Thursday, May 06, 2004
talking to americans - fallacies
AHH! Still so much to update about. Well, not specifically *update*, more like, things to talk about. I no longer stay awake till ~1-2 am, and my parents are keeping me busy so I don't have too much time to write. Many things to write about though. Dreams, including the one I had today about 'exam scheduling disasters'... anyway, I mentioned "talking to americans - fallacies" in the previous post, and Alan asked about it, so I'll just post about it here rather than write a long reply in the comments. Later below.
A few days ago I went to the NES speed runs site, and they had a new speed run for Takagi's "Crimson Room" - that really quirky and somewhat annoying (yet captivating) flash puzzle which places you in a room, and you have to solve certain puzzles and grab objects in really obscure, hard to click on places, in order to get out of the room. Anyway, the speed run "cheated" using some Flash menus (which you can't do with shockwave 7). Anyway, so I decided to check out the Crimson room again, and...
Viridian Room was out! Its long awaited sequel. So, without hesitation, I started doing it, this time with no help from anyone (although I wanted help when I got stuck for 20 minutes) - and eventually, after 95 minutes, I solved it. It shouldn't take 95 minutes, but the puzzles are a bit... quirkier now, I would say. Kinda. But it's an interestingly... dark story... involves death... that creepy skeleton on the floor doesn't exactly help much either. And like the Crimson room, a lot of things are hard to find. Check it out, if you dare. Viridian Room. I'm not sure about you, but when I click on it, it says it's not available or something - so just refresh the page and eventually it'll work.
I'm listening to "Lime in the coconut" again. Wanna join in my joy? Here you are, for your listening pleasure.
Lime in the coconut - 3.6 mb, mp3. Right click and save as.
Saw CSI yesterday, was a pretty disturbing episode. Alan blogged about it I think. Like, a sentence or two. Today's episode was much... less disturbing. It was a good episode. Not among the greatest, but still pretty good. I think I like Season 1 the best. Taped the friends' finale, we'll (parents, myself, sister, etc) watch that tomorrow. One more thing that makes CSI Miami cool: Horatio, the main character, drives a Hummer. Not an old hummer, like from The Rock or Face/off, but the new one, like in Bad Boys II.
One thing that I wondered about once... "wicked" is a bad thing. bombs are bad. to be sick/ill is bad. shit is bad. So how did they become good stuff? "That was a wicked ride! That's da bomb! That is soo sick! He is the illest cat in town. That game is the shit!" ... why... are they good things? Just wondering. The other day I also wondered why it's kick-ass, instead of maybe... kick-head... oh wait, I already mentioned this, I think, and said that it's because kicking in the ass is cowardly. hehe.
With suggestions from Wen and etc, mission 0 for the d20 game will be lengthened and made more exciting, so ricky can take part of mission 1. Ambrose will be the one left out of mission 1 this time. But next time... well, next time mother's day won't interfere, but still, everyone should come on time. Also, I'm adding a few... alternative rules. Nothing big. Just things like, for example, at one point where you have to put together a cape.. well, there's no craft: cloth, so I'll say you can use craft mechanical or craft structural or whatever instead. Nothing really big, and it's not necessary until when I explain it.
Today was our first personal trainer session. I however, thought it was a fitness assessment appointment, so I didn't have enough to eat for a full workout. So at one point, after a vigorous running exercise... well, I almost passed out. I fell to the floor and couldn't move for 10 minutes, and I felt dizzy and almost threw up a few times. And... well, that pretty much covers it - I'm sure you don't want to hear more about it. They say I just gotta eat more for breakfast.
I was gonna post this last topic.. I call it my theory of 'long entry, short entry'. Usually, I notice after a period of inactivity in my blog, I write a long entry and only 1 or 2 people respond, and then I write a short entry the following day and it eats up all the comments and the long entry doesn't get anymore afterwards. Well... the long entry 2 posts below this had only 2 when I was going to write this, but the 2 comments were long and constructive. Now this number has grown to 4, so my theory has been reduced a bit... so whatever. doesn't matter anymore.
It's 11:48, and I think I'm heading to bed in 12-22 minutes. So, I'll write the topic title - talking to americans - fallacies.
So... Talking to Americans: Rick Mercer goes around and asks questions to Americans and records the stupid answers on tape and plays it. So there are several fallacies here and there, and when I recognize the fallacies, the show becomes less funny - well, it's still funny when it involves famous people, and I like the black&white parts where they show stuff that's not truly part of the show content - like... smart people denying Rick's questions :) So the fallacies that I see most are:
Vicarious Authority: Basically... well, Rick Mercer is a TV persona, right? So he's famous, so what he says must be true, right? If a regular person says something about a national igloo, it doesn't seem as reasonable as if Rick Mercer said it, right? He's on TV, he's famous, he must be telling the truth, right? Wrong! So, the people are committing the vicarious authority fallacy, and believing everything Rick Mercer says.
Loaded Question: This is a fallacy that Rick Mercer does, but probably on purpose for the show. The example my teacher used was the question: Did you vote for the Democrat party, or are you a communist?
The question gives you 2 choices, while a 3rd choice (namely, I did not vote for the democrat party but I'm not a communist either) is hidden. So when Rick Mercer asks "would you or would you not like to support our national igloo?" - Well, it gives them the choice of yes or no, but doesn't give them anything else. Additionally, 'arguing' with Rick Mercer could be considered 'hostile', so they don't do it for personal reasons. And it's just a petition... so just sign the damn thing - just say yes. No point saying no.
Then there's motivated inference... well... kinda. It's cool to be on TV, right? Even if you don't make money, just showing up on TV is pretty cool. These people know that. Some of these people purposely act stupid, in order to get on TV - so the results are biased because people want to be stupid, because people want to be on TV. If they're not stupid, they won't be shown, so they play along with it. Not everyone, but some people.
Lastly, the show trims data. If the show was used in research, this would be an error - for example, if I did a research paper on 'the smartness of americans' and I used this show as a source, I would come up with "99% of americans are stupid". The show doesn't show all of their 'findings' - just the ones that make americans look stupid. So it's a biased piece of research, and it 'trims the data' - doesn't cover all data points, only the points which are favourable for an already desired conclusion.
Maybe I'm looking too deeply into this or just making stuff up. But oh well.
Well, now I've talked about everything except dreams. Enjoy the song. Enjoy the viridian room. Time yourself, but allot at least 50-90 minutes to play it. And lastly, try to enjoy "talking with americans" :)
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A few days ago I went to the NES speed runs site, and they had a new speed run for Takagi's "Crimson Room" - that really quirky and somewhat annoying (yet captivating) flash puzzle which places you in a room, and you have to solve certain puzzles and grab objects in really obscure, hard to click on places, in order to get out of the room. Anyway, the speed run "cheated" using some Flash menus (which you can't do with shockwave 7). Anyway, so I decided to check out the Crimson room again, and...
Viridian Room was out! Its long awaited sequel. So, without hesitation, I started doing it, this time with no help from anyone (although I wanted help when I got stuck for 20 minutes) - and eventually, after 95 minutes, I solved it. It shouldn't take 95 minutes, but the puzzles are a bit... quirkier now, I would say. Kinda. But it's an interestingly... dark story... involves death... that creepy skeleton on the floor doesn't exactly help much either. And like the Crimson room, a lot of things are hard to find. Check it out, if you dare. Viridian Room. I'm not sure about you, but when I click on it, it says it's not available or something - so just refresh the page and eventually it'll work.
I'm listening to "Lime in the coconut" again. Wanna join in my joy? Here you are, for your listening pleasure.
Lime in the coconut - 3.6 mb, mp3. Right click and save as.
Saw CSI yesterday, was a pretty disturbing episode. Alan blogged about it I think. Like, a sentence or two. Today's episode was much... less disturbing. It was a good episode. Not among the greatest, but still pretty good. I think I like Season 1 the best. Taped the friends' finale, we'll (parents, myself, sister, etc) watch that tomorrow. One more thing that makes CSI Miami cool: Horatio, the main character, drives a Hummer. Not an old hummer, like from The Rock or Face/off, but the new one, like in Bad Boys II.
One thing that I wondered about once... "wicked" is a bad thing. bombs are bad. to be sick/ill is bad. shit is bad. So how did they become good stuff? "That was a wicked ride! That's da bomb! That is soo sick! He is the illest cat in town. That game is the shit!" ... why... are they good things? Just wondering. The other day I also wondered why it's kick-ass, instead of maybe... kick-head... oh wait, I already mentioned this, I think, and said that it's because kicking in the ass is cowardly. hehe.
With suggestions from Wen and etc, mission 0 for the d20 game will be lengthened and made more exciting, so ricky can take part of mission 1. Ambrose will be the one left out of mission 1 this time. But next time... well, next time mother's day won't interfere, but still, everyone should come on time. Also, I'm adding a few... alternative rules. Nothing big. Just things like, for example, at one point where you have to put together a cape.. well, there's no craft: cloth, so I'll say you can use craft mechanical or craft structural or whatever instead. Nothing really big, and it's not necessary until when I explain it.
Today was our first personal trainer session. I however, thought it was a fitness assessment appointment, so I didn't have enough to eat for a full workout. So at one point, after a vigorous running exercise... well, I almost passed out. I fell to the floor and couldn't move for 10 minutes, and I felt dizzy and almost threw up a few times. And... well, that pretty much covers it - I'm sure you don't want to hear more about it. They say I just gotta eat more for breakfast.
I was gonna post this last topic.. I call it my theory of 'long entry, short entry'. Usually, I notice after a period of inactivity in my blog, I write a long entry and only 1 or 2 people respond, and then I write a short entry the following day and it eats up all the comments and the long entry doesn't get anymore afterwards. Well... the long entry 2 posts below this had only 2 when I was going to write this, but the 2 comments were long and constructive. Now this number has grown to 4, so my theory has been reduced a bit... so whatever. doesn't matter anymore.
It's 11:48, and I think I'm heading to bed in 12-22 minutes. So, I'll write the topic title - talking to americans - fallacies.
So... Talking to Americans: Rick Mercer goes around and asks questions to Americans and records the stupid answers on tape and plays it. So there are several fallacies here and there, and when I recognize the fallacies, the show becomes less funny - well, it's still funny when it involves famous people, and I like the black&white parts where they show stuff that's not truly part of the show content - like... smart people denying Rick's questions :) So the fallacies that I see most are:
Vicarious Authority: Basically... well, Rick Mercer is a TV persona, right? So he's famous, so what he says must be true, right? If a regular person says something about a national igloo, it doesn't seem as reasonable as if Rick Mercer said it, right? He's on TV, he's famous, he must be telling the truth, right? Wrong! So, the people are committing the vicarious authority fallacy, and believing everything Rick Mercer says.
Loaded Question: This is a fallacy that Rick Mercer does, but probably on purpose for the show. The example my teacher used was the question: Did you vote for the Democrat party, or are you a communist?
The question gives you 2 choices, while a 3rd choice (namely, I did not vote for the democrat party but I'm not a communist either) is hidden. So when Rick Mercer asks "would you or would you not like to support our national igloo?" - Well, it gives them the choice of yes or no, but doesn't give them anything else. Additionally, 'arguing' with Rick Mercer could be considered 'hostile', so they don't do it for personal reasons. And it's just a petition... so just sign the damn thing - just say yes. No point saying no.
Then there's motivated inference... well... kinda. It's cool to be on TV, right? Even if you don't make money, just showing up on TV is pretty cool. These people know that. Some of these people purposely act stupid, in order to get on TV - so the results are biased because people want to be stupid, because people want to be on TV. If they're not stupid, they won't be shown, so they play along with it. Not everyone, but some people.
Lastly, the show trims data. If the show was used in research, this would be an error - for example, if I did a research paper on 'the smartness of americans' and I used this show as a source, I would come up with "99% of americans are stupid". The show doesn't show all of their 'findings' - just the ones that make americans look stupid. So it's a biased piece of research, and it 'trims the data' - doesn't cover all data points, only the points which are favourable for an already desired conclusion.
Maybe I'm looking too deeply into this or just making stuff up. But oh well.
Well, now I've talked about everything except dreams. Enjoy the song. Enjoy the viridian room. Time yourself, but allot at least 50-90 minutes to play it. And lastly, try to enjoy "talking with americans" :)