John's Personal Journal

Reflections after my first week

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:24:18 GMT

Whew! So I'm at a break now after the first week of classes. My program is every weekday, four hours with 7-8th graders in Santa Clara in the morning (8AM-12PM) and then three hours of instructional classes at Stanford (2-5PM). The schedule is rather grueling -- especially doing homework after the end of classes -- but it's fascinating at the same time and I am learning a lot.

For the 4th of July, I invited my classmates over for a BBQ at my house -- cf. Liz's Flickr pics. We grilled veggies and chicken, had lots of watermelon, wine, and chips; toasted marshmallows; and then went to see the fireworks from a parking lot.

I like the STEP program a lot. I like the kids, and the coursework is good. I have to work some on my positive feedback. In my adult life, I've tended to be a little argumentative -- showing a subtler point, or pushing for my own view of the nuances of the situation. However, I think that kids benefit enormously from positive feedback, especially those who are struggling. I think there is good effort from most of them, and I need to work at sincerely expressing recognition of that -- without immediately launching into a daunting series of corrections and advice. My advice should be for the next thing for them to work on, I think, rather than for every flaw that I see.

Joining STEP

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:01:45 GMT

So I'm in the middle of my first week in STEP -- the teacher education program at Stanford. This week was orientation -- a lot of ice-breaking with the 87 other members of the program (22 elementary and 64 secondary); some familiarization, because next week we immediately start on classroom experience, helping teach summer school for 5th to 8th graders.

The STEPpies are a lot of fun. It's strange being on campus after all this time, but everyone's very friendly.

At a guess, maybe 2/3s of us are from California, with the rest being a wide mix of other states. About a third of us are fresh out of undergrad, about half had a few years of experience and/or grad school, and a sixth like me are older with different work experience. Master's are pretty common, but there's only a few of us with doctorates. (Professor Lythcott called on me as "Dr. Kim" at one point in the class, which was a little embarrassing. I'm proud of my doctorate work, but I never have people call me doctor.) Our class is mostly women (91% of the elementary and 70% of the secondary). A few are married, but less than a handful have kids. In the secondary science cohort, we've got 3 in physics, 2 in chemistry, and around ten or so biology. (A little unusually low for chemistry.)

Starting on Monday, I'll be helping teach a science class for 7th-8th graders with three other STEPpies, doing a five week sequence on the "Clean Air Challenge" -- covering how air pollution works. The students will mostly be remedial, though a few have chosen this as an option. It's an exciting but a little scary as a prospect. I gather that for the summer, we're mainly there to acclimate us to kids, learn how to do classroom observation, and analyze methods for ourselves. We'll be shooting video, analyzing the footage, and editing out clips.

Heroes vs. Whistle-Blowers

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:11:42 GMT

So I've been watching more of the television series Heroes through the end of the third season. I find it like a fascinating train wreck, really, in how the characters just keep getting stupider and stupider. At some point in Season Three, I couldn't take it any more and just read summaries before skipping to the end.

Super Blunders

Now, it's hard to top the stupidity in the first season finale. Nikki -- the most violent character of the series thus far, who had fought and killed many gangsters with guns bare-handed -- started to beat up the immensely powerful serial killer Sylar using her super-strength. However, after she gets in one blow, Peter steps in the way and tells her "Go back to your family. I got this." And she obeys him. As the immediate result of that, Peter not only fails to beat up Sylar, but nearly goes nuclear in the middle of Manhattan.

So what the hell is wrong with Peter? More importantly, what is wrong with the writers who make him out to be heroic for this, as opposed to an overconfidant showboating moron who endangered millions rather than let a woman fight?

As I started watching Season Three, episode 3.10 was another high point. A group of supposed heroes find that Claire is again a crucial key to the enemys' plans. They have a United States senator and the full resources of the Company behind them (which had been financed by a limitless supply of gold). Given all this, they attempted to keep her safe by sending her alone with her father to an abandoned house a short drive from her known family home -- an abandoned house that they had just been to with an agent of the enemy. While there, they take no care to be on their guard and don't even lock the doors. After they are inevitably attacked, her father overpowers the attackers -- but doesn't bother to knock them unconscious or even pick his gun back up before leaving with her, who has what he later described as a surface wound that he feels she should not be taken to the hospital for. Having been attacked in his pathetic attempt at a hideout, he takes her to their family home and leaves her there wounded.

The Subtext

This isn't just dumb writers, though. The characters' blunders have very clear subtext. For example, Nikki being sent away wasn't accidental. The writers had set up that Peter, as the good-looking young white boy, was the main hero of the story and thus he had to be the one to fight his nemesis Sylar. However, this authorial desire bled through into the character's attitude, the result of which was monumental stupidity.

The part that I find the most offensive -- particularly in the second and third seasons -- is the overwhelming attitude on all sides that the non-powered public cannot be trusted with the truth. Despite attempts at grand scale mass-murder and worse, everyone agrees that problems should be kept within the company and dealt with personally, not by whistle-blowing. They explicitly use term "whistle-blower" in Season Two. During that season, many characters (including Mohinder, Matt, and Noah) are supposedly working to take down the Company. However, their efforts are ultimately pathetic and toothless, because they have no idea what to do to it. They aren't willing to assassinate or even prosecute its leaders, and they are unwilling to expose it despite a token step towards doing so at the end of the season. As soon as someone shoots at Nathan, all of them drop the idea. Similarly, Claire sits around for days after threatening to expose the Company, and then drops the idea after a stern talking-to from her father.

This is all the more shocking at the revelation late in Season Three that the government had created a concentration camp in 1961 for specials, with soldiers evidently poised to shoot them at the first sign of trouble. When the inevitable slaughter happened, rather than reveal the crime to the public, the concentration camp survivors helped cover up what had happened, lived their lives passing as non-Jews (excuse me, non-specials), and raised their children never knowing about what had happened or about their heritage. Having found out, the next generation have (as of the season finale) embraced this approach, repeating what their parents did.

This is about as repugnant a message as I can picture coming out of such a show. What is more, the result of their cover-up was exactly what one might predict. After the atrocity was covered up, history repeated itself. Children of the survivors (Nathan in particular), raised in ignorance, participated in creating an even more brutal concentration camp than the first one. Despite this, it appears that the main characters all remain committed to keeping the secret rather than risk public recognition of the Other among us.

This doesn't even touch on the host of other moral issues with the show, from medical ethics to race and more.

Parallels

There are similar themes in some other comics or TV series, though it has rarely been so baldly expressed. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the characters are set on hiding evidence of the upcoming doomsday rather than trying to convince the public. Painkiller Jane centered on a secret government program to suppress criminal "neurals" with superpowers. (It also featured a heroine, Jane, who could regenerate much like Claire Bennet of Heroes. The concept predated Heroes, though, being based on a comic created in 1995 and a movie released in December 2005.) However, these had more recognition of the moral problems of the cover-ups.

All of these are influenced by the X-Men, I think. I can see a chain of influence from the X-Men who hide their identities for fear of anti-mutant discrimination, to Painkiller Jane and Heroes. Some X-Men stories can definitely be read as "The unwashed masses fear and despise we few who are talented." lhn and I discussed a similar message in The Incredibles in the comments of my post on "Films adapted from comics" last fall.

Somewhere along that chain, the message goes from questionable to horrific.

Fear of the Masses

It is completely reasonable for an individual superhero keeping his identity a secret in order to live a double life of fighting crime. I have zero problems with this as a theme for identity -- there is nothing wrong with having a dual identity and/or passing for mainstream.

Problems begin when such an identity is considered required -- i.e. lacking one is considered a universal flaw, certain to cause problems. Those who don't try to lead a double life of fitting in may be characterized as flawed. In mainstream comics at least, there are many characters without secret identities, like the Fantastic Four and many of the Avengers. However, some superhero plotlines do focus on a secret identity being necessary. Problems grow larger as the stories increasingly idealize "normal life" -- and imagine that more and more forceful means are justified to keep the secret.

It takes a truly twisted mind, though, to extend this to the point that no one should whistle-blow on the Company -- and that concentration camps should be hushed up to allow the survivors to lead normal lives free from unwanted attention.

Thoughts on North Korea

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:57:05 GMT

Some random thoughts, prompted by zigguratbuilder's post.

As a bit of background, my father was originally from North Korea, but his family moved south before the division. In 2005 I went with him to China where we went along the North Korea border and up Mount Baekdu -- see my brief August 2005 entries.

There are some North Korean sympathizers within China - our tour guides in Jilin province were among them. However, they are far from the mainstream. While travelling near the border, we visited an isolated cultural outpost run by North Koreans. They came across to me as creepy proselytizers a bit reminiscent of Mormon missionaries with their ultra-clean suits. They had a gift shop of art produced in North Korea and a set of propaganda books in Korean, though they were not interested in selling the latter to us.

I just read The Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi, written about the year of liberation when she was ten years old in North Korea. It is a young adult book in the Newberry tradition of presenting horrific experiences. The Japanese occupation was described as particularly horrendous, and the early Russian occupation just as totalitarian but with less hostility. On the other hand, the South Korean government was also totalitarian for decades -- and executed thousands of suspected communists before, during, and after the Korean war. It remains illegal in South Korea to express communist sympathies, subject to punishment ranging from imprisonment to death.

(As a side note, my father's experience was not like that. My grandfather had spent a year studying in Japan, and apparently got along passably with the Japanese authorities. The family moved south by cart before the border was formalized cut off. Still, it was difficult. I remember vividly when my cousin Scott brought his Japanese girlfriend to Christmas one year when we were in college. My grandmother began a raging tirade in Korean that made everyone uncomfortable, and Scott looked distinctly embarrassed when she asked him what it was about. I couldn't follow it, but it had a lot about the godless Japanese.)

North Korea is most certainly ruled by a dangerous totalitarian regime. They have been pursuing a nuclear weapons program and space program in defiance of the U.S. and U.N. However, I find some of the rhetoric regarding them odd. People refer to North Korea as being child-like and/or insane, using words like "tantrums" to describe their actions. They are morally reprehensible on many fronts, but their actions have a logic to them.

The Korean War was a terrible tragedy started by the North, but from what I read, they genuinely were motivated by a nationalist desire for a unified Korea free from foreign occupation. They were willing to pursue an incredibly bloody war that killed over 2 million Koreans. Korea in 1950 had a combined population of about 30 million, roughly equal to the United States in 1860. The Korean War killed nearly three times as many as the U.S. Civil War, but whereas in America most of those deaths were soldiers dying of infection, in the Korean War most of the deaths were from wholesale slaughter of civilians on both sides. This extremism -- the willingness to pursue goals in the face of enormous cost -- remains a major issue. There was an interesting editorial by Yang Sung-chul for The Guardian on it.

The present situation is that the nuclear-armed powers and the rest of the international community want North Korea to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons as well as its space program. However, I note that Japan has had a space program for decades, launching its first satellite Ohsumi in 1970 -- and South Korea has also been developing a domestic space program since 1989 supported by the U.S.

North Korea has often been defiant of this, at great cost to its economy and civilian population. However, rather than thinking them childishly foolish for defying the rest of the world, I may also picture them as strong-willed. It seems quite possible to me that the U.S. and its allies would not want to pay the price that North Korea would extract in war to maintain its sovereignty. I expect that they feel that ultimately, countries with nuclear weapons (such as Pakistan and India) are treated with respect -- while countries without them (like Iraq) are subject to regime change.

Edit: As I note in this comment, Audrey McAvoy states in a Japan Times article that Japan is North Korea's biggest trading partner, noting: "North Korea shipped $ 225.62 million worth of goods to Japan in 2001, according to figures compiled by the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency in South Korea. Its next biggest markets were South Korea, which imported $176.17 million, and China, $166.73 million." There may be other metrics of trade which rate these three differently, but it is useful to note.

Subtexts in Evolutionary Psychology

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:37:40 GMT

A key issue in the debate over evolutionary psychology is the subtext of the debate. I am reading Stephen Gould's The Mismeasure of Man currently, and one of his points is that the science is inextricably tied into social policy. Rather than trying to pretend objectivity, it is better to make the subtext and social consequences clear.

Evolutionary Psychology Subtext

The subtext of much evolutionary psychology is that humans are inherently sexist, racist, and violent, and that our culture tries to reduce these tendencies but it cannot wipe them out entirely. Champions of this subtext tend to argue that humans are closer to common chimpanzees than bonobos. This is often accompanied by a warning that we should not go too far in trying to eradicate human nature, because there will be bad side-effects.

By identifying the source of problems as natural genetic tendencies, this subtext tends to be more conservative. It spins traditional culture in a positive light, by claiming how it is moderating unwanted tendencies.

An example of this would be Naomi Wolf's column "How the male brain can't see the laundry pile up," endorsed by wanton_heat_jet. Wolf claims, "The feminist critique, for example, has totally remade elementary-level education, where female decision-makers prevail: the construction of male hierarchies in the schoolyard is often redirected for fear of "bullying", with boys and girls alike expected to "share" and "process" their emotions. But many educators have begun to argue that such intervention in what may be a hard-wired aspect of "boy-ness" can lead to boys' academic underperformance relative to girls and to more frequent diagnoses of behavioural problems."

I was immediately set off by the use of scare quotes. Wolf cites no sources for her characterization of feminists, but links to two sources for her own view: anthropologist Helen Fisher, and neurobiology consultant Michael Gurian. In short, her message is that the modern breakdown of the traditional gender roles is going against nature, and that this has problematic consequences.

Contrasting Subtext

An opposing subtext sometimes found is that humanity is by nature relatively cooperative and egalitarian. The spin is that agriculture and global population pressures of the past 5000 years have tended to create more hierarchical societies than prior hunter-gatherer societies. Populations were selected for success in war, with more rigidly defined class, race, and gender roles. Such a spin is more critical of modern culture, pointing out its mix of advantages and disadvantages.

The difference between these views is often in spin rather than fact. For example, the comparison of humans versus both common chimpanzees and bonobos is relatively well known -- but the same list of similarities and differences can be re-phrased by either side to create a different emphasis. Neither way is wrong per se, nor would a neutral way be any more correct.

My View

Obviously, both of these views as expressed are simplistic. The history of culture will have influences in varying directions, and may not follow a simple progression. Rather than a single continuous trend, even in the broad view there may be shifts back and forth. I do suspect that violence levels during the past 5000 years among agricultural societies, have tended to be greater than among hunter-gatherers previously. However, I do not have proof of this.

My introduction to this was Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, which presents a theoretical framework as well as a number of historical examples. He suggests that increased population density and other changes in agricultural life changed relations. However, hunter-gatherers still have some violence -- and most importantly, have levels of violence that vary just as agricultural societies vary in their violence. There are references to the scientific debate in a 2006 paper from University of New Mexico on the high violent death rates among the Hiwi of Venezuala, which contrast with low rates in previously measured hunter-gatherer societies (the Ache, Agta, Hadza, and Ju/'hoansi).

Regardless of the past trends of culture, though, possible future trends are not determined by them. While some environmental influences may be cyclical, there are clearly many that are not. Life in the 21st century -- both in our general environment and culture -- is not a simple function. For many centuries, our environment and culture have been vastly different from our ancestors 10,000 years ago -- even though as a species we are little changed genetically. There is no inherent reason to think that making our culture either closer to or further from our ancient past will be better. There are behaviors that we have in common with other animals. We have patterns of eating, mating, and socializing. Our culture sometimes clashes with behavior seen in other animals -- such as arranged marriage. Other times, culture reinforces patterns seen in many animals -- such as the common condemnation of incest.

Eating is a good example. Eating is critical to survival, and is a behavior we share with other animals. It is almost certainly genetically coded for, in both our instincts and our anatomy. Yet despite this, our modern eating habits vary widely by culture and are quite different from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. There have been some calls to stick to a paleolithic diet, but those are usually dismissed as fads even by sociobiologists. However, many do think that the paleolithic gender roles are important.

Another example would be incest. Evolutionary psychologists, following the first subtext, tend to say that murder and war are the outcomes of human instincts that favor violence, particular by men. Yet conversely, they suggest that humans have instincts against incest. Incest among humans is almost always condemned by culture, with a few exceptions. However, incest also happens -- often a father or uncle abusing a daughter. The rate is difficult to pin down, but in the modern United States it seems to be more common than murder (cf. the National Center for Victims of Crime Incest page). The facts can be spun in different ways, but the spin tends to say more about motivations than about the facts.

Steven Pinker and the History of Violence

Another example of imposed narrative is in a TED talk endorsed by Tweet, "Steven Pinker on the myth of violence." He attempts to spin the history of culture as reducing violence. Shortly into the talk, he presents a graph, saying:

"But the archeologist Lawrence Keeley, looking at casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers -- which is our best source of evidence about this way of life -- has shown a rather different conclusion. Here is a graph that he put together showing the percentage of male deaths due to warfare in a number of foraging or hunting and gathering societies. The red bars correspond to the likelihood that a man will die at the hands of another man, as opposed to passing away of natural causes, in a variety of foraging societies in the New Guinea highlands and the Amazon rainforest. ... If the death rate in tribal warfare had prevailed during the 20th century, there would have been 2 billion deaths rather than 100 million."

I have not read Keeley's book, but I think can see the names on this graph. It looks like: Jivaro, Yanomamo (?), Mae Enga, Dugum Dani, Huli, Yanomamo (Nanowei), and Gebusi.

The first problem is that he begins with an obvious lie. Most of those societies are not hunter-gatherers, as a few searches will show. For example, the Mae Enga raise pigs and sweet potatoes along with taro, bananas, sugarcane, and others. He further implicitly claims that the seven societies listed are representative of "tribal warfare" in general. Starting off like this makes me highly doubtful of the rest of his statistics, and in particular suspicious of his choice of those seven societies. I noted before about the 2006 UNM paper on the high violent death rates among the Hiwi of Venezuala, which notes a wide range between violent death rates in different hunter-gatherers.

Steven Taylor reviewed the book by Keeley that Pinker cites, saying "And, while the ethnography he draws on is varied, you don‚Äôt have to be that attentive to notice the frequency with which a certain notoriously violent tribal society in New Guinea are referred to."

Methodology

I don't think that it is necessary or important to pretend to be purely objective. However, one should be truthful and clear about one's sources.

In particular, genetic influence is difficult to pin down. Supporters of evolutionary psychology often suggest that if a behavior is common in many cultures, and provides an advantage, that therefore it must be programmed into our genes. However, that is clearly a weak argument. Behaviors that are advantageous will be selected for among cultures as well -- sometimes referred to as the "meme pool." I had earlier used the example of making stone cutting tools. This behavior is older than hunting, continued for over a million years, and occurred across the world in a variety of cultures. Yet given the evidence of modern humans, it seems that the behavior is not genetically programmed. i.e. We do not find it natural or simple to make a stone axe.

One counter-argument is that genetics do not determine our behavior, but only produce predispositions that may be expressed to varying degrees based on the environment. wanton_heat_jet says a version of this in his post "genetic soft-coding." However, saying that genes code potential for behavior that is expressed based on environment is functionally the same as behaviors that are caused by the environment. Stephen Gould expressed his feeling on this in the conclusion of The Mismeasure of Man, saying:

I believe that human sociobiologists have made a fundamental mistake in categories. They are seeking the genetic basis of human behavior at the wrong level. They are searching among the specific products of generated rules -- Joe's homosexuality, Martha's fear of strangers -- while the rules themselves are the genetic deep structures of human behavior. For example, E.O. Wilson (1978) writes: "Are human being innately aggressive? This is a favorite question of college seminars and cocktail party conversations, and one that raises emotions in political ideologues of all stripes. The answer to it is yes." As evidence, Wilson cites the prevalence of warfare in history and then discounts any current disinclination to fight: "The most peaceable tribes of today were often the ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future." But if some people are peaceable now, then aggression itself cannot be coded in our genes, only the potential for it. If innate only means possible, or even likely in certain environments, then everything we do is innate and the word has no meaning.

Review of The Thirteenth Child

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:02:25 GMT

(no significant spoilers)

The Thirteenth Child, by Patricia Wrede, is a flawed story. I read it because I was troubled by others judging it solely by a summary of its premise, and I read another of Wrede's books (Dealing With Dragons) before commenting. Several reviews summed it up as "Harry Potter meets Little House" -- or this review on books4yourkids.com that describes it as "Diana Wynne Jones meets Laura Ingalls Wilder." Comparisons to Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker books are also inevitable. It is a coming of age, with young Eff Rothmer growing from age five to sixteen. She goes with her family to the frontier and learns about magic there, and ends up having an adventure.

I'd agree that it is trying to emulate some of the feel of Laura Ingalls Wilder. However, I feel it tells a bad lesson to young adults in doing so, and I would not recommend this book for young readers.

I do not inherently oppose the idea of an alternate history where the Americas were not colonized until the 16th century -- any more than I oppose the idea of an alternate history where Hitler won, or a future where humanity is devastated by world war. However, Wrede isn't trying to explore what America would really be like without American Indians. She is trying to emulate the feel of Laura Ingalls Wilder, while avoiding the ethical problems of colonialism. In her history, the United States is still independent -- with initial presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson leading the country; and a Lewis and Clark expedition under Jefferson, though it never returned. These are the only historical figures she cites are these. There was also a Secession War, in 1838 that ended slavery.

She avoids obvious gaffs such as the myriad of American Indian place names -- so the Mississippi is instead called the Mammoth River, for example. There is no mention of foods like potatoes, corn, chocolate, or peanuts -- or mention of tobacco or smoking. She makes no mention of pilgrims, or any mention of South America, Mexico, or Canada. However, this just makes it more problematic. Without Aztecs and their gold, Mexico and the Carribean would be vastly different. Without the fur trade, Canada would be vastly different. Without the Nauset, the original Plymouth Colony would most likely have failed. However, her view as expressed in these book is that all of these were inconsequential. There is no sense that white America is missing anything from the lack of indians.

Now, Wrede does make an effort to be multi-cultural. However, that effort is also problematic. Young Eff has a black schoolteacher, Miss Ochiba, who teaches her about the difference between Avrupan, Aphrikan, and Hijero-Cathayan magic (i.e. European, African, and East Asian). However, the characters, including Miss Ochiba, speak of these in different terms. They speak of the great Ben Franklin and his achievements, along with the wise ancients Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras. They also list presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson as well as explorers Lewis and Clark. However, there is no mention of any famous Aphrikans, Aphrikan-Americans, or Hijero-Cathayans. The single mention of a non-white figure in history is a passing comment that great Thomas Jefferson mentioned a (fictional) Hamid al-Rashid, but no one was sure who he was talking about because other magicians hadn't read four thousand or so books the way he had. Instead of characters, Hijero-Cathayan and Aphrikan magic are described as fundamentally different approaches to dealing with the world -- along with their strengths and weaknesses.

To start with, having a black grade-school teacher who teaches Eff the secrets of Aphrikan magic runs straight into the magic negro archetype, paired with Wash Morris -- the helpful explorer who tells her about the wildlife and gives her a magical talisman. The descriptions of the different magics echo too closely old ideas of racial essentialism. The Oriental Hijero-Cathayans lack individualism but can be powerful in large groups, while Aphrikans are close to nature and work with it instead of against it. [*]

While I am condemning this, I do want to make clear something. It would have been easily possible for Wrede to write a fantasy story set on a version of the American frontier with no non-white characters at all, and simply avoid significant mention of Indians. Doing so would probably have brought less comment than her book did, but would have been at least as problematic. I do want to give some credit to her effort to be multi-cultural. However, much of this is very simple.

Eliminating all American Indians is a huge change, and if you are going to do that, the changes should be noticeable and explored -- not hidden from view. If you are just trying to imitate the frontier settlement genre, then don't choose so divergent a history. If you are going to have a black schoolteacher teaching African magic, you should mention some non-white historical figures instead of only waxing on about the great Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.

[*] The following is the description of the contrasting types of magic from the book, from page 200 of the hardback edition. It comes across to me very much as an essentialist description of cultures, but you can judge for yourself.

"Aphrikan maigc isn't much like Avrupan magic, or even Hijero-Cathayan magic. Avrupan magic is individual. Even when teams of magicians work together on something, they do it by each casting one particular spell that fits together with all the other spells, like the teeth on a set of gears fit each other. If one magician gets it wrong and his piece fizzles or it blows up, the big spell doesn't work, but it doesn't hurt any of the other magicians or affect their magic. Still, you have to be very precise to work as part of a team of Avrupan magicians, because nobody wants to waste all that effort just because someone else got it wrong.

Hijero-Cathayan magic is group magic. They hardly have any small, everyday magics that one magician can do alone, like fire-lighting spells. They're good at big things, like moving rivers and clearing out dragon rookeries -- at least, they say it was the ancient Hijero-Cathayan magicians who cleaned out the last few nests of dragons in Ashia and Avrupa and made all the land safe for people to live in.

Hijero-Cathayan magicians almost always work in groups, with all the magicians linked together by a spell so they can pool their power. The trouble is that if even one of the magicians makes a mistake, the whole spell can come apart, and when it does, it can hurt or kill every magician who is part of it. The leader of the group, who channels all that power, usually burns out after a couple of years, if his groupworks steady. I could never make out why anybody would take up magic at all, if they knew that was in store for them, but I guess the Hijero-Cathayans don't see it that way.

But different as they are, both Avrupan and Hijero-Cathayan magic have one thing in common: The main idea is to raise up and control enough magic to do things. That's why learning either of them starts the same way, with doing small spells, and then bigger spells, using more and stronger magic to do larger and larger things each time.

Aphrikan magic starts with looking, not doing. Instead of calling up magic and controlling it, Aphrikan conjurefolk find the places where magic is already moving and then guide it somewhere else. It means the Aphrikan magicians can work together a lot more safely and easily than Avrupan or Hijero-Cathayan magicians, because they don't have to match up their spells precisely, or worry about burning each other out. It also means that Aphrikan spells hardly ever work the same way twice. Sometimes what the magicians wants to make happen is too different from the way the natural magic is moving, and he can't get it to do what he wanted at all. Because of that, most Avrupan magicians think Aphrikan magic is unpredictable and unreliable."

More on Evolutionary Psychology

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:57:33 GMT

So I've been commenting recently on wanton_heat_jet's journal about evolutionary psychology after he left a series of comments on my RPG journal post "On Gender Disparity in RPGs" from last year. At around that time, I also had a post on my personal blog, "Evolutionary Psychology," more about the scientific side of this.

He started in with "ev psych and RPGs." and followed with a series of ten posts thus far on evolutionary psychology (see his June 2009 archive). This was also picked up by robin_d_laws in his post, "We Evolved On the Grasslands To Have This Debate."

A number of others have been dismissive of this. However, I ran into similar evolutionary arguments from multiple people at a panel at WisCon, so I am convinced that belief is widespread enough that it bears addressing.

The Short Form

From my observation, the field of evolutionary psychology is overwhelmingly filled with unscientific crap. It may be that there is some valid work within the cesspool, but I haven't seen it, and it would have to overcome a major hurdle to distance itself from the rest of it.

robin_d_laws admitted widespread problems in evolutionary psychology, but did recommend a few including Robert Wright, Jeffrey Schloss and Frans de Waal. I'm remain doubtful based on what I read, such as his recommended vlog entry, "Humanity's Primate Heritage." From what I've seen, their discussion is airy speculation -- it's trying to argue in favor of evolution over creationism, but there isn't any real content regarding psychology.

Use of Evolutionary Data

There is no doubt that humans are a product of evolution, and that our genetics are an important factor in our behavior. However, the details of are evolution are found in the fossil record, which have very limited cues telling us of behavior. We can observe the behavior of humans in the modern-day among the various surviving cultures, but that might not correspond to the norms of behavior thousands or millions of years ago.

Humans are exceptional in many ways from comparable mammals, not only in brain size. Our body hair (for land animals), our bipedal gait, our fertility cycle and mammaries, and more. We can conjecture about trends, but that must be taken with large handfuls of salt.

I suspect that modern-day gender dynamics reflect paleolithic gender dynamics in a similar way to how the average modern-day diet reflects the average paleolithic diet. On that basis, I think that evolutionary logic applies to game design in roughly the same way that it applies to cooking. One may in principle come up with a new idea for cooking based on evolutionary logic. However, given that we are cooking for modern-day humans, it is an absurd stretch.

Presuming Adaptations

A key issue with evolutionary psychology is its use of "just so stories." In short, suppose that a particular trait or behavior exists in modern humans. The evolutionary psychologist points out how this behavior might have had a functional benefit for early hominids. This behavior or psychological trait is then presumed to be genetically programmed.

Simply put, that is stupid. Just because a trait would be useful doesn't mean that it necessarily exists. There are endless hypothetical traits -- anatomical as well as psychological -- that could potentially have been useful to us. That they would have been useful doesn't mean that they exist. For example, humans and their ancestors made stone cutting tools for over a million years, for longer than they had hunted. However, that does not mean that the process of creating a stone axe is genetically programmed into our brains.

Human Evolution and Sexual Dimorphism

To the best of our knowledge, humans evolved from the extinct line of austrolopithecines (from 2-4 million years ago), and from earlier forms of the genus Homo. Species in the genus Homo include Homo Habilis (2.4 to 1.8 million years ago) and Homo Erectus (1.8 million to 70,000 years ago). The exact line of descent is not clear, however, and there may be other species or subspecies not yet found.

Homo Habilis apparently scavenged meat and used tools, but did not hunt. Homo Erectus hunted and made use of fire. Both of these species had greater sexual dimorphism than modern humans -- i.e. in modern humans, males are closer in size to females. (cf. "Analysis of Early Hominids")

Hunting became important for early humans once it was established. In the Upper Paleolithic Age, estimates vary that food from hunting amounted to from 20% to 70% of the caloric intake. Among modern humans of all cultures, hunting is usually considered an exclusively male task. The gender roles among earlier species is not known. It may be inferred from the example of modern humans that hunting was generally done by males, but this is not a given. For example, in lions the male is much larger and stronger, yet hunting is done primarily by the females.

I frequently hear the claim that men are larger and stronger because they are evolved to be hunters, which is patently false. Their larger size may have helped male hominids be the main hunters, but their size is not an evolutionary adaptation for that purpose. It was quite the opposite. Since hunting began, men have grown closer in size to women.

Genetic Gender Roles

There are most certainly going to be genetic differences, both in morphology and behavior, between men and women. Among mammals and birds, males tend to be larger and also tend to have more adornment and/or coloration. cf. "conspicuous males" In sexual selection, males tend to compete for the attention of females by various display behaviors.

The general tendencies may not hold true for humans, but if they were, they would suggest that men have a genetic predisposition to more competitive and performative behaviors. That is, men may genetically tend to be more interested in sports, dance, fashion, and make-up. However, the decrease in sexual dimorphism of humans compared to their ancestors suggests a lessening of male competition based on size.

Claims are also made regarding men's taste for violence, often based on male competitions to impress females common among primates and mammals in general. However, the logic is generally twisted. A common claim is that women don't like action movies or boxing matches because they are inherently less violent. Within evolution, watching male contests is a more characteristically female trait. Evolutionary logic would suggest that watching men fight is more enjoyed by women, since they can improve the fitness of their offspring by observing and selecting a more fit mate.

A rather amusing bit was Tweet's claims about sports. He originally stated regarding the predominance of men in D&D, "It's about a group assembling to undertake (imaginary) risks for glory and dominance. It's the same reason that team sports, such as basketball, are more male, whereas women compete to be judged beautiful and worthy (ice skating, gymnastics)." He attempted to defend this in his post, "ev psych, gymnastics, and ice skating." However, it was pointed out to him that ice skating and gymnastics were historically male sports, whereas basketball was adopted by women almost immediately for women since its invention in 1891. kynn also provided statistics showing how vastly more women participated in soccer, volleyball, and basketball than in gymnastics or figure skating. He attempted to recover this by claiming that he was talking about our "cultural footprint" rather than actual behaviors of men and women, but that makes no sense in an evolutionary perspective.

A similar point was made in the heritability of Big Five personality traits, that differ between sexes. An interesting study on this is "Gender differences in personality traits across cultures" (2001). This is sometimes claimed as showing cross-cultural universality, but that isn't what it shows. It compares gender differences in personality ratings among 26 countries, but most of those are relatively Westernized first-world nations. In other countries, though, the results were quite different. For example, Zimbabweans had the opposite gender difference in Neuroticism and Agreeableness to those seen in other countries (i.e. women were slightly less neurotic and less agreeable than men, whereas the first-world trend is the other direction). Other countries showed major differences as well, notably South Korea, Japan, and black South Africa. There is close agreement, say, between Yugoslavia and Portugal and the U.S. -- but I think that is indicating similarity of environment.

Many behaviors can arise from the environment, even if they are done for millions of years. Evolutionary psychologists like to say that because we have been hunting for a million years, therefore hunting is programmed into the DNA of men but not women. However, we have been creating stone cutting tools for longer than we have been hunting. I have yet to hear claims of how the processes of chipping a stone axe are genetically programmed.

I think that we will find that there are some adaptations for stone tools and hunting. However, I expect that our modern-day behaviors will be markedly different from our ancestors in a great many categories, and in ways that are not predictable by simple common sense.

Identifying Genetically Programmed Behaviors

In one post, Tweet suggests that behaviors that come "naturally" to us -- i.e. those that do not require special effort by parents or the community -- are those that are genetically programmed. However, I believe that is based on false logic.

Humans raised in modern society are in a vastly different environment than the ancestors of humanity were. Even if no special effort is made to train them, animals raised in conditions vastly different from their natural habitats (such as homes or zoos) often display behaviors that are quite different from their behavior in the wild. It can be extremely difficult or even impossible to train an animal to live in its natural habitat after being raised elsewhere. By the same token, trying to raise a child in today's society who could survive in the grasslands would take enormous effort.

One example would be human food. The modern foods that we enjoy most are likely to bear little resemblance to the Paleolithic diet that we evolved for. In fact, sticking to a Paleolithic diet can be as difficult as other diets.

Humans in particular are excellent learning machines. There are an enormous number of things that we learn from our environment without it being a great effort to learn. For example, in our society, children rapidly learn that long hair and dresses are markers for being a girl. However, that is not culturally universal.

It may be genetically encoded for us to learn spoken language, and for us to learn markers for sex. Even if that is so, however, the specifics may depend on environment -- i.e. the specific language that we learn, and the specific markers for sex (such as girl clothes vs boy clothes, or girl games vs. boy games).

Why this is important

It is important because people spread around fabricated claims as well as other biased quotes and bad science that try to prop up sexist stereotypes. wanton_heat_jet passed on some, like linking to an ABC News story that began with the claim, "For instance, a woman uses about 20,000 words a day while a man uses about 7,000."

I pointed out that this claim was fabricated, and linked to a review from the British science journal Nature that reported "The Female Brain disappointingly fails to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance." and "Misrepresentations of scientific details are legion." However, he continued to defend author Brizendine, claiming here that "She's a popular writer and her big ideas are good even if her details don't always measure up."

Besides fabrications, there are wildly misused claims. For example, Tweet claimed that women inherently tended towards imaginative social play -- citing as evidence that monkeys had such sex-biased instincts. As far as I can tell, that referred to a 2002 study, "Sex differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates." (This study was also mentioned in ozarque's journal here.) The researchers at UCLA gave a set of 48 vervet monkeys of each gender a set of six toys: two "masculine" (a toy car and a ball), two "feminine" (a pot and a doll), and two "neutral" (a book and a stuffed dog). Their conclusion noted, "We found differences between male and female vervet monkeys that resemble the well-established differences in the toy preferences of boys and girls, consistent with the proposed existence of innate object preferences. However, although female vervets preferred 'feminine' toys over 'masculine' toys, male vervets did not appear to prefer 'masculine' toys over 'feminine' toys. This difference between male vervets and boys may indicate that toy preferences in boys are directed by gender socialization to a larger degree than are toy preferences in girls." I think even casual consideration makes one doubt how much this study really gets at the nature versus nurture question in humans -- let alone the conclusion that girls favor imaginative social play in general.

Field Trip!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:09:39 GMT

Whew!!

So last week I chaperoned a 4th grade field trip with around 90 students, 25 or so parents, and 5 teachers. The kids had been doing a history segment on the California Gold Rush (1848-1855), and so our trip was to "Gold Country." It had a lot of driving, and we organized into 18 cars/minivans with about five kids each, where each car was paired with another to guard against getting lost.

I made a map of the sites on Google Maps.

Wednesday we gathered at 7AM, went to the railroad museum and Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, and then onwards to Jenness Park Christian Camp where our cabins were. Thursday we went to Columbia State Historic Park, to look at the town and to wander the camp of gold rush reenactors for the week. That evening the kids listened to a professional storyteller, who told stories about Charlie Parkhurst, the jumping frog of Calaveras County, and others. Friday we went panning for gold, then into Moaning Cavern, and then got back to Redwood City a little after 7PM.

The kids had a lot of fun, as did I. On the bad side, I already had a sinus infection going in that was miserable with the altitude changes. Also, sleeping was rough, particularly on the first night. In a cabin with nine boys, a few of them insisted on staying up and making noise well past their silent time at 9:30PM, and then on the first morning I woke up to their noise at 5:40AM. Milo was pretty annoyed at two of his cabin mates in particular.

However, he got along fairly well with the other kids in the car (Jose, Sophie, Lauren, and Kiran). Sophie's mom was driving, and we got along well. That lasted until some time during the long drive back at the end, when a rift grew between the three girls sitting in back and the two boys in front and they started trading insults. I think that mostly reflected being tired and uncomfortable, though.

WisCon 33 Report: Male Answer Syndrome

Sat, 30 May 2009 06:38:40 GMT

So I arrived back from WisCon late Monday night, and had only a day of recovery before leaving early Wednesday morning to help chaperone a long 4th grade field trip that took me offline until getting back Friday night. Whew!!

Here's my report on the one panel I moderated...

Added: firecat also has notes on this panel.

Dealing With Your Male Answer Syndrome

The panelists were Suzanne, Stef, Moondancer, and John. The panel description focused on being someone with the syndrome, and that was how it worked out. All of the panelists and nearly all of the audience commenters identified with having an answer syndrome. However, I did feel that we missed a bit when an audience member asked about how to deal with answer-syndrome people.

I lead into this by a bit of a monologue where I did my best imitation of a bad moderator, where I used the excuse of introduction to talk at length on the subject. I slowly got more and more into the issues, and then stopped and looked from side to side at the panelists and said "Oh! Maybe I should introduce the panelists." There was a pause before an audience member called out, "Wait, was that on purpose..." and I answered yes.

I then had brief panelist introductions, and I then took one round of questions from the audience to guide the first half of the discussion among the panelists. Questions included: (1) Is the male specifier a shortcut for a more complex split? (2) Does calling it a syndrome imply a range of related but distinct behaviors? (3) Does it have a function as a social lubricant, keeping discussion going? (4) Is the behavior different and function differently in the workplace and in social life? (5) Is the syndrome distinct in the American Midwest and other regional cultures? (6) Is it a conscious effort? (7) How does it reflect the power dynamic?

In addressing these, each of the panelists discussed their own personal background in having a form of answer syndrome. We then went on to discuss the questions. There were some general agreements. Most agreed that the syndrome was not exclusive to men at all, but that it did link into important gender dynamics. Stef had some interesting comments separating out "Geek Answer Syndrome" and "Mother Answer Syndrome."

There were many who distinguish the tendency to pontificate, as opposed to inventing answers that one really doesn't know. However, I noted that giving genuine answers could still be problematic. I noted the well-known example of Rachel Solnit's essay, "Men Explain Things to Me," where she described a man lecturing to her for a while about an important new book in the field -- one that she had written. This man was talking about real knowledge he had about a real book, but he was so focused on answering that he couldn't learn even a basic bit of information from dialogue.

Moondancer noted that some regions explicitly taught cultural rules that men were supposed to have answers. However, we did not have any simple answers about regional or national variations. It was felt to exist in other cultures, but no one felt ready to tackle a cross-cultural comparison. Joell from the audience noted how men are often taught to be the provider, and to be a mentor as training for boys to become men.

Most felt that the answer syndrome behaviors did not function as a social lubricant. The person is distancing themselves from the social situation by moving into answer mode rather than dialogue, and avoids emotional connection. Instead, though, there are hierarchies of dominance that answering establishes.

We did not have many good ways to deal with answer syndrome behaviors except for pointing them out when they occur. There was a point in the panel when one of the panelists did speak over the other one, that was pointed out from the audience and discussed.

I think it went fairly well. However, I think another approach to take would be to have more dialogue between those who identify with the syndrome, and those who do not. This panel was more about people who identified with the syndrome analyzing what it meant for themselves and others.

Two Days of WisCon

Sun, 24 May 2009 14:07:36 GMT

Arrived on Thursday but basically just ate and collapsed.

Friday was the Gathering with Milo, then one panel -- "Warrior Women in Current Fiction -- Do They Exist, Really?" This was fair but not great. The moderator, James, had a lot of comments; but I preferred the input from panelists Jacqueline and Kerry. What stood out for me some was some of the back and forth over Red Sonja. Jacqueline appreciated very much while growing up, but James was dismissive of as a "man with breasts" by R.E. Howard's writing -- which was rightly challenged in the audience.

Saturday was my day as a panelist on the subject of science to a large degree. In the morning I was a panelist on "The Mismeasure of Man, and the Rest of Us, Too: Science, Colonialism, Genocide, and Science Fiction" -- along with moderator Rachel and fellow panelists Evelyn, Micole, and K. Joyce. There was a lot of good material in this. I got to go on some about revisionism in the popular history of science. There was pretty wide agreement that there was an objective reality touched on by experiment, but that the specific social structures of science did have a role in colonialism and oppression. The interesting question that I took from it was about what science with a different social role would look like. Several people recommended some fiction that I'd like to read.

There was also an unresolved disagreement over economics. My position was that economics doesn't fit the same scientific model, because by publishing a paper on economics, you are changing how the economic system works. If you come up with a new model, companies will take that new model into account in making their financial decisions.

After lunch I was a panelist on "Science/Religion/Art" -- which had a lot of interesting discussion, with moderator Georgie and fellow panelists Ted, Brad, and Marna. There were a lot of people knowledgeable about history and science and comparative religion, and we had interesting debates about topics I enjoyed such as Isaac Newton. It came across to me as a very educated and interested crowd, which made for a rich discussion. No one felt that the three were inherently opposed, but there was some disagreement over whether they should be defined as exclusive or whether they overlap. In particular, are creationists categorically mistaken as taking a religious belief as scientific fact, or is it that they have a religious belief that is wrong. An interesting question that we struggled with was how to talk to people like this.

Later I attended the panel on "Are We Done Believing in God Yet?" -- with substitute moderator Keith along with panelists Doselle, Jack, Kerrie, and Steven. The moderator and panelists here were all atheists, except for one Jewish agnostic. I am glad that I attended because I did get to see the other side, and people who were unabashed in expressing their distaste for theism as irrationality. Their comments had much of what I would expect, such as identifying all of religion as bending to authority and/or tradition, and resentment over discrimination and assumption of Christianity. There were also a few I didn't quite expect but could have, such as anger at God appearing because that would make things more boring. In discussion afterwards, the latter seems to be based on biblical literalism -- that there can't be anything interesting that we haven't seen, because if so it would've been in the Bible. The panel introduced their views, then exchanged ideas on how they would get rid of religion in principle, and then opened up to questions.

I don't think anyone's views were particularly changed. However, it was at least interesting to see all this in person, with a more friendly crowd than I might see elsewhere.

That evening I went to the academic panels: "Feminist, Fantasy, or Fetish: The Evolution of Wonder Woman" by Nicole Provencher, and "Little Girls on the Hero's Journey." The former's points were fairly obvious to anyone who had read some of Wonder Woman, which has very blatant fetish roots. The latter was an intriguing analysis of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Lucy in Lewis' The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Chihiro in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. The problematic part was the lack of male figures using this feminine archetype, which we discussed.

Thoughts on the Star Trek film

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:02:59 GMT

So, my thoughts on the new Star Trek movie, which I saw last Friday with Liz... In general, it was good pulpy fun, with lots of action and explosions.

The Good

I have something of a distaste for the trend of "origin story" plots -- such as Batman Begins, Iron Man, and Casino Royale. I talked a little about this earlier in an LJ post on "Films adapted from comics." Happily, Star Trek spent little time explaining things, though it did a bit with Spock growing up and Nimoy's narrated story.

The parts I liked best: the bar fight, McCoy's injections, the innumerable slashy moments between the original characters, the sword fight on the platform, the chase in the snow, Scotty trapped in the tube, and the Kirk/Spock fight. In general, I liked the humor and campy action.

The actors were all excellent. I felt a slight twinge over having a Korean actor play a Japanese character, but I quickly got over it (cf. my earlier post on race in casting).
The Bad

My two big complaints:

1) Destroying the Vulcan homeworld was weak. They had only briefly established it, and mainly as a planet full of pointy-eared racist jerks. Unsurprisingly, when it was destroyed it had rather less impact than the family dog dying. In my opinion, they should have blown up Earth. That would have had an impact, and made a strong case.

2) Damn it! Why does Uhura have to pointlessly open hailing frequencies? They went as far as to include exposition that she is competent such as by knowing Romulan, but naturally this ability turns out to be totally useless. All of the other main characters got to have at least some sort of plot-useful action showing they were cool. Chekov showed off transporter and navigation skills; Sulu got to pilot through wreckage and stab a Romulan; Scotty got to do fancy transporting and eject the warp core. Uhura get nothing -- her function was to kiss Spock and look good in her underwear. For example, when they attempt to sneak onto the Romulan ship, wouldn't it have been useful to have someone who knows the Romulan language?

I have a few less major complaints. I thought the direction of most of the action scenes was lackluster, full of choppy cuts.

The Context

In general, this struck me as taking the original characters and dropping them into a pulp-inspired action film -- with the missing subtitle being something like "Young Kirk in an Alternate Timeline". To me, it works as sort of another episode in the varied collection of Star Trek stories. There's room for pulp action like the collection, along with lighter humor and more serious episodes.

However, it definitely does not work for me as a reinvention of Star Trek or encapsulation of the spirit. If someone didn't know what Star Trek was, this would be far down the list of what I would show them. For one, it's crammed full of in-jokes and references. Also, the main plotline is a straight shoot-the-bad-guy. There is some backstory about where the villain came from, but his motivations are largely irrelevant. What they have to do is just kill him. Nothing wrong with this, but it's not representative of Star Trek for me.

Conclusion

In the Star Trek film series, this stands pretty well. Looking them over, we have:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Star Trek Generations (1994)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Star Trek Nemesis (2002)
Star Trek (2009)

I think my favorite three would be The Wrath of Khan, First Contact, and The Undiscovered Country. I think this is fourth, though.

Spoilers!

Tue, 12 May 2009 14:56:20 GMT

OK, here's a originally-blank post for me and others to talk about the books (Blindsight, Skin Folk, and/or Shatterpoint) including spoilers.

The Chinese Room

So really I think that this is a terrible argument, and I get mad that people take this seriously. For some reason the Wikipedia article does no justice to arguments against it.

So, to review for other, the argument is that you have a machine that speaks in Chinese, where all the operations are performed by a man inside a room instead of processors. The claim is that this man cannot understand what a horse is despite sending out replies in Chinese that speak intelligibly about horses.

As others note, this critically relies on lack of complexity, which should be obvious by taking the inverse. Suppose we put a hypothetical person inside the brain of a human who speaks Chinese. The viewer can see every last detail of neurons firing down to the last molecule and electric field, but nothing else. By the logic of the Chinese room argument, the brain-watcher should be able to understand Chinese. Somewhere within the brain there is semantic meaning, so by his logic, we should be able to see it. Of course, our intuition says otherwise -- that simply watching a Chinese person's brain doesn't let us understand Chinese. However, in principle that inofrmation is definitely there.

The underlying flaw, behind this screen of false intuition, is that the Chinese Room is blind and bodiless. As an AI, the Chinese room is like a person who was born blind and limbless and kept on life support, only interacting with the world through speaking grammatically-correct language. Never having seen or felt any animal, such a person would not have any real understanding of what a horse is.

Now, suppose you give a body and eyes and memory to the Chinese Room AI, and let it have interacted with a horse in the past. At this point, the situations of the Chinese Room and the brain-watcher are comparable. When a horse is spoken of, the verbal parts of the brain connect to the visual centers -- the system pictures a horse and its understanding of what a horse is. It then forms a reply based on these. The viewer (i.e. the brain-watcher or Chinese Room occupant) will see these all as patterns. Assuming super-intelligence, though, the viewer could parse the mental image evoked into spatial coordinates -- relating this set of inputs, to the memories of that set of inputs.

Blindsight

The whole center of Blindsight rests on Searle's argument -- starting from the idea of a "synthesist" who can recognize patterns but who doesn't have any understanding of the field or issues.

The story of Kiri is based on pattern recognition being different than understanding -- and that being able to accurately read and predict people doesn't give you any understanding of them or empathy for their condition. There is some crucial human understanding that Siri lacked, where instead he had only machine-like processing.

My WisCon 33 Panels

Tue, 12 May 2009 06:38:23 GMT

This year, I'm a panelist in topics related to science -- as opposed to previous years where I'd mostly engaged from my experience as a gamer. It'll be an interesting change, and it seems a topical idea as I'm going back to teaching science. My three panels are:

The Mismeasure of Man, and the Rest of Us, Too: Science, Colonialism, Genocide, and Science Fiction (Sat 10:00 - 11:15AM in Senate B)

Moderator: Rachel Virginia Swirsky. Panelists Evelyn Browne, John H. Kim, Micole Iris Sudberg, K. Joyce Tsai.

A number of recent works have examined the relationships between science, colonialism, historiography, and science fiction, from Rosemary Kirstein's stealth sf Steerswoman series to M.T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing historical re‚visions to sf tv such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. How are sf and related genres envisioning and revising the ethical and social dimensions of science? What role does the idea of Science play in maintaining or subverting power inequities of empire, nation, race, and gender?

I'm a bit lost because I haven't read any of the listed recent works, but I think there is plenty of material on the topic in general. I'd like to talk some about how the institution of science itself can be reflect and reinforce inequities -- in particular physics and gender.

Science/Religion/Art (Sat 1:00 - 2:15PM in Assembly)

Moderator: Georgie L. Schnobrich. Panelists John H. Kim, Ted A Kosmatka, Brad Lyau, Marna Nightingale.

How do the structures of Science, Religion, and Art differ? What do they share? Are Faith, Conviction, Belief and Self-delusion the same state? Can we prove it? Let's define our terms instead of letting the popular media do it for us.

This is an interesting one for me. Here my pet peeve is the idea that convictions are opposed to science -- i.e. that scientists should follow an essentially Baconian method, believing nothing until they study the data, and then only tentatively tossing out hypotheses. This has never been how real science works, and yet I still see this considered central.

Dealing With Your Male Answer Syndrome (Sun 10:00 - 11:15AM in Assembly)

Moderator: John H. Kim. Panelists Suzanne All√©s Blom, Moondancer Drake, John Helfers, Stef Maruch.

Although it's not absolute, there's a strong tendency among masculine people to always want to have the definitive answer for everything, even if they don't necessarily know. In panels and elsewhere in life, it can be hard for men to admit they don't know things. Why is this? How can men deal with the pressure (either internal or external) to always have the right answer? How do women and other non-masculine folks deal with Male Answer Syndrome? If you think the answers to all these questions are obvious, then you need to come to this panel!

Hehehehehehe. This should be amusing to moderate, or so I plan.

Recent reading

Tue, 12 May 2009 06:01:08 GMT

A few notes on books I've recently read. The first, actually a few weeks ago, is Shatterpoint, by Matthew Stover. The second is Skin Folk, a collection of speculative short stories by Nalo Hopkinson. The third is Blindsight, by Peter Watts.

Shatterpoint, by Matthew Stover

This is a Star Wars novel, set sometime during the era of the prequels. I'd never read a Star Wars novel before, but this was well spoken of online, so on a whim I ordered it. Its concept resembles Heart of Darkness, where Jedi master Mace Windu returns to jungles he only knew in his infancy.

I had a mixed reaction to this. The story created an intriguing blend that was still recognizably within the genre of Star Wars, but related in colonialism, war crimes, and terrorism. On the down side, it has some clunky narrative devices, in particular Mace's journal entries. It bends but doesn't break its genre -- so some readers may be disappointed that it doesn't push past the genre to delve more deeply into the bleakness of war, or conversely that it is slow in the delivery of pulp action twists. Personally, I appreciated that it opened questions without being heavy-handed. I liked some of the subtle touches, like Mace's quiet struggle with ethnic identity. The story brings him back to jungles where he was born, but left at a young age, severing all ties. This gives a taste of an immigrant story to the whole, but it is never pressed.

Skin Folk, by Nalo Hopkinson

This was discussed as one of four recommended books at a Potlatch 18 panel, chosen by nadyalec. I found it was an excellent collection, with a variety of stories that vary between urban fantasy and science fiction. The title reflects a common theme of Caribbean folklore, of monsters that wear human skin -- sometimes without knowing that they are monsters.

My favorite was probably the one non-speculative story, "Fisherman," which was very sexy and still pointed in its story. I also liked the straight fairy tale "Tan-Tan and Dry Bone." Many of the stories were more about Carribean-descended characters in modern-day Canada, which likely follows the adage of writing what you know but were a bit less compelling to my tastes.

Blindsight, by Peter Watts

This was also recommended on the same Potlatch 18 panel, by vito_excalibur. On the good side, this was a well-written hard sci-fi story. As a former scientist, I am often annoyed by hard science stories, particularly attempts to give a tone of authority to elements that really shouldn't have it. This was one of the better on this front.

However, I have a big philosophical issue with the book. Consciousness is a central theme to the story, and it particularly highlights John Searle's Chinese Room analogy. Having read it in college, I had huge issues with Searle's analogy. Unfortunately, I find the same issues with the core thrust of the book.

All of the pieces of this work fine, but personally I am left with the same sense of annoyance I have with Searle's argument. I'd be happy to delve into that, but it would need spoilers and a post of its own.

Vacations Report

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:19:47 GMT

I just had three vacations in a row, which has been fun but eventually exhausting.

First was a family trip to San Diego, where we took in Legoland and Sea World while renting a condo by the beach. Milo got to play with his cousins, and we did the Dolphin Interaction Program. It seemed shorter and less cool than years ago when Liz and I did it (pre-Milo), though it was still very cool to go in and pet a dolphin. (They also may have held back more when dealing with kids who were uneasy around the dolphin.) Liz posted pics for the vacation.

Immediately after getting back from that, I left for Norway to attend Knutepunkt 2009, including the "Week in Norway." I'll post more details on that in my RPG journal. On the social side, the "Week in Norway" tradition this time was split into a slightly more larp-filled two days prior, and a purely social two days after. In theory, the latter period would have more discussion and analysis, but I had fun just spending time socializing with people there. I was kindly hosted by Britta, who put up with nearly twelve people crashing at her house. Last year in Finland, I booked a cheap hotel room to avoid this, but I found that it was more fun to be with the group. Many thanks to the hosts, to fellow guests Martina, Larson, Alex, Karsten (and others whom I'm forgetting) -- and especially to Sofia.

Following Norway, I took four days to visit Moscow, where my friend Emily is teaching at the Anglo-American School of Moscow. I did Moscow sightseeing: Red Square, the Polytechnic Museum, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Pushkin Museum of Art, the Kremlin (including the inner churches and armory museum), and Victory Park (and WWII memorial museum). I also got to see the school and meet some of the teachers and students there, and we went out to eat at some very nice restaurants.

It reminded me of Manhattan in many ways. It is a giant bustling metropolis; the locals ranged from standoffish to surly though fellow tourists (usually Russian) were quite friendly; the thirties-era subway (though Moscow's metro greatly outshines NYC's subways). The most dominant buildings in numbers were very dull blocky tenements that unsurprisingly reminded me of East Berlin, but the highlights included the churches and the Stalinist-era gothic buildings, which parallel some parts of NYC.

It was interesting to see the construction of Russian identity going on. Many of the places I saw were monuments constructed in the nineties to contrast with the Soviet era. (I did have lunch at the McDonalds right beside Red Square and the Kremlin, which had the taste of American victory along with the grease and additives.) I'll be putting up pictures shortly.

I was very glad to finally get home, though, and my sinuses are slowly recovering from the combination of the usual convention cold plus many air trips.

Edit: I now have my Flickr sets up for both my Moscow trip and Knutepunkt 2009.

Dance Your Ph.D. Contest

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:33:06 GMT

Via martinemonster and shehasathree, I came across this:

"Can Scientists Dance?"

about the world's first Dance Your Ph.D. Contest, held at the Medical University of Vienna. It looked like a blast.

Re-watching The Karate Kid

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:52:39 GMT

So, I watched The Karate Kid with Milo tonight. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, but I remember overall liking it, cheesy though it was.

There is a scene about three quarters of the way through where Daniel finds Mr. Miyagi drunk and broken up over his long dead wife on their anniversary. What I completely missed when I watched it as a kid was about how she died. From just a few drunken lines, we learn that Miyagi had been a soldier fighting the Germans as part of the 442nd in Europe, while his wife had been interned at the Manzanar War Relocation Center as a Japanese-American. He cries that she and her infant son had died due to complications in childbirth, and no doctor had come for her. I was shocked to watch that, and I stopped the movie to explain to Milo about what that was about.

It struck me that this was a huge deal. The film makes out strongly that the problem of the bullies is not in the kids, even in their leader, but in their teacher -- in this case John Kreese, who we see from photos in his dojo was a karate champion in the Army in 1970-71. So there is a subtle but real political side to the movie and its lesson about how "karate isn't about attacking, it is about defending so you don't have to fight." There is a subtle linking of Kreese's dojo, with its attitude of attacking with no mercy, with the Vietnam-era military -- as opposed to Miyagi's very painful service in WWII, and his philosophy of fighting as a last resort.

I was intrigued enough to at least check out comments on the anniversary scene from the "making of" featurette and commentary track on the DVD. The comments were that the studio executives had wanted to cut the scene during editing, as they said it stopped the flow of the movie, but the director had urged its inclusion and kept it in. They noted that this scene was crucial for Pat Morita being nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

Rereading Watchmen

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:02:50 GMT

I recently re-read the Watchmen graphic novel, since Liz had borrowed a copy from my neighbors. I had read it way back in college, and had disliked it at the time. I thought of it as deconstructing superhero comics, and as such, I thought it was very thin -- trying to be dark and edgy for the sake of it. There are have been a number of works that try to mix superheroes and realism, and the effort usually struck me as easy and trite. Yes, skintight costumes and capes and superpowers aren't realistic, but pointing that out in a dozen different ways doesn't say anything interesting about the genre.

On re-reading it, though, I appreciated it more as a political allegory using superheroes. I still feel that it is part of a trend of pointlessly dark takes on superheroes that are trying to be edgy and distance themselves from the superhero traditions rather than stand on own. However, the story does have its points.

wiredferret had some interesting comments on the politics of it, noting that in hindsight of the breakdown of the U.S.S.R., total nuclear annihilation seems like less of a threat -- and thus Ozymandias' claim that millions must die for it to be averted is not credible.

Looking in more detail: You have on the one hand Nixon, the Comedian, Rorscach, and the New Frontiersman representing hard-line conservatism. On the other hand, Nova Express, Ozymandias and his corporate empire represent liberalism. In the story's alternate timeline, Nixon triumphed. Watergate was avoided by suppression of the reporters, JFK was still assassinated, North Vietnam surrendered, and the Soviets were held in check by the threat of Doctor Manhattan. (Note also that there was no Silver Age of comics in this timeline.) However, the victory was pyrrhic -- their side winning only resulted in more civil unrest and disillusionment among the populace. I see the story of the Black Freighter as being their story, that their drive to protect the innocent from monstrous evil only results in their becoming monsters themselves.

However, the story is divided on this. Despite their violence and fascism, the conservatives are portrayed far more sympathetically than Ozymandias. We see human faces behind the New Frontiersman, and we see the troubled childhood of Rorschach. Even the last we see of the Comedian is Sally kissing his picture with tears in her eyes. In contrast, Ozymandias is supremely privileged and inhuman -- even if we accept that his ultimate ends are good. He is patterned as a villain, including killing his subordinates and his megalomaniacal speech of patterning himself on Alexander the Great.

While intellectually the story admits that Ozymandias' plan is effective and saves the world, emotionally the sympathy is with the conservatives. Besides killing millions and basing his new world order on a lie he invented, Ozymandias also was poised to continue his corporate efforts in his new world. As Nite Owl commented, his notes did not seem like someone who was preparing for the end of the world. For example, he directed buying of stocks according to his predictions of what would happen. He directed his Asian servants while studying the media from Karnak, saying,

Veidt: This all says "war." We should buy accordingly.
Servant: But... Sir, we have never bought into munitions ...
Veidt: Of course not. You're ignoring the subtext: increased sexual imagery, even in the candy ads. It implies an erotic undercurrent not uncommon in times of war. Remember the Baby Boom...
Servant: So, should we buy into ... uh ...
Veidt: Into the major erotic video companies. That's short term. Also, we should negotiate controlling shares in selected baby food and maternity goods manufacturers.

Note that he knew that munitions wouldn't be sold, and it was reasonable that there would be another baby boom in light of his plan. In the papers that Rorschach and Nite Owl took from his office desk, Veidt wrote to his marketing director Leo regarding his action figure line, saying "Suggest instead we create costumed army of terrorists, introduce as main villains in Saturday cartoon, then duplicate here along with weapons, accessories, and vehicles." Note how he is making costumed terrorists the villains in his line.

I don't think that expanding his empire is his motive, but he is not above profiting from his plan. I picture that he would use the profits from this to do as he thought best. However, this comes across as more than a little unsavory.

The story does criticize both sides -- and reading it again today, it is curious to see both Moore's eighties politics as well as his criticism. For example, big business really is a liberal conspiracy opposed to the conservative government. The New Frontiersman political cartoon shows a Jewish figure as "Big Biz" threatening America along with Crime and the CCCP. The Frontiersman even went as far as defending the KKK in an editorial, saying "Despite what some might view as their later excesses, the Klan originally came into being because decent people had perfectly reasonable fears for the safety of their persons and belongings when forced into proximity with people from a culture far less morally advanced." So the conservatives are fascist and ultimately self-destructive, and the big-business liberals are the necessary but distasteful alternative.

A curious note on the side is Doctor Manhattan, and in particular his growing more distant from humanity over two decades while at the same time shedding his clothing. I think that for him, clothing is a sign of civilization that he is increasingly distant from. The take on science, and perhaps the Ivory Tower in general, as being increasingly distant from humanity is neither new nor compelling here -- but judging from comments on the film, it seems that this take still has the power to shock.

For contrast, some other takes on the graphic novel include Brian Tiemann's "The Spandex no longer flatters" (from 2003) and Justin Kownacki's "10 Things People Don't Seem to Get About the Watchmen" -- referring politics to Ken Tucker's Popwatch article "Watchmen: Why Rush Limbaugh isn't gonna like it."

The Ethics of Debate

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:41:18 GMT

So I've been having some arguments lately, and I've been following on the sidelines others which have prompted me to think more on ethics and etiquette. This spins off in part from various discussion of racism, from a discussion with kynn and nihilistic_kid, and some from comments with greyorm. (Tangentially, bruceb had some interesting comments on "Ebert on Admiring", citing Roger Ebert's post on avoiding snarking.)

I call this ethics of debate rather then etiquette. I tend not to rant or insult people much, but I appreciate those and use them on occasion. For me, these principles apply even if I'm in the process of calling someone a dickhead.

General Points of Ethics

So the following are some of my principles in the abstract.

1) One should refer to people by the names they go by within that field. I'm not above name-calling as a exclamation or taunt -- and I can appreciate a rant. However, trying to assign someone a nickname, repeating insults, or calling them by a name they don't use is uncalled for. This applies particularly for exposing people's identities (see below).

2) One should try to avoid ad hominem in debate, but it can be appropriate. It generally means the end of debate over substance, though. Usually it applies if you think someone has been arguing in bad faith, adopting positions just for the sake of argument. Even then, though, there are reasonable limits. You should stick to the scope of the debate. If the person you are arguing with is only criticizing someone's online writing, then there is no call to drag in their offline identity (see below). Similarly, one shouldn't bring another's family or friends into the argument unless they are somehow involved. If someone is using a sock puppet in the debate, it's appropriate to expose that. Also, if someone in harassing and does not stop, that may enter into the issue.

3) In general, one should source one's quotes -- specifically providing a link to the context where they came from. One should also quote in a way that you think represents a substantial position. Picking out a one-line anonymous comment from a long thread is effectively a straw man. This is particularly true if you don't know who wrote the comment and/or whether that single line represents a serious position. Many comments are from someone deliberately trolling, someone drunk or high, or some 13-year-old (or a drunk, high, 13-year-old who is deliberately trolling). Rants against such are equivalent to Maddox's mocking I am better than your kids.

4) Avoid making judgments where you don't know. For example, if you haven't seen a movie, then do you really need to make a point about how it is worse than some other movie? The same goes for a book that you haven't read. The book that you haven't read may well suck and if anything, be worse than your expectations. However, if you haven't read it, I don't think anything is lost by just not commenting on it. If it is part of some other point, then refer to it with the disclaimer that you haven't read it.

5) Avoid speaking as or for other people. It's much better to speak from your own view, even your judgement of others, than to say what they are saying.

Anonymity

I have definitely had issues with anonymity in the past -- most notably last summer when people from an online forum started trying to harass me over comments I made. cf. The Encyclopedia Dramatica entry that others made for me. I had vented a little about this in a off-topic thread on an RPG forum I frequent. Really, this made me much more positive about people who were crusty and annoying, but still had basic ethics.

I generally feel that being in public on the Internet should be like being in public anywhere else. People cannot look at you and know your full name and other details. However, they can recognize your face and identify you later. Unless you are at a formal gathering, you'll probably only introduce yourself with your first name. In many places, you may go by a nickname without it being considered odd -- i.e. at the local pub, everyone calls him "Bulldog."

Acceptable behaviors vary depending on the place, but there are some generalizations. Wearing a mask or disguise is frowned on outside of a few specific occasions. You may go by different names in different places, including different dress and style -- but it is expected that you will be uniquely recognizable. Giving out another person's full name and phone number without their permission is at best rude and may be harassment. Following someone home is usually discouraged as stalking, though not illegal in itself. However, asking your friends about the guy you just met is reasonable.

If someone is suspected of a crime, it should be possible for the authorities to do things like get their credit card receipt from a bar they went to, or the security camera recording. However, establishments should not give out such information for anything less than authorities investigating a lead on a specific crime.

Outing

As a general note on outing: I think that people should have a right to privacy, but I don't think that it inherently gives them power.

I think no matter what your ideology, I think one can agree that in some parts of the world, the innocent can be unjustly hurt by being exposed. The term of being "outed" comes from exposure of homosexuality. However, even if you're conservative, you could imagine someone in a liberal region might be shunned from their jobs for non-politically-correct activities -- or someone in a repressive country might be in danger from holding pro-democratic views.

I am lucky in this respect in that I have had no problems being public on the Internet. I almost always post under my real name, and aside from keeping my private life private, I am pretty open. That gives me power, moreso than anonymity. One of the amusing bits in my encounter with the Encyclopedia Dramatica folk was how desperately afraid they all were of being outed. For example, posting there, some posted my work details and threatened to call my boss -- met with calls of how fucked I was then. I simply shrugged and gave them my boss' phone number.

However, I realize that many people are in more tenuous positions through no fault of their own. So I consider it best to respect privacy unless they bring their private identity into the debate in one way or another. Kynn had a post on "The Politics of Outing" that examined this, that I replied to.

Side Example

A minor example started on John Scalzi's whatever with a post on tie-in novels. Down in the 77th comment, an unlinked poster titled "Jamesdsn" said that Matt Stover's Traitor and Shatterpoint are the best novels ever. This is ignored by the other commenter's as a silly bit of hyperbole.

However, nihilistic_kid stated that Jamesdsn's comment was the "apex-slash-nadir" of the debate, and posted specifically on this point. He went to Amazon and pulled a quote out from Stover's book, and put it alongside a selected quote from Joyce's Ulysses to conclude that Joyce was superior. In comments, others proceeded to compare the book unfavorably not only to literary classics, but also to other tie-in genre novels -- by authors such as Brian Daley, Barbara Hambly, John Ford, and Timothy Zahn. Author Matt Stover then commented on the thread, insulting nihilistic_kid, saying that he didn't mind bad reviews, but they should be from people who read his book. kynn then commented on this, and concluded that maybe Matt should stick to his day job.

I commented on kynn's post linked above, but to summarize, I had two main objections to this. First, pulling in an isolated sentence from the 77th comment of a 17,000 word thread is obviously an attempt to score points rather than address anything of substance. Second, even given that you're pulling that single sentence, pulling a quote from Amazon of a book that you haven't read doesn't show anything. It's rude to the author, and it is insulting to the intelligence of the reader to imagine that it does.

More generally, this grates on me in its tone of trying to score points by mocking Jamesdsn's one comment. It is only a minor case of etiquette, though, compared to some other issues. Though it is noteworthy how the insults escalated in the course of comments.

The Bigger Issue

The whole recent race debate is so broad that I really don't want to get into any specifics on it. A lot of other people have covered events in it better than me, and understand more of the context. (Incidentally, I dislike the tendency of some to call it "RaceFail" in the same way that I dislike others calling it "The Great Silliness" or what have you. Both are nicknames that basically fall under my point #1 above. It's fine to say that your opponents are full of fail, or that your opponents are silly, but coining it as a term seems petty to me.)

I think characterizing the other poster is called for -- given shifting positions, deleting posts and accounts, and related behavior. On the other hand, some of the characterizations simply aren't very convincing to someone who isn't already inclined to see things that way -- in part because of the breaks of principles, I think.

Joining Stanford STEP

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:20:50 GMT

So I have officially been accepted and signed up for the STEP program at Stanford. It's a competitive teacher education program that has about 70-90 students gaining a combined master's degree in education and California teacher credential. There's an Edutopia article about it with some description.

Friday morning I had taken the CBEST test -- a SAT/GRE-like test that California requires its teachers to pass. It has a reading section that includes many questions on reading an index, table of contents, or a graph -- in addition to the usual vocabulary and comprehension questions. The math portion is focused on basic operations and simple statistics, i.e. if the students got these scores, what is the average and what is their percentile? I did well, actually getting a perfect score on the reading, rather better than I did on the math, where I probably flubbed some simple arithmetic.

That afternoon, just before I left to pick up Milo, I got a phone call, which went something like:

Voice: "Dr. Kim?"
Me: "Uh... no?"
Voice: "Dr. John Kim?"
Me: "Oh! Yes."
Voice: "You've been accepted into the STEP program at Stanford..."

I got the official email on Monday, and have started to go through the program information in more detail now. I start classes in late June, and graduate in the spring.

I'm excited and a little nervous. I haven't taken any classes since the end of my second year of grad school back in 1993 (with the sole exception of a local tap-dancing class in Irvine). Hopefully it's like riding a bike.

21, The Last Airbender, and Race in Casting

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:38:30 GMT

I've been tempted into semi-television-like browsing of some mediocre and not-so-mediocre movies by Netflix's new online viewing feature (fairly new for Macs).

Among my browsing was the 2008 movie "21" -- based on Ben Mezrich's semi-factual book Bringin Down the House about the MIT Blackjack Team. The casting of this inspired a bunch of criticism because while ~~the team~~ real-life players featured in the book were primarily Asian males, notably Jeff Ma with friends Mike Aponte and John Chang, the film cast the roles with white actors Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, and Jacob Pitts as the leads of the team. There were two token Asian actors also on the team, but they had much smaller parts. cf. The Sydney Morning Herald's "Hollywood fails ethnic realism test" or "racist casting and 21" for some opinions.

I knew in principle about the casting, but when I saw the film, it was even worse than I was expecting. The central storyline of the film is the poor little rich boy -- a good-looking white kid who is top of his class at MIT who wants to go to Harvard Medical School but has trouble affording it. The wrapper story is his applying for a scholarship that would pay his whole way. His mother is widowed and ostensibly working-class, but is nevertheless able to offer him $68,000 for medical school while in her respectable living room.

I was stunned at the privilege inherent in this -- that not being able to afford Harvard Medical School right out of college is genuinely played up as a sob story -- while being a white, male, straight, hot-looking MIT student who is graduating top of his class. The other half of his tale is that when he starts making tens of thousands through legal (though unethical) means, he starts abandoning his two geeky, white, less-hot-looking, and still-poor friends. Meanwhile, the token asian male of the team (played by Aaron Yoo) is portrayed as a kleptomaniac with no real part, and the token asian female of the team (played by Liza Lapira) has even fewer lines. The three white team members are considered the best.

Mind you, race isn't the sole factor here. Even if the movie played up the troubles of an asian top-of-his-class MIT student, that angle on the story would still be stupid. Still, I think that the outrageous sense of privilege and the whitewashed casting are related -- stemming from the same worldview.

In both reality and the movie, the absolutely crucial factor for the success of the team was that they not be conspicuous. According to real-life members, one of the factors in their favor was that young Asian-Americans were not scrutinized as closely as whites by the casinos' security for card-counting. In the movie, however, there was the opposite dynamic. Among the team of five, the two white male players (the lead Campbell and his rival Fisher) were the ones designated to win all the money, while the others (female and/or asian) acted as spotters, unobtrusively signaling when to come to a table.

The film also featured a hazing scene where the lead Campbell is sent to a seedy back alley gambling den in Chinatown, where he is made nervous by all the threatening asian characters there. It turns out that this was secretly done as a test of his being able to remember the card count under pressure. In an interview, Mike Aponte noted about this:

Well, there was no secret casino in Chinatown, but I do know how Mezrich came up with that idea. Martinez, "Kevin Lewis" and I had a friend who was king of the Asian nightclub scene. On Chinese New Year he invited us to a private party in Chinatown. When we arrived we saw they had a few blackjack tables set up. It wasn't much, but they were playing for real money. Of course our natural instinct kicked in and we couldn't resist the temptation to play. (...) It didn't take long for us to wipe them out. Within an hour, we won about $2,000. They were shell-shocked and they didn't have enough money to pay us the full amount. We ended up settling on $1400.

The interesting thing here is that Aponte describes this scene as a safe trial of their system. It was a private party run by a fellow Asian-American friend. In the movie, this is reversed -- the Chinatown gambling den is a threatening hazing to see if Ben can keep his cool under pressure.

I don't think that simply casting white actors for characters who are based on asians is wrong in itself. However, in this case, the film oozes privilege.

Casting The Last Airbender

I had discussed a similar issue with the upcoming live-action adaptation of the animated TV series "Avatar: The Last Airbender". The film isn't out yet, but there are parallels. The director, M. Night Shyamalan has apparently cast an unknown karate star Noah Ringer as Aang (no picture available), with Jackson Rathbone (Twilight's Jasper Hale) as Sokka, Nicola Peltz (Deck the Halls) as Katara, and Pop/R&B singer Jesse McCartney as Prince Zuko.

I first saw this on slashfilm back in December, and briefly noted it in an off-topic RPG forum thread, "Casting for live-action Airbender movie." In January, I commented on a followup thread, "Aang Ain't White (but Superman can be Chinese)?" Here are slashfilm's pics of the casting:

From these images alone, the miscasting is not completely obvious. However, I think that in this case it is central. Aang's race is very important for the story, because he is the last surviving member of the Air Tribe. In the series, the Fire Nation's genocide of the Air Tribe is a huge deal, and indeed is the very title of the series. The Air Tribe aren't a real-world race, but their culture in the series is clearly based on the culture of Tibet and to some degree India. It is possible to code this in different ways, but if Aang appears racially the same as all the other characters, I think something is definitely wrong.

To put the images in more context, here is Sokka with his family of the Southern Water Tribe, and proposed actor Jasper Hale:

Here is Prince Zuko, his voice actor Dante Basco, and proposed cast Jesse McCartney:

I am not saying that these images alone prove that the casting is poor. However, for those unfamiliar with the show, they add a bit more context. In addition, other characters from the series highlight the importance of the asian flavor. Prince Zuko's uncle Iroh is my favorite character of the animated series, played by voice actor Mako.

There is also Sokka's sometime-girlfriend Suki shown below with her voice actress Jenny Kwan,

Race and Casting in General

My lesson from 21 is that the process of whitewashed casting is more than just an isolated case of substituting one worthy actor for another. The choices in casting reflect views of the film-makers. Not every actor needs to be the same race as the original character or real person their character is based on. It depends on the work and the other factor. That said, I will generally suspect some level of racism when white actors are consistently pulled in to play characters that should be Asian, whereas Asian actors almost never play white characters. Based on what I see in 21, I think that suspicion is justified.

To give some counter-examples, I had no problem with either mixed-race Halle Berry or Caucasian Michelle Pfieffer playing Catwoman. The original comic-book character was dark-haired and light-skinned, while the early casting of Catwoman included Caucasian actor Julie Newmar and the late African-American actor Eartha Kitt. However, her appearance changed drastically in different versions of the comic, and she has been shown as blond at various times as well.

Valentine's Day

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:36:46 GMT

Milo coming home from school on Thursday:

"Valentine's Day is SO COOL!!! It's now one of my three favorite holidays, after Halloween and Christmas."

His class had a policy that kids could only give away valentines at school if they gave one to everyone in the whole class. So he came back from school with a bag full of candy from those in the class who gave treats with their valentines.

This is a policy that I would previously have lightly mocked -- I suppose as being an attempt at social manipulation that seems stretched. However, I can't really argue with results.

Last Day for WisCon

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:26:32 GMT

This is the last day to submit program ideas for WisCon 33! Lots of good ideas are out there to be submitted, I'm sure.

Program Idea Submission Form

VNC for Grandmas

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:14:11 GMT

So here's my problem. My mother has a total phobia of computers, and yet she is required to use them for her work. I'd like to have a VNC connection into her computer so that I can connect in and see exactly what she's seeing and doing on her screen. Last time I saw her, in Washington DC, I tried it out and was able to help her out on her laptop. I connected in and could see and interact directly, which was a great help. However, it is a lot harder to get this setup when we're not on the same network -- her in New York and me here in California.

When trying it out locally, we each had Mac laptops, and I used Chicken of the VNC as my client. I originally used an installed VNC server on her laptop, but it turns out that Mac OS has a built-in VNC server as a preference option. Incidentally, part of their MobileMe features includes a client to this as "Back to My Mac" (cf. MobileMe features).

So VNC worked fine when we were local to each other. She uses a Mac desktop and laptop. However, she's over in New York and cannot be relied on to set anything up. I occasionally have to talk her through some basic browser operations.

Both myself and her have a similar setup for our Internet connection. We have a cable modem, connected to a router, connected to an airport. This puts us both behind a NAT. Getting a VNC connection through both of these is a real pain, and makes me really wish for IPv6.

My original thought had been that I could use Mark Lentczner's "Reverse VNC for Mac OS X." This adds reverse VNC to the Mac and Chicken-of-the-VNC. That is a little non-ideal in that it requires her to start up Chicken-of-the-VNC and point it towards me, but in principle I thought that it would be easier for me to set up a publicly-accessible route to my computer.

So there is trying to just port forward through my local router (see car1son's walkthrough of port forwarding), but I'm not guaranteed a static IP from my service. I thought in principle that I could do better by ssh tunneling. I have a hosted server with a DNS entry, so when I wanted to look in, she could just point to darkshire.net. However, I was stymied in this. I could connect into an arbitrary non-reserved port on darkshire and listen to it with a local Perl script, and see that from the outside. However, when I set up an ssh tunnel for remote port forwarding, it isn't passing through. In more detail:

1) I ssh normally into darkshire, then run a script that listens to port 8080 and returns a test message. I point my browser to http://www.darkshire.net:8080/ and I see the message. So that port seems public.

2) I remove port forward to darkshire (i.e. ssh www.darkshire.net -R 8080:10.0.1.2:80). Now I point my browser to http://www.darkshire.net:8080/ and I get no connection. However, from darkshire I can do "wget http://localhost:8080/" and I get my local computer's web page.

This is odd. I'd expect either to be able to get to 8080 on my server or not. But I can get to it one way, but not another.

I had left it there at last count. I really need this to be blazingly simple on all levels on the other end, or it'll be an added burden rather than a help. Even if I got the port forwarded on my end, it's likely asking too much for my mother to start up Chicken-of-the-VNC and reverse it.

Proving I'm a Trekkie

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:07:11 GMT

Coolest post ever - Charlie on io9 posts an amazing flowchart by Stephanie Fox.

"Create Your Own Original Star Trek Story"