Editorial RPG Codex Editorial: Darth Roxor on the State of RPG Writing

[Deleted Member 22431]

For starters, CRPGs have emergent gameplay strategies that are irrelevant to the main quest

Like what?

Like placing bombs with timers inside people’s pockets, killing a whole city for the lulz, etc. For some players, this aspect of the gameplay is the most important part.

 

[Zer0wing]

Like placing bombs with timers inside people’s pockets, killing a whole city for the lulz, etc. For some players, this aspect of the gameplay is the most important part.

Look at this guy. This post is full of idealism. Look at him and laugh.

No, you got this part completely backwards. (Core) Gameplay mechanics that let the player do such irrelevant to main quest things are valued among the most players, not "some". Either on conscious or unconscious level, like fucking around on the 2nd playthrough. Do you even know what "emergent gameplay" means?

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Do you even know what "emergent gameplay" means?

Do you? I'm all ears.

 

[Zer0wing]

Do you? I'm all ears.

Is this a catch question? Because if it is, then you've lost.

It's just gameplay mechanics free and flexible enough to give the player the freedom in finding new strategies and utilise them beyond seemed original intention or pardon my pretentiousness, express themselves by acting like a whore throughout or killing shit on sight every in every hub in Fallout 2. Another such example is Hybrid Dagger crit build in AoD that maxes out critical strike and kills enemies by lowering their stats to zero, both "hybrid" thingie and killing shit in such way clearly not intended by Vince (that's the only game you've played) or, in multiplayer games, the newly discovered meta. This comes first. This is essentially a part of, the horror, roleplaying!

If it's bad by your standards than you have shit taste and shouldn't play anything other than walking sims, not even Age of Decadence.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

It's just gameplay mechanics free and flexible enough to give the player the freedom in finding new strategies and utilise them beyond seemed original intention.

That’s a bad definition. If the player can use the existent mechanics in a way that was not intended by the developers then it is a developer’ oversight, not emergent gameplay. It would be an incoherence to suggest that a developer will intentionally give the player more leaway at the same time this was not his intention. The other obvious problem is that you think that a developer’s decision to allow the player to use new strategies is a mechanic in its own right. You are confusing the developer’s decision to give the player more leaway with a mechanic. You think too highly of your own cognitive abilities. Go home, Ze0wing. You are drunk.

 

[Zer0wing]

That’s a bad definition. If the player can use the existent mechanics in a way that was not intended by the developers then it is a developer’ oversight, not emergent gameplay. It would be an incoherence to suggest that a developer will intentionally give the player more leaway at the same time this was not his intention. The other obvious problem is that you think that a developer’s decision to allow the player to use new strategies is a mechanic in its own right. You are confusing the developer’s decision to give the player more leaway with a mechanic. You think too highly of your own cognitive abilities. Go home, Ze0wing. You are drunk.

So you also work at Blizzard and think that meta is not discovered by the players but dictated by the developer? This narrow mindset, as opposed to developer making game mechanics and letting players use it in either intended or not intended (as in, no the only possible way/ways), is part of the CRPG decline aswell. Also, I reasonably question your cognitive abilities if you think and say that even some players value the aspect of fucking around on it's own as opposed to having the flexibility to fuck around and branding them as decline enablers. It's your mindset of developer oversight that is more destructive.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I think the bomb planting example is an exception to the rigid rules of Fallout. It's a bit more flexible than BG and the rest, but it's still got almost no emergent gameplay mechanics.

 

[Fenix]

Btw, we talked a bit about theory, that State of RPG wrinting closely tied to state of education system - I have found something about how in France teaching of mathematics happened at least in 2012, was very interesting reading, if someone interested in this - just ask.

 

[Zer0wing]

Btw, we talked a bit about theory, that State of RPG wrinting closely tied to state of education system - I have found something about how in France teaching of mathematics happened at least in 2012, was very interesting reading, if someone interested in this - just ask.

Well, both state of writing and quality of games rulesets can be traced back to quality of education. I think writing skills based on quality of first language lessons and the accumulated basis of school library list of literature that was meant to be read and analyzed on literature lessons and gamedesign on algebra and general erudition. Just to be more exact, this applies both on players and game developers, only latter develops skills and former develops affinity and taste.

So what happened in France?

 

[Fenix]

Well, this is article, or more precise - re-post of some article in livejournal, it's in Russian, but I guess it could be easily translated because of fine academic language used there.
It's a short srticle from a man, who is teaching mathematics and physics in Paris university of Pierre and Marie Curie, also known as "Paris VI", or "Jussieu" - as you can see it's not the worst institution. :D
What I read there is absolutely horrible and show many things about future of all white Europeans and I guess Russians too.

https://vlhart.livejournal.com/112844.html

Author is Victor Dotsenko, article is called "Fifth rule of arithmetic".
ЕГЭ aka USE in text is form of final school exams in form of tests that is used for admission to the University if your points are high enough, French one callled something like BACH - from word Bachelor, at least that's how it sound in Russian.
In fifth paragraph he explains about same French exam, similarities and differences with Russian, and what he do in general.

Well, to complete this rather boring introduction, a little about myself: doctor of physical and mathematical Sciences, Professor, engaged in theoretical physics; at the University "Paris VI" I teach mathematics and General physics to freshmen, and also, as a "contrasting soul", I read a theoretical course (I will not explain what) and conduct seminars for graduate students last year Ecole Normal superier (ie, for those who are not only "the most-most", but also "super" and "extra").

Used this for translation https://translate.yandex.ru/ if google failed me.

Due to the specifics of my work in my future narration, I will sometimes have to appeal to experts in the field of higher mathematics. I mean those who know all four rules of arithmetic, and also knows how to add fractions and in General are familiar with the multiplication table. Parts of the text, for understanding of which are required so specific knowledge, I will highlight in italics.

Now, in this school year, I found out that among my fifty first-year students (I have two groups), eight people believe that three-sixths (3/6) is one-third (1/3). I would like to stress that these are young people who have just passed the "science BACH", which gives priority to mathematics and physics. All the experts to whom I have told this and who have no experience of teaching in Paris universities, immediately become stumped. Trying to understand how this can be, they make a standard error inherent in all experts: try to find the logic in this, looking for (erroneous) mathematical reasoning that can lead to such a result. Actually everything is much simpler: it is reported them in the school, and as they are diligent students (and only a diligent students amissioned in the University!), they memorized it. That's all. I retrained them: at the next lesson (the topic of which was actually a function derivative) I made a small digression and said that 3/6 is equal to 1/2, and not 1/3, as some of those present believe. The reaction was, " Yeah? Good..."If I told them that it is equal to 1/10, the reaction would be exactly the same.

In the previous two academic years, ten to fifteen percent of my students systematically discovered another, no less "non-standard" mathematical knowledge: they believed that any number in the -1 degree is zero. And it was not a random fantasy, but a well-learned knowledge, because it was shown repeatedly (even after my objections) and worked in both directions: if you have discovered anything in degree -1, it immediately zeroed, and Vice versa, if something needed to zeroize, were fitted degree -1. Summary the same: they were taught this [in school?].

What the unfortunate French children can’t really teach is how to handle fractions. In general, fractions (their addition, multiplication, and especially division) are a constant headache of my students. From my five years of teaching experience, I can tell you that no more than a tenth of my freshmen could handle fractions with confidence. It must be said that the arithmetic division operation is perhaps the most difficult topic of modern French secondary education. Think for yourself how to explain to the child what division is: I suppose you will distribute the six apples equally among the three boys? As if not so. To tell how they teach division in the French school, I again have to turn to experts. Let not all, but some of you still remember the rule of dividing into a bar. So, in the French school, the division operation is introduced in the form of a formal division algorithm into a bar that allows you to get the third number (the result of the division) from two numbers (divisible and divisor) by strictly defined mathematical manipulations. Of course, this horror can only be learned by doing a lot of exercises, and these exercises consist in this: unhappy students are presented with charades in the form of an already completed division in a column in which some numbers are omitted, and these missing figures are to be found. Naturally, after all this, whatever you are told about 3/6, you will agree to anything.

Of course, besides the above described, so to speak, "systematic non-standard knowledge" (which was taught in school) there are many simply personal, random fantasies. Some of them are very funny. For example, one young man somehow suggested transferring the number from the denominator to the numerator with a variable sign. Another student, when the cosine of the angle between two vectors turned out to be equal to 8, concluded that the angle itself is 360 degrees multiplied by eight, and so on. I have a whole collection of similar incidents, but it is not about them now. In the end, the fact that young people are still able to fantasize is not so bad. Thinking at school has already been weaned (and those who have not yet been weaned, we will have weaned at the university - that's for sure), so for now let it be that the mind is alive (as long as they, the alertness and mind, still exist).

For quite a long time I could not understand how all these young people managed to pass the Bach with a similar level of knowledge, the tasks in which, as a rule, were composed at a quite decent level and which can be solved (as it seemed to me) only with quite decent knowledge. Now I know the answer to this question. The fact is that almost all the tasks offered at the LHC can be solved with the help of a good calculator - they are very smart now, these are modern calculators: they will do any algebraic transformation, find the derivative of the function, and draw a graph. At the same time, it is officially authorized to use the calculator upon passing Bach. And so that something, but quickly and in the right order to press the buttons of modern young people are learning very well. One problem - from time to time, you will make mistake; in a hurry, you will press the wrong button, and then you will be embarrassed. However, the “embarrassment” is from my, old-fashioned, point of view, but according to their, modern, opinion is simply a mistake, what can you do, it happens.
For example, one of my students pressed something wrong there, and he had a radius of the planet Earth equal to 10 millimeters. And, unfortunately, at school he was not taught (or he simply did not remember) how large our planet was, so the 10 millimeters he received did not embarrass him at all. And only when I said that his answer was wrong, he began to look for a mistake. More precisely, he simply began to press the buttons again, but now he did it more carefully and as a result received a correct answer on the second attempt. It was a diligent student, but he absolutely didn't care, what is the radius of the Earth: 10 millimeters or 6400 kilometers, - [Earth's radius] will be as he will be told. Just do not think that the problem can be solved by banning calculators: in this case, nobody will [ass BACH, children after school will have to look for jobs instead of studying at universities, and at the same time a whole army of university professors will remain without work - in general, will happen terrible social explosio. So you don’t have to touch calculators, especially since in most cases, students correctly press the buttons.

Now about how, in fact, they teach mathematics and physics at the university. As for mathematics, three topics are studied under this sign in the fall semester: trigonometry (sines, cosines, etc.), derivatives of functions, and several integrals of standard functions — in general, everything that you need to know to pass the BACH. But at the university, as is often the case, they learn everything first, in order to finally teach "for real."

As for trigonometry, its study is reduced to memorizing the table of sine, cosine and tangent values for standard angles of 0, 30, 45, 60 and 90 degrees, as well as several standard relations between these functions. Diligent students, who are actually not so few, knows this already. But here's the hitch - every year I persistently ask my students the same question: who can explain why the sine of 30 degrees is 1/2? I have been teaching for five years now, and I have about fifty students every year; so, out of two hundred and fifty of my students, no one answered me this question all the time. Moreover, in their opinion, the question itself is meaningless: that to which all these sines and cosines are equal (as well as all the other knowledge that they were stuffed at school, and now continue to be stuffed at the university), is simply some kind of thing to remember/certain reality that needs to be remembered/constant. And every year, as the last bore, I try to dissuade them from this, trying to tell where it comes from, what it all has to do with the world in which we live, I struggle to talk so that it is interesting, and they look at me, like an idiot, and patiently wait for, when I finally calm down and tell them that, in fact, you need to memorize. I consider it a great success if by the end of the semester one or two people from the group once or twice ask me the question "why?". But I can’t achieve this every year ...

Now the derivative of the function. Dear experts, do not worry: there is no Cauchy theorem, no "let an epsilon be greater than zero ..." will be here. When I first started working at the university, I spent some time in class with my colleagues, other teachers, to understand what was happening. And so I discovered that in fact everything is much, much easier than we were once taught. I hasten to share my discovery: the derivative of a function is a stroke, which is placed on the right above the designation of a function. By God, I'm not kidding-that's how they teach. No, of course, this is far from everything: you need to memorize a set of rules, what happens if you put a stroke on a product of functions, etc.; to learn the table, in which it is shown that this very stroke produces with standard elementary functions, and also to remember that if the result of these magic operations turned out to be positive, then the function grows, and if negative, it decreases That's all.
The integration is exactly the same story: the integral is such a vertical karlyuchka (very funny made up word which sound somehting like breed between "dwarf" and "squiggle") which is placed before the function, then the rules for dealing with this karlyuchka and a separate message is given: the result of integration is the area under the curve (and why do they need this area? .. ).

With the teaching of physics, things are similar, just talking about it is boring - there is not so much fun. Therefore, very briefly (just to complete the picture): the physics course in the first semester at the Pierre and Marie Curie University begins for some reason with linear optics (while in parallel in laboratory classes, students for some reason study the oscilloscope), then cramming a huge table with the dimensions of physical quantities (that is, as expressed in kilograms, seconds and meters, say, the gravitational constant, etc., I note along the way - they have no idea what a gravitational constant is at that time), then - mechanics (balls collision, balance of power, and so on. p.), and finally crowned with the fall semester hydrodynamics. Why such a sample - I have no idea, perhaps this is the little that the main coordinator (and lecturer) of our section knows. Why exactly in that order? Yes, actually, what's the difference, in what order all this is cramming ...

Poor Maria and Pierre Curie ... They in the other world, I suppose, they do not find a place for themselves with shame.

I will try to offer a remote analogy of all this nonsense for the humanities. Imagine that the program of the university course called "Russian literature" consists of the following sections: 1. A. P. Chekhov's work; 2. Linguistic analysis of the works of Russian and Soviet writers of the XIX and XX centuries; 3. "Word about Igor's regiment"; 4. A. Platonov's work. And that is all...

As for the Ekol Normal Super postgraduate students (that is, those who are “super-best”), the situation is completely different. These guys have gone through such a rigorous selection, that neither free-dreamers, nor the slobs, can be found here. Moreover, they have everything in order with fractions, and they know algebra perfectly, and many, many things that they are supposed to know by this age. They are very purposeful, efficient and executive, and I am sure they will have everything in order with their dissertations. One problem - they do not know how to think at all. Perform the above, clearly articulated teacher manipulations - sure, learn something, remember - as much as you like. But to think - no way. This function of the body, alas, is completely atrophied. But besides, of course, they do not know theoretical physics at all. That is, they, of course, know a lot of all sorts of things, but this is some kind of motley, completely chaotic mosaic from the mass of all sorts of small "knowledge" that they can successfully use only if questions are prepared for them in accordance with predetermined rules compatible with this mosaic. For example, if such a graduate student is asked a question, then the answer to it should be either “knowledge A” or “knowledge B” or “knowledge C”, because if it is neither A, nor B, nor C, he fell into a stupor, which is called "this does not exist."

The rest is tomorrow if someone interested.

 

[Darth Roxor]

That's pretty amazing.

I'm glad that he comes to the correct conclusion that schools (and universities) rarely sell anything deeper than strict rules and catch-phrases that come with no explanations why these facts have become, well, rules. Although it's even better when they present shortcuts as "universal rules", when they can't always be applied reliably and when there are significant exceptions to them.

I actually remember plenty of that from a bunch of courses at uni too, mostly those that dealt with language grammar. "X is always followed by Y, remember that", "you should always add A to B", "make sure to always use Z here to make your life easier". And it wasn't until I went off on my own to try to understand on what all that shit was actually fucking based that I could get these rules and employ them consciously.

 

[Jaedar]

As for the Ekol Normal Super postgraduate students (that is, those who are “super-best”), the situation is completely different. These guys have gone through such a rigorous selection, that neither free-dreamers, nor the slobs, can be found here. Moreover, they have everything in order with fractions, and they know algebra perfectly, and there are still many, many things that they are supposed to know by this age. They are very purposeful, efficient and executive, and I am sure they will have everything in order with their dissertations. One problem - they do not know how to think at all. Perform the above, clearly articulated teacher manipulations - sure, learn something, remember - as much as you like. But to think - no way. This function of the body, alas, is completely atrophied. But besides, of course, they do not know theoretical physics at all. That is, they, of course, know a lot of all sorts of things, but this is some kind of motley, completely chaotic mosaic from the mass of all sorts of small "knowledge" that they can successfully use only if questions are prepared for them in accordance with predetermined rules compatible with this mosaic. For example, if such a graduate student is asked a question, then the answer to it should be either “knowledge A” or “knowledge B” or “knowledge C”, because if it is neither A, nor B, nor C, it will become stupor , which is called "this does not exist."

This is not so strange. If you've spent 20ish years of your life being crammed with facts, and having all facts written in a book, or on the internet, you will have precious little training in 'thinking'.

This is a big flaw in how we train new scientists.

 

[Zer0wing]

Shit like this, especially this paragraph hits right in the feelz, it's so relatable to our precious RPGs (or media in general), if we change some keywords like 'teacher' and 'student' with 'developer' and 'player'.

As for my colleagues - the current University professors... No, their arithmetic is fine, and in general, in a sense, they are all quite literate people-an aging endangered generation. But, on the other hand, when the education system itself is messed up in general, willingly or unwittingly, but all will degradate- not only students but also teachers and apparently, this is some inevitable law of nature. Depravity depraves...

I guess it's all the same unwritten law.

 

[Fenix]

For example, if such a graduate student is asked a question, then the answer to it should be either “knowledge A” or “knowledge B” or “knowledge C”, because if it is neither A, nor B, nor C, he fell into a stupor, which is called "this does not exist." Although, of course, the Ekol Normal Superier graduate students have quite funny holes in knowledge - but here the poor kids are not at all to blame - they had such teachers. For example, from year to year I find that none of my students (graduate students of the last year Ekol Normal Superier!) are able to take the Gauss integral and have no idea what it is. Well, it is as if a person wrote a dissertation, say, about the meaning of nature in the poetry of the late Pushkin and at the same time had no idea what synonyms are. But, in general, of course, these graduate students will turn out great executant, like those "executant robots" from the long-time film "Moscow-Cassiopeia" ... And so I like to teach university freshmen more: there is still a little hope to teach someone something..

I feel so sorry for them, for these kids! Just imagine: from year to year from early childhood to cram, cram and cram all this nonsense ... But it’s clear that it’s impossible to cram everything. Even the most diligent students will have a gaps at least in something. In practice, it sometimes looks crazy (at least for me). Imagine: a diligent student, able to find derivatives, able to integrate (that is, he has memorized all the rules, about the "stroke" and "vertical karluchka"), but he does not know how to add fractions. Or, let's say, he can add, but he cannot substract it - no way - he didn’t learn it in time! At the same time, he may know the whole multiplication table, but 6 times 7 — no (maybe he just got sick on the day when the teacher at the school reported this). Now you, I hope, understand that in fact 3/6 can be equal not only 1/3, but generally anything. If you like, you can call this the “fifth rule of arithmetic”: it will be as much as they were told it is!

I do not know how long this educational “apocalypse” lasts here, maybe ten years, maybe a little less, but the fact that teachers of the “new generation” have already come to school - graduates of such universities - that's for sure, I see it in my students. As for my colleagues - the current University professors... No, their arithmetic is fine, and in general, in a sense, they are all quite literate people-an aging endangered generation. But, on the other hand, when the education system itself is messed up in general, willingly or unwittingly, all will degradate - not only students but also teachers and apparently, this is some inevitable law of nature. Depravity depraves...

This academic year at the semester control one of the assignment was this (I think our eight, and maybe seventh-graders would rate/appreciate it): "The balloon flies in the same direction at a speed of 20 km / h for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Then the direction of movement changes by a given angle (60╟) and the balloon flies for another 1 hour and 45 minutes at the same speed. Find the distance from the starting point to the landing point." For two weeks before the test, there was a lively discussion among the university professors - is this task too difficult for our students? In the end, decided to take a chance to put it on the test, but with the condition that those who solve it will get a few extra bonus points. Then, to help teachers who will check student work, the author of this task gave its solution. The solution took up half the page and was wrong. When I noticed and raised a squeal, my colleagues immediately reassured me with a very simple argument: “What are you nervous about? Anyway, no one will solve this assignment...”. And they were right. Of the one and a half hundred students who wrote the test, it was soved by only two people (and that were Chinese). Of my fifty students, about half did not even try to solve it, and those who made such an attempt, the range of responses extended from 104 meters to 108 500 kilometers. Giving work to the student who managed to get a distance of 108.5 thousand kilometers, I tried to appeal to her common sense: they say, it's two and a half times to fly around the globe! But she answered me with dignity:"Yes, I already know - this is the wrong solution." That's it...

I suppose the reader has already been exhausted in anticipation of the answer to the long-standing question: "How can this be ?!" After all, France is a highly developed cultural country, in which is full of intelligent, educated people. This is one of the main world leaders in theoretical physics, and in mathematics, and in high technology, a country where, according to the Russian concepts, "everything is fine." And in the end, where did the outstanding French mathematical school "Bourbaki" go? And in general, what does the “Unified State Exam” have to do with it?

The easiest answer is about "Bourbaki". This school has not disappeared anywhere, it continues to function, but at the same time it became like a “black hole”: it continues to “suck up” people (and talented people!), but what is there inside it, those who are outside, no longer know. It became something of a “bead game” by Hermann Hesse. Although the powerful mathematical tradition of "Bourbaki" in French society, of course, remained. That is why the poor children here are so tormented by charades about dividing into a bar. Or, for example, when it was necessary to solve the equation 5x + 3 = 0, one of my students wrote a whole page of arguments about the structure and countability of the set of solutions of this type of equations, but could not solve the equation itself. It is well known what happens if a spirit leaves the teaching, faith, or science, and only formal ritual remains: marasmus.

As for "how this is possible?!", then, as you can see, it is possible, very much! However, I suspect, only from time to time. First, you need to keep in mind that all this disaster in education began not so long ago, and when they talk about smart and educated people, it is actually a very thin layer of society (on which everything is actually holds). And recharge in this layer now just does not occur (more precisely, it occurs at the expense of the Chinese and other Russians there). Secondly, there is a completely different point of view on what is happening. This extremely cynical view of modern society was somehow explained to me by one of my university colleagues (a huge French patriot, a Pole by birth who had studied for a few years in Moscow, speaks Russian fluently, is a great connoisseur of Russian literature). He is a very intelligent man, he also teaches and sees perfectly what is happening, but at the same time he believes that there is no catastrophe, but on the contrary, everything is correct, everything is developing as it should. The fact is that modern developed society needs only good executan. Creative, thinking people, of course, are also required, but literally units. Therefore, the entire education system should be set up to select, cultivate and train precisely good executan, and there is no need to teach young people to think: in modern society this will only damage their future professional activities, whatever it may be. As for creative personalities, they shouldn’t be particularly worried about: those who are really talented will somehow make their way. In this sense, by and large, it does not matter at all what subjects we teach them here at the university (at least in the first courses). Instead of physics with mathematics, it would be quite possible to make cramming, for example, Latin (only you cannot find such specialists now). Anyway, in the future professional activity, they will not need any understanding of physics with mathematics. At the level of the school and the university, it is important to simply select and train the most obedient, hardworking and executive, that's all. And for those who fly out of this system, for those who go to "waste", there are brooms for sweeping the streets, cash registers in supermarkets, factory conveyors, etc. You in the Soviet Union at one time produced millions of educated "thinking" engineers - so what? As part of their direct professional duties, they, as a rule, did not know how to do a damn thing, but preferred to reflect on the destinies of the world, on the meaning of life, on Dostoevsky ... And, you will agree, these very “thinking educated engineers” themselves every so often felt completely unhappy: unfulfilled dreams of great accomplishments, unrealized talents, world grief, and the like. And now the life claims and requests, both personal and professional, are clearly algorithmized, and everyone is happy and satisfied...

I think the idea is clear, and I don't need to go on. All this has already been written, rewritten in countless utopias and anti-utopias. For me personally, this point of view on a developed modern society is extremely unsympathetic, but this does not mean at all that it is erroneous. It seems to me that in such a system no talents will ever get through (simply because there will be no one to teach them), and then people, more precisely, "robots-executants" will very quickly forget how to build the Great Pyramids. But maybe I’m wrong...

Now, I hope, clearly, what does the “Unified State Exam” have to do with it? When people, instead of thinking themselves and teaching their children to think, eventually try to reduce everything to algorithms and stupid tests, there is a total stupidity. However, I don’t know what’s primary and what’s secondary: it’s quite possible that all these BACH, ЕГЭ (USE) and other tests are nothing more than a consequence (and not a reason) of a universal, let's say, “radical simplification of thinking” in a developed society. In my youth, examinations in the EGE style were conducted only at the military cathedra, which was completely justified and understandable: “the order of the chief is the law for the subordinate,” - thinking in this case was contraindicated. Now this learning style seems to be becoming universal. For me, it would be better to let corruption be than a crystal-fair society of executive robots-idiots. Although, by the way, I have strong suspicions that in this sense Russia does not threaten anything particularly serious. Not only good undertakings, but fortunately also idiotic, too often get stuck and die in our country. Well, if such an "algorithmization" of life really is the main road for the further development of humanity (after all, if it’s effective, then why not?), Well, then I just have to wish him a happy journey. Good luck to you guys, continue on without me, I'm staying ...

Little PS form the guy who made repost.

I go nuts in this zoo.
True, I am an expert (in terms of the author), and began to study after Stalin, but before the thaw. And our formidable mathematics teacher (he is the principal of the school) ruthlessly forced us to solve verbally (that is, without a written fix and drawing) the assignments of geometry. About mental arithmetic, I generally keep quiet - I still surprise my younger colleagues with the fact that I estimate some parameters in my mind more quickly than they do on a calculator. And not because the smart one is (unfortunately), I just had very totalitarian teachers.

And yeah, also there is some info in comments about to article, for example first comment come from Israel.

Nightmare. I look at the textbook of the mathematics of my eighth-grader son, and I am afraid of the hopeless idiocy of its compilers. Chunks of statistics, combinatorics and tasks for a visual understanding of the series of integers are blended in, mixed roughly and unsystematically.

That probably mean that Israel - as a sidenote - not a country of future rulers of the world, because nobody train rulers like this - they are victims just like the rest, probbly that mean future rulers rely on some small closed science institutes, as I agree tha science now doesn't require many bright heas, only few required, the rest is the work for "robots-executants"...

PPS From pure mischief I'm telling you - translate first four paragraphs yourself.

 

[JRIz]

Hardly believable.

Education always consists of two parts: the theoretical framework and its practical application. I think those university courses were never intended to make experts out of the entirely ignorant but only to provide people already interested in the subjects with this theoretical foundation. Of course, formal education always comes with tests to pass, homework to do, etc., to establish a feedback mechanism that ensures students actually remember the things they are taught.

As it turns out, those tests are not sufficient to actually prove someone is as competent as he is expected to be, only common sense is. Rather, they can be passed by employing primitive techniques not inherent to scientists' ways of thinking, thereby 'gaming the system' in some way.

Nowadays, more and more young people are practically forced to study something if they want to have a halfway decent job later on, even if they are not really interested in anything scientific or engineering-related. Universities for this reason become assembly lines for 'academicians', and this process must sadly be self-sustaining because as more people are forced into it as students, the need for teachers rises too. The responsibility of teaching of course is fulfilled by actual academicians (PhD students, some of whom will later become postdocs and professors). But here the story is similar. Are most of them actually fit for those positions, or are they only there for secondary reasons? I've heard many times that freshmen don't even know what this is all about when they attend their first lectures. Dude, if you know absolutely nothing about the subject when you are 18, 19, 20, chances are you are not actually interested in it. Why strive to become an academician (intended to be an expert in his field)?

At the time when the majority of the finished PhDs or postgraduates enter into the normal workforce, they will set a precedent that will make anyone not having gone through the system unsuitable for the same jobs and so establish a dangerous positive feedback mechanism. In other words, most people don't have the right mindset to study but must do so anyway, making everything worse for everyone else and preventing people talented in other ways from being recognized. Decline ensues.

Dewey:

Formal instruction, on the contrary, easily becomes remote and dead -- abstract and bookish, to use the ordinary words of depreciation. What accumulated knowledge exists in low grade societies is at least put into practice; it is transmuted into character; it exists with the depth of meaning that attaches to its coming within urgent daily interests.
...
Hence one of the weightiest problems with which the philosophy of education has to cope is the method of keeeping a proper balance between the informal and the formal, the incidental and the intentional, modes of education.

Uni is 100% formal.

I'm no writer or anything but I guess becoming a good writer, much like a good programmer maybe, is at most 20% formal education, the rest being trial and error.

 

[Fenix]

And now guys, it's time to make a conclusions for this work not became a wasted efforts...

 

[FeelTheRads]

It would be an incoherence to suggest that a developer will intentionally give the player more leaway at the same time this was not his intention.

No, it's not.
You give leeway by not putting roadblocks in front of the player. By letting him actually use the system you created instead of going out of the way to block his actions.
Only an imbecile would call that oversight. Only a decline enabler would want the developer to control each and every little thing the player is able to do.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

No, it's not.
You give leeway by not putting roadblocks in front of the player. By letting him actually use the system you created instead of going out of the way to block his actions.
Only an imbecile would call that oversight. Only a decline enabler would want the developer to control each and every little thing the player is able to do.

You are so eager to attack me that you missed the point. Either the developer allowed the player a certain freedom to do certain things or he didn’t. If he did, that was his intention from the beginning. Therefore, you can't say that emergent gameplay was something the developer didn’t anticipate. If he didn’t, that was an oversight, but then again this was an oversight to be correct, not a design feature.

The discussion whether the player should be allowed to do certain things in a cRPG when they don’t make any narrative sense, but boots the player’s ego and makes him fell empowered, is a completely different issue. It doesn’t matter how many names you call people. You didn’t make a case for your position that way. Sorry.

 

[Tigranes]

That's pretty amazing.

I'm glad that he comes to the correct conclusion that schools (and universities) rarely sell anything deeper than strict rules and catch-phrases that come with no explanations why these facts have become, well, rules. Although it's even better when they present shortcuts as "universal rules", when they can't always be applied reliably and when there are significant exceptions to them.

I actually remember plenty of that from a bunch of courses at uni too, mostly those that dealt with language grammar. "X is always followed by Y, remember that", "you should always add A to B", "make sure to always use Z here to make your life easier". And it wasn't until I went off on my own to try to understand on what all that shit was actually fucking based that I could get these rules and employ them consciously.

This is not to disagree, but to say that the problem is very structural. Western universities in general are these days underfunded and understaffed. Sure, large ones see plenty of money pass through them, but it usually goes to big campus buildings to attract more students, an ever growing bloat of cushy admin jobs, and in general, universities today are run like a business based on maximising revenue - a process which is not good for students or instructors.

Academics are increasingly required to produce research faster and in greater volumes to even have a chance at getting a job, which means they are on their own treadmill of constantly churning research out no matter what. That means there's not time to invest in good quality teaching, and that also is the general force behind the occasional scandals you see today around shoddy research or scientists massaging data to push out findings.

And when you finally get to the scene of teaching, top universities will have reasonable resources, but everywhere below that, chances are that the instructor is an adjunct, perhaps driving for hours between 2-3 different universities to teach these courses and getting paid in soggy condoms, busy grading and lecturing for hundreds of students. Not exactly the conditions for really effective teaching.

I would say that many people with PhDs would agree that not everybody has to go to university to have a good life, and that the current situation where kids are made to study 'just because', come to university or even grad school 'just because', is idiotic. But just choosing not to go doesn't solve the problems, of course - it gets us into the larger problem of how the job market is structured, and so on.

JRIz Yes, and a lot of this comes down to the massively increased population, scale, and thus organisational requirements of universities as a place of education and research. When you have a few thousand scientists or whatever it is in the 18th century conducting research & teaching in a relatively autonomous way, you have a lot of leeway to avoid these downfalls of formalisation (and some cons of its own as well, of course). When you have the number of PhDs explode more than tenfold in the last 50 years in the US, and when you have student numbers going through the roof, universities are forced to formalise.

Everyone is predicting the death and transformation of the university as we know it soon, but exactly when it will happen - and whether we'd get anything better as a result - is harder to say.

 

[Demo.Graph]

I'm glad that he comes to the correct conclusion that schools (and universities) rarely sell anything deeper than strict rules and catch-phrases that come with no explanations why these facts have become, well, rules. Although it's even better when they present shortcuts as "universal rules", when they can't always be applied reliably and when there are significant exceptions to them.

M.Soc.Sci here (sorry).
The theory that education system's main function is not promotion of learning but recreation of existing social order (including profession and income inequality) is a commonly known one in sociology. IIRC Pierre Bourdieu wrote about it voluminously.

 

[Fenix]

I think those university courses were never intended to make experts out of the entirely ignorant but only to provide people already interested in the subjects with this theoretical foundation. Of course, formal education always comes with tests to pass, homework to do, etc., to establish a feedback mechanism that ensures students actually remember the things they are taught.

I completely disagree. Did you miss part about those "super-best" students from Ekol Normal Superier (or something)?

As for the Ekol Normal Super postgraduate students (that is, those who are “super-best”), the situation is completely different. These guys have gone through such a rigorous selection, that neither free-dreamers, nor the slobs, can be found here. Moreover, they have everything in order with fractions, and they know algebra perfectly, and many, many things that they are supposed to know by this age. They are very purposeful, efficient and executive, and I am sure they will have everything in order with their dissertations. One problem - they do not know how to think at all. Perform the above, clearly articulated teacher manipulations - sure, learn something, remember - as much as you like. But to think - no way. This function of the body, alas, is completely atrophied. But besides, of course, they do not know theoretical physics at all. That is, they, of course, know a lot of all sorts of things, but this is some kind of motley, completely chaotic mosaic from the mass of all sorts of small "knowledge" that they can successfully use only if questions are prepared for them in accordance with predetermined rules compatible with this mosaic. For example, if such a graduate student is asked a question, then the answer to it should be either “knowledge A” or “knowledge B” or “knowledge C”, because if it is neither A, nor B, nor C, he fell into a stupor, which is called "this does not exist."

They are the best students available, highly motivated, and the only things they are the best at is cramming info. Motivation do nothing for real understanding of thing they cram, if education system is built that way - nothing to expalain here, just cram!

As it turns out, those tests are not sufficient to actually prove someone is as competent as he is expected to be, only common sense is. Rather, they can be passed by employing primitive techniques not inherent to scientists' ways of thinking, thereby 'gaming the system' in some way.

These tests was were compromised from the start by alowing to use calculators, and it was clearly delierate.

Dude, if you know absolutely nothing about the subject when you are 18, 19, 20

It only possible if school education is fucked up.

 

[Fenix]

That means there's not time to invest in good quality teaching

This is absolutely different from what was shown in article - bad quality teaching could be also within education system where teachers actually explain wat they teach.
There was collegdes in USSR where education was visibly worse than in institutes and universities - however teachers did their job and explained material.
So "bad quality teaching" doesn't equate "deliberately dulled education system", it's not quality of subject, it's it foundation and basice principles.

 

[laclongquan]

Where's the TLDR button when you need it most~

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

from Ekol Normal Superier (or something)?

Ekol... or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_normale_supérieure_(Paris)

Yeah, it's only the most prestigious university of France, like America's Ivy League. Who cares, right? Now let's discuss education.

 

[Grunker]

I'm glad that he comes to the correct conclusion that schools (and universities) rarely sell anything deeper than strict rules and catch-phrases that come with no explanations why these facts have become, well, rules. Although it's even better when they present shortcuts as "universal rules", when they can't always be applied reliably and when there are significant exceptions to them.

M.Soc.Sci here (sorry).
The theory that education system's main function is not promotion of learning but recreation of existing social order (including profession and income inequality) is a commonly known one in sociology. IIRC Pierre Bourdieu wrote about it voluminously.

M.Soc.Sci that has to "IIRC" something Bourdieu wrote?

I SMELL A LIE BOYS