unsurprisingly it was Elizabeth May, the leader of the Greens, who won her riding.  The Green platform is incredibly narrow and they obviously aren't ready to be in charge of anything but I think that legitimizing them and giving them a voice stands to improve things in Canadian politics.  The power structure could not change based on the results of her riding but the perception of the Greens as a real party instead of a joke like the Pirate party or the Marijuana party is a good thing.

My party won in my riding.  The riding in which I live has been a safe Liberal riding for a very long time and nothing changed this election.  I voted for them because I liked their platform but as usual it made absolutely no difference what I did.

The Bad:

The Conservatives got a majority government much to my disappointment.  Despite numerous scandals and despite being in contempt of parliament the Conservatives got the nod to run the country in any way they see fit.  Mostly everybody was predicting a Conservative minority which would have probably been fairly short lived.  That would not be a great situation but it is much preferable to what we have.  Now we get to see exactly how Stephen Harper's Canada will look when he has total control over everything and doesn't have to please anyone but himself.  I expect a lot of really silly and foolish things out of this government like 'tough on crime, fill those prisons' policies and tax cuts that drive us further into debt.  What I really wonder about though is if we are going to see a lot of religious, right wing social policy like banning gay marriage or criminalizing abortion.  Neither of these things was part of the Conservative platform this time around but many of their candidates support them and many Conservative voters desire them.  Harper is a canny politician so he clearly knows how controversial these sorts of things are and knows that they might well sink his next election but we have never had the chance to see him with unfettered power before... who knows?

The Reason:

I think the simple reason behind the Conservative push is people's fears about losing their jobs.  Despite the fact that Canada already has incredibly low corporate taxes and the fact that corporate tax rates have been shown to have a miniscule effect on job creation Harper convinced Canadians that voting for anyone else was tantamount to being laid off because they would tax corporations more.  Harper simply used the greatest fear floating around in the country right now to leverage political power even though his party can by no means be considered better than the others at dealing with the object of the fear.  I personally am much more concerned about the legacy of debt we will leave behind in our quest to make sure corporations pay minimal tax but like it or not this is where we are.

The Silly:

Sthenno and I were talking about how Canada has both a Communist party and a Marxist-Leninist party (both get no appreciable votes) and he mentioned that this was a big problem because those guys just can't afford to split the very few communist votes that are out there.  Of course that isn't the case - they can afford to split the vote more than anybody else on the ticket because the results are identical either way.

Space battles - unlikely at best

I just finished rereading the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi.  It is at base a 3 book series about humanity a few centuries from now where our species has colonized a number of worlds and is in deadly combat with many alien races.  There is a 4th book which is a retelling of the events of the 3rd book from another character's perspective ala Ender's Game/Ender's Shadow and is also worth a read.  Like many futuristic settings it could easily be called science fiction but could reasonably be called space opera too.  It isn't nearly as space opera as Star Trek but isn't nearly as science fiction as Heinlein - it feels like a nice medium between the two.  Of course it has better writing and creativity than Star Trek and better characters than Heinlein's novels which is why I don't hesitate to recommend it if you have an interest in the genre.

The trouble with the series like many others in the space opera genre is that it relies on humans fighting aliens with rifles.  That doesn't ruin the experience thankfully but it does mean that it is hard to imagine the real world ever working out even remotely like the series does.  Even ignoring nuclear weapons entirely a modern army could wipe out an army of a million soldiers from 100 years ago without taking losses or breaking a sweat. Not only is this true but innovations are not flat year by year but rather are accelerating rapidly.  If we were to somehow be colonizing planets and cruising around the stars some time from now and we encountered another species the chance that our two civilizations would have even remotely comparable technology is laughable.  It would be nearly certain that they had somewhere between 1 million and 5 billion years of progress on us and as such could presumably annihilate us with the tiniest bit of effort.  For our technologies to be comparable they would have to be remarkably similar to us in terms of development, probably within a few decades.  The chance of that given that the universe is a solid 14 billion years old is remote at best.

If we continue to assume that colonization and travel through space is a reasonable proposition (which it emphatically is not at the moment) then we must assume that when we encounter some other intelligent race out there it almost certainly will be with a vast power gulf between us.  We are likely to either be facing people with effectively no technology at all who are stuck on their own planet or beings wielding technology that is so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic to us primitives.  Neither of these scenarios provides much fodder for great space opera though both would be very interesting as far as science fiction goes.  Space opera isn't very entertaining when we carpet bomb primitive species nor does it have much to say about us begging for tech from beings of godlike power.  It works when there are lots of species of variable forms with remarkably comparable technological progress who shoot each other up in flashy space battles and particularly well when attractive human 'space marines' pick up rifles and shoot at ugly bugs who want to eat their brains.

We aren't getting into space soon, if ever.  If we want to colonize someplace due to population pressure we would be far better off to colonize Antarctica than a foreign planet and no one is even considering *that* as a solution.  Spaceship Earth is our one and only home and the only place we are going to be shooting up aliens with rifles is in popular entertainment.