The outpouring of love for Steve Jobs over the past couple days is summed up by Techcrunch writer John Biggs: “Apple and Jobs brought something to technology that it didn’t have before he began – irrationality.”
But should we really characterize the intense consumer devotion to the iPhone as an addiction? A recent experiment that I carried out using neuroimaging technology suggests that drug-related terms like “addiction” and “fix” aren’t as scientifically accurate as a word we use to describe our most cherished personal relationships. That word is “love.” – Martin Lindstrom
Apple has aggressively worked on accessibility for users who are blind or deaf or have other limitations, an effort that makes no “business sense” but surely makes human sense if you read that or any of the countless other articles about what a boon the iPhone has been to the blind.
One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?
One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?
Maybe Nikki Chau could better answer her own question if she did a tiny bit of scholarly research and perhaps a little bit less meditating on the subject?
Because right now it seems that question is equivalent to asking if it's crazy trying to use a paint brush to drive a screw.-40hz (October 18, 2011, 08:07 AM)
One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?- she may be being disingenuous in an attempt to conceal her plagiarism. Of course that's not very likely. (Yeah, right.)
"You can have any color Ford you want as long as it's black."
Wikipedia: Maslow's theory suggests that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs.
Hop on that spaceship tailing the Hale-Bopp asteroid with me baby, and we'll transcend humanity together - it's the last bus outta here!Irrational religious belief and wish-fulfillment.
I'm metamotivated baby!(Sounds like something from the drugged sixties that Austin Powers would have said.)
I don't know much about the specifics of marketing theory but I did chance upon an assertion that marketing cannot create needs where there was none.I usually would advise caution when assertions are being made, because they can generally be meaningless if not substantiated by fact or at least solid theory.-Paul Keith (October 19, 2011, 10:35 PM)
...your latter post falls apart...- I am at a loss, as there seems to be nothing to "fall apart". Whilst it might be badly/hastily written, I was not trying to structure a proposition or argument for debate, but was genarally merely pointing out that Maslow's theory would seem to be a weak thing on which to base an argument for anything, because the research that relates to it has apparently only been able to throw the whole thing into question - i.e., the opposite of substantiating it (QED). There is apparently no proof that the theory holds out in practice (QED).
..and that the author is aiming this more at...- as I have no idea what she is aiming at, and I don't see how you can have special knowledge of what she is aiming at either, when what she is saying is irrational (QED). ;)
Yet, at the same, you have a scenario here where once you expand on the fallacious concept of Maslow - you simply build the case for it.
I sincerely thank you for sharing that link on ahamkara.Thank YOU. I learned about this concept in about 1994, when I attended a series of educational sessions at The School of Philosophy (http://www.philosophy.org.nz/) in Wellington, New Zealand. I was mindboggled by it at first. I found it to be one of the most profoundly useful concepts that I have come across, and it helps to explain a state of being or perception that I had hitherto been unable to understand. It helped me to understand myself a little more. I am so pleased if the link has proved useful. Please pass it on.
I don't know if Oakley-branded glasses are a good example for self-actualization though.No they are probably not, depending on how you define "self-actualization", but I have no idea what "self-actualization" means.
...I have self-actualised all over the carpet...- the whole idea is stupid/funny.
Of course this is all hypothetical. I don't think or believe actual moral marketers do this...LOL. "Moral marketers" - a novel concept. An oxymoron.
Yet, at the same, you have a scenario here where once you expand on the fallacious concept of Maslow - you simply build the case for it.Eh? Who is this guy Maslow anyway? ;)
...when Nikki's original post...And who the heck is Nikki?
- the whole idea is stupid/funny.
"Moral marketers" - a novel concept. An oxymoron.
Eh? Who is this guy Maslow anyway?
And who the heck is Nikki?
Debunking self-actualization is certainly an interesting thing especially from a Hindu (Buddhism?) perspective.if you mean that you thought I was trying to debunk self-actualization from a Hindu perspective, I wasn't, as I am too metamotivated to do that (Yeah baby!). ;)-Paul Keith (October 22, 2011, 10:18 PM)
"Hindu activists say the canal project will damage Lord Rama's bridge...Hindu hardliners say the project will destroy what they say is a bridge built by Ram and his army of monkeys."
Thus the thesis of Nikki Chau's post is definitely invalid to start with, so why waste time discussing an invalid proposition unless it is to explore the reasons why it is invalid? That's arguably likely to be the only useful thing (analysis of reasoning as to why the argument is invalid) that could be gained from discussing it. Otherwise we might be better off - and have more fun - debating (say) the existence of winged fairies (because everyone already knows that the wingless variety exists as pixies).-IainB (October 21, 2011, 05:48 AM)
...as stuff like social media sharing buttons spread around the concept is what then boosted the motivation to develop such concepts as social curation and cross-sharing further than what designers and coders would have intended. (My emphasis.)I thought this Dilbert cartoon (http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/30000/6000/700/136776/136776.strip.sunday.gif) made a good comment on this...speaks for itself really.-Paul Keith (October 18, 2011, 01:38 PM)
...as stuff like social media sharing buttons spread around the concept is what then boosted the motivation to develop such concepts as social curation and cross-sharing further than what designers and coders would have intended. (My emphasis.)I thought this Dilbert cartoon (http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/30000/6000/700/136776/136776.strip.sunday.gif) made a good comment on this...speaks for itself really.-Paul Keith (October 18, 2011, 01:38 PM)-IainB (October 30, 2011, 10:48 AM)
I don't see what's confusing.
...
...Again, I'd like to emphasize that the above is merely hinting at the potential of social curation and not saying this will be the reality.-Paul Keith (November 05, 2011, 10:28 AM)
curation
late 14c., from O.Fr. curacion, from L. curationem, noun of action from curare "to cure" (see cure).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
At the same time, the bullshit factor of buzz words here is that Workflowy doesn't state it is a social curation tool. The designers might not even be thinking of social curation when they design the app. Yet here's the flip side though. Is Workflowy better off because of it? I say no. A big part of social curation is the social. Actually social here doesn't mean sharing except that it can be shown to the public/friends that get permission. What in reality it is hinting at is that export and import can be cool.
...but in order to be cool, it has to be personalized to more casual needs and layed out in better ways. Bullshit buzz words or not - there's nothing confusing about that especially for technical people. Export/import and presentations was always an important and controversial issue in all walks of life but software developers have often tacked it on if not been slow to adopt to this. Web developers focus too much on mobile. Desktop developers focus too much on caged databases. Had Workflowy been more of a social curation tool maybe it would have focus on a desktop compliment already. Maybe.
If this is still confusing, here's the bottomline. Curator as a word especially in a digital world? Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit in that. The average blogger can be a curator simply by blogging. You won't know whether he's a good or bad curator at that. You might not even sniff it because blogging is based on popularity and niche circles much like social networks. Social curation though - you can see a bit of the person's identity through that as it's their personal collection. Not in an entirely privacy invading way but like a well researched blogger making a blog post. The difference between the potential of social curation design and blogging is that blogging asks for the reader to have an interest in skimming through archives with little way of organizing a story except maybe via chronological and tag based random clickings. Social curation could potentially adopt the concept of stumbling upon data that Stumbleupon originally popularized before that service was hijacked into a social media category and combine it with the innovations of annotations (PDFs/Diigo), personal website scraping (Scrapbook+/Surfulator) and combine it with the bundles of an e-book.
The main difference to me is that curation is more than filtering (whichever form you give it): curation is about giving context.
A filter will select content. A collaborative filter, content based on what others and you did.
A curator will not only do that but add context: comment, analysis, format, pictures, ... Why they felt it was relevant, why they agree or disagree with that content.
Look at how the same piece of news is titled differently by say CNN and Fox and Al Jazeera: it's the same news but the context can be way different because each time, a human being - not an algorithm - gave his own twist to it.-Guillaume Decugis, I run Scoop.it
...That is what modern social curation tools are aiming for.
Here's a thing called "curation", and it means whatever I say it means, but it means kinda everything. This "everything" is the objective that the designers of "modern social curation tools" are aiming for. Yet those designers seem to be unable to define what curation is any more clearly than they can define what the objective of using them is.
Easily Publish
Gorgeous Magazines
Leverage Curation to increase your visibility.
Give persistence to your social media presence.
Why Financial Literacy Fails
“Actually,” I told the interviewer, “I don’t think this country needs more financial literacy education. Time and again, financial literacy efforts have failed. They don’t make any noticeable difference in the way we spend and save.”
I gave an example from my own life. “When I was in high school, all seniors were required to take a financial literacy class. It covered topics like compound interest, the Federal Reserve, how to write a check, and the dangers of credit cards. I took that class. I aced every test. And five years later, I had the beginnings of a debt habit.”
I wasn’t the only one. From what I can tell, the kids from my high school grew up to be no different than the rest of Americans. We learned the basics of financial literacy, but it had no perceivable impact on the way we saved and spent and earned. We still made stupid mistakes. We still spent more than we earned? Why? Because financial literacy isn’t the answer!
If you’ve been following Get Rich Slowly for any length of time, you can probably guess what I believe is a better solution. It’s not to feed people more facts and figures. It’s not to teach them how bonds work or to explain the sheer awesomeness of a Roth IRA. I believe what we really need in this country is some sort of behavioral education.
I’m just not sure how to do it.
Behavioral Finance
Personal finance is simple. Fundamentally, you only need to one thing: To build wealth, you must spend less than you earn. The end. That’s it. We can all go home now. Everything else simply builds on this. Why, then, is it so hard for everyone to get ahead?
For some people, it’s systemic. There’s no doubt that some people are trapped in a cycle of poverty, and they truly need outside help to overcome the obstacles they face. But for most of us, the issue is internal: The problem is us. In other words, I am the reason that I can’t get ahead. And you are the reason that you can’t get ahead. It’s not a lack of financial literacy that holds us back, but a chain of bad behavior.
One of the key tenets of this site is that money is more about mind than it is about math. That is, our financial success isn’t determined by how smart we are with numbers, but how well we’re able to control our emotions — our wants and desires.
There’s actually a branch of economics called behavioral finance devoted exclusively to this phenomenon, exploring the interplay between economic theory and psychological reality. And in August, I wrote about a new wave of folks who are exploring the gamification of personal finance; they’re trying to turn money management into a game. More and more, experts are seeing that our economic decisions aren’t based on logic, but on emotion and desire.
“For years, I struggled with money,” I told my interviewer today. “I knew the math, but I still couldn’t seem to defeat debt. It wasn’t until I started applying psychology to the situation that I was able to make changes. For instance, I used the debt snowball to pay down my debt in an illogical yet psychologically satisfying way. It worked. And I’ve learned that by having financial goals — such as travel — I’m much more inclined to save than if I have no goals at all.”
...it seems enough people find use in the idea...- which is an implicit appeal to the consensus.
(From Wikipedia Flesch–Kincaid readability test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test#Flesch.E2.80.93Kincaid_Grade_Level))(Mind you, I have come across not a few university graduates who seemed to have been particularly challenged in this regard.)
The F-K formula was first used by the US Army for assessing the difficulty of technical manuals in 1978 and soon after became the Department of Defense military standard. The commonwealth of Pennsylvania was the first state in the US to require that automobile insurance policies be written at no higher than a ninth grade level of reading difficulty, as measure by the F-K formula. This is now a common requirement in many other states and for other legal documents such as insurance policies.
Flesch Reading Ease scores:
- 90.0–100.0: easily understandable by an average 11-year-old student.
- 60.0–70.0: easily understandable by 13- to 15-year-old students.
- 0.0–30.0: best understood by university graduates.
And in August, I wrote about a new wave of folks who are exploring the gamification of personal finance; they’re trying to turn money management into a game.
Gamification: The process of turning an aspect of, or a process in our lives into a game, in order to enable us to manage these aspects of our lives more effectively and efficiently.
but it seems that you have not yet been able to provide sufficiently coherent definition or fact to be able to establish whether the term "curation" and its derivatives are anything more than undefined hyped-up BS buzzwords that an implied 97% of scientists bloggers believe to be true.(A logical fallacy - an appeal to the consensus.)
I have already had one person in the DCF comment that I am "...the man who writes the longest and most convoluted posts in the entire forum". I think this was from the same person as used a logical fallacy without realising it and, when I mentioned it, seemed to think it was a matter of opinion as to whether it was a fallacy.(!)
- which is an implicit appeal to the consensus.
Maybe the earth is still flat, and maybe Hitler was grossly misunderstood, and maybe eugenics/Communism/Fascism/[insert religio-political ideology or pseudoscience here] is the way ahead, and maybe there is anthropogenic global warming, and maybe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, but I remain incredulous regarding these things until they are able to be substantiated as unequivocally true.
The article provides no definition for:
Financial Literacy
behavioral education
Behavioral Finance
Personal finance
- and yet these terms are used and bandied around in the article as though they actually mean something.
There's nothing wrong with the article that couldn't be fixed by a complete rewrite.
Of course, there is no "new wave of folks who are exploring the gamification of personal finance". I have been involved in creating such games for students to play (on a mainframe computer) as learning games since the early '70s. Things have moved on a bit since then - e.g., I can practice placing buys and sells on the stock market through an online game system run by my New Zealand bank, which is similar to a game sponsored by the Wider Share Ownership Council in the UK in the mid-'70s.
Despite all this, it tends to be the case that the operation of accounting systems - and especially banking/insurance systems and processes - are a closed book to the majority of the population (who have not studied the theory of accounting and national payments transaction processing). I have a very cynical view that this state of affairs is maintained by the banks and insurance companies because they can only really maximise their profits by maintaining an impenetrable transparency of their operations. The last thing they want is a theoretically perfect Keynesian market where all consumers know what products and services are on offer at what prices, and from which financial institutions. That means that it is very difficult for the typical consumer to know/understand what the heck is going on with their money in the financial market.
There are far more cell phones in India than there is access to sanitary toilets — about 600 million out of 1.2 billion Indians have ready access to a clean bathroom, while 800 million Indians have cell phones. That rather shocking stat, was an a-ha moment for Swapnil Chaturvedi, an entrepreneur who has been working on sanitation projects in India’s slums and who was looking for an idea to help him reach many more millions of Indians with clean toilets.
Chaturvedi’s idea is the awesomely-named Poop Rewards, a startup that creates an incentive program using cell phone talk minutes and other prizes to convince Indians that don’t have easy access to toilets to use designated public toilets in their area. These cell phone users are extremely price sensitive, explained Chaturvedi to me in an interview after winning first prize at the business competition Startup Weekend Delhi, and he thinks this demographic will be willing to change their behavior (or use a public toilet) to save a little bit of money or earn free cell phone talk time.
How it works
With a phone company as a partner, more public toilets could be built in the necessary areas — the U.N. estimates it only costs $300 for a low-cost toilet — and cell phone companies can use the rewards program to retain low-price conscious customers and provide a public service, which can also help with loyalty.
The Indian cell phone market is becoming increasingly commoditized and Indian cell phone companies are struggling to find ways to end churn (customers hopping to the next cheaper cell phone carrier offering a deal). Chaturvedi says carriers like Airtel spend a significant amount of money just trying to keep its customers from leaving for a competitor. In the same way that the airline industry was saved by rewards programs that gave free miles to loyal users, cell phone companies can create rewards programs around sanitation that can also give back to the community, says Chaturvedi.
Down the road, Chaturvedi envisions the program could be an open source tool that local entrepreneurs in developing areas can use to create their own Poop Rewards programs with carriers. But Chaturvedi is still just figuring out his business model, he tells me.
Development of an idea
Like all good entrepreneurs, Chaturvedi has pivoted a bit on his original ideas. He had been working on a type of toilet that could convert human waste into electricity, and he’d received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work on that. But after going over the math, he kept realizing he was only going to be able to reach a very small population relative to the problem because the project required funding and lacked incentives. His new idea, Poop Rewards, could potentially work with the waste-to-fuel toilet, but it is more focused overall on just boosting a sanitation network.
Chaturvedi hopes to start a pilot project with a test toilet and user group in the coming months (Airtel is really interested, he says). Make way for the Poop franchise. Though, yes, there are a bunch of hurdles ahead, like convincing a carrier for a deal, and launching a program that does actually produce a behavior change.
Along the way no doubt he’ll need some funding, and most of the startups at Startup Weekend Delhi were looking for funds. At the end of Chaturvedi’s pitch, angel investor Dave McClure (see disclosure below) told Chaturvedi that his pitch was the best of the day and that he is interested in potentially funding the project.
Proficiency points are gained for weapon types that are actually used, and they are gained at set boundaries, independent of the level up process - if you've used a weapon for so long you're going to get better, even if you've not killed a few thousand creatures or solved a few quests.
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/berkun/2008/08/why-jargon-feeds-on-lazy-minds.html
Why Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds
Posted by Scott Berkun on August 7, 2008 11:40 AM
If I could give every single business writer, guru or executive one thing to read every morning before work, it'd be this essay by George Orwell: Politics and the English Language.
Not only is this essay short, brilliant, thought-provoking and memorable, it calls bullshit on most of what passes today as speech and written language in management circles. And if you are too lazy to read the article, all you need to remember is this: never use a fancy word when a simple one will do. If your idea is good, no hype is necessary. Explain it clearly and people will get it, if there truly is something notable to get. If your idea is bad: keep working before you share it with others. And if you don't have time for that, you might as well be honest. Because when you throw jargon around, most of us know you're probably lying about something anyway.
In honor of George, whose birthday was last month, here is a handy list of words I hear often in management circles that should be banned. Flat out, these words are never used for good reason.
Words that should be banned:
Breakthrough
Transformative
Next-generation
Seamless
Game-changing
Ideation (oh how I hate this word)
Disruptive
Incentivize
Innovation Infrastructure
Customer-centric
Radical
These are the lazy words of 2008, and whenever i see them used I feel justified in challenging the claims. To use these words with a straight face is to assume the listener is an idiot. They are intellectual insults. They are shortcuts away from good marketing and strong thinking since they try to sneak by with claims they know they cannot prove or do not make any sense.
Marketers and managers use jargon because it's safe. No one stops them to ask: exactly what is it you are breaking through? What precisely are you transforming, and how are you certain the new thing will be better than the old (e.g. New Coke)? If no one, especially no one in power, challenges its use, jargon spreads, choking the life out of conversations and meetings forever.
Pay attention to who uses the most jargon: it's never the brightest. It's those who want to be perceived as the best and the brightest, something they know they are not. They use cheap language tricks to intimidate, distract, and confuse, hoping to sneak past those afraid to ask what they really mean.
I'm going to do my best for the rest of the year to question people who use these lazy, deceptive, and inflated terms. Maybe then they'll use their real marketing talents and tell me a story so powerful that I believe, all on my own, will transform this, or revolutionize that.
What jargon do you hear these days that you'd like to add to the list above? Let me know.
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Politics And The English Language
by George Orwell
Published in Horizon, April 1946; Modern British Writing ed. Denys Val Baker, 1947.
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language so the arguments runs must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative samples. I number them so I can refer back to them when necessary:
1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien (sic) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression).
2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes such egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate or put at a loss for bewilder.Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa).
3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? Essay on psychology in Politics (New York).
4. All the 'best people' from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic Fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror of the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction to proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoisie to chauvinistic fervour on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Communist pamphlet.
5 . If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes, or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as 'standard English'. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school ma'amish arch braying of blameless, bashful mewing maidens! Letter in Tribune.
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:
Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, rift within the lute, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a 'rift', for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.
Operators, or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subject to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining) . The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.
Pretentious diction.. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilise, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien r?gime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, Gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc) consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
Meaningless words.. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, 'The outstanding features of Mr X's work is its living quality', while another writes, 'The immediately striking thing about Mr X's work is its peculiar deadness', the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit 3, above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations race, battle, bread dissolve into the vague phrase 'success or failure in competitive activities'. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing no one capable of using phrases like 'objective consideration of contemporary phenomena' would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyse these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ('time and chance') that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier even quicker, once you have the habit to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech it is natural to fall into a pretentious, latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting-pot it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski uses five negatives in 53 words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means, (3) if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4) the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea-leaves blocking a sink. In (5) words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a 'party line'. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of Under-Secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases bestial atrocities, iron heel, blood-stained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, 'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he 'felt impelled' to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I see:
'(The Allies) have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.'
You see, he 'feels impelled' to write feels, presumably, that he has something new to say and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, ant that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of fly-blown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
To begin with, it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting-up of a 'standard English' which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a 'good prose style'. On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meanings as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose not simply accept the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. .If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse into the dustbin where it belongs.
So I haven't seen the proof/"proof" that claims Maslow is "debunked". After all, people are "sorta wonderful", so if the "proof" is flawed, then everything spirals down into Alice's Wonderland when you have to decide if the mistake was honest or deliberate.-TaoPhoenix (February 01, 2012, 08:34 AM)
If you're interested in Maslow (and ready to move beyond Wikipedia)...That could seem to be a rather cheap shot smacking of intellectual snobbery, and as such would do the author no credit. It could also seem to be irrelevant - providing neither rational substantiation of a previous argument nor disproving a previous argument.-40hz (February 01, 2012, 04:57 PM)
Note: self-actualization isn't properly a "buzz word" since Maslow coined and used that term in his writings. :PThat would seem to be an incorrect statement - for example, from Etymonline:-40hz (February 01, 2012, 04:57 PM)
Word Origin & History(The quote from Ann Oakley is out of context and is not a rational construct or argument with any substantiation given, so it is probably merely a statement of opinion. Example: some people may find housework to be very fulfilling (say) as in "nest-building".)
self-actualization
1939, from self + actualization. Popularized, though not coined, by U.S. psychologist and philosopher Abraham H. Maslow. (1908-1970).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Matching Quote
"Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization."
-Ann Oakley
buzzwordGenerally speaking, using the above with other common definitions, you will be able to equate:
Pronunciation: /ˈbʌzwəːd/
(also buzz phrase)
noun
informal
a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context: the latest buzzword in international travel is ‘ecotourism’
(http://http://oxforddictionaries.com/)
If you're interested in Maslow (and ready to move beyond Wikipedia)...-40hz (February 01, 2012, 04:57 PM)
That could seem to be a rather cheap shot smacking of intellectual snobbery, and as such would do the author no credit.-IainB (February 01, 2012, 09:04 PM)
That could seem to be a rather cheap shot smacking of intellectual snobbery, and as such would do the author no credit.That was a rational and impersonal statement.
Perhaps a certain sort of person might take my words as a "cheap shot."This of course could be suggesting snidely that it is I who am "that sort of person" (in a pejorative sense).
And as for Maslow, I'd say his pyramid isn't "disproved". Once again, it's also difficult to create any theory with *zero* use. Remember, he was among other things reacting to Skinner's rather insidious legacy of rat mazes applied to people. A lot of evil corporate managers deliberately chop off the top couple of pyramid layers to force people to keep worrying about the lower rungs, which results in getting away with lower pay rates.It would be incorrect to say that because something has not been proven and yet:-TaoPhoenix (February 01, 2012, 08:34 AM)
isn't "disproved"- then it has even a grain of truth in it.
And that's the rub. There's no proof people actually do self-actualize. (Skinner would argue they didn't.) Because self-actualization argues for some higher order of existence or awareness (i.e. a soul) which amounts to a version of 'pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.'
It was something Maslow was never able to satisfactorily explain, although he did remark how horrible a world it would be if some form of self-actualization didn't really exist.
In the end, you have to take the existence of self-actualization on faith.
I do. :)-40hz (February 01, 2012, 09:17 AM)
Recent research appears to validate the existence of universal human needs, although the hierarchy proposed by Maslow is called into questionWikipedia gives references to support this statement - here (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/maslow-20-a-new-and-improved-recipe-for-happiness/243486/#.TkvKIRv8USE.facebook), and here (https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-2-354.pdf&pli=1).
...Maslow's theory would seem to be a weak thing on which to base an argument for anything, because the research that relates to it has apparently only been able to throw the whole thing into question - i.e., the opposite of substantiating it (QED). There is apparently no proof that the theory holds out in practice (QED).
This would be quite the reverse, for example, to the validity of the theory (unverifiable at the time it was proposed) of gravitational lenses postulated by Einstein.-IainB (October 21, 2011, 05:48 AM)
How do you even state the criteria of a proof?I'm not sure how you would do this for Maslow's theory. At a guess it would require empiric research over several thousand people/cases, using a control group(s) and requiring defined and repeatable results.-TaoPhoenix (February 02, 2012, 07:26 AM)
Also I understand Maslow's theory to be a *correlation*, not a Boolean either-or-xor or such.High correlation proves that there is high correlation. It does not prove a cause/effect relationship. One of the earliest lessons I had in statistics was to gather data about the import of bananas into the UK and the amount of reported crimes in the UK, over a period of years, and then summarise conclusions from the analysis of the data. There was no doubt about it, the rate of growth in the crime rate had a high correlation with the rate of growth in the import of bananas.-TaoPhoenix (February 02, 2012, 07:26 AM)
High correlation proves that there is high correlation. It does not prove a cause/effect relationship.Interestingly, it looks as though this may yet be proven to be an inexact generalisation: Linking correlation to causation with power laws and scale free systems (http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/NzKuPgcpSdY/seeing-a-power-law-in-data-doesnt-make-it-real.ars)-IainB (February 02, 2012, 08:49 AM)
In his short treatise On Bullshit, the moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt gives us a useful theory of bullshit. We normally think of bullshit as a synonym—albeit a somewhat vulgar one—for lies or deceit. But Frankfurt argues that bullshit has nothing to do with truth.
Rather, bullshit is used to conceal, to impress or to coerce. Unlike liars, bullshitters have no use for the truth. All that matters to them is hiding their ignorance or bringing about their own benefit.
Gamification is bullshit.
I'm not being flip or glib or provocative. I'm speaking philosophically.
More specifically, gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway.
Bullshitters are many things, but they are not stupid. The rhetorical power of the word "gamification" is enormous, and it does precisely what the bullshitters want: it takes games—a mysterious, magical, powerful medium that has captured the attention of millions of people—and it makes them accessible in the context of contemporary business.
Gamification is reassuring. It gives Vice Presidents and Brand Managers comfort: they're doing everything right, and they can do even better by adding "a games strategy" to their existing products, slathering on "gaminess" like aioli on ciabatta at the consultant's indulgent sales lunch.
Gamification is easy. It offers simple, repeatable approaches in which benefit, honor, and aesthetics are less important than facility. For the consultants and the startups, that means selling the same bullshit in book, workshop, platform, or API form over and over again, at limited incremental cost. It ticks a box. Social media strategy? Check. Games strategy? Check.
The title of this symposium shorthands these points for me: the slogan "For the Win," accompanied by a turgid budgetary arrow and a tumescent rocket, suggesting the inevitable priapism this powerful pill will bring about—a Viagra for engagement dysfunction, engorgement guaranteed for up to one fiscal quarter.
This rhetorical power derives from the "-ification" rather than from the "game". -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it's usually bullshit. Just add points.
Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets games wrong, mistaking incidental properties like points and levels for primary features like interactions with behavioral complexity. That may be true, but truth doesn't matter for bullshitters. Indeed, the very point of gamification is to make the sale as easy as possible.
I've suggested the term "exploitationware" as a more accurate name for gamification's true purpose, for those of us still interested in truth. Exploitationware captures gamifiers' real intentions: a grifter's game, pursued to capitalize on a cultural moment, through services about which they have questionable expertise, to bring about results meant to last only long enough to pad their bank accounts before the next bullshit trend comes along.
I am not naive and I am not a fool. I realize that gamification is the easy answer for deploying a perversion of games as a mod marketing miracle. I realize that using games earnestly would mean changing the very operation of most businesses. For those whose goal is to clock out at 5pm having matched the strategy and performance of your competitors, I understand that mediocrity's lips are seductive because they are willing. For the rest, those of you who would consider that games can offer something different and greater than an affirmation of existing corporate practices, the business world has another name for you: they call you "leaders."
Furthermore, he chose not just to dedicate superhuman effort to this profession, but to practice in one of the poorest of poor regions of the world, Haiti, where every newcomer is "blan" (white), even African Americans from the US.
On a certain level, a doctor like Paul Farmer is an indictment of the way most physicians in this country practice. Paul Farmer could, if he chose, be one of the highest paid consultant in the country. He has demonstrated the intellect and the force of will to succeed at any branch of medicine. And yet, he chose infectious disease and epidemiology as his twin callings, two of the lower-paying specialties within the field.
V. Munsey says:
Yeah, what about his wife and kid? It sounds like they are pretty much ignored by him. How sad. Why did he marry and have a family if he knew his work would always take first place?
I think even non-physicians might have this initial reaction. I think a common defense mechanism might also be one that occurred to me, to pathologize Farmer, to think of his drive to help others as a need to satisfy some kind of internal conflict. After all, if Farmer does what he does to "quite the voices", then the rest of us are off the hook.
In the end, I came to realize that this was grossly unfair. A reader does not know and never can know what drives a man like Farmer, we can only judge him by his works. And those works are amazing. Time and again in his career, Farmer chose to push for the absolute best care for the absolute poorest of his patients. He refused to accept that the best HIV and tuberculosis drugs were "inappropriate technology" for Haiti. Instead, by tirelessly fighting for his patients, he redefined how tuberculosis and other horrible diseases are treated. I would encourage a reader to look closest at this aspect of Farmer, as it can be applied to all of our lives.
To close, I am reminded of the old saying:
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
--George Bernard Shaw
Dr. Paul Farmer is an unreasonable man who has changed the world.
Not only that: we should help them because, in most every case, their poverty is a sign that we have failed them. Farmer angrily ticks off case after case, most of them straight from his first-hand experience, where what initially looks like a senseless, random death is seen to be a symptom of a deeper systemic problem. The most haunting of these may be the death of a young Haitian girl named Acephie who contracted HIV from a Haitian soldier. She had sex with him because soldiers are some of the few Haitians with dependable salaries. But what led Acephie into that position of economic dependence to begin with? It didn't help that the Haitian government, with the blessing of Western development agencies, had evicted Acephie's family years before to build a dam; the family had to move to higher, poorer ground because of someone's idea of what was good for them. The road from there leads more or less directly to the AIDS death of a Haitian girl. (James Scott's Seeing Like A State contains a lot more tragedies in this direction.)
Pathologies of Power is filled with stories like that. It is not a hopeful book; it is very, very bitter. This despite Kidder's blurb on the cover to the contrary: Kidder recognized the anger, but saw hopefulness that I didn't.
transcendent (trænˈsɛndənt)
— adj
1. exceeding or surpassing in degree or excellence
2. a. (in the philosophy of Kant) beyond or before experience; a priori
b. (of a concept) falling outside a given set of categories
c. beyond consciousness or direct apprehension
3. theol (of God) having continuous existence outside the created world
4. free from the limitations inherent in matter
— n
5. philosophy a transcendent thing
anthropomorphism definition
(an-thruh-puh- mawr -fiz-uhm) The attributing of human characteristics and purposes to inanimate objects, animals, plants, or other natural phenomena, or to God. To describe a rushing river as “angry” is to anthropomorphize it.
"Each layer of Maslow's hierarchy becomes more and more anthromorphic yet as we know of anthromorphism, many of that can be illusions humans created."- because I do not understand the sense of this.
I can't really speak for Nikki obviously but as I'm also one of those who refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs loosely in my own writing, I think what makes it so appealing to refer to that concept is not so much the existence of the hierarchy itself but the final step of self-actualization which depending on how you interpret it has elements of buzz and manipulation to it too.Nikki's post was in a link per your opening post: Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid. (http://www.nikkichau.com/2011/10/08/beyond-gamification-designing-up-maslow-pyramid/) Her post is absurd (QED).-Paul Keith (October 18, 2011, 01:38 PM)
Abraham Maslow:
I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds (or better, degrees) of self-actualizing people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central…. I find not only self-actualizing people who transcend, but also nonhealthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences. …
“Furthermore, when going forward & returning, he makes himself fully alert; when looking toward & looking away… when bending & extending his limbs… when carrying his outer cloak, his upper robe & his bowl… when eating, drinking, chewing, & savoring… when urinating & defecating… when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, & remaining silent, he makes himself fully alert”.
205. What is the inner significance of the story of Gajendra Moksha?
Gajendra was a king in his previous birth and he became an elephant on account of a curse given to him by a sage. Here king signifies Atma. Atma is the king and Paramatma is the kingmaster. This elephant forgot the Atmatatwa and he was leading a life of attachment and illusion, entering the forest of life. Wandering in the forest of life it became thirsty. This thirst relates to the enjoyment of the senses. Immediately it saw a lake. This lake signifies worldly desires and that is called the samsara. He wanted to enjoy the pleasure of samsara and entered the lake. At once a crocodile, which can be compared to 'Mamakara' or attachment and 'Ahamkara' or ego, caught hold of its leg. The elephant was not able to escape from it. It tried all its physical and mental strength but in vain. At last it prayed for God's help. Similarly we are leading our lives entirely depending upon the strength of the body and mind. But these are not capable of giving happiness or peace. When we dedicate these two strengths to God and think that everything depends upon the grace of God, then we may get peace and happiness with the grace of God. When the elephant prayed, God sent his Chakra called "Sudarsana Chakra" and killed the crocodile and saved the elephant. The inner meaning of 'Sudarsana' is "Su" means good - darshan means vision. So Sudarshan is not merely a weapon or instrument: it is the good look of God, when elephant turned his sight to God, the look of God also turned towards the elephant. So also our Bhagawan says "You look to me and I shall certainly look to you".
The crocodile in its last life was a king called HuHu in the Gandharva planet. Once while enjoying himself in the waters, he pulled the leg of a sage. The enraged sage cursed the king to become a crocodile in his next life. The repentant HuHu asked for pardon. The Sage proclaimed that though he cannot reverse the curse, the crocodile would be liberated from the cycle of birth and death when Gajendra would be saved by the Lord Vishnu Himself.
Are you kidding me?! Who's mindful when they are urinating and defecating?Anyone who wishes to practice mindfulness as a meditative exercise. I can confirm this is so from my own experience in meditation.
"Each layer of Maslow's hierarchy becomes more and more anthromorphic..."Well, yes, of course it is anthropomorphic. It is, after all, supposed to be modelling human needs. Whether it becomes more anthropomorphic as you progress up the pyramid would arguably be a matter of individual perception.
For a person to go to this extreme and be truly mindful, they would have to...I am not aware that the Universe has put any rules on what must be done to be truly mindful, though I strongly suspect that meditation helps as a start.
"You know Paul Keith, you have a point there."I actually did ask myself that question, before writing what I did. I considered but was unsure as to whether it was my inability to decode what you said, or your inability to put things more rationally, or a mixture of both that was the problem.
If you're sincere in using such a grave word as ahamkara though in this context...- and there I think you show something of yourself. Who says it is a "grave word"? It can be any kind of word. I call it a useful and defined concept. It is merely a very useful tool for thinking with. Ahamkara with the word ahamkara? Possibly ahamkara with the terms "self-actualisation" and gamification as well?
...life does not end at all...Can be neither proven nor disproven, except presumably by individual experience.
I have consistently pointed out that a discussion that uses undefined terms cannot be rational, by definition (that's not an opinion).-IainB
I only used the definition of "transcendent" because there was no working definition (that I am aware of) that we were using for "self-actualisation"
I wonder if, because you have inadvertently used these BS words in trying to articulate your thinking in what you have written here or elsewhere, you might have entered into a state of ahamkara with the very BS terms we have been discussing.
If that (ahamkara) is the case, then:
* (a) you will be unable to accept any denial of their existence as real/useful objects, because to do so would mean that you had been mistaken in using them in the first place, and your ego can't allow that thought (cf. De Bono re "intellectual deadlock"). So your ego may now oblige you to have to defend these useless BS things instead of saying, "You know Iain, you have a point there. They are purely imaginary and undefined constructs and I have only been imagining that I have been using them, but it seemed very real to me at the time."
* (b) to rationally refute the terms at this stage could be a very hard thing for you to do, but it would be interesting if you were able to do it. It would probably demonstrate that you are able to exercise the capacity to overcome your internal intellectual deadlock and transcend your ego, and become more rational in the process.
then why do you not not suggest something else that will do? Otherwise, continuing discussing things using the term "self-actualisation" would indeed be (as I think I have already suggested) rather like discussing the buttons on the Emperor's new (invisible) clothes - i.e., an absurdity/irrationality.
you will be unable to accept any denial of their existence as real/useful objects,
and your ego can't allow that thought (cf. De Bono re "intellectual deadlock").
So your ego may now oblige you to have to defend these useless BS things instead of saying,
Because it is such a concept, I can do what the heck I want with it without abusing anyone or anything, and it's use does not rely on alignment with any mumbo-jumbo in Hinduism.-the passion is strong in this one
You would probably be right, but the thing about Maslow's pyramid was that it was a hierarchy of needs. It wasn't suggesting relative superiority/inferiority of states per se, but merely that you could not move from the 1st need level to the 2nd one until your needs at the 1st level had been met, and so on. I think that that part of Maslow's theory stands up pretty well, simply because he defined them as fixed but necessarily linearly successive states.
The trouble with using pyramids in diagrams is that they are ambiguous on their own. If you employ them in a concept diagram, then one person's interpretation of meaning could be quite different to what the author might have intended.-IainB
Well, yes, of course it is anthropomorphic. It is, after all, supposed to be modelling human needs. Whether it becomes more anthropomorphic as you progress up the pyramid would arguably be a matter of individual perception.-IainB
I actually did ask myself that question, before writing what I did. I considered but was unsure as to whether it was my inability to decode what you said, or your inability to put things more rationally, or a mixture of both that was the problem.-IainB
- and there I think you show something of yourself. Who says it is a "grave word"? It can be any kind of word. I call it a useful and defined concept. It is merely a very useful tool for thinking with. Ahamkara with the word ahamkara? Possibly ahamkara with the terms "self-actualisation" and gamification as well?
We are all probably in a state of ahamkara to some degree, at one stage or another, if not all the time.-IainB
Can be neither proven nor disproven, except presumably by individual experience.
Transcendence.-IainB
Well, I'm sorry Keith, this is all very repetitive. Maybe we are talking at cross-purposes and will never be able to understand each other in this - and it's possibly because of our different and peculiar paradigms.-IainB (June 04, 2012, 05:53 PM)
By suggesting "transcendent", I was only trying to be helpful and move things along.However, we still seem to be in the state of trying to have a rational discussion whilst continuing using undefined terms, so I don't think things have moved along at all really, nor would they seem likely to do so under these continuing circumstances.
...life does not end at all...-Paul Keith
Can be neither proven nor disproven, except presumably by individual experience.
Transcendence.-IainB
Uhh...no... I'm not talking about just individual life but the impact of individual life. The things left behind by a dead person like memories, influence, contributions, legacies.-Paul Keith (June 05, 2012, 04:28 AM)
"You can move beyond gamification by designing up Maslow's pyramid." (OWTTE)
yet I refuse to drag us into the gutter with a "Tu quoque" (Latin: "you also") in response to your ad hominem.