Teiman
2051
I think scientist is a role that need a lot of creativity. Because the unknown really has not shape or words to describe it. Scientist often do a poor job at that, sometimes they do a really good work …too good for our own well being.
- Scientist equally particles to small “marble balls”. Damage: we apply microscopical properties to entities that are alien to us, we pretend to understand by a analogy.
- Scientist name a particle “god particle”. Damage: a lot of “super-skeptics” nut jobs trying to disprove science.
- Scientist name a special cell “mother cell”. Damage: nut jobs try to stop investigation with this type of cells. Making the fight against cancer or other stuff harder.
- Wheater vs Climate change. Damage: a better word for this could have saved us a lot of time. Since weather and climate can be confused, this murk the message.
We are blind, and we give words to stuff and with these words we see the world, but seeing the world trough these words is no the same as seeing really the world, because these words are analogies.
This get us in trouble, like how now a particle can also be a wave, so we have fighting analogies using our brain as a battlefield.
I think being able to father new narrative lines is a very special skill. We talk here about the 1% of all the reviewers, critics. The elite of the elite. But 99% of all reviews on the internet are “me-too” reviews that just follow the narrative created somewhere else.
(to be continued)
I agree with pretty much everything in that article. And bonus meaningless charts!
RickH
2053
Well, you’ve lost me there. Your definition of auteur theory is so broad as to make it meaningless.
It’s not my definition :). I just think it’s useful (it’s a tool, not a dogma). Think of it this way: you have two excellent DoPs. Both of them are technically solid and their stuff looks gorgeous and is functional too. It works. However, one of them has something (a sort of framing, a way of looking…) that is present in all his movies, no matter who the director, producer or writer, while the other one is always good, but there’s nothing you can see unique in his movies. If it was not for the credits you would not say they were shot by the same person. Now, both of them are excellent professionals, but one is an auteur (is able to bring something personal to his work over the apparatus of production) while the other one is not. And this is not assigning value. A non auteur professional can be better on his job than an auteur, technically, but the auteur is able to bring something else other than just technique. Since movies are collaborative, the only way to see if it’s that specific person bringing something is analyzing the body of work to try to see patterns pertaining only to him.
Note that this is only of use to analyze industrial film production (or industrial game production. AAA and Hollywood/Bollywood). The theory is of less use to talk about indie filmmaking were authorship is easier to identify (due to a single person having a lot of power over the production). Although it can work to identify some more obscure professional.
Okay, am I missing something? Where did this bizarre idea that “Objective means I must present ludicrous, factually unsupported theories as having equal footing” come from? I mean, I think the idea of an objective game review is also silly, but the objective way to cover ludicrous subject is to say “And there are those who believe this (ludicrous) claim. An exhaustive search has turned up exactly zero evidence to support this (ludicrous) viewpoint. If somehow we have missed supporting claims of any factual evidence, please let us know and we will amend our argument.”
The idea that an “objective” investigation must give equal weighting to all sides is insane. An “objective” investigation gives weighting equivalent to the direct support provided by external sources, modified by the reliability of those sources. (Which is to say if your talking chicken ghost medium gave you the information, I’ll pass it on and make sure I include the source and account for the reliability of said source).
Yes, theoretically, an objective approach to a multi-sided issue gives proportional representation, not equal time (see: John Oliver on Climate Change).
It doesn’t work out that way in practice though.
CraigM
2057
Do you pay attention to US news media? If you do, you would see where that claim comes from. In the examples given of climate change and vaccines the US media indeed DID treat the two viewpoints with equal coverage. That 97% of scientists agree on anthropomorphic climate change would not be apparent from the way mainstream news covered each view with equal consideration. Except Fox which almost exclusively covered the minority opinion.
Same with vaccines. They took this twisted notion of objectivity to mean that they couldn’t take a stance by covering one opinion more than the other. They felt to be ‘fair’ they need to give each position, no matter how stupid, the same level of coverage.
So this version of ‘objectivity’ that you deny as ridiculous, which I agree by the way, is unfortunately a view of what objectivity means to many people. They are wrong of course, but it is what a certain subset of people are clamoring for when they call for objectivity.
Well I guess what I meant is what the fuck is some supposedly journalistic article discussing the foundations of objective discourse doing perpetuating such a ridiculous myth.
That’s effectively ceding the central point. If RPS is going to harp on about objectivity, they ought to, y’know, actually define it right instead of saying “Nah, we don’t want to be objective since that requires us to treat every argument as if it was on equal footing!” Bullshit it does! They should be ashamed of themselves!
(Similarly, if people hereabouts are going to harp on about good journalism, they ought to at least hold those journalists to the ability to properly define terms!)
kedaha
2059
Journalistic objectivity is a fairly well fleshed out subject, all John Walker has done is show yet again that all too often games ‘journalists’ are nothing of the sort. Neither in desire, nor in actuality.
Sidenote, what John loudly and at great length describes as journalistic objectivity is not what journalistic objectivity is. He might have, you know, done some research before writing on games journalism. As journalists do.
Ironically for his talk about MMR/Autism, John has been caught out many times ignoring facts and statistics in his long tirades on RPS and yet claims that attempted to be objective in journalism would somehow…end up with him writing as he already does?
Telefrog
2060
I’m probably stirring it up again, but here you go. Zoe Quinn wrote an article for Cracked.
5 Things I Learned as the Internet’s Most Hated Person
kedaha
2061
Bikini bridge was an attack on feminism? Free bleeding was being on the warpath against feminists? She uses Anita Sarkeesian as an example of the common abuse ‘feminists’ receive on the internet?
It’s just a poorly written diatribe against 4chan, with lots of obfuscation and statements that aren’t lies but are close enough to not really matter.
All it shows is that she’s in fact learned no things from ‘being the most hated person on the internet’.
Internet’s most hated person? Nah. She is taking too small of a perspective on the internet. There are a LOT of right leaning folks who don’t play video games who hate Obama, for example. Probably more than hate her.
Telefrog
2063
Whut?
This sort of thing is hardly new – forums like 4chan organize campaigns every month or so to try to stick it to feminists or just women in general. Just a few months ago, they organized a fake campaign to end Father’s Day and harass black feminists. In January, a hoax was created to make women feel crappy about their bodies, and in February they went on the warpath against feminists by creating a hoax about tampons.
Reading.
Edit: Regarding “freebleeding”, yeah, from what I can see.
http://www.dailydot.com/lol/free-bleeding-is-a-4chan-hoax/
flyinj
2064
And what, in your opinion, should she “have learned” from all the abuse and rape threats?
From your own little diatribe here, I’m pretty sure I know the answer already, but please do tell.
I like Tim Schafer’s tweet at the end of the article:
What? I’m already here. Don’t you know we’re all tweeting from the same hot tub?
-Todd
Yikes, you read all the things she endured in that article and your take-away was that she didn’t learn the right things from the experience? That’s gotta be the least relatable post I’ve seen on these forums.
Here, there’s been some discussion about whether this abuse only or especially happens to women, and she took a fairly even-handed approach up-front with the first subject being: “This Can Happen to Anybody (but It Helps if You’re Female)”. After that it mostly just events so I don’t see much to discuss other than being pretty surprised by people calling her father.
Teiman
2067
This scene is repeated all around the space time in different timelines and alternative universes:
- On X theres one geek on top a visualization device looking at a log of attacks originating from know source Y attacking X.
- Behind him theres some jock looking at the same screen and making questions to figure it out.
- Suddenly the jock have a idea. It must be very important, since jocks rerarlly have ideas of their own. He also think is a very original one. “Lets attack the attacker”. Lets flood the source of the flood. Lets write a few scripts and put in place a few servers to flood the Y source.
Somewhere on the Outer Internet (or equivalent thing) theres a quiet malevolent laugh from crackers.
-
Once the “attack the attackers” is put in place and the crackers found it. The crackers start a attack on Y with a forged address Z. Y start DDoSing Z.
-
On Z theres one geek on top a visualization device looking at a log of attacks originating from know source X attacking Z.
…
This happens very rarely, and is bad enough the people that try that, remove themselves from the genepool. If two services try it at the same time, it would be possible to have Y attack Z and Z to attack Y, with the crackers laughing is ass, having powerful internet services DDoSing each another.
The moral of the history is that when you are attacked on the internet, you don’t reply with equal force in the other direction, because thats stupid and abusable by malicious intend.
I could have write “Don’t feed the trolls”, that is shorter, but I find interesting to sometimes comment why you have to avoid feeding the trolls.
I thought bikini bridge was an excuse to peek down bikini bottoms and check out some six packs, and freebleeding was uber-trolling for shits n giggles, talk about read way to much into it.
As for the second part, nevermind Gamergates pedestaling their resident anti/equality feminist CH Sommers, its all about attacks on women isn’t it. Whats quite odd is that CH Sommers has inspired others on the gamergate side, and now I see quotes from second wave feminists, but that doesn’t fit with the cries of misogyny from the other side. I’m guessing some of it is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” but at the end of the day if its getting people to read more about it can only change attitudes in the long run.
I guess linking biased articles on gamergate doesnt have to be limited to one POV
I realize how much of an outsider and how removed I am from all of this controversy since I don’t understand any of the references or insider-lingo at this point. No one needs to explain it, it is just an observation.
-Todd
