I have just read this article: http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-toxic-drama-of-ya-twitter.html

And it has shocked / touched me and informed my next career goal.

In short, it is about how one #YA author was a target of a systematic abuse campaign against a book most people who hated on it haven't even read because it was "dangerous". That it's currently popular to hate on people because you disagree with the way they express their ideas or worse yet because you follow opinion leaders is absolutely abhorrent.

I haven't read the book either, and I probably won't, but it saddens me to the core that people think it's okay to promote hate against any collective, whether they are white, black, Muslim, Christian, heterosexual, homosexual, or what have you. This is somewhat out of scope of the article in question, but it is a thing.

Have you had any experiences with "Social Justice Warriors"?

And then everybody made a lot more money.

This man is a monster.

My Chinese cookie says, "Poverty and wealth do not live in the house, but in the heart of the people."

Great video, RJ. "If people can not control their own emotions, they can not expect to control other people's behavior" is a fantastic line.

Here is one more. I haven't heard about this dude until recently (Jon'C might know more on the account of living in Canada [IIRC]), but I do approve of his message.

"Line" is a good word here. Comedians are great critics of humanity in many cases (and I greatly admire John Cleese), but I also wouldn't want to give people the impression that they are expert at anything. Which seems to be a common trap people are taken in by.

Of course it's also pretty common to give politicians the credence of being experts of everything rather than being experts of nothing (other than manipulating people emotionally into thinking that actually are).

E.g., why do people want to listen to people like Hilary Clinton at this point. There's no need for her any longer.

Similar thing going on with newspapers ("Gell-Mann" effect).

OTOH the founding fathers were expert land / people owners, a far cry from the propogandist politicians of today....

Perhaps once kids are taught how to think instead of what to think, things will change.

We've made tremendous progress as far as humanism is concerned over the last 2 thousand years in most parts of the world.

I hope we won't stop now; it was considered perfectly all right to burn people alive after they'd confessed to being witches / warlocks under extreme torture because opinion leaders said so only 300 years ago.

I thought your first sentence was hopelessly naive (is it a contradiction to be "taught to think"?) but the second half of your post is a good refutation to that inital impression (as far as it goes).

You can't eat spirit.

The greatest challenge in marketing creative works is the discovery problem. Put simply, there's too much stuff chasing after too little time - a limitless supply of movies, games, books, music, etc. are all competing against each other for access to a limited audience. We always like to pretend markets aren't fixed sum, but for creative works the market very much is, and so there's not much difference between tearing down a Pareto market dominator and building up yourself.

That's why the most alarming part of the article you posted, for me, isn't the take-down. It's the fact that other authors are joining the pile-on, encouraging and instigating corrosive behavior among their audience. Doing this is effectively saying, "This author is insufficiently contrite about their status, so you shouldn't read their book. You should read mine instead." More than anything else, this shows the lengths YA authors are willing to go to destroy their competition, using the most brutal, socially destructive, career-ending strategies available to them.

The silver lining is that, generally, works taken apart by angry Twitterers instantly become more popular among the alt right. Reading a book about overcoming racism and bias might actually be good for them.



I'll paste what I said the last time someone linked a video of him:

Jordan Peterson has a lot of valuable things to say about authoritarianism. Unfortunately - and I feel like I need to make this clear, because the kinds of people who link to his videos mostly don't realize this - he isn't famous for saying those valuable things. He is famous for a history of verbally abusing trans students, and for a very cringeworthy public meltdown about a bill that actually had nothing at all to do with what he was complaining about (although you'd never know that, if you only go by The Rebel and other alt right sources).

Now, I'm not saying you should stop linking to his videos. Like I said, he does have some interesting things to say about his area of expertise (law and trans rights not being among them). But you should probably keep in mind that people are gonna think you're a ****ty alt-right transphobe if you do, so you'd better be okay with that.

TL;DR: Thanks for making Google think I'm in the alt right. Again.



But I thought you hated universities?

An example of teaching someone how to think: all people's lives are valuable (reasoning from first principles).
An example of teaching someone what to think: American lives are more valuable than others (reasoning by analogy).

"first principles"

In order for people to think for themselves, you have to give them the right to disagree.

I can also add that you can't usually learn something new if it isn't painful.

Who heck is gonna want to do either of those things, on either end of the table?

Masochists. Luckily, I am told by many here in the great state of Utah that if we continue to allow 'transgender' and 'the gay' to infiltrate our society BDSM will be incorporated into the elementary school curriculum, which should help people actualize their masochistic side and create better scholars in the long run.

No, I just hate it when people they think they're better than others for having attended one. Or for any other reason.

I haven't had a chance to read the rest of your post, only skimmed through it, but I am sure that there's plenty more I'll disagree with. For example, the discovery problem. I haven't worked in Hollywood, but I bet it's not as big as people tend to think it is. I know that the "world" of speculative fiction and video games (creation) certainly isn't. Most people know each other.

And once you've success in that smaller world of movies / games / books, those who keep their hand on the pulse are usually willing to give you money to market the product to those evasive masses that you mention.

So yes my partner's home but I'll be back. Peace out.

Stating that "all people's lives are valuable", as a given is the exact opposite - it's telling someone what to think, not how to think. Thinking begins with questions, not with axioms. Are all people's lives really valuable? How do you measure value, is it measured by the loss that would be felt by a loved one, or by an estimate of their lifetime contribution to society? Eventually you'll need to choose some irreducible set of values, but that set need not be consistent, and it need not be the same as others'. By what set of values do you reason that all lives are valuable?

By many metrics, American lives actually are more valuable than others. Well, some of them, at least.

Why are some of the smilies still broken, this is causing me great distress.

Imagine what they would think if they knew I was wearing a lace thong and thigh high stockings under my jeans and don't think of myself as a man?

Probably something repressed and conflicted. That's why I reveal that slowly. Get them comfortable, and before they know it they're in a sun dress tied to my pull up bar calling me Joseph Smith while I penetrate them with my magic wand.

I'm going to end up in a camp aren't I? No matter who is in power during the collapse... Ugh.

For video games it's even worse, because the barrier to entry is smaller. Here's Jeff Vogel's take: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.ca/2017/03/writing-indie-games-is-like-being.html

(I'm uncertain what "Most people know each other" means.... the problem is keeping eyeballs, not networking with your competition.)



Once you've succeeded, your future works will move through prior privilege alone; you don't need any help to do it. The hard part about success is predicting it or causing it beforehand. That does require good marketing (N.B. marketing is not the same as promotion/advertising), but marketing is only necessary, not sufficient.

Most people prefer brands, franchises, companies, and creators with which they are already familiar (this is why branding is so successful). Today, entertainment consumers get more than enough content from familiar sources - like EA games, or Disney movies. Attracting an audience (i.e. achieving initial success) means somehow compelling an audience to reach outside of their comfort zone and try something different. Providing a good product (with good market fit) is not enough to achieve this, and there is no evidence that advertising is effective, either. Literally nobody knows how to do this. It basically needs to go viral, and that either means a lot of luck or very deep pockets (and the latter isn't even guaranteed).

Marketing is how you decide what products to make. It's a core competence of all companies. It cannot be outsourced.

They're "happy camps".

She brought a Subway sandwich. It's amazing. I'm still procrastinating. Back to it then.



Parents who want their kids not to grow up to be tools, firstly. The kids who grow up not to be tools, secondly. That's my theory.

Not sure about "painful"; if you're learning more about the field you're interested in, it should be rather enjoyable, shouldn't it?

Let's say if you want to do kickboxing but hate the idea of getting kicked in the face time to time, maybe you don't want to do kickboxing after all.



Yes, it starts with questions which then boil down to fundamental truths. My reasoning went something like this:

In what kind of world would I like to live in, and what kind of a society would have the best chance at success?

In one where people don't get killed / discriminated against for being different.

What is the most basic underlying principle that could drive such a society?

The sanctity of human life (for starters) is what seems most logical to me.

To elaborate, I might like / tolerate Average Bob more than a jihadist because Average Bob doesn't believe that killing himself / dying in battle is the only guaranteed way to go to heaven, but if I say that the jihadist's life is more expendable (and by extension, the life of his family, and all of his countrymen) than Average Bob's, the logical course of action is to kill them all and let God sort them out.

Which is exactly what the jihadists think, I imagine.



This person is not an authority for me because I haven't played anything he ever worked on, or ever heard of him for that matter -- not to say I don't appreciate the article, I'll read it more detail once I have the time -- but he seems to be talking about making cash from making games.

To which I say that's as stupid as writing books only to make money.

With such an approach, in 99% cases, you will fail.

If you write books / make games because you want to create something you want to create that, in your opinion, does not exist but must, you will more than like succeed. Not necessarily commercially, but success / failure is achieving or failing set goals, right? If you succeed at creating a product you'd wanted to create, you are successful. Do it time and time again (because you love it), and continuously improve, and eventually you'll be so good at it that others would probably pay you to do it.



It literally means that most people in the industry know each other, as they all go to same conventions / are in the same circles / etc. And almost everyone I'd met make games because they love making games.

Sharing a beer with the guy who made Assasin's Creed (Patrice Désilets, really chill dude) is hardly "networking with competition". I'm not competition, I'm just a guy who loves games. He's not competition, he's just a guy who loves games.

Not to single this dude out, but again, most people I'd met were just guys (and in some cases, girls) who love games.

So it's not like there's an overflow of great products there. Make something good, and it will probably sell. If not, the next thing you'll make will, because chances are that it's going to be even better.

The other day I was at an Epic games meetup (they paid for all the drinks, w0hoo), and ended up chilling with this Hungarian bloke who, later it turns out, showed me a game he's made with 4 other people.

It's called Quern: http://store.steampowered.com/app/512790/Quern__Undying_Thoughts/

They had a 20k GBP budget they'd Kickstarted. Apart from that, they had nothing but talent & enthusiasm. No connections, no "marketing" budget, nothing.

Apparently, it sold pretty well. Still does.

Like most of the game developers I'd met, dude was very humble and genuinely interested in video games. And I liked his game. If you like Myst, you'll probably like it too.



See above.

All you need to do is make a good product.

And then make another one. And then another one. And to just keep doing that because you love doing what you do.

Unless you measure wealth in money, of course.

But more often than not, you will end up getting both (a fulfilling life and financial security).

In another thread you said, "most successful creatives don't know why they are successful." Well, I don't know how many of these people you'd talked to, but the ones I'd talked to knew exactly how they became successful. They just did what they loved and did not let failure stop them. None but one* cared about if there's any money in it. Eventually, they became successful financially as well.





*The one exception is Marek Rosa, who made Space Engineers primarily to finance his General AI research firm.

It should be a potent mixture of both pain and pleasure, with enough external stimulation to cultivate perpetual anticipation of the unexpected.

Otherwise it's just passively masturbating from a single point of view, and we all know that gets super old over time.

Don't knock yourself out before you even try it with the help of a friend, maybe you'll learn to cope

[quote=Janos Neumann, the smartest Hungarian ever] Young man, you don't understand getting kicked in the face, you just get used to it[/quote]

Nobody's gonna stop you from artistically expressing yourself, but unless you can win a grant from some kind of funding agency, don't forget that the word marketing contains the word market, which is not something to which you can afford to turn up your nose, so long as you plan for me to part ways with what's in my wallet.

Otherwise I suggest you read Peter Thiel's book Zero to One and create a monopoly for yourself.

The reason why most people consume the products of bigger companies is because those companies have had initial success and continued to build on it, getting more money for advertising & development along they way. There are tons of times they could've failed anywhere along the way.



What are you basing this on?



If that would be the case, there would be no advertisements.

That is surely not the case. I mean I don't know how to phrase this politely, but you are wrong.

ahahahahaha

I did a bunch of martial arts for years.

It's not about learning to cope.

It's about wanting to fight.

Advertising is "effective" at getting people to buy ads. Anything beyond that is gonna need a citation.

Wait, so does this mean you do like getting kicked in the face?

Allow me to introduce you to my friend Spook, unconventional elementary school teacher

Anyhow, I'm eager to read all your clever rebuttals (eg., "hahaha"), but please don't take it the wrong way if I do not contribute more to this thread. I feel that I've said everything I could say on the subject, and at this point it would become too personal (eg., I will begin to feel that I'm talking from experience vs. what to me seems equivalent to an "armchair expert of everything" approach), and we've played that game before.

No, I enjoy(ed) fighting. It's difficult to think of anything else when you're trying not to get kicked in the face. Stress relief and good release for aggression without actually being aggressive if that makes sense. I didn't mind getting kicked / hit if I could not block it / evade / etc.

I quit about 3 years ago because I almost hurt somebody, and I didn't want to feel like I can easily do it again (wanting somebody to throw a first punch so I can break their knees and such). I basically got a bit scared of myself, on the account of being a pacifist and all. But I wasn't in a very good place mentally at the time, so I'll probably start again as soon as I get back in shape.

White supremacists think hard about the kind of world they'd like, where they would have the greatest chance of success, and soundly conclude that all other races must be exterminated.

How is it that white supremacists can use the same kind of reasoning you used, and yet arrive at a conclusion that's so evil and wrong?

The reason teaching someone how to think is so important is because it helps them expose the flimsy reasoning we use to justify our beliefs every day. It's not enough to have the right beliefs, it's important to have good reasons, too, lest the wrong beliefs take hold.

Jeff Vogel is an extremely famous independent game developer, one of the very first ones in fact. He has been invited to speak at GDC about game industry economics (the "indiepocalypse") several times.

I have never played one of his games either (I am not interested in Mac textdump RPGs from the 90s) but I have heard of him anyway. It would be difficult not to, since his name will show up repeatedly when you research the games industry.

You can set your own goalposts wherever you want, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you are only a successful creative as long as you break even.

Are you making games for game developers, and books for authors, ...? A professional network is a good place to get advice, or to find a contractor to do some small job. It's not going to help you sell games.

This is a really tired subject.

The reason people buy ads is because ads sell their products. There is plenty of reasons for that. There are different kinds of advertising, and lots of intricacies that we will not go into right now, but check this out:

What's America's #1 soda drink?

What's the most popular burger chain in the world?

How do you know the answers to these questions?

Coca Cola spent $565 million on advertising in the U.S alone.

McDolands spent more than $600.

This is only for 2016.

They are obviously doing it because they hate money, since advertising doesn't work.

I'm suspicious that such a thing is possible. Every person is going to develop their own ways of thinking and conceptualizing in that black box that is our consciousness. But insofar as you can teach how to think:


Is good, and I would argue that what Jon said, asking questions instead of supposing axioms, is the heart of philosophical thinking. Asking yourself and others questions, seeking justifications for our beliefs, practices, languages, anything. I think the most valuable questions for each person to be asking themselves is personal, it's not something we can institute.

No, I just make them for myself (ideally; I also make / write things for money ... sometimes, I can combine the two). As do most game designers / writers that I know. They make games they want to play and write books they want to read.

Since they are so passionate about it, they become experts, and others read their books & play their games as well.

Don't want to read the thread. To respond to the OP:"Social justice warrior" I think is like "nazi" and "neoliberal" in that it varies wildly in scope/meaning depending on who is using it; I have been called all three. I do think men/white people who think they're persecuted for being those things are crybabies, fwiw

Re: the Vulture article, I think a lot of the worst of YA & tumblr progressivism can be written up to the fact that most of the participants are teenagers (or adults who consume mostly content intended for teenagers, which presumably speaks to something).

Also, sometimes I see ads for things and then buy the things. I don't know if that helps.

What is it meant here specifically by value? I can think of two ways to use the word value. Most of the time, we use value to refer to things that are useful in some way, i.e. you value your car because it's more convenient than walking, or value money because of the power and privilege it can obtain. Valuable people are often actually considered this way, people who are in some ways useful to us. The other sort of value is more metaphysical. Instead of seeing people as means, you see them as ends in themselves.



It's a centuries-old folly of the enlightenment that suggests all right-thinking, reasonable people will come to the same conclusion.

Overall, I agree with you here, about asking questions. I tried to elaborate on it with the jihadist example (if we do not value the lives of some people, we shouldn't be too surprised they don't value ours), but it was relatively clumsy.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do think that we have certain "human values" which we can operate from. Like the Golden Rule, for example.

I meant specifically that it's useful to consider all human life precious because then we will have a higher chance of survival as a species.