Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
Pages
| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Tuesday, June 7 2005 12:40
Profile
Well, I'm confused, too. The main problem is that critical thinking is a lot like common sense. Yet, unlike common sense, professors and universities regularly do justify their existences by claiming to teach critical thinking. And graduates regularly rejoice in having learned it. So it seems that it can be both taught and learned, and it's worth doing that. But on the other hand, I can state pretty confidently that hardly any college level instructors actually plan courses or teach them with the conscious goal of teaching critical thinking. So is it some Zen archery kind of thing, that you can only learn unconsciously? Maybe; but I'd like to at least hesitate a while before leaping to that conclusion. So, here's a grab bag of the kinds of things I'd like to try to bundle together in the cause of pumping up critical thinking. -- Classic logic paradoxes (Prisoner's Dilemma, Unexpected Hanging, Three Door Gameshow, etc.) -- Precis writing. Summarize long texts in absurd brevity. -- Proofs and Refutations by Imre Lakatos. Ostensibly about Euler's Theorem on polyhedra, it is really about the nature of mathematical reasoning. -- Some collection of widely divergent texts on some controversial historical episode, like maybe the battle of Waterloo. -- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, maybe thrown up against stuff by Paul Feyrabend. -- Other stuff (gotta leave to go get my daughter from her preschool). -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| ever felt anyone envys you just because you are intelligent? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Tuesday, June 7 2005 12:04
Profile
Age also helps. Ugly ducklings eventually grow up and find the other swans. I don't mean to imply any specific judgements on the intelligence or character of people I don't know at all, anyway. Trite or not, though, the phenomenon is real, and good except in how long it can take, as I expect most of the older people here can attest. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Tuesday, June 7 2005 11:56
Profile
Ah, now these are good questions. I'm not sure what you mean by 'without specialization'. Do you mean, without teaching some specific subject matter? If so, I'm not sure that has to be a constraint, anyway. Taking some specific material of some sort, maybe using a case study kind of approach, might well be the way to go. The point is not necessarily to teach critical thinking without teaching anything else, just to make the critical thinking content deliberate instead of haphazard. As to the problem of level range: I think I take your point. It's true that the same problem exists in principle for any subject matter -- a course on viking history can attract people who have read original sagas and people who have never even read Hagar the Horrible. But the range of levels of prior mastery may well be greater for critical thinking than for non-meta-subjects like viking history. And if necessary you can let people skip the intro to viking history course, and go directly to the senior seminar, if they pass a written test. Doing this for critical thinking might require creating a better test than anything we currently have. Maybe not, though. Maybe the range of levels of critical thinking skills is not actually as great as one might think. Or maybe a good 'testing out' procedure could be found. Or maybe one would just have to have quite limited class sizes, so the range problems weren't so bad. A lot of college courses are taught in small classes, even for large enrollment freshman courses. This is managed by having grad students as instructors, but that can work out fine. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Where is Stringer's shield in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Tuesday, June 7 2005 11:36
Profile
But you may as well get the closest one, which is his, to his south. IIRC, it's a bit hard to find the area where his shield is, because the path that leads to it is unusually close to the eastern exitzone. It does not start right near Stringer; you have to go back northeast a bit, to find the narrow southern path that leads to the clawbug den in which you can find his shield. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Living tools just spray spores? What's happened to these valuable tools? in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Tuesday, June 7 2005 06:09
Profile
The only non-bug thing I can think of is that maybe you overlooked the fact that what you thought were your living tools were really a few spore batons, since those have the same graphic but just different colors. I apologize in advance for suggesting that you posted a question here just because you made an idiotic mistake, but playing late at night many of us have made similar mistakes, so for all I know at this point it is a possibility. Other than that, this sounds like a major bug. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Living tools just spray spores? What's happened to these valuable tools? in Geneforge | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Tuesday, June 7 2005 06:09
Profile
The only non-bug thing I can think of is that maybe you overlooked the fact that what you thought were your living tools were really a few spore batons, since those have the same graphic but just different colors. I apologize in advance for suggesting that you posted a question here just because you made an idiotic mistake, but playing late at night many of us have made similar mistakes, so for all I know at this point it is a possibility. Other than that, this sounds like a major bug. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Alwan is a disgrace in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 18:40
Profile
Alwan would be okay, I think, if he were just given some armor upgrades as well as melee. A baton might also help, but he has to have weaker ranged attack than Greta, and stronger melee, or he isn't different enough from her to be interesting. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Enchanted anvil, Dhonal island question in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 15:36
Profile
You've got to get the mine Servant Mind back in gear, and tell it to command the golems. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 12:57
Profile
I don't see that this first point has anything to do with teaching critical thinking. It's just pointing out how dismal it is to sit through any course pitched too low for you. The only thing that will keep you focused is a course at your own level, whether the topic is Vikings or critical thinking or anything else. The second point is indeed a potential pitfall. Ought to be avoidable, though. No reason teaching critical thinking has to be done entirely in the abstract. In general it would be more helpful for me if people would distinguish comments about the principle of teaching critical thinking on purpose rather than by accident, from comments about teaching critical thinking badly. Pointing out pitfalls to avoid is one thing, but condemning the whole idea because you've thought of a pitfall is kind of jumping the gun, unless you can give a good argument why the pitfall cannot possibly be avoided. [ Monday, June 06, 2005 15:42: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 12:19
Profile
Perhaps not under recent popes. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Which Faction Has The Powa? in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 11:13
Profile
As I stated above, this doesn't work. That sneaky Barzahl has his revenge even in death. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Which Faction Has The Powa? in Geneforge 2 | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 11:13
Profile
As I stated above, this doesn't work. That sneaky Barzahl has his revenge even in death. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I can't pick things up? But I'm not encumbered. in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 11:08
Profile
Dropping everything at random is bad. Picking one town as a base, and putting everything there near one exitzone, in neatly organized piles, is not a problem -- just a pathology. In every darn Geneforge game I've ever played, I have wound up with way more stuff piled up in town than I ever actually needed. You can really just sell most stuff. But it is worth keeping sets of resistant items, for use in particular areas. And of course it is reasonable to stockpile crystals, pods and living tools. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I can't pick things up? But I'm not encumbered. in Geneforge | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 11:08
Profile
Dropping everything at random is bad. Picking one town as a base, and putting everything there near one exitzone, in neatly organized piles, is not a problem -- just a pathology. In every darn Geneforge game I've ever played, I have wound up with way more stuff piled up in town than I ever actually needed. You can really just sell most stuff. But it is worth keeping sets of resistant items, for use in particular areas. And of course it is reasonable to stockpile crystals, pods and living tools. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Purist ending in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 10:58
Profile
Hmmm, I suppose that actually canisters aren't as big a deal to Agents as they were in G2, anyway. I found that Kill and Aura of Flames were actually quite nerfed, compared to what they were, because the top monsters seem to resist stunning and magic very well. Kill was good for Rotghroths, but otherwise I did end up using Searer and Ice Lances and Essence Orbs most of the time, anyway. Where I'd miss canisters most would be with a Shaper, because then I'd never get Gazers, and so be unable to smirk everything to death. Hey, though: since things have been rebalanced a bit since G2, has anyone actually tried Drakons and Rotghroths? How do they compare with Gazers now? In G2 it seemed they were clearly worse. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| ok, what;'s wrong here ... in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 10:51
Profile
Roamers are indeed bad, but I don't remember having any particular problems with my Shaper. You will have trouble fighting six at once with a Guardian, too. And the only reason an Agent won't have trouble is Daze. Did you try Daze with your Shaper? Did you try to avoid engaging all six at once? It's quite rare that you are really forced to fight so many rogues simultaneously. There is almost always some way of using corners and ranges to fight only a couple at a time. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| ever felt anyone envys you just because you are intelligent? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 07:21
Profile
Yale wishes. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 07:18
Profile
Yeah, this is what I'm getting at. Critical thinking (and maybe one or two similarly vague but vital talents) are the active ingredient in undergraduate college education, but they come as accidental byproducts. I just think we could do more to focus on them deliberately. As to how, the only idea I have at the moment is indeed the one Thuryl mentioned, of just exposing students to inspirational examples from a range of different disciplines. Forcing everyone to take some more formal math or logic courses would also be great. Forcing everyone to write a lot of short essays would be good, too. And I'm keen on the exercise of precis writing. I actually did that in high school, and never since, but I think it's fantastic training. But beyond those initial guesses, I have a lot of faith in the power of focused attention. If we actually set about doing something like this, I'd bet we'd figure out how to do it better. For instance, if you start putting together edifying examples, and discover that something people are supposed to be learning in a history course actually has some overlap with something people should learn from a physics course, then that would help a lot. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Warped Creator in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Monday, June 6 2005 04:12
Profile
Depends on your stats. Agents get (or should get) high enough MM and SC that their Dazes are very powerful. My sword-swinging Guardian was lucky to daze even a couple of enemies. But even he could get very good mass immobilization from a Madness Gem. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Sunday, June 5 2005 19:32
Profile
quote:Because what they come up with is usually pretty mundane. "It's easy to be wrong." Well, forgive me, but I didn't need to study physics to know that. [/quote]I guess I wasn't clear enough when I tried to distinguish between hearing that as a platitude, and having it infect your instincts. In suggesting that colleges make deliberate and explicit efforts to teach such things, I did not mean to assume that these efforts would consist of announcing empty phrases to dozing students. That doesn't work very well even for conveying ordinary lecture course subject matter. Most people do not actually have any idea how many ways there are to be wrong; they do need to study physics, or perhaps something else, in order to begin to get an idea. This is an example of something valuable to learn in college. It certainly isn't to be learned just by hearing somebody tell you it in so many words. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be learned faster and by more people, if colleges made deliberate efforts to teach it, instead of simply patting themselves on the back when people pick it up along the way. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Sunday, June 5 2005 09:48
Profile
What exactly do you hate about philosophizing physics professors? Why would everyone tune out if someone tried to teach them explicitly the very things that everyone cites as the only practical benefits of their education? I'm not saying you're wrong, necessarily. It's just that it strikes me as a pretty reasonable proposal, to actually try to do the things we currently do accidentally, but claim as the main justification of all our work. So it seems strange to me to give up on this proposal so quickly. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The artifacts (SPOILERS) in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Sunday, June 5 2005 08:57
Profile
I revive this topic to settle it. The first post has been edited into what I think is the final version. I do not believe there are three Purified Essences in the game, despite a few people claiming that there are. I haven't been able to find more than two, despite looking carefully in my last run through the game. And nobody has ever been able to say where the third one is. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Purist ending in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Sunday, June 5 2005 08:46
Profile
Not to spoil anything, but if you play as a purist, you do get a significantly nicer ending as a loyalist. The differences don't change the world, but I liked them. It did seem worthwhile. A purist doesn't touch canisters, or get shaped or augmented or modified in any way. Training is fine. In G2 you could still get the purist ending if you used no more than ten canisters. (Getting modified for fourth tier magic also counted, but I can't remember how much it counted in terms of canisters.) I don't know what the threshold might be in G3; my Guardian was simon pure, and didn't touch anything weird at all. The purist route is not really such a big deal for a Guardian, but it would probably be quite a burden for Agents and Shapers. Agents, in fact, would be badly hampered. I'm sure you could win the game, perhaps by taking the stealth path instead of battle, but you would probably have to give up clearing the Monastery Caves. EDIT: Mike Montgomery deserves enduring fame for discovering the purist alternative, in G2. [ Sunday, June 05, 2005 08:48: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What do YOU want to see in G4? in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Sunday, June 5 2005 08:38
Profile
Hmmm. Maybe you're right. I just happen to like the geneforges, and the canisters. But maybe some variety. How about multicolored canisters, that differ in some interesting ways that I can't think of at all right now? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What do YOU want to see in G4? in Geneforge Series | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Sunday, June 5 2005 06:31
Profile
There are two basic directions this kind of discussion can take. We can go 'clear blue sky', dreaming up anything that appeals to us. If there is ever a 'Blades of Geneforge' (though I sure hope they don't call it that), that could be great. Or we can keep in mind that Jeff still has to make a living, so he can't do anything that won't be reasonably commercial over an audience with a wide range of ages. On the whole, I don't think it would be commercially viable for Spiderweb to give up too much continuity with the geneforge series. The stock elements of canisters and geneforges and the various combinations of creatures are popular and expected. If I were in Jeff's shoes, I'd be thinking that if I were going to risk cutting out such basic elements, I might as well give myself the fun of a completely blank canvas, and do something completely different from Geneforge in every way. So, I don't think really basic changes in the games are plausible for Geneforge IV. We can of course hope to see the elements altered and combined in surprising ways that develop new themes. The many technical innovations that are the main advance of G3 open up a lot of possibilities. So my vote would be to put ideas like minotaurs and 'no geneforge' into a thread on 'what I would do with Blades of Geneforge', and leave 'what do you want in G4' for things that Jeff can more easily afford to do in his commercial product. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |