2005-11-19
Moving again!
OK, I've made up my mind this time. My new blog is at http://pdf23ds.net. And there it will stay.
2005-11-17
Moving...
I think, while blogger may be an "OK" service, I'm going to go ahead and move to my own host. This'll stay up for a week or so. My new site is here, and is initially just a mirror of this one. I may eventually set up a different blogging system though, like MT or WP something.
2005-11-11
Blogger trackbacks
To my non-existant lazyweb: Is there a way to leave trackbacks if your blogging software (such as blogger) doesn't support it? I know I can't get trackbacks here, but I should be able to leave them on blogs that support them.
Oh my God.
Unfogged is a great place. Powerline is not. Gelernter sucks. (The unfogged comments are particularly great here—don't miss 'em.)
bloggy bloggy bloggy
Ah, finally. I finished my first post. I have like five more drafts in the works (two with similar length to the previous). I really must work harder at this.
Children and Videogames
On a thread at Pharyngula, I post some comments going against the grain there, though I have two or three other posters on my side. I'll edit and restate my words here. (OK, using the present tense is a bit silly a week and a half after the post. Cut me some slack. I've been busy.)
Children have a different view of videos games than many of us adults do. (Though some of us younger adults have never grown out of that stage.) They have grown up interacting with advanced 3D graphics forming narratives, puzzles, and challenges of coordination or strategy. These games represent a significant pastime, no less important to them than baseball or football would be to a true adult fan. For more and more, significant portions of their social life are built upon interests and knowledge shared with their peers of these games and game systems and accessories, as well as time actually shared playing them. Whereas "being a gamer" several years ago meant being in a somewhat specialized and often stigmatized niche, nowadays it's become much more respectable.
This rapid change over the past fifteen years—moving from Pac-man and Asteroids to Quake and Halo—has caused a real gap in experience between parents and children. Really getting involved in a video game is an alien experience for many parents nowadays. Instead of simple tests of skill and reflexes, many of today's games rely heavily on storyline and graphical beauty to make the game compelling. Many of the games require significant commitments of time to earn characters strong enough, or enough game money, to continue. The levels achieved in the game can be significant attainments, something the gamer can feel proud of. While modern games have become much better about making it easier to put down the game and pick it back up later without losing too much, many of them haven't. Playing a game these days can be a very meaningful activity.
Online games make the commitments even more real, since instead of interacting with programmer-created personalities, the gamers are interacting with other real gamers through a limited and directed channel designed by the game programmers. But despite these limitations a full social atmosphere is created. Considerable pressure on the gamer is exerted in the form of codes for behavior, which can involve various aspects game etiquette governing the behavior of the player in various situations. These codes certainly aren't universal, any more than parallel codes in real life are, nor are they universally respected, but they must be considered.
Besides this, online games usually offer a much higher ceiling for accomplishment, so that there's plenty of room at the top for people to put in hundreds or even thousands of hours and still have room for improvement. This increases both the pride gamers take in accomplishment and the gamers' emotional investment in general.
These things are quite often completely unknown by the parents. It's no surprise that serious tension can often result from this lack of understanding. The parent, having legitimate needs, a right to demand certain duties from the child, will sometimes demand that the child perform those duties at times that, from the child's perspective, are quite inopportune, though from a healthy perspective often quite reasonable. The child sometimes plays long hours at the game, and the parent can form a perception of laziness or spoildness on the child's part.
When the gamer has been playing a solo game for a period of time, often she's fairly immersed in the experience. It can be emotionally difficult to put the game down, just as it would be to stop reading a compelling novel in the middle of an interesting passage. And when she goes into one of those online sessions, she's making a fairly serious commitment to the others in her team that she's going to play and finish playing.
When a parent interrupts one of these sessions, in a way that shows no respect for the involvement or commitments of the gamer, it can be incredibly frustrating to her. So often, parents expect that the gamer ought to simply drop the game at whatever moment, and if they don't that they're being "pushy, greedy, arrogant, and rude". But in reality—oftentimes—the parent is the one exhibiting the insensitivity. These relationships and commitments just don't seem real to the parent, even though they're very real to the child, so they don't know to respect them. This can lead to conflicts like in the video PZ linked to. The parents say "it's just a game", and the kids feel denigrated and belittled besides the immediate disappointment and frustration and even embarrassment.
This conflict isn't necessary, though. The parents' needs can be met perfectly well by always making it clear beforehand what times are available to the child for this sort of recreation, and perhaps setting some soft time limits on it so that the parent is ensured enough of the child's time to do chores and such. And more importantly, the parents can make sure that their children understand that they respect and understand what it's like to play a videogame.
In the linked video, the child is screaming abuse at the mother. This sort of thing certainly can't be excused, but I think it's important to examine the kind of family situation that leads to this kind of encounter. (I grew up in such a family.) It's often one in which there is very little trust between the child and the parent in any situation. As the parents are the ones that have the responsibility to earn the trust of the child to begin with, I think that from a larger perspective the parents can be blamed for the verbal abuse too.
Then again, in a situation where one party has all of the power, and controls all or most aspects of the kids' lives from an early age, there's not much that the parents can't be blamed for, except in the sense that the parents' ignorance of good parenting skills are the result of other circumstances, and then we can blame those circumstances. And that chain of reasoning can go on ad nauseum.
But say we're using blame to assign responsibility for changing the circumstances that led to the blameworthy event, based on who is in a social position to change the situation—who has the power, in other words. This seems to me to be a pretty reasonable definition. With this definition, I think the parents here share about equal blame with the child. They're the ones that can stop the destructive patterns that lead to this kind of interaction in the first place. The child, on the other hand, can certainly try to explain why the game is so important and try to negotiate some uninterrupted time. (If they've done so and the parents are not interested, more blame shifts to them.)
Now, if we modify our definition to take into account the different agents' abilities, not just the avenues theoretically open to them, the blame shifts. The fact that the child, being young, is less likely to have the mental maturity and language skill to negotiate better circumstances for herself lessens her blame in this situation, I think.
Many of the commenters in that thread were incredibly irked by the child in the video's behavior. What follows is a small sample.
To all of these people: Your reactions really rub me the wrong way. When I was growing up my parents took the same attitude toward me. I feel that it was dehumanizing to a degree. It betrayed a lack of respect for my anger, and a lack of understanding of my values. It's hard to know what you would do if you actually had a child like that, because if you did you wouldn't be the parent you are, but if your own children ever do start to act like that, don't take it as a sign of disrespect to you. Take it as a sign of their frustration. Try to understand what's going on instead of reacting so unthinkingly.
The kid in the video, in all likelihood, has been interrupted unreasonably by his mother many times in the past. He's feeling very betrayed, and likely, is justified. He's not right to abuse the mother, but it's probably the only way he feels he can defend himself against the humiliation of being forced to pull away from something he feels is so important.
To belittle the game without understanding its importance to them is just to engender more distrust from your child. It takes maturity to realize that leaving a session like that is, normally, really no big deal. Make sure they have that maturity, and you'll solve a lot of problems a lot better than the knee-jerk (and to the kid, very offensive) "I'll show him who's boss: I'll just throw it away" reactions. The kid in the video, as many others, doesn't understand that a single video game session simply isn't that important. That they don't should be expected—it's not some huge character flaw. In this kind of situation, what I would do as a parent is let the immediate situation pass, and then explain to the kid later how to put a game down.
What, you say, "too bad cutting them off is offensive. They need to learn their lesson." What lesson does it teach them to take away something important to them because you don't think it's as important as they do, and because it's interfering with their (otherwise valid) responsibilities to you? Remember, your kid probably agrees that they have a responsibility to take out the dishes or water the cats or whatever. (Even if they won't admit it out loud, they do.) What the difference between you is, is that they think this session of counterstrike is too important to stop just to go do this or that chore. To simply take away something they hold that important can only lead to offense, bitterness, and an even more antagonistic relationship than they probably already have with you. The proper reaction is to respect how important they think it is and try to convince them that it isn't actually that important, or that they have to spend less time to fulfill their familial responsibilities (which come first), or something.
Don't be motivated more by a desire to assert your power over your child, to "save face", to get revenge against the insult of their disrespect. You should have a genuine concern in the well-being of your relationship. Something to consider.
As a final note, I'm not saying that suspending their game playing "privileges"* isn't a valid reaction. Nonetheless, yanking their controller out of their hands or the box out of the wall is definitely and obviously the wrong way to right your child's imbalance. I mean, stop and think about it.
It gives them the impression that they're being misunderstood and not valued as a person, which doesn't incline them to change their values. Maybe taking the game away for a time (but not interrupting too badly) or limiting their time on it would be appropriate, but you have to realize—as PZ does—that your goal should be to change their priorities, to change what the value, to change what's important to them. If taking them game away seems like the best thing to do that, then go ahead. But in many situations, it could be counterproductive.
But. I think if you take the game away from them with the attitude that it's a punishment for their disobedience when they didn't put the game down, it's most likely going to be counterproductive. If you communicate that you're taking it away because it's evidence that their interest has crossed the line into the unhealthy, and you think a little privation could balance their lives, then it has a chance of working, along with other conversations, etc. But. I still have my doubts about that. I think you should consider it carefully first. Sometimes there's really no way you can encourage them to have other interests without impinging pretty seriously on their interests and wishes. I get the feeling from PZ's hyperbole in the main post, and in others' comments, that the attitude they would take would be one of punishment, not correction, not education, not growth, and not respect. I'll say it again: Respect is vital.
It's the difference between communicating to your kid that you don't value their values and that you disagree with them. Children react very positively to the latter (which is why religion runs in families) but negatively to the former, as I've personally experienced.
*Oh, oh, how I hate that term. Please, please don't use that term for something like playing video games. You already have virtually complete control over the life of your child. More or less everything that they have access to is a privilege you give to them. There is absolutely no reason to remind them of this fact, except to gloat in your power, and belittle their growing independence, and using the term "privileges" is a pretty good way to remind them.
Children have a different view of videos games than many of us adults do. (Though some of us younger adults have never grown out of that stage.) They have grown up interacting with advanced 3D graphics forming narratives, puzzles, and challenges of coordination or strategy. These games represent a significant pastime, no less important to them than baseball or football would be to a true adult fan. For more and more, significant portions of their social life are built upon interests and knowledge shared with their peers of these games and game systems and accessories, as well as time actually shared playing them. Whereas "being a gamer" several years ago meant being in a somewhat specialized and often stigmatized niche, nowadays it's become much more respectable.
This rapid change over the past fifteen years—moving from Pac-man and Asteroids to Quake and Halo—has caused a real gap in experience between parents and children. Really getting involved in a video game is an alien experience for many parents nowadays. Instead of simple tests of skill and reflexes, many of today's games rely heavily on storyline and graphical beauty to make the game compelling. Many of the games require significant commitments of time to earn characters strong enough, or enough game money, to continue. The levels achieved in the game can be significant attainments, something the gamer can feel proud of. While modern games have become much better about making it easier to put down the game and pick it back up later without losing too much, many of them haven't. Playing a game these days can be a very meaningful activity.
Online games make the commitments even more real, since instead of interacting with programmer-created personalities, the gamers are interacting with other real gamers through a limited and directed channel designed by the game programmers. But despite these limitations a full social atmosphere is created. Considerable pressure on the gamer is exerted in the form of codes for behavior, which can involve various aspects game etiquette governing the behavior of the player in various situations. These codes certainly aren't universal, any more than parallel codes in real life are, nor are they universally respected, but they must be considered.
Besides this, online games usually offer a much higher ceiling for accomplishment, so that there's plenty of room at the top for people to put in hundreds or even thousands of hours and still have room for improvement. This increases both the pride gamers take in accomplishment and the gamers' emotional investment in general.
These things are quite often completely unknown by the parents. It's no surprise that serious tension can often result from this lack of understanding. The parent, having legitimate needs, a right to demand certain duties from the child, will sometimes demand that the child perform those duties at times that, from the child's perspective, are quite inopportune, though from a healthy perspective often quite reasonable. The child sometimes plays long hours at the game, and the parent can form a perception of laziness or spoildness on the child's part.
When the gamer has been playing a solo game for a period of time, often she's fairly immersed in the experience. It can be emotionally difficult to put the game down, just as it would be to stop reading a compelling novel in the middle of an interesting passage. And when she goes into one of those online sessions, she's making a fairly serious commitment to the others in her team that she's going to play and finish playing.
When a parent interrupts one of these sessions, in a way that shows no respect for the involvement or commitments of the gamer, it can be incredibly frustrating to her. So often, parents expect that the gamer ought to simply drop the game at whatever moment, and if they don't that they're being "pushy, greedy, arrogant, and rude". But in reality—oftentimes—the parent is the one exhibiting the insensitivity. These relationships and commitments just don't seem real to the parent, even though they're very real to the child, so they don't know to respect them. This can lead to conflicts like in the video PZ linked to. The parents say "it's just a game", and the kids feel denigrated and belittled besides the immediate disappointment and frustration and even embarrassment.
This conflict isn't necessary, though. The parents' needs can be met perfectly well by always making it clear beforehand what times are available to the child for this sort of recreation, and perhaps setting some soft time limits on it so that the parent is ensured enough of the child's time to do chores and such. And more importantly, the parents can make sure that their children understand that they respect and understand what it's like to play a videogame.
In the linked video, the child is screaming abuse at the mother. This sort of thing certainly can't be excused, but I think it's important to examine the kind of family situation that leads to this kind of encounter. (I grew up in such a family.) It's often one in which there is very little trust between the child and the parent in any situation. As the parents are the ones that have the responsibility to earn the trust of the child to begin with, I think that from a larger perspective the parents can be blamed for the verbal abuse too.
Then again, in a situation where one party has all of the power, and controls all or most aspects of the kids' lives from an early age, there's not much that the parents can't be blamed for, except in the sense that the parents' ignorance of good parenting skills are the result of other circumstances, and then we can blame those circumstances. And that chain of reasoning can go on ad nauseum.
But say we're using blame to assign responsibility for changing the circumstances that led to the blameworthy event, based on who is in a social position to change the situation—who has the power, in other words. This seems to me to be a pretty reasonable definition. With this definition, I think the parents here share about equal blame with the child. They're the ones that can stop the destructive patterns that lead to this kind of interaction in the first place. The child, on the other hand, can certainly try to explain why the game is so important and try to negotiate some uninterrupted time. (If they've done so and the parents are not interested, more blame shifts to them.)
Now, if we modify our definition to take into account the different agents' abilities, not just the avenues theoretically open to them, the blame shifts. The fact that the child, being young, is less likely to have the mental maturity and language skill to negotiate better circumstances for herself lessens her blame in this situation, I think.
Many of the commenters in that thread were incredibly irked by the child in the video's behavior. What follows is a small sample.
Thats nuts. If that was my kid I'd break the disk over his head, donate the Xbox, and ban him to his room..
If my daughter ever talked to me like that she'd get her xbox taken away til she was 18 and she wouldn't be able to do anything else fun for at least two months. To start.
It is the mother's fault. The first "shit" would have been enough to have me simply pull the plug and smash the X-Box.
A fairly serious commitment? Nonsense. It's a fricken video game.
To all of these people: Your reactions really rub me the wrong way. When I was growing up my parents took the same attitude toward me. I feel that it was dehumanizing to a degree. It betrayed a lack of respect for my anger, and a lack of understanding of my values. It's hard to know what you would do if you actually had a child like that, because if you did you wouldn't be the parent you are, but if your own children ever do start to act like that, don't take it as a sign of disrespect to you. Take it as a sign of their frustration. Try to understand what's going on instead of reacting so unthinkingly.
The kid in the video, in all likelihood, has been interrupted unreasonably by his mother many times in the past. He's feeling very betrayed, and likely, is justified. He's not right to abuse the mother, but it's probably the only way he feels he can defend himself against the humiliation of being forced to pull away from something he feels is so important.
To belittle the game without understanding its importance to them is just to engender more distrust from your child. It takes maturity to realize that leaving a session like that is, normally, really no big deal. Make sure they have that maturity, and you'll solve a lot of problems a lot better than the knee-jerk (and to the kid, very offensive) "I'll show him who's boss: I'll just throw it away" reactions. The kid in the video, as many others, doesn't understand that a single video game session simply isn't that important. That they don't should be expected—it's not some huge character flaw. In this kind of situation, what I would do as a parent is let the immediate situation pass, and then explain to the kid later how to put a game down.
What, you say, "too bad cutting them off is offensive. They need to learn their lesson." What lesson does it teach them to take away something important to them because you don't think it's as important as they do, and because it's interfering with their (otherwise valid) responsibilities to you? Remember, your kid probably agrees that they have a responsibility to take out the dishes or water the cats or whatever. (Even if they won't admit it out loud, they do.) What the difference between you is, is that they think this session of counterstrike is too important to stop just to go do this or that chore. To simply take away something they hold that important can only lead to offense, bitterness, and an even more antagonistic relationship than they probably already have with you. The proper reaction is to respect how important they think it is and try to convince them that it isn't actually that important, or that they have to spend less time to fulfill their familial responsibilities (which come first), or something.
Don't be motivated more by a desire to assert your power over your child, to "save face", to get revenge against the insult of their disrespect. You should have a genuine concern in the well-being of your relationship. Something to consider.
As a final note, I'm not saying that suspending their game playing "privileges"* isn't a valid reaction. Nonetheless, yanking their controller out of their hands or the box out of the wall is definitely and obviously the wrong way to right your child's imbalance. I mean, stop and think about it.
It gives them the impression that they're being misunderstood and not valued as a person, which doesn't incline them to change their values. Maybe taking the game away for a time (but not interrupting too badly) or limiting their time on it would be appropriate, but you have to realize—as PZ does—that your goal should be to change their priorities, to change what the value, to change what's important to them. If taking them game away seems like the best thing to do that, then go ahead. But in many situations, it could be counterproductive.
But. I think if you take the game away from them with the attitude that it's a punishment for their disobedience when they didn't put the game down, it's most likely going to be counterproductive. If you communicate that you're taking it away because it's evidence that their interest has crossed the line into the unhealthy, and you think a little privation could balance their lives, then it has a chance of working, along with other conversations, etc. But. I still have my doubts about that. I think you should consider it carefully first. Sometimes there's really no way you can encourage them to have other interests without impinging pretty seriously on their interests and wishes. I get the feeling from PZ's hyperbole in the main post, and in others' comments, that the attitude they would take would be one of punishment, not correction, not education, not growth, and not respect. I'll say it again: Respect is vital.
It's the difference between communicating to your kid that you don't value their values and that you disagree with them. Children react very positively to the latter (which is why religion runs in families) but negatively to the former, as I've personally experienced.
*Oh, oh, how I hate that term. Please, please don't use that term for something like playing video games. You already have virtually complete control over the life of your child. More or less everything that they have access to is a privilege you give to them. There is absolutely no reason to remind them of this fact, except to gloat in your power, and belittle their growing independence, and using the term "privileges" is a pretty good way to remind them.
2005-10-24
Sexiness
Commenter FoolishOwl in this thread at Pandagon prompts me to think about what I personally find sexy.
I'm not big on sex with strangers. Some enjoy it. What makes me different from them? What makes me require intellectual and emotional intimacy with someone before I can find them captivating?
It's, I think, that they feel intimacy more easily. They can take a look at someone, exchange a few words, and feel like they know the person. Sometime's it's based on stereotypical assumptions instead of real knowledge. Sometimes it's because the person has enough real knowledge of the other to trust them. I just don't trust as soon.
And, thanks to Foolish Owl, I think I realize it's because I can't share a knowing glance, a private moment, with someone who I have less than exhaustive intimacy with, emotionally. I won't know what to expect.
It's all about being mutually desired.It's about having someone who knows me, understands who I am, and wants me all the more for it. It's someone who I can share a knowing glance with.
I'm not big on sex with strangers. Some enjoy it. What makes me different from them? What makes me require intellectual and emotional intimacy with someone before I can find them captivating?
It's, I think, that they feel intimacy more easily. They can take a look at someone, exchange a few words, and feel like they know the person. Sometime's it's based on stereotypical assumptions instead of real knowledge. Sometimes it's because the person has enough real knowledge of the other to trust them. I just don't trust as soon.
And, thanks to Foolish Owl, I think I realize it's because I can't share a knowing glance, a private moment, with someone who I have less than exhaustive intimacy with, emotionally. I won't know what to expect.
Greetings.
Greetings everyone. So I've decided to start a blog. We'll see how it goes.
Initially, I think it'll mainly contain my spontaneous outpourings (well, incited, but otherwise random) that would otherwise have ended up in the comments thread of this or that blog. But I'll try to get some longer pieces prepared here and there.
Initially, I think it'll mainly contain my spontaneous outpourings (well, incited, but otherwise random) that would otherwise have ended up in the comments thread of this or that blog. But I'll try to get some longer pieces prepared here and there.
