itsamoose

Whether or not it is a new thing is always a tough question, and one I don't think we'll ever get an answer to, but I think the change here is that the institutions themselves have adopted these pretty precarious positions. I'm sure you could find hundreds of examples of women or minority groups getting kicked out of campuses back in the no so good good-old-days, though this information would be difficult to cobble together. In reading this article the biggest question I came to was how does this affect the school or professors' ability to mediate disagreements? I certainly was one of the people who would blow things out of proportion in my college days, and I would imagine people in college now wouldn't be any different, but there was always a mandate by the school to kind of bring the energy level down and act as the voice of reason.

To drill down on this a little deeper, this aspect is also what leads to the application, or at least the labeling, of something to be based on someone's perception of events. This tends to happen in conservative circles and anti-conservative circles, where ideologies are conflated based on who holds them. Because racist groups like the KKK tend to be conservative, it is acceptable to label conservatives as racist, or because militant liberal groups exist and liberal groups tend to support gay rights, we suddenly get the term militant gays. This kind of points to a weird situation where the idea of cultural appropriation is based on a subjective understanding, but only one such understanding is the right one. It's one of those problems unique to social concepts due to the lack of some standard (for example the scientific method linking sciences or the system of logic linking philosophies).

I tend to get my updates on ferguson and related incidents through the US news aggregators like huffington post, though I do find more of the deeper stuff on sites like the atlantic and mother jones.

So is cultural appropriation mostly limited to appearance, or does the appropriation of ideas count too? I get the point about cultural appropriation being an issue when done for self promotion, profit, or the degradation of spirituality, but is that where it stops? A point was brought up earlier about gay culture stealing from black culture, though to my knowledge both of these cultures have been historically oppressed. The idea of a power dynamic has been established as one of the elements of cultural appropriation, so is this an issue in this case? Why can't a person or their larger choose to borrow something from another culture? I know this will seem like privilege at work here, but it seems weird that we don't let people choose their culture but we encourage them choose everything else about their identity. Why must things belong to one culture or another? Cultures borrow from each other all the time, and things that we see as belonging to one culture or another were very likely at one point taken from another. Take Christianity for example, almost all of the rituals and celebretory days were taken from pagan cultures, but since those aren't around as much anymore we see these things as part of a Christian culture. What about when similar cultures borrow from one another?

I caught Hector and the search for happiness last night, and man was it excellent. Simon Pegg has been absolutely fantastic in every movie I've seen of his, and this might just be his best work so far. He manages to do the funny movie with a message thing so well.

I think this gets to where you and I differ on the issue. When we go out to bars and the like, which is where I was exposed to him experiencing this, my friend is treated as though he is being held personally accountable for the cultural remnants of things diametrically opposed to the culture he identifies with. I have been in similar situations with a female friend of mine who married a black man, and there have been much more high profile cases like Rachel Dolezal. I get the emphasis on the macro level, or rather seeing this issue as a part of the trends and forces that shape our society, which I agree with in principle. The application however confuses this with the individual, and that might seem like nothing for the most part, but I think you could make just as strong an argument for it helping create a multicultural society as it does to create a more polarized one. One of the reasons I linked to that article about colleges earlier was to point out that these attempts, while often well-intentioned (such as policing microaggressions on college campuses) often lead to more polarization. That isn't to say I think the concept should be abandoned, but that in practice it isn't what it purports to be. There isn't a desire to figure out when it is OK or not, or whether it is ok or not, the emphasis on specifics is really just the second part of any good philosophical discussion. I think we all agree that in principle the idea has merit, or is at least worth of merit, but we can't really gain an understanding of it without involving of concrete examples, typically edge cases.

I apologize if I'm derailing here. Y'all have been helpful, but I have perhaps been a bit indirect with the intent of my questions. My main issue surrounding all of this that the rubric by which it is used is entirely inconsistent. The basis for which something is considered appropriation is based not necessarily on it's appearance, but on the perception of it's appearance. When someone is accused of cultural appropriation and they deny it, by the very structure of the idea they are not given a means to defend their actions or disprove the claim. I have a white friend who often uses black slang, turns of phrase and speech patterns, and is constantly accused of this. Each time he denies it, and is not believed until he pulls out a picture of him and his two black adoptive parents (his biological parents died when he was a baby, and their friends adopted him). We jokingly refer to this as his "race card", but it underscores the point that black culture is his culture, though his appearance wouldn't suggest this. I find that this idea, not in it's principle but in it's application, encourages us to treat cultures as monoliths while at the same time berating us for doing so.

I see the argument here, but I can't help but feel like the course correction is doomed to fail. Essentially you're asking people to adopt elements of their personality for unselfish reasons, but for the most part the reason anyone adopts something as a part of their personality is selfish. Somewhat related to that-- In this case I see two issues, First and foremost how do you know that is what is going on? How do you know the white person wearing corn rows isn't also adopting the substance of black society, whether that be expressed through activism, donation, education, etc? Isn't this just the observer infusing the observed's actions with intent based on their ignorance of the situation? Second, why does adopting a traditionally black, latino, japanese, etc aesthetic constitute something negative? Why can't I just adopt something because I like it, and why is it assumed that I assume I will be "using it better" than the creators of said aesthetic? Ultimately I feel as though the reasoning behind these sentiments requires far too much assumption on the part of the observer, and even implies a pretty malicious intent.

That video lays out some good examples of cultural appropriation, or at the very least the callousness behind some of it, but the concept as a whole I still find odd. She laments white stars being inspired by black culture and adopting it into their acts/Persona, and describes this as being a bad thing because racism and institutional violence still exist. She seems to suggest that the privileged members of society should respect the culture they are emulating, but isn't that what they are doing? Isn't the choice to emulate something a sign of your respect for it, or at least the worthiness you see in it? I don't think the idea of cultural appropriation is any different than what we see elsewhere. People figure out the things they like, adopt those things into their personality and publicize that (basically every Facebook page you've ever seen).

To be fair, I don't think this can be avoided. I came across this article the other day that talks about a few situations where universities have been kind of fostering this idea that a particular turn of phrase can be considered violent, regardless of the intent, which leads to a lot of push back against the speaker. Really that article is a whole other issue in itself, but the common thread throughout it is that an offensive thing is said without the speaker knowing it would cause offense. The problem is, the argument that supports a particular phrase being violent or anti-(insert thing you value here) is that it is born of a particular circumstance, life experience, understanding of history, etc. If you take a number of the arguments as to why cultural appropriation is bad, and apply a logical or objective proof to them, they almost never hold up. Opinions of this nature, namely any opinions that are relative to a specific, culture, time period, identity, or politic, are born of a specific life experience or understanding. It may be frustrating to have to go back to the drawing board so to speak, but since those things you are explaining are the basis of your reasoning, it isn't reasonable to expect people to understand them without personally undergoing or being made aware of the experience that lead to them.

So is a person adopting any element of a culture that isn't theirs going to be problematic? Don't all cultures at some point just start to borrow from one another, or at least resemble one another with enough exposure? There are plenty of examples of things that two cultures came to separately but are seen as being a part of one culture rather than another (the word Yo for example). I get the reasoning behind this position, but I think it implies an intent that isn't necessarily there. It seems to suggest that once a thing is associated with a particular culture, any other culture using it is appropriation or problematic (a word I feel is starting to lose it's meaning to me) for no other reason than they didn't think of it first.

Yeah that's true, my point was mainly that typically labels are combined with insult words, then are eventually just replaced by the word itself as the insult. For example Feminazi and libtard used to be popular insults a couple conservative friends of mine would throw around, but now they tend to use feminist and liberal in the exact same manner. I think the more extreme groups tend to hang onto the words designed to be insults, but for the more moderate? crowd the phrase itself becomes an insult.

I think SJW and terms like it, regardless of their meaning just get appropriated by reactionary groups so they can be turned into insults. They also tend to get compounded with other words to emphasize the speaker's distaste. I don't know for sure but it seems to be a product of the internet echo chamber that doesn't really have any meaning outside of a particular circle, or has an entirely different meaning outside of those specific circumstances. I hear things like libtard, contard, cuckservative, RINO (Republican in name only), feminidiot, or even simply the words/Acronyms that represent a concept like feminist, SJW, liberal, etc more often used as a way to pilory your opponents more so than a term used for it's meaning. I don't know if it's worth it to try and discover the meaning in a term used in this way, quite simply because there isn't one.

I can't argue with the reasoning that post lays out for the strategy, but it relies on a whole host of other factors. First, that other groups won't follow their example and browbeat Sanders into adopting their positions as a more central part of his platform. Second, that it won't lessen the focus on other elements of his platform, possibly pushing those groups to Clinton or other candidates (that's how Obama beat Hilary). Third, that Bernie Sanders wins the presidency twice. This is mainly due to the fact that a self described democratic socialist isn't going to get a damn thing through a republican controlled Congress until his second term, and then that the next round of elections put a democratic majority into the house and senate. Finally there is the question of how this strategy, and it's apparent success, changes the Sanders campaign with relation to the rest of the field. How does this affect his position with moderates? Is he going to lose or never gain the support of other groups? Regardless of the facts on the ground, the perception elsewhere seems to be that Bernie has aligned himself with a belligerent faction. As much as it shouldn't be the case, fear often dictates people's voting choices more so than principle. The argument seems to center on the idea that this strategy would only have ever worked with Bernie, but I don't really see the argument as to why it is the best strategy.

I've seen some comparisons made to the code pink protests that interrupted George Bush's speeches a few years ago, which if you look back did draw quite a bit of anger but not quite to the extent of BLM (though that's hard to say, the internet is a whole different beast nowadays). I would point out however that while code pink is still ongoing, it hasn't been successful in achieving even a single one of it's aims despite it being one of the earlier groups to adopt this style of protest. The reaction to BLM has been pretty revealing, but again they did what they did in order to get such a reaction. I don't know that anyone who heckled an entire crowd or prevented something people had been waiting hours for wouldn't have gotten the exact same reaction. They tried to make people mad, it worked, though I'm not convinced there is value in that in, and of itself. On the one hand I don't know if they're turning people against them, or they are the Malcom X of the modern civil rights movement(if that analogy makes sense). Also, they're demands seem to be quite vague from what I've read, and generally don't deal with things like military equipment being gifted to state and local police departments, the establishment of free speech zones (which often provide the pretense for dispersal and arrest), and other policy positions that have clear solutions. Yeah I wasn't sure if it was appropriate here or the we need to talk about race thread. I can move it over if it's distracting from more pressing matters pertaining to ferguson.

Being somewhat ignorant of the specific circumstances of this event, from all the coverage I've seen today and yesterday the problem seems to be just as prevalent, if not worse than it was a year ago. I don't know why I'd expect otherwise, after all the federal programs and policies that lead to this situation haven't been addressed in any meaningful way (Congress only working 113 days and all this year). I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread or the "we need to talk about race" one, but the Black Lives Matter movement that sprung out of Ferguson seems to have seen patchwork success in recent months. Most recently on two occasions activists representing, or at least claiming to represent, the movement have interrupted rallies for Bernie Sanders. The justifications I've seen for the actions praise the activists for making people unfamiliar with discrimination to experience the frustration that goes along with it first hand. I can understand the cleverness of this strategy, but I can't help but see the futility in it as well. The acts are designed to illicit an angry, even unreasonably angry response, which they have, and the group has subsequently chastised people for having the exact response they wanted them to have. Again, this may be the point, but I just don't get the choice of target. In what universe would Bernie "I'm a Liberal socialist" Sanders be against this movement? Ultimately I've been hesitant to post about this because I feel as though calling a heckler a heckler shouldn't qualify me as a racist, but a number of people seem to disagree. Anyway, I come to this forum to get opinions of those who are better at thinking about this stuff than I am, so what do y'all think?

Do any of the math wizards here know of any cool number/inequality relationships like we see in Rock-Paper-Scissors? I always geek out when I learn about things like tessellation, prime spirals and finding cool patterns in numbers.

I love Halo Wars, my room mates and I used to have 3 xboxes set up to play it online together. I think some traditional RTS fans found it a bit basic, but to be honest I thought the base building mechanics improved the design and made the fights and tactics a little more interesting. It was the first RTS I played where the early game didn't necessarily dictate the pace of the match, and there ended up being a lot more back and forth. I'm really excited for this.

I just came across this, seems relevant with the current thrust of the discussion. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/thats-not-funny/399335/

I assume by punished you mean sells less, but this is built into the idea of pricing. You don't need to sell as many copies if you can sell it at a higher price, so I don't think this pans out. What ends up happening in games however is that games who don't come out at a particular, or expected, price point are dismissed outright or that is somehow counted against them. Even to the point of the creative director of Bungie needing to apologize and promise to lower the price for Destiny's next expansion. For example back when Braid came out $15 was seen as a great value for a game of that scope, but today a $15 indie game is almost considered to be high and many devs I've spoken with (myself included) have been forced to lower their release price to $10. In many cases these games are more feature rich than their predecessors, but gamers (for lack of a better term) seem to put such an arbitrarily high emphasis on the price of their games. I think the difference between this and say people complaining about movie prices is that people will still go to movies if they increase the price over time, but this has proven to not be the case in games. If this trend continues games will become more like hollywood, where large studios dominate not only the blockbuster titles but start making most of the indie and mobile stuff as well. I'm not arguing against considering the price so much as I am the idea that the price seems to be the thing that dictates the category the game is placed in. I know full well as an indie developer I will get shouted down if I try to make a $50 game, even if the content in the game justifies it, for no other reason than I am not part of some large studio or whatever it is AAA means. On the other hand if I take a publishing deal (effectively slapping a Microsoft or EA label on the game) people will accept that price. Again I don't think any one thing is responsible for this, but it has created a situation where particular types of games either don't get made or have specific features added to them to account for what should have just been a series of small price increases.

In this case the price valuation is temporary, relative to the individual, the current economic situation, and a number of other factors that likely won't be the case in a year or more. I don't think a game's quality should be determined by it's length, but in today's market shelf lives aren't what they used to be. Sure retail has something like a 3 month shelf life, but digital games will still be easily available a decade down the line. I feel as though the way that games are examined in most reviews are based on things that are both relative and temporary. Given that game prices have remained pretty static for decades, the value proposition will always be skewed towards punishing games that ask for a higher price for no other reason than their price. I think recent years show that this is at least somewhat responsible for the race to the bottom on prices or having games adapt free to play mechanics.To bring it back to the price-fairness issue development costs keept going up, and rather than simply raise prices like every other industry, we have to nickel and dime our way up there. Ultimately I think the real solution will be to figure out more ways for people to pay for a game, but if we could get people to drop this idea that a game at a particular price point needs to be a certain thing, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place. Making a judgement on the value of a game is fine but it seems to me, particularly in talking to friends who work in publishing and movies, that games are unique in that their price defines the expectation.

I can see the point here, I'm just not quite sold on it. If it is OK to have the cost of a game influence it's review, doesn't this just always mean that cheaper games are predisposed to have better reviews? I have no problem with a reviewer telling me the length of a game, what they determine to be it's replay-ability, what they determine to be the quality of it's mechanics, etc. When they take the next step and say that game X is only worth Y money they are essentially making the value judgement for you, or in some way determining what a game should be based on it's cost rather than the game itself. Sure $60 means something different to everyone, but isn't it up to them to make the judgement based on their personal financial situation? Does a bad game become a good game at a 50% discount, or a good game become bad at a 50% markup? I don't deny anyone the right to make that determination for themselves, but often times it leads to games being both dismissed or celebrated for nothing other than their price point. Additionally, the value proposition comes up in all types of games, not just AAA priced games but $10 indies as well. I can't help but see reviews basing their judgement on the cost of a thing as just being something that at best is only valuable to people in a similar financial situation, relative economy, and time of the reviewer.

So does disclosure to gators (I like calling them that because I picture people arguing with prehistoric creatures, having the opinions you would expect) basically mean that everything you do needs to be accompanied by a disclaimer? At this point it seems like someone not knowing a piece of publicly available information constitutes an ethics violation for them. I haven't been following the movement/hashtag/mob lately, but is it still a large ongoing thing?

I don't mean to pass the blame here on prices, but does anyone see the whole pricing thing as being a product of how most game reviews/criticism works? Most reviews I watch and read tend to be focused around making a value judgement on the game's content. I've encountered this personally where games I've worked on were reviewed well, but with the caveat that the reviewer saw the price point as being too high and ended up reducing the score as a result or telling the reader to wait for a sale. On the other hand, I've seen reviews that make a point of mentioning the price point as a positive thing that improves the score. I don't know if this is something that reviewers are explicitly told to do, or is just an industry standard/expectation. It's a bit of a bugbear with me since the price of a thing is always relative to the individual, and I just don't think a reviewer infusing their own personal value proposition into their work is all that beneficial to anyone but the reviewer. It's one of those things that from what I can tell is unique to games--I don't think I've ever read a book or movie review that even mentioned the price. I wonder how much the cost of a game dictates what people expect from it, or what it should be (whatever that means). On the development side at least the cost is often something considered from the start, but I've never gotten a sense why this is the case other than the need to conform to some expectation.

I toured a studio once where this criticism was brought up, and the response was "We don't pay you to work here, we pay you to live while you work here". Personally I've never had a problem with crunch time when I've had to endure it, but then again I don't have a family or anyone that really depends on me.