Actually, ask any herpetologist, the toad will quite readily jump out of the pot when it gets hot enough.
You might be right (I have no idea, I don't know any herpetologists) that it's an untrue analogy, but the point that people usually try to make with the analogy isn't necessarily false. Ask any Psychologist--people will accept some rather extreme situations if they are gradually desensitized to it.
Hell, _I_ wasn't okay with games like that back then. I never liked games where you play the same thing over and over again and it just gets harder and harder until you die and start over.
I preferred the old Sierra adventure games, and CRPGs like the Ultima games (until Ultima 7--that's when the series started to go seriously downhill for me). More action-oriented games were okay too, as long as they had some achievable end goal. I'm in my mid-20's and I can completely empathize with these kids' distaste for "play 'til you die, then start over" games.
Oh, and maybe it was just that I never had access to much money when I was younger, but I wouldn't have spent quarters for a few minutes of playing any of those games either.
Ahh, who could forget King's Quest III and that damned cat....
It's probably just because I was younger, or maybe because it took me a lot of time to accomplish it, but escaping from Manannan gave me a feeling of pleasure that I don't often experience from modern games.
Pirates! popped into my mind as soon as I saw your "Learning history from games" subject line. That was my favorite game for a while when I was younger (I also loved another classic Microprose game called Sword of the Samurai), and I enjoyed reading the stories behind the historic expeditions that you can play in the game. Hell, that game inspired me to read a biography of Sir Francis Drake back when I was 12 or 13.
I remember feeling good about myself in a middle school history/social studies class when we were covering the colonization of the New World, and I already knew most of the stuff we were being taught (not to mention stuff that we _weren't_ being taught!).
Ugh, I despise the Gravis Gamepads. I bought a pair of old Gravis Gamepad Pros off of eBay a while ago, thinking they would be perfect for playing emulated SNES games.
For some games they were bearable, but for most of the games I was playing the pad was horrible because it is unreasonably difficult to press STRAIGHT in one direction without accidentally going diagonal. This made games like Street Fighter 2 unplayable.
I'm much happier with a standard PS2 controller + PS2->USB adapter.
I wish I had points to mod this up. Most religions start with very noble, well-meaning ideals, thought up by very compassionate and well-meaning people.
But as soon as you put the "organized" into "organized religion"--i.e. as soon as there are positions of authority for people to follow--power-hungry people get involved twist the religion for their own purposes.
Strange... you make it sound like you feel as if you have to upgrade your kernel as soon as a new version is released, but at the same time you make it sound like you always end up upgrading your kernel late (i.e. right before the next version comes out).
But seriously, if you waited as long as you did to upgrade to 2.6.9, why do you feel like you have to upgrade to 2.6.10 as soon as it's out?
While there are certainly problems with our voting that need to be fixed, that doesn't change the fact that a majority of people voted to stick with the current presidential administration. It doesn't change the fact that organized religion is having a growing influence on the people of the U.S.--and thus, by extension, the government. It doesn't change the fact that a majority of people really are perfectly happy voting in favor of restricting other people's rights (e.g. gay marriage, DMCA, etc.).
And I realize that enlightening the masses is an enormously difficult goal that one is unlikely to ever achieve. But if you feel passionately that something is wrong and you want to put a lot of effort into doing something about it, trying to enlighten the people is still more likely to work than trying to violently overthrow our government, and you don't risk killing innocent people as "collateral damage" in the process.
Well sure, almost anything is worse when you take it to an extreme.
The line, ultimately, is between free speech and threats. Disagreeing with the government, spreading knowledge/information, advocating voting out incumbent politicians, etc. is all free speech and should be protected. When you start talking about violently opposing the government--you know, like blowing up federal buildings and maybe killing some children as "collateral damage"--you should expect the government to take some interest in your activities. And if you make specific plans to carry out an attack somewhere... well, wouldn't there be quite a public outrage if we all found out the government could have stopped it, but didn't?
Hey, I agree with you completely on the subject of free speech, and our obligations toward speaking out.
And I even agree on the right to spread around certain information that could be seeen as dangerous (i.e. how to make weapons).
But if you include with that information an obvious intent to violently overthrow the government, it's a bit silly to expect the government to turn a blind eye to it.
Besides, what exactly would a revolution fix? This country is already run by leaders voted in democratically. A "revolution" would require a small minority to assert its dominance over everyone else and create a dictatorship.
Yeah, I agree that our government is screwed up. And I completely despise our two-party system. But the important thing to understand is that our government is screwed up because a majority of people are VOTING for it to be screwed up.
If you want to fix our government, you have to enlighten the people voting for it. You won't solve anything by teaching people how to blow shit up.
Just try to be a true radical online ( or in real life ) now, advocating for the next revolution.. Outlining details techniques and equipment manufacture..
I'm always amused by comments like this on Slashdot. Come on--no government, however "free" the country is, is going to look kindly upon people who advocate overthrowing it. Just because a government was put in place by a revolution doesn't mean it would be perfectly happy with being overthrown by another one.
If you've had a girlfriend, I'm sure you'd know there's a difference between sex and making love.
I appreciated your informative post, but this part is a not-always-accurate stereotype! I have exchanges with my girlfriend (who just so happens to be Indian, actually) that go like this:
I bought Combat Abs and Combat Conditioning before I discovered Ross Enamait. Ross Enamait made me regret wasting $60 on Furey.
You are right that they are similar as far as the types of exercise they promote/teach, but (despite how his web site appears) Ross is not the marketing genius/rip-off expert that Furey is. Furey's "books" are a half-assed collection of pictures with sparse descriptions that seem designed primarily to get the reader to purchase the ridiculously overpriced video versions. (As if the books themselves aren't ridiculously overpriced.) Ross's books (well, Warrior Fitness anyway--I don't feel I need to buy his other books because Warrior Fitness had everything I needed) are actual books, crammed with information, unlike Furey's books that are no more than lists of exercises.
Furey himself admits that he loves ripping his customers off by charging as much as he can squeeze out of them for as little work as possible, and happily teaches other people to do the same (for a hefty fee, of course) in his marketing seminars.
Ross Enamait's Warrior Fitness book costs the same price as Combat Conditioning, but doesn't include the marketing crap, has more exercises, and has more (and better, IMO) advice about doing the exercises. In addition to the comprehensive chapters on leg, upper body, and core exercises, Warrior Fitness also has chapters on stretching, conditioning, nutrition, motivation, and developing training routines.
I hate to sound like an advertisement--I'm not usually so eager to promote one guy's product over another--but this is one of those cases where the product from the less-well-known guy greatly exceeds the (many) products from the more popular guy in both quantity and quality, for a lesser price. I would feel very guilty if I passed up a chance to keep someone from wasting money on Furey like I did.
Enamait is essentially what Furey could have been if Furey was more open-minded and cared more about sharing his knowledge than about getting rich.
Did you read the article? They didn't really say it wouldn't work; in fact, they said quite the opposite:
The magic ingredient was benzocaine, a local anaesthetic, which made the judges' tongues go numb. We didn't even think about trying it on our genitals.
In many ways the subculture of Open Source software has some catching up to do: it's amateur userbase tolerates the neolithic attitudes towards women and gays that mainstream society has rid itself of years ago.
Are you talking about the same mainstream society that stifles intellect, creativity, and independence in little girls by training them to base their self-esteem on their appearance; the same mainstream society that votes for politicians who are trying to add a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?
I guess you live in a country with a "mainstream society" that's more enlightened than what we have here in the US.
I just bought an ebook called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and I'm working my way through it. It explains what optimum nutrition is for the human body, and lays out a program to follow if you want to lose fat without losing any lean body mass such as muscle. I am purely an amateur at nutrition stuff, but based on everything I have read, this ebook has it all right and is worth the money. If you want to know exactly what you should eat to be as healthy as possible, that is the book I recommend.
Good choice. I've done a _lot_ of reading on nutrition and exercise, and that is the single best "diet book" (I hate to call it that, since it's not a fad diet) I've ever read.
The only areas where I disagree at all with _Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle_ are in the exercise part. There's nothing really wrong with the weight training + aerobic exercise that Tom Venuto describes, but I think (if you're more interested in functional strength and stamina than big muscles) you can replace the weight lifting with bodyweight exercises (Ross Enamait's Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness is the best bodyweight exercise book I've seen. And there seems to be a lot of evidence showing that short, repeated bursts of intense anaerobic exercise is better for fat loss and cardiovascular conditioning than long, slow aerobic exercise. (i.e. It's better to do a bunch of wind sprints than it is to jog for an hour.)
In response to Hormel's ad campaign, grocery shoppers all over the world decided not to bother spending any money on reminding Hormel that they all thought SPAM was nasty crap long before they ever had E-mail addresses.
Did you really see people saying "It's okay for China to act like that because America acts like that too." ?? I didn't. Most of the responses I've seen fit into these categories:
1. This is bad, and yet more proof that China is evil (socialist commy bastards!).
2. I live (or have lived) in China and... (insert description that looks far less oppressive than the American stereotype)
3. America and China both do this and it's okay because I'm pro-censorship and I think those games do bad things to kids.
4. America and China both do this and it's not okay.
5. America and China both do this and it's not okay, but it's hypocritical of Americans to suggest that China is so much more evil on this issue.
Please note that none of numbers 3-5 involve using America's actions to justify China's. Your post is one of many in the #4 category, and I think that you are misreading category #3 and #5 posts as suggesting that America's actions justify China's. Those who are pro-censorship justify it because they like censorship; those who think Americans are hypocritical aren't justifying anything, they're just saying Americans are hypocritical.
Personally, I've enjoyed the category #2 posts the most.
Now, what the original poster could have said, that I would completely agree with, is that the average intelligence is unfortunately lower than it should/could be.
Actually, I should amend this by saying that I think the problem isn't necessarily how intelligent people are. Rather, I think that a great many people are rather lazy and complacent about applying their intelligence. I think people let their brains lose effectiveness through lack of mental effort in the same way that their bodies get fat and weak from lack of use.
So, you immediately assume that the examples of extreme stupidity you have witnessed are representative of "average" intelligence?
There's a reason that anecdotal evidence is not looked highly upon in science.
(Note: I'm not saying that the average person is as intelligent as I would like him to be, just that your reasoning isn't sound evidence for him being as stupid as you suggest.)
Slashdot Mirror
As a counterexample, I have a female friend at work who openly professes to liking muscular guys. She watched Walking Tall just to see "The Rock".
But yes, I will admit that she is outnumbered by the women I know who fawn over guys like Johnny Depp.
Actually, ask any herpetologist, the toad will quite readily jump out of the pot when it gets hot enough.
You might be right (I have no idea, I don't know any herpetologists) that it's an untrue analogy, but the point that people usually try to make with the analogy isn't necessarily false. Ask any Psychologist--people will accept some rather extreme situations if they are gradually desensitized to it.
I think my favorite part was when they were talking about the original Grand Theft Auto:
Rachel: I really like this game, because I can do all these things that are so against what I'd ever do in reality...
Garret: That's the whole point of videogames.
EGM: Do you this game is a bad influence on people?
Anthony: No, because only some people actually believe you should do this stuff in real life.
Those kids seem to have an understanding of the difference between fantasy and real life that a lot of censorship-loving adults have trouble grasping.
Hell, _I_ wasn't okay with games like that back then. I never liked games where you play the same thing over and over again and it just gets harder and harder until you die and start over.
I preferred the old Sierra adventure games, and CRPGs like the Ultima games (until Ultima 7--that's when the series started to go seriously downhill for me). More action-oriented games were okay too, as long as they had some achievable end goal. I'm in my mid-20's and I can completely empathize with these kids' distaste for "play 'til you die, then start over" games.
Oh, and maybe it was just that I never had access to much money when I was younger, but I wouldn't have spent quarters for a few minutes of playing any of those games either.
Ahh, who could forget King's Quest III and that damned cat....
It's probably just because I was younger, or maybe because it took me a lot of time to accomplish it, but escaping from Manannan gave me a feeling of pleasure that I don't often experience from modern games.
Pirates! popped into my mind as soon as I saw your "Learning history from games" subject line. That was my favorite game for a while when I was younger (I also loved another classic Microprose game called Sword of the Samurai), and I enjoyed reading the stories behind the historic expeditions that you can play in the game. Hell, that game inspired me to read a biography of Sir Francis Drake back when I was 12 or 13.
I remember feeling good about myself in a middle school history/social studies class when we were covering the colonization of the New World, and I already knew most of the stuff we were being taught (not to mention stuff that we _weren't_ being taught!).
Ugh, I despise the Gravis Gamepads. I bought a pair of old Gravis Gamepad Pros off of eBay a while ago, thinking they would be perfect for playing emulated SNES games.
For some games they were bearable, but for most of the games I was playing the pad was horrible because it is unreasonably difficult to press STRAIGHT in one direction without accidentally going diagonal. This made games like Street Fighter 2 unplayable.
I'm much happier with a standard PS2 controller + PS2->USB adapter.
I wish I had points to mod this up. Most religions start with very noble, well-meaning ideals, thought up by very compassionate and well-meaning people.
But as soon as you put the "organized" into "organized religion"--i.e. as soon as there are positions of authority for people to follow--power-hungry people get involved twist the religion for their own purposes.
Strange... you make it sound like you feel as if you have to upgrade your kernel as soon as a new version is released, but at the same time you make it sound like you always end up upgrading your kernel late (i.e. right before the next version comes out).
But seriously, if you waited as long as you did to upgrade to 2.6.9, why do you feel like you have to upgrade to 2.6.10 as soon as it's out?
While there are certainly problems with our voting that need to be fixed, that doesn't change the fact that a majority of people voted to stick with the current presidential administration. It doesn't change the fact that organized religion is having a growing influence on the people of the U.S.--and thus, by extension, the government. It doesn't change the fact that a majority of people really are perfectly happy voting in favor of restricting other people's rights (e.g. gay marriage, DMCA, etc.).
And I realize that enlightening the masses is an enormously difficult goal that one is unlikely to ever achieve. But if you feel passionately that something is wrong and you want to put a lot of effort into doing something about it, trying to enlighten the people is still more likely to work than trying to violently overthrow our government, and you don't risk killing innocent people as "collateral damage" in the process.
Well sure, almost anything is worse when you take it to an extreme.
The line, ultimately, is between free speech and threats. Disagreeing with the government, spreading knowledge/information, advocating voting out incumbent politicians, etc. is all free speech and should be protected. When you start talking about violently opposing the government--you know, like blowing up federal buildings and maybe killing some children as "collateral damage"--you should expect the government to take some interest in your activities. And if you make specific plans to carry out an attack somewhere... well, wouldn't there be quite a public outrage if we all found out the government could have stopped it, but didn't?
Hey, I agree with you completely on the subject of free speech, and our obligations toward speaking out.
And I even agree on the right to spread around certain information that could be seeen as dangerous (i.e. how to make weapons).
But if you include with that information an obvious intent to violently overthrow the government, it's a bit silly to expect the government to turn a blind eye to it.
Besides, what exactly would a revolution fix? This country is already run by leaders voted in democratically. A "revolution" would require a small minority to assert its dominance over everyone else and create a dictatorship.
Yeah, I agree that our government is screwed up. And I completely despise our two-party system. But the important thing to understand is that our government is screwed up because a majority of people are VOTING for it to be screwed up.
If you want to fix our government, you have to enlighten the people voting for it. You won't solve anything by teaching people how to blow shit up.
Just try to be a true radical online ( or in real life ) now, advocating for the next revolution.. Outlining details techniques and equipment manufacture..
I'm always amused by comments like this on Slashdot. Come on--no government, however "free" the country is, is going to look kindly upon people who advocate overthrowing it. Just because a government was put in place by a revolution doesn't mean it would be perfectly happy with being overthrown by another one.
If you've had a girlfriend, I'm sure you'd know there's a difference between sex and making love.
I appreciated your informative post, but this part is a not-always-accurate stereotype! I have exchanges with my girlfriend (who just so happens to be Indian, actually) that go like this:
Me: Wanna make love?
Her: Ew, don't make it sound all wussy.
Me: Oh yeah, sorry. Wanna fuck?
Her (while jumping me): Hell yeah, bitch!
Okay, I admit my girlfriend is rather unique. :)
You don't have to rub it in. :(
I bought Combat Abs and Combat Conditioning before I discovered Ross Enamait. Ross Enamait made me regret wasting $60 on Furey.
You are right that they are similar as far as the types of exercise they promote/teach, but (despite how his web site appears) Ross is not the marketing genius/rip-off expert that Furey is. Furey's "books" are a half-assed collection of pictures with sparse descriptions that seem designed primarily to get the reader to purchase the ridiculously overpriced video versions. (As if the books themselves aren't ridiculously overpriced.) Ross's books (well, Warrior Fitness anyway--I don't feel I need to buy his other books because Warrior Fitness had everything I needed) are actual books, crammed with information, unlike Furey's books that are no more than lists of exercises.
Furey himself admits that he loves ripping his customers off by charging as much as he can squeeze out of them for as little work as possible, and happily teaches other people to do the same (for a hefty fee, of course) in his marketing seminars.
Ross Enamait's Warrior Fitness book costs the same price as Combat Conditioning, but doesn't include the marketing crap, has more exercises, and has more (and better, IMO) advice about doing the exercises. In addition to the comprehensive chapters on leg, upper body, and core exercises, Warrior Fitness also has chapters on stretching, conditioning, nutrition, motivation, and developing training routines.
I hate to sound like an advertisement--I'm not usually so eager to promote one guy's product over another--but this is one of those cases where the product from the less-well-known guy greatly exceeds the (many) products from the more popular guy in both quantity and quality, for a lesser price. I would feel very guilty if I passed up a chance to keep someone from wasting money on Furey like I did.
Enamait is essentially what Furey could have been if Furey was more open-minded and cared more about sharing his knowledge than about getting rich.
Did you read the article? They didn't really say it wouldn't work; in fact, they said quite the opposite:
The magic ingredient was benzocaine, a local anaesthetic, which made the judges' tongues go numb. We didn't even think about trying it on our genitals.
In many ways the subculture of Open Source software has some catching up to do: it's amateur userbase tolerates the neolithic attitudes towards women and gays that mainstream society has rid itself of years ago.
Are you talking about the same mainstream society that stifles intellect, creativity, and independence in little girls by training them to base their self-esteem on their appearance; the same mainstream society that votes for politicians who are trying to add a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?
I guess you live in a country with a "mainstream society" that's more enlightened than what we have here in the US.
I just bought an ebook called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and I'm working my way through it. It explains what optimum nutrition is for the human body, and lays out a program to follow if you want to lose fat without losing any lean body mass such as muscle. I am purely an amateur at nutrition stuff, but based on everything I have read, this ebook has it all right and is worth the money. If you want to know exactly what you should eat to be as healthy as possible, that is the book I recommend.
Good choice. I've done a _lot_ of reading on nutrition and exercise, and that is the single best "diet book" (I hate to call it that, since it's not a fad diet) I've ever read.
The only areas where I disagree at all with _Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle_ are in the exercise part. There's nothing really wrong with the weight training + aerobic exercise that Tom Venuto describes, but I think (if you're more interested in functional strength and stamina than big muscles) you can replace the weight lifting with bodyweight exercises (Ross Enamait's Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness is the best bodyweight exercise book I've seen. And there seems to be a lot of evidence showing that short, repeated bursts of intense anaerobic exercise is better for fat loss and cardiovascular conditioning than long, slow aerobic exercise. (i.e. It's better to do a bunch of wind sprints than it is to jog for an hour.)
In response to Hormel's ad campaign, grocery shoppers all over the world decided not to bother spending any money on reminding Hormel that they all thought SPAM was nasty crap long before they ever had E-mail addresses.
Did you really see people saying "It's okay for China to act like that because America acts like that too." ?? I didn't. Most of the responses I've seen fit into these categories:
1. This is bad, and yet more proof that China is evil (socialist commy bastards!).
2. I live (or have lived) in China and... (insert description that looks far less oppressive than the American stereotype)
3. America and China both do this and it's okay because I'm pro-censorship and I think those games do bad things to kids.
4. America and China both do this and it's not okay.
5. America and China both do this and it's not okay, but it's hypocritical of Americans to suggest that China is so much more evil on this issue.
Please note that none of numbers 3-5 involve using America's actions to justify China's. Your post is one of many in the #4 category, and I think that you are misreading category #3 and #5 posts as suggesting that America's actions justify China's. Those who are pro-censorship justify it because they like censorship; those who think Americans are hypocritical aren't justifying anything, they're just saying Americans are hypocritical.
Personally, I've enjoyed the category #2 posts the most.
I know this has "troll" written all over it, but just in case it's not, can you do three things, please?
1. Operationally define "moral character".
2. Show evidence to support your claim that the "moral character", as you defined it in #1, of our youth is being destroyed.
3. Show evidence for how the destruction of our youth's "moral character" is a direct result of violent video games.
Anecdotal evidence, being very unscientific and misleading, does not count for numbers 2 and 3.
Thanks.
Thank you for so beautifully articulating the selfishness that will probably lead our country to share a fate similar to that of the Roman Empire.
Now, what the original poster could have said, that I would completely agree with, is that the average intelligence is unfortunately lower than it should/could be.
Actually, I should amend this by saying that I think the problem isn't necessarily how intelligent people are. Rather, I think that a great many people are rather lazy and complacent about applying their intelligence. I think people let their brains lose effectiveness through lack of mental effort in the same way that their bodies get fat and weak from lack of use.
So, you immediately assume that the examples of extreme stupidity you have witnessed are representative of "average" intelligence?
There's a reason that anecdotal evidence is not looked highly upon in science.
(Note: I'm not saying that the average person is as intelligent as I would like him to be, just that your reasoning isn't sound evidence for him being as stupid as you suggest.)