27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Break the Rules of a Game to Improve it
In The Well-Played Game, Bernard DeKoven advocates a fundamental adjustment in players' attitudes towards the rules of a game:
You're not changing the game for the sake of changing it. You're changing it for the sake of finding a game that works.
Once this freedom is established, once we have established why we want to change a game and how we go about it, a remarkable thing happens to us: We become the authorities.
No matter what game we create, no matter how well we are able to play it,...Folksonomies: gameplay
Folksonomies: gameplay
1 
notes
notesLike adding a push-your-luck component to Candyland or how SFR took Dragon Dice and refactored the rules to make it work.
13 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Despair, Cynicism, and Absurdism
Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgme... 1 notes
notesI often see the attitudes of self-proclaimed cynics as actually expressions of despair. When I find myself enjoying media that these cynics claim to enjoy for nihilistic messages, like Rick and Morty, my appreciation of the media comes from what I see as absurdity.
13 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Thar
There is, in my view, a direct correlation between the poverty of many societies and their tendency toward the thar mentality. Italy is a striking example. There is a remarkable north-south gradient of attitude and wealth in Italy; the far north is wealthy, highly industrialized, participated vigorously in the Renaissance, and is fully in the European mainstream. Although machismo is everywhere in Italy, in the north it rarely leads to anything more than loud exchanges in traffic. As you trav...Folksonomies: masculinity toxic masculinity
Folksonomies: masculinity toxic masculinity
1 notes
notes25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
Anger isn't Necessary and Gets In the Way
A prominent author who recently disagreed with me on a technical matter quickly labelled me as belonging to a ‘department of bullshit’. Ouch! How is it possible not to get offended by this sort of thing, especially when it’s coming not from an anonymous troll, but from a famous guy with more than 200,000 followers? By implementing the advice of another Stoic philosopher, the second-century slave-turned-teacher Epictetus, who admonished his students in this way: ‘Remember that it is we... 1 notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Stapleton's Use of Religious Terms
At the risk of raising thunder both on the Left and on the Right, I have occasionally used certain ideas and words derived from religion, and I have tried to interpret them in relation to modern needs. The valuable, though much damaged words "spiritual" and "worship," which have become almost as obscene to the Left as the good old sexual words are to the Right, are here intended to suggest an experience which the Right is apt to pervert and the Left to misconceive. This experience, I should s...Folksonomies: language religiosity
Folksonomies: language religiosity
1 notes
notes15 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
How Scientific Thought Differs from Ancient Thought
If we consent for the time being to denude the mind of philosophical and metaphysical presuppositions, and take the matter in the most simple and naive way possible, I think our answer, stated in technical terms, will be that [science] substitutes data for objects. (It is not meant that this outcome is the whole effect of the experimental method; that as we saw at the outset is complex; but that the first effect as far as stripping away qualities is concerned is of this nature.) That Greek sc...
1 Ancient thought saw things as immutable, to be appreciated aesthetically. Science sees the world as an endless series of mysteries to be solved.
01 SEP 2014 by ideonexus
Consider Eliminating the Humanities
To stop teaching literature and the other arts on the grounds that they're bad for us would be like refusing to study diseases because they're bad for us. However, maybe there should be a moratorium on requiring those who don't really want to, to take courses in the "humanities." We first have to figure out where we are. Then if we decide that every college student should be exposed to the "humanities," let us also insist that every one of them be exposed to the sciences, social sciences, and... 1 notes
notesWhy must all college students study the humanities, but are given a free pass for the sciences?
19 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Kuhn's Explanation of Scientific Revolutions as Post-Mode...
The politics the book ascribed to science resonated closely with prevailing attitudes. Scientists ("the Man") resist new (baby boomer) ideas, clinging to old (Western white male), outdated theories even as the evidence they are being willfully blind to accumulates (discrimination) like energy in an electron until it finally becomes overwhelming (the civil rights movement). Then, suddenly, in a crystallizing moment (revelation), the ruling order is displaced (comeuppance) and the intellectual ... 1 notes
notesAn interesting comparison.
09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Consume Fragments of Truth
At the outset do not be worried about this big question—Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the thirst—a thirst that from the soul must arise!—the fervent longing, a...Maintain a thirst for knowledge and don't be concerned with ultimate truth.
23 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Imitation Game
I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to ...Folksonomies: artificial life
Folksonomies: artificial life
1 Turing describes what would become the Turing test, the method for determining if a machine is comparable to a human in intelligence.
