Stupid things

I couldn’t watch this whole video because the host’s arguments are just too completely insane. It’s probably too insane to even be worth commenting on, but I’m going to anyway. (I like how ratings and comments are conveniently not allowed on the video.)

The argument is that the “damsel in distress” trope in video games objectifies women by portraying them as objects to be won. If this were truly the case, any game involving a damsel in distress could replace the damsel with a bag of virtual money as the ultimate prize, and the story should still work. It doesn’t, because the bag of money can’t love the main character in return. The prize is not the woman’s body, it’s the woman’s love, the return of the mutual love between the two characters. These stories are founded on relationships.

Claiming that wanting to save a woman is objectifying her is like claiming that giving a gift to someone is a form a objectification, because someone is being acted upon. “Honey, I got you a new necklace!” “How dare you act upon me!” We might as well never do anything for anyone else, less we objectify them.

There’s an issue going on in the writing / publishing world involving Random House’s e-book imprint Hydra, as mentioned in this recent post from the Writer Beware Blog.

I have no comment on the issue itself, but on something mentioned in Random House’s open response letter.  They write:

While we respect your position, you’ll not be surprised to learn that we strongly disagree with it, and wish you had contacted us before you published your posts.

I’ve seen this sort of defense before in the blogosphere.  “You should’ve talked to me before you said something negative about me!”  No.  Obviously you have every right to defend your opinions, but it is no breach of etiquette for someone else to publish his dissenting opinions without running them by you first.  Your original deeds and writings are what he is publishing an opinion about.  If his opinions seem to be based on a misunderstanding, you can correct him, but it is not his job to run his opinions by you first.

I doubt whoever wrote this letter meant much by this sentence, but this way of thinking bothers me.

It annoys me when characters on TV shows, especially sci-fi shows, are portrayed as being super-intelligent by being able to ramble off precise probabilities, as if probabilities of natural occurrences are some precise science. “The chances of succeeding are only 34.56 percent!” No, they are either 0 percent or 100 percent. The mathematics of probabilities are a compromise; probabilities provide a way for us to make decisions based on insufficient knowledge. They are not real-world measurements just because we use the word “percent” when talking about them.

“I am 53.45 percent done reading this book.” That’s a real-world measurement.

“There is one bullet left in this gun, so the chance of me shooting you is 16.6… percent.” That’s a measurement of imagined futures based on not knowing which chamber a bullet is in. The bullet is only in one chamber. There is only one possible future.

Truly intelligent characters do not compute precise probabilities in their heads. It is a completely impractical way to go about thinking or making decisions.

This annoys me as much as the idea that emotions and intelligence are somehow naturally at odds, and the price for higher intelligence is the ability to feel emotions.

Here’s a half-hour excerpt of a radio show (audio tape) I recorded in 1992 when I was six years old:

SeansTape.mp3

I never made it in the radio business.

I finally found this clip on YouTube! I thought it would be too obscure.

When I was four or five years old, this Humpty Dumpty scared me to death. I could rarely bring myself to watch it. Even now, there’s something sinister and demonic about the way he smiles. It’s like he knows he’s going to fall and thinks pain and death is funny. Look at him, smiling even when his head is cracked off. He is the devil.

And if that knowing perverse smile and those big out-of-sync eyes don’t remind you of all that is dark and deathly, just hear that deep voice of doom as it recites Dumpty’s fate, bellowing as if out of the depths of Hell itself.

This was my nightmare. Oh, Humpty Dumpty, how evil you are.