Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
@Cody As to video games, I submit they're somewhat useful or at least can be depending on what you consider useful of course. SimCity (for example), EverQuest(was is/was) believe it or not used in Leadership, and Project Management courses-basicly build a city and what do you do when something goes wrong. if I recall someone years ago from someone Orion Games talked at the Complex showing real world examples of fire-fighters, and pilots used Flight sims to help with training. World of Warcraft and other Massive Online Sims (or MMO/ MMORPG/ MMOAs) are often used as part of humanistic design resliance studies, leadership studies as well because you are in a group. How do you have to take criticism. How do you handle it? Can you get a group together? etc. I am unclear how useful those life skills are, but leadership skills and someway to be somewhat self reliant and managing tasks is likely at least somewhat useful in day-to-day life. On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 9:43 AM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: Yup, one of the arguments in the list of reasons-gaming-is-good TED talks was that they can be engaging as an educational tool. But you're clearly just trying to horrify me now.:-) -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:53 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Heh, as if the argument weren't absurd enough already, there's this: Is Facebook the next frontier for online learning? http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/is-facebook-the-next-frontier-for-online-learning/ I try to avoid facebook, despite my omnivorism. But when in Rome... -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella I got my face in the furnace, I got my snake in a sleeve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Yup, one of the arguments in the list of reasons-gaming-is-good TED talks was that they can be engaging as an educational tool. But you're clearly just trying to horrify me now.:-) -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:53 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Heh, as if the argument weren't absurd enough already, there's this: Is Facebook the next frontier for online learning? http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/is-facebook-the-next-frontier-for-online-learning/ I try to avoid facebook, despite my omnivorism. But when in Rome... -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella I got my face in the furnace, I got my snake in a sleeve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Heh, as if the argument weren't absurd enough already, there's this: Is Facebook the next frontier for online learning? http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/is-facebook-the-next-frontier-for-online-learning/ I try to avoid facebook, despite my omnivorism. But when in Rome... -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella I got my face in the furnace, I got my snake in a sleeve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
I caught the cat sitting on the bathroom counter watching the faucet drip the other day. -- rec -- On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 10:40 PM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: Nick writes: It seems to me that in the discussion we are having, the word entertainment cannot go undefined. How do you tell the difference between entertainment and productive work you enjoy. That it makes a profit? Suppose individuals are represented by nodes on a graph, each positioned in some high dimensional space (subjectively defined, but such that they can all be projected onto a higher dimensional space by some oracle). A definition of useful is the ability to move from one place in the space to another or to strengthen or weaken connections to others. A connection on the graph could by any sort of transformation that occurs to one node given a change in the other. One way to move is to be attached to another set of individuals that are already moving. Such a set might be, say, a business.To be attached to that set might involve participating in a class of moves relative to other nodes not in the set, say, the customers of that business.These coordinated actions would be profit motivated actions, or more generally social transactions. Similarly, there can be the opposite relationship of customer seeking a service (here entertainment).Some types of transformations ai m to create other coordinated moves, such as a fabric of connections amongst nodes representing theological constraints, criminality, governance, and so on. I'm talking about another kind of useful which is movement in a subjective space that is not constrained, or is only minimally constrained, by the edges in the graph. Movement in this space mostly does not change the configuration of the graph, but the nodes nonetheless move. Useful is not defined in terms of a particular graph transformation, but in understanding how to navigate the new dimensions without the pulling and pushing from other nodes. Given the possibility of collisions in the higher dimensional space, there's the possibility of a new social network forming there. Productive work can be defined socially, in terms of the graph transformations (one case being profit) or it can be defined privately or semi-privately by the subset of nodes that define their state in terms of dimensions not yet influenced by the various social fabrics. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
On 07/06/2015 11:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: At some point won’t these behaviors too be mastered by machine learning? Obviously, I’m not just taking on gaming here, I’m taking on the idea that people ought to master narrow “skill sets” at all.Ok, so a gamer can track 7 objects instead of 3. Machines could track hundreds or thousands. Better to design the machine, no? Arbitrary google response: Age-related differences in multiple-object tracking. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15746018 Let's say you wanted to, I don't know, _drive_ or maybe juggle ... or simple play flag football with your grandchildren. It seems like multiple object tracking exercise might help. It's a bit silly to suggest such skills are always narrow. I had an interesting discussion the other day. A friend suggested she _needed_ a personal trainer in order to exercise, that without the trainer, she would neither be motivated nor know what/how to do various exercises. She used this disability of hers to argue that she doesn't get much out of yoga (the 1 or 2 times she tried it, heh). I can't really sympathize much with her position. The point of exercising is to consistently _try_ things ... to poke around and see how/if you could do it slightly differently. Having another person tell you what/how to do something is way less rewarding than learning how to do it yourself ... even if all we're talking about is twirling a coin between your fingers. (Sure, if you're really really good at something and you want to be much better, then you need a trainer to sqeeze out that hidden performance, but not at the amateur level.) For the exact same reason, running on forest trails (as opposed to treadmills or in circles on a rubber trac k) is actually a very broad skill. And it's a very handy one. Is it better to build a robot that can run on forest trails? No. That would be very cool. But having your robot run around the mountain isn't near as rewarding as doing it yourself. Is it better to build a robot to run in circles on a rubber track? Yes, absolutely. I see zero benefit from having humans do that, much less rewarding the fastest ones with medals. 8^) -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Let's say you wanted to, I don't know, _drive_ or maybe juggle ... or simple play flag football with your grandchildren. It seems like multiple object tracking exercise might help. Usually the best way to develop a motor skill, or a particular kind of fitness, is to do that thing. In retrospect, the original question I was asking was a selfish question. It should have been What's in it for me to be a gamer? But generally people didn't know my values, and then told me about their values. Ok.I know how to drive, I don't have grandchildren, don't want to play flag football, and I have no interest in juggling. So in answer to my question, Why would I want to play a game, instead of other things I do, the answer is, for me, I would not. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
On Jul 6, 2015 7:29 PM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: Usually the best way to develop a motor skill, or a particular kind of fitness, is to do that thing. That's not strictly true. While it's true that you can't get good at some skill without doing it, it's also true that doing only that thing, overtraining on one activity, will make you worse at it. I know how to drive, ... So in answer to my question, Why would I want to play a game, instead of other things I do, the answer is, for me, I would not. You may have missed the age related aspect of my response. Yes you know how to drive. So does my 89 year old mother. But she never exercised her skills outside of driving. Had she done so, her range of competence at driving would have been larger. So I answered your question, I think. You would want to play the games that exercise your faculties so that you get better and retain those faculties. I'm not claiming any arbitrary video game will do that. (I've heard Luminosity isn't what they claim. ;-) But maybe some would help you stay competent at some things longer than you would otherwise be competent. Or maybe it's a huge waste of time. Hell, I don't know. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
That is kind of like asking What am I missing by not attending live music shows?. Perhaps nothing, if it turns out you would not have liked the music anyway, but perhaps you would have and it would have given you some enjoyment. I do not play computer games often enough to want to call myself a 'gamer', but I have enjoyed some visual novels (a type of more linear game, arguably), some 'open world'-type games (the opposite, a completely nonlinear game) like the surreal and disturbing Yume Nikki, and some more straightforward puzzle games and arcade clones. It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time. -Arlo James Barnes On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 9:27 PM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: What am I missing by not being a gamer? Seems like it is like doing exercises from a textbook but with higher production values. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual appearance of characters.But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge that gaming software is sometimes impressive. But why _bother_ writing it _except_ to sell it? Another way to ask the question is how is it more significant to be a gamer than, say, a reader of fiction or even a moviegoer? How is being a gamer a Thing? Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/nthompson/1-websitestuff/Texts/1980-1984/A_utopian_perspective_on_ecology_and_development.pdf it. It’s called, “A Utopian Perspective on Ecology and Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors would love to hear from you. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual appearance of characters.But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge that gaming software is sometimes impressive. But why _bother_ writing it _except_ to sell it? Another way to ask the question is how is it more significant to be a gamer than, say, a reader of fiction or even a moviegoer? How is being a gamer a Thing? Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Nick writes: It seems to me that in the discussion we are having, the word entertainment cannot go undefined. How do you tell the difference between entertainment and productive work you enjoy. That it makes a profit? Suppose individuals are represented by nodes on a graph, each positioned in some high dimensional space (subjectively defined, but such that they can all be projected onto a higher dimensional space by some oracle). A definition of useful is the ability to move from one place in the space to another or to strengthen or weaken connections to others. A connection on the graph could by any sort of transformation that occurs to one node given a change in the other. One way to move is to be attached to another set of individuals that are already moving. Such a set might be, say, a business.To be attached to that set might involve participating in a class of moves relative to other nodes not in the set, say, the customers of that business.These coordinated actions would be profit motivated actions, or more generally social transactions. Similarly, there can be the opposite relationship of customer seeking a service (here entertainment).Some types of transformations ai m to create other coordinated moves, such as a fabric of connections amongst nodes representing theological constraints, criminality, governance, and so on. I'm talking about another kind of useful which is movement in a subjective space that is not constrained, or is only minimally constrained, by the edges in the graph. Movement in this space mostly does not change the configuration of the graph, but the nodes nonetheless move. Useful is not defined in terms of a particular graph transformation, but in understanding how to navigate the new dimensions without the pulling and pushing from other nodes. Given the possibility of collisions in the higher dimensional space, there's the possibility of a new social network forming there. Productive work can be defined socially, in terms of the graph transformations (one case being profit) or it can be defined privately or semi-privately by the subset of nodes that define their state in terms of dimensions not yet influenced by the various social fabrics. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. Gary [husband of an artist] On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called, “A Utopian Perspective on Ecology and Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors would love to hear from you. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual appearance of characters.But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge that gaming software is sometimes impressive. But why _bother_ writing it _except_ to sell it? Another way to ask the question is how is it more significant to be a gamer than, say, a reader of fiction or even a moviegoer? How is being a gamer a Thing? Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Well, you’re in good company here :-) Actually, I also distinguish between “the useful stuff” that we do and the less useful, but I suspect that both are necessary. We're complex creatures that become bored doing only the useful stuff, and our brains need for us to do “the fun stuff” too. Maybe it’s somehow like sleep, nothing obviously productive is occuring, but it appears to perform some necessary physiological functions (cleanup of waste products, other?) as well as leading to various conceptual leaps that don’t seem to come as much in conscious thought. Now, the *real* bullshit of constantly new stuff just to get us to buy it, I’m more dubious about that. Maybe in the same way that the arms race and SDI led us to create new useful stuff, creating endless new crap has some useful function. I don’t know. “Give us bread, but give us roses On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: So's my wife! And I love her dearly! And after all, I made my living studying the behavior of crows. I enjoy bull shit and bullshitters. But still, Gary, are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? And is there nothing queer about the idea that some people get to earn their living doing bullshit, while others have to do productive labor? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 9:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. Gary [husband of an artist] On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called, “A Utopian Perspective on Ecology and Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors would love to hear from you. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual appearance of characters.But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
But Gary! How do you make that distinction ... the difference between the innocent useless and the harmful useless? I took a whack at that in the article I sent, but I never felt I nailed it. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 10:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Well, you’re in good company here :-) Actually, I also distinguish between “the useful stuff” that we do and the less useful, but I suspect that both are necessary. We're complex creatures that become bored doing only the useful stuff, and our brains need for us to do “the fun stuff” too. Maybe it’s somehow like sleep, nothing obviously productive is occuring, but it appears to perform some necessary physiological functions (cleanup of waste products, other?) as well as leading to various conceptual leaps that don’t seem to come as much in conscious thought. Now, the *real* bullshit of constantly new stuff just to get us to buy it, I’m more dubious about that. Maybe in the same way that the arms race and SDI led us to create new useful stuff, creating endless new crap has some useful function. I don’t know. “Give us bread, but give us roses On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: So's my wife! And I love her dearly! And after all, I made my living studying the behavior of crows. I enjoy bull shit and bullshitters. But still, Gary, are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? And is there nothing queer about the idea that some people get to earn their living doing bullshit, while others have to do productive labor? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 9:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. Gary [husband of an artist] On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called, “A Utopian Perspective on Ecology and Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors would love to hear from you. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Marcus, It seems to me that in the discussion we are having, the word entertainment cannot go undefined. How do you tell the difference between entertainment and productive work you enjoy. That it makes a profit? N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 10:37 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? I suggest that there are at least two definitions of useful. 1) profitable and 2) useful as a tool to do other desirable things.Any creative person knows that #2 can exist independently of #1. I sometimes think entertainment products, like computer games, exist just to pacify and harness (for #1) those that don't know or have forgotten that they can invent all new things. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
This is a very interesting subject. I often wonder if Im doing anything useful for society and/or the universe. I think the answer is probably no, but the future is notoriously hard to predict. It seems like most useful inventions are born from silly fascinations. For instance, fire was probably once thought of as a frivolous and sometimes dangerous magic trick. Same with music, microscopes, gun powder, and quantum physics. As for video games, I wonder if they will ever become useful, for anything other than training drone pilots. I hope so. Any way, I hope you all figure out whats useful before my mid-life crisis. Cody Smith On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: But Gary! How do you make that distinction ... the difference between the innocent useless and the harmful useless? I took a whack at that in the article I sent, but I never felt I nailed it. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 10:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Well, you’re in good company here :-) Actually, I also distinguish between “the useful stuff” that we do and the less useful, but I suspect that both are necessary. We're complex creatures that become bored doing only the useful stuff, and our brains need for us to do “the fun stuff” too. Maybe it’s somehow like sleep, nothing obviously productive is occuring, but it appears to perform some necessary physiological functions (cleanup of waste products, other?) as well as leading to various conceptual leaps that don’t seem to come as much in conscious thought. Now, the *real* bullshit of constantly new stuff just to get us to buy it, I’m more dubious about that. Maybe in the same way that the arms race and SDI led us to create new useful stuff, creating endless new crap has some useful function. I don’t know. “Give us bread, but give us roses On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: So's my wife! And I love her dearly! And after all, I made my living studying the behavior of crows. I enjoy bull shit and bullshitters. But still, Gary, are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? And is there nothing queer about the idea that some people get to earn their living doing bullshit, while others have to do productive labor? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 9:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. Gary [husband of an artist] On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
So's my wife! And I love her dearly! And after all, I made my living studying the behavior of crows. I enjoy bull shit and bullshitters. But still, Gary, are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? And is there nothing queer about the idea that some people get to earn their living doing bullshit, while others have to do productive labor? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 9:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. Gary [husband of an artist] On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called, “A Utopian Perspective on Ecology and Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors would love to hear from you. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual appearance of characters.But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge that gaming software is sometimes impressive. But why _bother_ writing it _except_ to sell it? Another way to ask the question is how is it more significant to be a gamer than, say, a reader of fiction or even a moviegoer? How is being a gamer a Thing? Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Well, I guess I have to play devil's advocate to myself. Being a gamer is `valuable' like being a fast crossword puzzle solver or a sprinter. It pushes the boundary of human potential in a way that can be compared. It is hard to compete art, or even science, because the mechanisms aren't necessarily there to give it an objective score.Of course, there are lots of slow runners and average chess players and similar differences must exist in the gamer world. I suppose I'm suspicious due to all the money that gets poured into making the games. It seems like more of an entertainment platform. Maybe that's good if it widens the audience that evolves to find the elite players. -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 7:51 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! So's my wife! And I love her dearly! And after all, I made my living studying the behavior of crows. I enjoy bull shit and bullshitters. But still, Gary, are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? And is there nothing queer about the idea that some people get to earn their living doing bullshit, while others have to do productive labor? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 9:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. Gary [husband of an artist] On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Dear Friammers, I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable boxes in which to carry people around. Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about that 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called, “A Utopian Perspective on Ecology and Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors would love to hear from you. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Arlo writes: “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free time.” I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual appearance of characters.But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge that gaming software
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
are you committed to the notion that there is no useful distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? I suggest that there are at least two definitions of useful. 1) profitable and 2) useful as a tool to do other desirable things.Any creative person knows that #2 can exist independently of #1. I sometimes think entertainment products, like computer games, exist just to pacify and harness (for #1) those that don't know or have forgotten that they can invent all new things. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
What is an Org Psych Wonk? Who knows? I might be one. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore Sent: Friday, July 03, 2015 9:54 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; wedt...@redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] DOH! Well the game world drama continues- hmm only time will tell what this meens: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/150702/atvi8-k.html In case others don't know: this has been a terrible year for Activision and Blizzard (Aka WOW, Heroes of the Storm, Destininy and of course Call of Duty.) Blizzard in 6 months has seen it's top Project Managers leave to Atari, and Bioware and 3 weeks ago Blizzards COO quit to go to a unknown competitor speculated to be Red Dawn (God of Wars) Activision's COO is rumoured to be quitting for Gearbox. (Borderlands series) As I don't know how many on Wedtech are gamers or Org Psych Wonks. I've been keeping tabs on this as I'm a gamer (so what) and into webdesign- Plus i'm curious what other peoples opinions are. Might be worth waching as a live case of complexity (kind of), how does this play out can the various people involved get the company back on track and if so how. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Oh I am sorry Organizational Psychology- someone who's into who groups, companies etc work, comunicate. On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: What is an Org Psych Wonk? Who knows? I might be one. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Gillian Densmore *Sent:* Friday, July 03, 2015 9:54 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; wedt...@redfish.com *Subject:* [FRIAM] DOH! Well the game world drama continues- hmm only time will tell what this meens: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/150702/atvi8-k.html In case others don't know: this has been a terrible year for Activision and Blizzard (Aka WOW, Heroes of the Storm, Destininy and of course Call of Duty.) Blizzard in 6 months has seen it's top Project Managers leave to Atari, and Bioware and 3 weeks ago Blizzards COO quit to go to a unknown competitor speculated to be Red Dawn (God of Wars) Activision's COO is rumoured to be quitting for Gearbox. (Borderlands series) As I don't know how many on Wedtech are gamers or Org Psych Wonks. I've been keeping tabs on this as I'm a gamer (so what) and into webdesign- Plus i'm curious what other peoples opinions are. Might be worth waching as a live case of complexity (kind of), how does this play out can the various people involved get the company back on track and if so how. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
Its big in Silicon Valley: see SBODN.com. Example: peter thiel's early studies on encouraging sheeplike behavior in humans. Think UBER with a corporate comic book explaining Carl Jung. On Friday, July 3, 2015, Gillian Densmore gil.densm...@gmail.com wrote: Oh I am sorry Organizational Psychology- someone who's into who groups, companies etc work, comunicate. On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','nickthomp...@earthlink.net'); wrote: What is an Org Psych Wonk? Who knows? I might be one. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','friam-boun...@redfish.com');] *On Behalf Of *Gillian Densmore *Sent:* Friday, July 03, 2015 9:54 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; wedt...@redfish.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','wedt...@redfish.com'); *Subject:* [FRIAM] DOH! Well the game world drama continues- hmm only time will tell what this meens: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/150702/atvi8-k.html In case others don't know: this has been a terrible year for Activision and Blizzard (Aka WOW, Heroes of the Storm, Destininy and of course Call of Duty.) Blizzard in 6 months has seen it's top Project Managers leave to Atari, and Bioware and 3 weeks ago Blizzards COO quit to go to a unknown competitor speculated to be Red Dawn (God of Wars) Activision's COO is rumoured to be quitting for Gearbox. (Borderlands series) As I don't know how many on Wedtech are gamers or Org Psych Wonks. I've been keeping tabs on this as I'm a gamer (so what) and into webdesign- Plus i'm curious what other peoples opinions are. Might be worth waching as a live case of complexity (kind of), how does this play out can the various people involved get the company back on track and if so how. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Sent from Gmail Mobile FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DOH!
What am I missing by not being a gamer? Seems like it is like doing exercises from a textbook but with higher production values. From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore Sent: Friday, July 03, 2015 7:54 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; wedt...@redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] DOH! Well the game world drama continues- hmm only time will tell what this meens: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/150702/atvi8-k.html In case others don't know: this has been a terrible year for Activision and Blizzard (Aka WOW, Heroes of the Storm, Destininy and of course Call of Duty.) Blizzard in 6 months has seen it's top Project Managers leave to Atari, and Bioware and 3 weeks ago Blizzards COO quit to go to a unknown competitor speculated to be Red Dawn (God of Wars) Activision's COO is rumoured to be quitting for Gearbox. (Borderlands series) As I don't know how many on Wedtech are gamers or Org Psych Wonks. I've been keeping tabs on this as I'm a gamer (so what) and into webdesign- Plus i'm curious what other peoples opinions are. Might be worth waching as a live case of complexity (kind of), how does this play out can the various people involved get the company back on track and if so how. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
