Violent games on the OLPC Activities page

[Edward Cherlin]

On Jan 18, 2008 1:58 AM, Antoine van Gelder <hummingbird at hivemind.net> wrote:
> Edward Cherlin wrote:
> > On Jan 18, 2008 1:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder <hummingbird at hivemind.net> wrote:
> >> Edward Cherlin wrote:
> >>> I was in the hills north of Seoul, Korea, in 1968
> >>
> >> Mr Cherlin - with much respect to your service in Korea (I have friends
> >> who also served) but may I ask you to please consider the possibility
> >> that your experience as an armed, trained and well-supplied soldier was
> >> not the same experience as that had by civilians caught in the crossfire
> >> of armies ?
> >
> > Mr. van Gelder, I respectfully request that you read my message, over
> > and over if necessary, until you understand the severity of your
> > egregious and insulting error. Then apologize, not just to me, but to
> > the others on this list who have had it far worse, and are even more
> > fed up than I am with those whose ignorance and lack of imagination
> > causes them such pain.
> >
> > The rest of you, no spoilers. He has to make this discovery himself
> > for it to take.
> >
> > And to think that hummingbirds are the messengers of the Gods in Mayan
> > mythology.
>
>
>
> Ed - look...
>
> Unless I'm completely misreading you, you are arguing on the basis of
> your experience as a soldier that Children need to be exposed to
> violence lest their naivety be taken advantage of by monsters.

Yes, you completely misread me. I have never been a soldier. Now go
back to the message you replied to, and find the clues. They aren't
hidden.

> This is a valid point of view.
>
> I let my own children play the Harry Potter games and Starcraft etc.
> etc. (and yes, when they are older Quake or whatever other waste of GPU
> cycles Id has come up with by then) to their heart's content because of
> that very reason.

Excellent. We agree completely on this principle.

> BUT
>
> The thing which I am trying to point out is that on the continent on
> which I live children are _already_ on the receiving end of violence
> with the result that their needs are different to the needs of my children.

I simply propose that we put it to them, and hear what *they* have to
say about the matter. We have no business trying to arrogate to
ourselves the right to make decisions for them.

> Or to put it yet another way:
>
> South Africa is still deeply fractured along racial and economic lines.
>
> Less than ten minutes from my children's school is a predominantly poor
> community. The children in this community have daily experiences of
> drive-by shootings, sexual abuse, rampant crystal meth and alcohol
> addiction, gang warfare and other such pleasantly formative experiences.
>
> Now in my children's school, there are a small amount of children from
> that community.
>
> With a result, that I can guarantee you that if ANY parent at my kid's
> school were to start arguing that the school should install Doom on the
> media center's computers that I would oppose them in any way I can.

To my knowledge, nobody here has argued for putting Doom on school
servers. That is a strawman argument, as I am sure you have been
taught. We are talking about how to list entirely optional software on
the OLPC site.

> Sure - if we were to make these kinds of decisions on the basis of a
> majority then _clearly_ there are more kids at the school who would
> learn from Doom than kids who would be traumatized by Doom.

Majority? Where does that nonsense come from? These are *individual* decisions.

> I would hope however that such a decision would rather be made on the
> basis of common sense.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age
eighteen."--Albert Einstein

Common sense, if it existed, would be the sense which we hold in
common. We don't. Certainly not you and I.

>   - the messenger of the gods

If you are going to start with us on that track, you can go back to
the Mayan Hell where you came from and tell your Demon Snake Lord
Hapikorn I said so. %-[

-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay