10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Workspace is Gamespace
It's not surprising that gamespace has become a workplace for hundreds of thousands of "gold famers" who undertake dreary, repetitive labor to produce virtual wealth that's sold to players with more money and less patience than them. The structural differences between in-game play and in-game work are mostly arbitrary, and "real" work is half a game, anyway. Most of the people you see going to work today are LARPing an incredibly boring RPG called "professionalism" that requires them to alter... 1 
notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
What We Learn from Games
What also went unremarked was how much I was learning by playing these games: basic ideas such as taking turns and developing patience while others completed their turns, the strengthening of simple memory, improved physical coordination, an ability to recognize and act on patterns, the capacity to see what might happen in a few turns if I took one move as opposed to another, resilience when losing, and the kind of strategic thinking that emerges once you realize that Scrabble is both a game ... 1 notes
notes24 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
Public School Mathematics are Like Drills
“Mathematics is not just a sequence of computations to be carried out by rote until your patience or stamina runs out—although it might seem that way from what you’ve been taught in courses called mathematics. Those integrals are to mathematics as weight training and calisthenics are to soccer. If you want to play soccer—I mean, really play, at a competitive level—you’ve got to do a lot of boring, repetitive, apparently pointless drills. Do professional players ever use those dril... 1 notes
notes11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Science Works from Approximation to Approximation
I have no patience with attempts to identify science with measurement, which is but one of its tools, or with any definition of the scientist which would exclude a Darwin, a Pasteur or a Kekulé. The scientist is a practical man and his are practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the who... 1 notes
notesGetting better all the time.
31 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The FIRST Principle for Effective Punishment
Effective punishment FIRST
“F” stands for firm. The punishment must mean something. It has to be firm and aversive to be effective.
“I” stands for immediate. The closer the punishment is delivered at the point of infraction, the more effective it is.
“R” stands for reliable. The punishment must be consistently applied whenever the noxious behavior is displayed. Inconsistently applied rules are confusing and lead to uneven moral development.
“S” stands for safe. Th...
1 Firm Immediate Reliable Safe Tolerant punishment is best for children, when there is not opportunity to praise good behavior.
31 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Parenting is Receiving as Well as Giving
As a new parent, you may feel sometimes that all children do is take from you, but it is just a form of giving in disguise. Kids present you with an ear infection, but what they are really giving you is patience. They present you with a tantrum, but they are really giving you the honor of witnessing a developing personality. Before you know it, you’ve raised up another human being. You realize what a great privilege it is to be a steward of another life.
I said that parenting is all about ... 1 notes
notesWe give and give and give to our children, but in return we get to experience the wonder of watching a life develop.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Patience, Attentiveness, and Thoroughness are Naturalist ...
Each branch of natural history
study demands its special abilities: the superior ear of
the birdwatcher, the attention to minute detail of the
entomologist, the courage of the herpetologist wading
into swamps full of poisonous snakes. But some “field
skills” are nearly ubiquitous. Perhaps the most
important are patience, perseverance, thoroughness
and attentiveness. The birdwatcher searching for that
one rare gull on a pond among seven hundred
common ones may have to watch for hours in bi... 1 notes
notesWithout them the naturalist would miss the rarities in nature.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
A Response to Leopold's Description
The passage shows how different aspects of
virtue connect. Patience is part intellectual virtue, part
moral virtue and part physical virtue, as it is portrayed
here. The humility which allows Leopold to lie down
in the muck unselfconsciously is a moral virtue, but
humble recognition of our own ignorance is also a key
intellectual virtue, as Socrates so often reminds us
(see also William Beebe’s description of the ideal
naturalist quoted earlier). Humility also makes
possible Leopold’s aes...
1 Cafaro sees a great deal of virtue in a naturalist's description of getting muddy to witness nature and appreciate it.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Brad Fitzpatrick on What Makes a Great Programmer
Seibel: What do you think is the most important skill for a programmer to have?
Fitzpatrick: Thinking like a scientist; changing one thing at a time. Patience and trying to understand the root cause of things. Especially when you're debugging something or designing something that's not quite working. I've seen young programmers say, "Oh, shit, it doesn't work," and then rewrite it all. Stop. Try to figure out what's going on. Learn how to write things incrementally so that at each stage you...A programmer must think like a scientist.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Science is Patient Observation
I think it is very important--at least it was to me--that if you are going to teach people to make observations, you should show that something wonderful can come from them. I learned then what science was about. It was patience. If you looked, and you watched, and you paid attention, you got a great reward from it (although possible not every time). As a result, when I became a more mature man, I would painstakingly, hour after hour, for years, work on problems--sometimes many years, sometim...Folksonomies: science scientific virtues
Folksonomies: science scientific virtues
Wonderful things can come from watching the world patiently.
