Comments
gruelandgristle t1_j4iqy64 wrote
I’ve got to give this a read! I loved radicalized! (And I kind of forgot about him!)
HanaBothWays t1_j4irjlz wrote
Cannot recommend Unauthorized Bread enough.
spudlyo t1_j4k1b2b wrote
It’s his best work IMHO.
OperationNovel8986 t1_j4l2rlr wrote
Not unlikely many of these games have at least partially contributed to violent behavior, especially among less responsible persons.
[deleted] t1_j4guh2d wrote
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fallen_one_fs t1_j4i513b wrote
TL;DR for the article: "gamification" is taylorism on roids, nothing more, nothing less.
It's an ancient theory taken to its pinnacle by realizing that humans are competitive. Wow. Such discovery. Give this man an honorary Nobel prize. It's not like we already had competition for gratification bonuses like, say, lawyers' companies, or for promotions in like, say, every office ever... No, wait...
The one thing I am surprised to see is how long it took companies to realize this and apply en masse, it's been used for education time and again, too, this is not some groundbreaking discovery, someone just happens to have put it on paper only now, you know, after Taylor did it about 150 years ago, and lo and behold, the article even points this out, comparing how Taylor measured worker efficiency with stopwatches and now companies use advanced metrics.
"yOu ArE bEiNg PlAyEd FoR a FoOl!!11!", no, only the 3 or so "too ignorant to care" that have no idea what this is are, ever since Ford did the exact same thing with the goddamn roller belts.
[deleted] t1_j4iandq wrote
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fallen_one_fs t1_j4j4lwa wrote
Yes, important notice in: MUCH larger.
TheKingOfTCGames t1_j4ivkj6 wrote
it's not even just competitive though, gamification also has a bunch of pointless accolades that has none at all.
the point is to make things a skinner box, to feed the lizard dopamine receptors without regard to actual outcomes.
fallen_one_fs t1_j4j4q5c wrote
I believe there's plenty of regards to the outcome, but not the one you're thinking...
adrianhon t1_j4kpsew wrote
Author here! There is a lot about Taylorism in the book, and about how the principles behind gamification extend back hundreds if not thousands of years. The reason why we talk about "gamification" now is not just because it's a slogan, however, it's because the way in which it's being presented and the feedback loops are very different from the past.
I do agree with you about the "you've been played" aspect, that's a publisher thing and "the gamification of everything" would be a less sensational and more accurate title.
fallen_one_fs t1_j4ks2sh wrote
The feedback loops are presented in a different way, but I see no fundamental difference anywhere, I'd have to read the whole book to see your point.
About the publisher thing I agree, it could with a lot of toning down on the impactful wording, the way the article presents it makes a very poor case for it too.
gardenofhounds t1_j4jqf2j wrote
If you’re not aware of this you’re complaining about it
SkyJebus t1_j4kqktv wrote
Ty for opening "taylorism" box for me!
fallen_one_fs t1_j4ks7vh wrote
I hope you have good readings with it, it's an interesting theory, if not a bit dirty.
SkyJebus t1_j4kscuq wrote
Dirty?
fallen_one_fs t1_j4ksqtp wrote
Yes, dirty.
It might be only my take on it, but I believe that minimizing effort and maximizing repetition is not good, I believe this mostly because of fordism, which is taylorism on roids but less roids than this one, which led to the 1920's great depression, and that was bad stuff.
Edit: notice how I talked about Ford and the GODDAMN roller belts before, yeah, I just don't like that at all, it's bad stuff.
Tactical-Lesbian t1_j4i1phn wrote
The existence of these games seems to be a response to an education system that produces graduates who have been taught 'what to think' instead of 'how to think'.
Otherwise, more people would question and reject such manipulations at the outset.
Howard_Campbell t1_j4jnoch wrote
Unless you're in a shitty state, us schools do not teach rote memorization.
Tactical-Lesbian t1_j4jsidx wrote
True, some state education systems are not as indoctrinated as others.
Howard_Campbell t1_j4jxkwx wrote
Indoctrinated?
Tactical-Lesbian t1_j5231g0 wrote
Yes, and manipulated, lied to, and stolen from.
spiritbx t1_j4j26cr wrote
So all you need to do to get a promotion is to kill the boss?
Memorysm t1_j4kbbtr wrote
Jeff Bezos shoots fire balls on the last level and the only way to defeat him is to put out the fire with urine filled water bottles
Swift_Koopa t1_j4nambn wrote
You forgot that all the while, you must traverse a rickety bridge over a pit of flaming employees
Fisttoyourfears t1_j4in8mb wrote
The revolution is coming
DonManuel t1_j4g5t80 wrote
I don't think gamification as such is the bad thing. It's the lack of intelligent rules which cause harm for a large number of participants in the game. But I still think all rules can improve and the game can become much better.
Bubbagumpredditor t1_j4gbqdg wrote
The problem is when it's used to help companies accomplish goals instead of people.
DonManuel t1_j4gfts4 wrote
Sure, that's why I think we should drastically improve the rules, contrary to the religion of the free market , the failing of which I think is best described in the so called Yard Sale Model.
khansian t1_j4hef9m wrote
How does this Yard Sale Model represent economic activity?
This Yard Sale Model involves people randomly pairing up and randomly exchanging wealth in a way that one person is always the loser and one person is always the winner. The model shows people flipping a coin and then trading a fraction of the others’ wealth.
How does that mimic trade? In voluntary trade, people are engaging in mutually beneficial trade exchange. I trade you my tchotchke for $5 because I value $5 more than my tchotchke; you do it because you value my tchotchke more than $5. Neither of us walks away “poorer.”
This is the kind of stupid stuff physicists come up with when they try to do economics.
reverie42 t1_j4hu7jz wrote
They also assert that somehow being owed a debt counts towards your net worth, but having debt doesn't count against it, which is absolutely nonsensical. Meanwhile, they completely ignore how the net wealth of society actually changes (the creation and consumption/loss of things).
[deleted] t1_j4ilxtb wrote
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Throwawayingaccount t1_j4oegwi wrote
> They also assert that somehow being owed a debt counts towards your net worth, but having debt doesn't count against it, which is absolutely nonsensical.
Have you looked at how money enters circulation?
Hint hint: it's because of shenanigans like what you just wrote.
(I'm explicitly not defending it. I think it's dumb, but it's what our financial system is based off of.)
reverie42 t1_j4pc6nd wrote
Introducing more money to an economy is not the same as a loan.
In this case, you haven't created value in that case, you've simply fractionalized the value that currently exists. This is an important distinction.
Even with more loan-like things like treasury bonds, the instrument is a little more like a future (in reverse) than a loan.
None of these things create money on a balance sheet. There are huge benefits to owning assets and taking loans on them, but doing so does not mean you suddenly have no liabilities.
frogandbanjo t1_j4j4ejb wrote
> In voluntary trade, people are engaging in mutually beneficial trade exchange. I trade you my tchotchke for $5 because I value $5 more than my tchotchke; you do it because you value my tchotchke more than $5. Neither of us walks away “poorer.”
So it's non-zero-sum because of a subjective tautology? That's a great theory. I can't imagine it ever producing unintended negative outcomes. <massive eyeroll>
khansian t1_j4jb6u7 wrote
Not every aspect of economics has to be wrong in order for your preferred economic theory to be correct.
It’s hilarious how socialists/communists/idiots will disagree with anything and everything about economics, as if they “win” by default if economics is wrong. Yet they fail to realize their own theories would fall apart too if they deny even the most basic building blocks. Marx’s theories of exchange are also based on the principle that people trade on this basis of mutual benefit. His theories of exploitation don’t rely on workers being so stupid that they don’t realize they’re trading their labor for too little; his theories rely on the idea that they simply can’t get as much as they’re worth because of the capitalists’ power.
I’ve had self-described Marxists tell me that capitalists always collude and competition never drives down profit rates. The guy didn’t realize Marx’s whole theory of economic crisis is based on the idea that capitalists drive drown profits through competition.
DonManuel t1_j4hfevw wrote
It's of course a model, an experiment and not a descriptive explanation. But it ends up with a similar accumulation of wealth like we observe in unregulated capitalism.
khansian t1_j4hh7bb wrote
But I can come up with an infinite number of models that generate extreme inequality. Here’s one:
Flip a coin. Comes up heads, all wealth ends up with DontManuel. Comes up tails, nothing happens. Repeat until all wealth ends up with DontManuel.
The question is whether this model mimics reality in any way. Is there any reason to believe actual economic processes operate in this way or generate inequality in this way?
The problem isn’t even that it’s unrealistic. The problem is that the rules of this Yard Sale Model are so painfully contrived to generate extreme inequality that it doesn’t actually even yield any insight into anything. Of course if you make trade 1) random; 2) not mutually beneficial; and 3) trade is done as a fraction of wealth, then eventually some end up with everything.
Perhaps there’s some analogy here to entrepreneurship in select zero-sum contexts, where there can only be a few winners, past winners are more likely to win again, and most people lose. But then I have no idea why this is called the “Yard Sale” model.
The_Last_Green_leaf t1_j4kuvbt wrote
>like we observe in unregulated capitalism.
where do we observe unregulated capitalism? the only country I can think of that has unregulated capitalism might be Somalia, because the government is near non existent,
there has never been unregulated capitalism, and America is far from unregulated, every industry has million of regulations, down to the most niche things.
i8abug t1_j4jjfig wrote
Honest question as I don't think I understand your comment. Why is it a problem to help companies accomplish goals? Isn't that why we work?
Bubbagumpredditor t1_j4kb0a9 wrote
Maybe I should have said accomplish goals at the expense of employees? Like you bust your ass to help double profits, CEO gets a gold plane and you get 2 slices of pizza.
i8abug t1_j4l0hn6 wrote
Oh I see. So you see gamification as a way of making employees more effective without increasing their real world rewards, which feels unfair. I suppose that is likely the goal of gamification at work in a lot of instances. Kind of sucks that the extra money often doesn't get shared.
asdaaaaaaaa t1_j4goqs9 wrote
I think the issue is when you gamify certain industries/work, people start focusing on the "points" or "score" over the actual job. You can see this problem when companies start tracking certain metrics for performance; employees find ways to game the system and get more points without actually helping the company/business.
DonManuel t1_j4gpq9y wrote
> employees find ways to game the system
That always happened, since the beginning of employment. And it always was an arms competition, a game of cat and mouse.
runthepoint1 t1_j4ijokv wrote
It’s the lack of awareness of the game. They get wrapped up in it and forget reality.
I play basketball aggressively, angrily almost. But when I’m off the court there’s no need for any of that. I am aware of the game I am playing.
HanaBothWays t1_j4g13bh wrote
There’s a little bit about this in Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway too and how some communities in the budding Walkaway society use it to encourage innovation and contribution while others don’t because it’s seen as toxic (eventually they all seem to drop it).