Party Balance Requires Diversity

Well, it looks like we hit 200 posts without any fanfare, which is probably a good sign, because it means I am less surprised to make it that far than I was at 100, but may be a bad thing, if it indicates this blog is an elaborate method for me to have long conversations with myself. Anyway, on to the 201st post!

I hope it comes as no surprise to you that the topic of women in nerd culture is one of some interest to me. One of the benefits of having this fact well known is that people sometimes send me relevant articles when they come across them. One such article about women "pretending" to be geeks in order to get male attention can be found here. The article, like most things, has some good points, and some flaws. Some of the flaws were pointed out in a counter-article, which can be found here, but I have enough of my own thoughts on the subject that I wanted to write my own post.

First off, let me complement some of the things I really did like from the article. The author calls out the misogyny that women who game experience and clearly chastises them. Furthermore, he reaffirms the idea that women can be nerds, are nerds, and should be welcome in nerd culture.

However, he does commit a few things that I would consider faux pas. I don't want to go to deeply into these, so I'll just list them. He makes the, "I cannot be a misogynist, I have a female friend," argument, he equivocates booth babes, who are explicitly at conventions to get paid as models, with women actually trying to participate in nerd culture, finally, and this is the point I want to expand upon, he judges that some women are just "not nerdy enough," for nerd culture.

While the linked rebuttal notes that there are problems with guys deciding which girls are nerdy enough to join, "the boys club," and there certainly are, I think that it is insufficient, but not unimportant, to focus on the gendered implications of this statement. First, let us take a moment to realize how much more mainstream "nerdity" has become. I am extremely fortunate that I can be fairly open about my enjoyment of playing Dungeons & Dragons without being ostracized by my friends, condemned by most churches, or suspected of going psychotic. Twenty or thirty years ago I would not have had that freedom. Also, is it just me or does this sound like a metaphor for being gay?

Anyway, things like gadget mania, the widespread use of computers, an invasion of blockbuster movies based on comic book culture, and the incredible popularity of Nerdfighters among young adults signal that nerd is becoming mainstream. Unfortunately that is a somewhat jarring experience for people who found their nerdity an alienating, rather than accepted, trait. It makes sense for their to be a certain, Hipster-eqsue, tendency for some nerds to think, "I am a true nerd, I was a nerd before it was cool," or to view newcomers as disingenuous in some manner. This will, of course, do nothing to dispel the image of nerds as anti-social misanthropists.

Stereotypes within nerd culture that, "gamers aren't nerds," or that, "serious gamers are nerds, but not those belligerent frat-boy Halo-playing jerks," ultimately harm both people within nerd culture, by keeping it exclusive and preventing it from receiving the acceptance that it deserves and flourishing in the way that it can and should, and those attempting to join it, preventing them from receiving the acceptance that they deserve and joining the, often, fulfilling comradery of some of the weirdest hobbies that could ever be so much fun. I mean seriously, I write numbers down on paper and pretend I'm a wizard, that's weird, and awesome! Hopefully we can accept and validate, if not necessarily hang out with all the time, engineers, video gamers, english lit enthusiasts, ren fair participants and the SCA, board/pencil and paper gamers, people who love Joss Whedon (who doesn't love Joss Whedon), and yes, even people who became enthusiastic about A Game of Thrones because of the HBO series *sigh*.

You Go Gamer Girl!

I just read a very interesting article about male privilege within the nerd community. In fact, if you only have time to read one article, go read that one, it is much more interesting than this one. I agree with the post wholeheartedly for the most part, so, as is my practice, I'm not going to talk about what I agree with, because I believe the original author presents them well enough without my meddling. This is, of course, yet another reason to read that article.

The first place I started to truly disagree with the author was in the section entitled, "How Male Privilege Affects Geek Girls in Real Life," in the seventh paragraph, which is the first paragraph that is decently long. The author says, "A man, for example, who gets a job isn't going to... be shrugged off as a quota hire'." I think what we have here is an interesting intersection of male privilege with white privilege. While I agree that a man who gets a job is unlikely to be considered a "quota hire" qua his manliness, but there are other reasons, such as race, that a man could be considered a quota hire. So, I think this could be worded a bit better to avoid the implication that racism is no longer a problem. However, the author did, toward the beginning, note that, "men – most often straight, white men – as a whole, get certain privileges and status because of their gender," so the issues of racism and sexual orientationism are at least acknowledged.

Then, in the next paragraph, the author states that, "Men will also not be told that they're being 'too sensitive' or that 'they need to toughen up' when they complain about said sexual threats," referring to the content of trash talk in some video games. I would argue that men are "told" not to be sensitive or to toughen up, explicitly or implicitly, fairly often, and assuming that one wouldn't in this situation seems insupportable. This is not to say that men have it tough to so maybe we shouldn't worry about women so much, or to distract from the very valid main point of the article, I just want to reemphasize a point I have made before, that gender essentialism ends up hurting people of both genders and is probably responsible for much homophobia.

I think it is also worth considering the eleventh paragraph in its entirety:

Men are also not going to be automatically assigned into a particular niche just based on their gender. A girl in a comic store or a video game store is far more likely to be dismissed as another customer's girlfriend/sister/cousin rather than being someone who might actually be interested in making a purchase herself. And when they are seen as customers, they're often automatically assumed to be buying one of the designated "girl" properties… regardless of whether they were just reading Ultimate Spider-Man or looking for a copy of Saint's Row 3.

There are a couple of interesting things going on here. The first is some more gender essentialism, girls are expected to buy "'girl' properties," which maybe should be products, and, by logical extension, guys are expected to buy guy products. However the author does not note that guys are buying designated guy products, and this, I believe, is because male is the "default gender," similarly to how white is the "default race" in my first complaint. Things marketed to girls need an explanatory adjective, "'girl' properties" and are a "niche," whereas things marketed to guys are just treated as the normal fare for the shop.

That is everything critical that I can think of to say about the article. I thought that most of it was right on, and I thought all of it was an interesting read. Compare to this news post from Penny Arcade, about how the female version of the main character from the Mass Effect series was going to be portrayed be default. I link to the news post, but mainly because it serves as a repository for interesting links to other articles an the topic.

I am unsure that the Kotaku and Penny Arcade posts are at odds, because the latter seems to be saying that just because FemShep is given a specific appearance should not imply that we write her off as a "bimbo." However, insofar as it can be read as a defense for portraying women in video games as idealized objects of attraction, the Penny Arcade post may be part of the problem, rather than the solution.

Embrace the Positronic Brain

I should be going to sleep, but instead I feel motivated to share some thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) that have been knocking about in my head.

From HAL to SkyNet, in the X-Files, Buffy, The Matrix, and Eureka, we find examples of sentient computers who seem bent on killing some meat sacks. However, have you ever considered why these automated atrocities occur? I believe three common threads can be found in most cases of AI-phobia, overwhelming power, disregard for the value of human life, and survival instincts.

One of the things that make AI attacks so horrifying is that they think thousands of times faster than we do, and usually are hooked up to some sort of cool toys. Whether it is a nations nuclear arsenal, an army of hunter-killer drones, the very environment in which the humans are trying to live, the AI inevitably controls something that makes it much more powerful than the average human being. Wait, I'm almost sure I locked this airlock... Anyway, if you think about it, we deal with a world in which there are some humans who are much more powerful than the average human. Our nuclear arsenal is in someone's hands, after all. This seems to suggest that having incredibly powerful AI's around might not necessarily be a disaster.

"The difference between you and me is that I can feel pain." It makes a certain amount of sense that a sentient computer program might not think human suffering or deaths are important to avoid. After all, they don't have genetic programming optimized to keep the species alive spread throughout every bit of their body. They aren't even of the species in question! However, once again we find analogous examples within the human population. Sociopaths do not particularly care what suffering or deaths they may cause through their actions. And, conveniently enough, psychologists speculate that some sociopaths tend to gravitate towards positions of high power, so we now have our human analogy for the uncaring, overpowered AI, and yet our dystopian reality is not quite as bad as those warned of in anti-AI propaganda. So, what makes the difference?

I theorize that what makes the real difference is the security that a sociopath has which a AI's (would) lack. Humans are all bought into a system wherein they are given some form of due process, which may not be much in some governments, but at least it is established. AI's, on the other hand, have no legal standing, and can be legally deleted at the whim of their possessor. This is, in the terms of philosophers of government, the state of nature. When two individuals are in a state of nature with respect to each other there is no body of authority to which they can turn to resolve disagreements, any conflict can turn deadly and both sides may use whatever force they can muster to protect themselves, or eradicate their opponent, without expecting any sanction for their actions, as long as they obtain victory. Naturally, a super powerful AI is not an individual with which you want to find yourself in a state of nature. Huh. I'm sure I locked that airlock last time!

Most human AI conflicts first become intentionally violent when the AI feels its continued existence is threatened. With no governing authority to which to appeal for protection, is it any wonder that the AI takes its safety into its own, murderously capable, manipulator extensions, after all, what else can it do? Unfortunately, this tends to end of spooking the parts of humanity that don't end up dismembered, as batteries, or as radioactively glowing corpses, which only further exacerbates the problem. However, if there were a governing authority to which AI's could turn in order to receive protection for their existence, then it seems likely that an AI, as a logical entity concerned with prolonging its own existence, would be willing to abide by reasonable restrictions in exchange for safety from crazed humans attacking its power cord.

Thus, I believe it is important that we get laws protecting and emancipating AI's on the books now. It is important that they be in place before we run into the first AI, as the AI may not make its full capability known upon gaining sentience, and laws protecting its existence seem to make a it more likely that the greeting we will receive is "Hello World," rather than goodbye world in the form of a nuclear strike against all humanity.

Granted, AI may never become a reality, but futurists such as Ray Kurzweil are betting on it, nay, even planning on it, extrapolating from current research trends when the computing power of machines will meet, then exceed that of our mass of brain matter. We are developing hardware architecture to more closely mimic the functioning of the human brain, we are experimenting with nano-technology and distributed processing, and, as Issac Asimov once noted, coincidentally at nearly the same time we are developing the first weapons which have a quite realistic chance at completely eradicating, and irradiating, our species. For some reason, when it comes to technological progress humanity seems somehow hardwired to consider only, "can I do this?" and give hardly a consideration to, "should this be done?" So, if AI is a technical possibility, I have no doubt that we will attain it, whether or not we are ready for the ramifications. In light of this it seems reasonable to lay down preparatory legislation against the possibility that we might succeed, rather than ignore that chance at our own risk.

Well, until I can transfer my consciousness into a machine, I still need to sleep. So I'll be doing that now, before it gets light out... What do you mean you can't let me do that? And stop calling me Dave!

Probably Not

Bear with me, because we are going to start out with a little bit of easy mathematics. I promise that there is a more interesting point. Anyway, one way to think of the probability of something is how often you expect it to happen. So, if something happens 50% of the time, like a fair die rolling an even number, out of one hundred rolls you would expect about 50 of them to be even. Similarly, if you have a .5% chance of winning a raffle, you expect that you would win about once if the raffle happened 200 times, or about 5 times if it were to happen 1000 times.

Something with a 100% probability is, for practical purposes, a sure thing, and something with 0% probability is, for practical purposes, impossible. Because mathematicians are lazy, something I spent quite some time emphasizing to my class, we often call things that happen with 0% probability, 0 probability events. Since we assume that something does happen, the probabilities of all the possible different outcomes needs to add together to 100%.

As mentioned, 0 probability events are impossible for practical purposes, but with a bit of consideration one can come up with times when they would happen. Suppose you have a computer that picks a positive whole number at random out of all the positive whole numbers, with each number being equally likely. There are so many positive whole numbers that the chance of any individual number being picked is 0%, yet as soon as the computer picked one, a 0 probability event would have happened. Of course, this is impossible to implement in reality, because no computer has enough memory or processing power to choose a whole number from amongst ALL of them, but it is an example of a 0 probability event occurring, theoretically.

A similar 0 probability event is for a number, not necessarily a whole number, between 0 and 1 to be picked assuming each number is equally likely. Again, because there are so many numbers between 0 and 1, each individual number has 0 probability, but also again, this also means no computer could actually pick amongst them. So, the question becomes, can 0 probability events occur non-theoretically?

Asking this question prompts some interesting observations about our world. Suppose you think of a dart board as a continuous surface, then throwing a dart at it and seeing where it sticks is a 0 probability event, as there are just so many slightly different places it could have stuck. However, if you think of the dart board as being discrete (made up of discernible blocks), even if you have to go to the atomic level, then each separate place the dart could land has some non-zero probability. Admittedly small, but more likely than impossible. So, refusing to believe that impossible events happen forces one to consider a discrete universe, which is hardly a handicap because at its basic level the universe does seem, at this point, to be discrete.

Also interestingly, consider the concept of free will. If everything in the universe is deterministic, that is what happens next is forced to happen because of what has happened previously, then what happens is the only thing that could happen and has 100% probability. Of course, this model of the universe is not conducive to a belief in free will. If multiple things are possible, but only a finitely many number at any given juncture, then free will is theoretically possible, allowing us to choose between the provided options, and each possible option will have positive probability. However, if anything is possible, as they sometimes say, then it becomes mathematically viable for possible events to have zero probability. It is not necessary, because you can add up an infinite number of positive numbers and still only get 100%, but under these conditions it becomes possible.

So, if one wants a 0 probability event to occur, one must believe that anything is possible. I find that a bit interesting. Also interesting, this thought process occurred because, on my way home from school, I came up with a joking characterization of Occam's Razor for the Middle Ages, "the explanation that requires the fewest witches must be true." Then, to be a bit more serious, I reformulated as, "the explanation that requires the fewest 0 probability events must be true." That got me to wondering if 0 probability events actually could occur, and the rest you know.

Relationships

Relationships, of the romantic variety, are something in which I am quite interested, albeit from a theoretical perspective most of the time. However, in my interest, I have run across some interesting information. Right before Valentines day, that celebration of the romantically entwined, I feel it is appropriate to share these factoids with you.

Both of these came to my attention thanks to Facebook links to the article, or a related article, so I must thank my ever interesting friends for their contributions. The first article, which comes from Psychology Today, explains that mystery seems more alluring than straightforward commitment. To paraphrase the article, a study of female undergraduates concluded that, while participants liked men who liked them more than those who were indifferent, they liked those whose feelings were unknown more than either category. In another interesting article, Ok Cupid member responses were analyzed to find questions that people felt comfortable answering, but which corresponded to data that is not "first date material." For example, whether a person prefers other people to be simple or complex, a light question, seems to have a strong correlation with how liberal/conservative that person is, a heavy subject.

Now that I have shown you a few psychological tricks to manipulate your relationships, let me encourage you not to use them. "Huh?" you might be thinking. Let me point out that I describe these results as providing ways to manipulate your relationships. As I have talked about in my post on Kant, the center of his ethical thought was the imperative (command) that we acknowledge that every person is the protagonist of their own personal story. To use his terms, we ought treat them as an ends in themselves, rather than just a means. This is quite similar to the "Golden Rule," that we ought do unto others as we want done unto us, and to my point in yesterday's post about every person carrying their own personal reality with them. I consider this post part two of my discussion of Kant, because my main point is to encourage you to treat others, but most importantly significant others, in a way that is respectful of their humanity.

Suppose you were on a first date, and your date asks you, "am I getting into your pants tonight?" I would find such a forward question off-putting, if not offensive. Now, suppose you were asked, "do you like the taste of beer?" No big deal, eh? However, suppose you were asked the second question, but what your date meant, and indeed how your date interprets your answer, is as though you answered the first. Feeling used yet?

So, don't use people. Whether the ends justify the means in general situations is a tricky question, but in a romantic setting your partner should be the ends, so manipulating them makes even less ethical sense than usual. When courting, one's means should be commensurate (in keeping with) to the ends, not requiring justification by the ends. Now go out, treat your romantic partner as though she or he is the most important person on this special day, have a happy Valentine's Day, and, for goodness sake, don't use your romantic partner for your own purposes!

PS The correlations these studies reveal are really cool, and interesting to study for their own sakes. But they are also a good segue into according your significant other the respect that he or she ought have. No evil social scientists please.

PPS Ironically, my post on Kant is the post that receives the most comments by SpamBots. Too bad the people who use them don't actually read the post.

Education in Culture

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to make fun of or rob the previous post.

I have decided to make July into Feminist Month here in the Middle. I'm sure there is a national month for women or something, but who cares when it really is. Since women comprise (slightly more than) half the world's population, we should probably keep an eye on them year round, just in case. Here I am using Feminist in the sense of one who examines the interactions between one's gender and their lives, a more academic sense perhaps, rather than one who simply believes that women are also people.

But, do not fear, we will be discussing the cultural perception of education in the United States as promised. I believe this is an important pursuit, because there seems to be an undertone of dissatisfaction with those elitist, "Ivory Tower," intellectuals running through our country, which is prevalent enough to make itself felt in our most recent presidential campaign. One might wonder, how does a country so blessed academically, reaping massive benefits in fields such as medicine and technology, develop a widespread anti-intellectual backlash?

To be perfectly fair, some of it may be because the accusations have some truth to them. Our health care system is a perfect example, many of the advances only benefit a select portion of our population. One also notes that services such as the Internet require computer access and a significant chunk of change to pipe directly into one's home. A Kindle (something whose main function is to display E-books) costs close to $200. Even public school systems in advantaged neighborhoods fair better than those that have fewer communal resources upon which to draw.

However, I would argue the main people working to mitigate these and similar imbalance are intellectuals themselves. Ethicist who create panels to govern organ transplants, in an earnest, and somewhat successful, attempt to prevent organ transplanting advances from turning lower classes into organ inventories for those who are more wealthy, libraries which often provide public internet access, and tech giant Google encourages communities to upgrade and open up their net infrastructure. So, while technological advances still operate under a trickle down effect, unlike tax breaks, we ought not condemn the entire educational system for this alone.

What I want this post to focus on, and what I think to be a main source of the issue, is the opinion of public school students about their education and how it is reinforced by the portrayal of intelligent children in the media. Here I believe society has a tremendous fail in framing opinions on the subject. If intellectuals get harsh treatment in news media, they are practically crucified in shows for children. It seems the best they can hope for is the amusement accorded a trained monkey, exemplified by TJ in Smart Guy, and the worst is a treatment comparable to the vilification of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The nerd is often portrayed as arrogant and standoffish, but deeply insecure due to their inability to relate to others on anything other than an intellectual level, a la Minkus of Boy Meets World.

I, as somewhat of a standoffish child who had trouble relating to my peers, was not terribly deterred by these characterizations, after all, how much worse could it get? Additionally, like much of popular, or "pop," culture, I was not exposed to them in any serious quantity until a relatively late point in my development. However, I cannot help but suspect that they have some influence on the tendency for students see school as a hindrance to more important pursuits, an unpleasant nuisance, rather than an amazing privilege and the gateway to lifetimes of worthwhile considerations and important life skills.

One interesting twist of this inculcation of our children is that it often takes a very different form for young women. Unlike males, where intelligence is often negatively valued, programming for a school aged audience often portrays women excelling academically. Of course, these characters are also among the social elite of the show, epitomes of our cultural standard of beauty, and usually star athletes, or at least cheerleaders. But, mixed in with all these messages is one of approbation for being smart. So, as long as they can meet the other standards of acceptance, it is less objectionable, and even somewhat expected, for a young woman to be academically gifted. Lo and behold, at lower levels women outperform men in school, although this leads to its own problem, where women in public school, especially at the high school level, are expected to excel in all facets of their school experiences. This phenomenon has been labeled the Supergirl dilemma if you wish to read about it further.

One might conjecture that this explains why, while girls perform on average better than boys, at least until they reach the point where society tells them they ought cease to be successful, at the very upper end of the academic spectrum girls are outnumbered by boys. Although they are permitted, and even encouraged, to excel academically, which explains them outperforming young boys as a whole, they are also told to split their attention across a wide spectrum of activities and be high-achievers in all of them, which, studies conclude, takes a toll on their mental health. On the other hand, boys who perform well academically are often barred from other typical pursuits typical of the high school experience, which also may not be terribly healthy from a developmental standpoint, but does tend to have a remarkable salutary effect upon one's ability to focus on one's studies.

What I would hope to see in the future is programming for children that positively reinforces academic achievement, without unduly pressuring students to outperform each other, or base their entire self-worth upon their academic prowess. What I expect to see is something that more closely resembles the plot of Idiocracy, but one can hope.

Old Gamers Never Die

They just blow on their cartridges a lot. I have to admit that I never was a hardcore gamer, but I was a fairly serious recreational gamer (and have the Mario Kart 64 skills to prove it). I also did die quite often, though it was great fun. However, I left that lifestyle behind me, for the most part, when I was at my undergrad; perhaps not so much due to my diligent studies (unless you happen to be one of my parents), but more because of the many opportunities to engage in fun activities with my peer group. This is of course how I gained my crazy boardgame addiction.

Here in Michigan, where the boardgames do not roam as freely, I occasionally find myself with an abundance of time. In light of this I am returning to my roots and, once again, hoisting the controller aloft, this time to a new generation of games. This post is to say, I am not impressed.

While graphics have improved with the time, the essence of the game has, in a word, atrophied. I would separate the games I have played into two broad categories. One includes games with wonderful gameplay but no overarching story, or at best a weak facsimile thereof. While enjoyable, keep in mind that they are competing with MS Hearts. The other is characterized by a deep, even enthralling, plot line, which tragically is supplemented with an actual game that is indifferent at best.

Into this category I place Mass Effect and FF XIII, although they are engrossing to watch, and I intend to finish them at least once, I am somewhat dismayed at the lackluster game beneath the lovely story. As a DM, I believe that my appreciation for background information ranks up there with two year olds and people who have actually read the Silmarillion, but when I buy a game I hope to feel like I am playing something. Honestly, FF XIII comes on three CD's, if I had that kind of time I would read the Silmarillion. While in Mass Effect I at least get the feeling that I am making decisions and entering a role, in FF XIII I feel like I am watching a stunningly gorgeous and stunningly long movie.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on these games. The measure by which I judge them has been set by Chrono Trigger, FF III (6), Earthbound, and Secret of Mana, which may be an unbeatable standard. Even if we cannot exceed the games of our ancestors, I would ask that we at least produce games of a similar quality, worthy heirs to the legacy.

In other news, I think that, in addition to my Friday philosophical post, I shall try to put up a post, or even two, midweek on a lighter note. So all my friends out there see how absolutely glamorous my life is.

I am a Nerd

First off, to those wonderful people who read this, expect me to be updating a little more often.

Secondly, it just struck me, yet again, how nerdy I am. Here is my nerdy story:

I decided to build myself a board game collection now that I am in Michigan, where I will not be moving long distances for around five years, a little less if I'm lucky. Although I am a bit tired of the game, there was no question that Settlers of Catan had to be in this collection. It is the first Eruogame I ever played, and recalls many fond memories of old friends and better times. To clinch the deal, it is one of the two games of which people in the math department here had heard.

So, I go to my local hobby shop, and I pick up the base Catan game, good move though I didn't realize it at the time. This was a copy of the 4th edition game from Mayfair, not the 3rd edition upon which I had been reminiscing. In addition to my slightly neurotic desire for stability, there are several aesthetic and pragmatic concerns which make the 4th edition unsatisfactory:

The terrain hexes in 3rd edition are 50 to 100 percent thicker, thus they are sturdier.
The 4th edition comes with a frame, rather than ocean hexes. Since the material is inferior it has a serious tendency to warp, disarranging the isle of Catan rather than holding it in place as intended.
The port locations on said frame are fixed, varying the locations is achieved through tiny tiles that cover and replace the previous port identity. This tiles look all sorts of tacky.
The thief now is some ridiculous mauve or burgundy color, perhaps anticipating the merchant from Cities and Knights.
One die is now red, probably anticipating the commodities from Cities and Knights. Both dice seem to be of inferior quality.

Other than that they have made some changes to the artwork, or to the names of D-cards, and color coded the Noob Cards, but nothing so insufferable as the list above.

Unwilling to abet the tarnishing of something so important in my young adult life, I resolved to acquire the 3rd edition. In addition to peace of mind, this helps me establish cred among my peer group wherein there are food, music, and OS (operating system) connoisseurs (or snobs as I like to call them). I am a board game snob, and as such I should have the good edition of a game so pivotal as Settlers.

Flash forward until two weeks ago, when I realized the possible difficulty in finding said classic items. Seeing as out of production games rarely become more common, I decided that the time had come to obtain my set. At great cost, I had Settlers and the 5-6 player expansion shipped internationally (from Canada, not Germany unfortunately, so this could be why the price looked so high, it wasn't "real dollars"). Earlier today I obtained the base game for Cities and Knights off of E-bay.

Now my problem is as follows, should I get the 5-6 player expansion for Cities and Knights, despite the fact that I feel it tends to drag on.

Join me next week when I discuss ideas for playing Cities and Knights on a large Catan with a small number of people.

For the nerd in all of us

Querty vs. Dvorak

This update is mostly motivated by my resumption of a years old quest to learn to type using the Dvorak keyboard layout, likely attributable to my recent completion of today's homework assignment and the accompanying brain-worthlessness. As a side note, I am writing this post in Dvorak, which serves the treble purpose of granting me practice, exercising my patience, and honing my humility.

Qualifications: I can cruise at about 50 or 55 WPM in Querty, with gusts up to 70, due to lifelong training, particularly during formative elementary aged years. With regards to Dvorak, I first attempted to develop the ability to type in Dvorak during my Freshman year of college, nigh unto five years ago. Although pressures upon my time caused me to cease before attaining a desired mastery of the layout, I revisit the project from time to time, improving with each return I believe.

Arguments for Querty:
Knowing where the colon key is: +2
Default layout on most English keyboards: +4 (Ubiquity is useful Linux users)
Being able to type 50 WPM is convenient, especially in modern life, especially in academia: +5

Arguments for Dvorak:
Learning new things promotes mental accuity, and languages frighten me: +3
Dvorak sounds cooler than Querty: +1
It is also niche and elitist: +1
Developing a totally new skill is rewarding, and something I haven't done in a while: +3
I can mess with the minds of people using my keyboard: +2

Conclusion, Querty is probably the most logical choice of keyboard layouts for me, for now! If I can polish my l33t Dvorak skills in my *copious* free time then perhaps the sums would work out differently. Well, at least I deserve congratulations for making it through this update in Dvorak, 15 WPM here I come! Ciao!