What Games Means to Me

I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember. I started on an old Atari 2600 and a pre-windows PC. I remember competing with my mom playing Centipede, I remember playing the old text-based game Adventure, and it's Hall of the Mountain King. For context, I'm only 31 y/o, so I was easily single-digit age when I started gaming. Games have been more a part of my life than anything else, if I'm being truly frank her, even more than my family. It's something that's been a part of my life for over two decades, if not more (memories of my childhood are pretty fuzzy). So, what happens in gaming matters to me.

I think that's why I can't seem to shake the Zoe Quinn thing. As long as I've been gaming I've also been consuming game journalism. I remember back when Gamespot was a fairly rag-tag site that I used to read on a regular basis. I eventually drifted away from it because the reviews weren't lining up with my tastes anymore. No biggie, that happens, at the time (mid 90's, if I remember correctly) gaming was diverging more towards multiplayer that singleplayer experiences, and I've always been a singleplayer kind of gamer. I drifted for awhile without any good professional feedback on games that I found useful, then I stumbled across a site I'm still fond of today: Ars Technica. I like their game reviews, and I've found that my tastes generally align with their reviews. More recently I've expanded that a little to include TotalBiscut's YouTube channel, and I absolutely delight on his game industry commentary. I can easily disagree with TotalBiscut's approach to gaming, and what he does/doesn't like (Dear Esther being the quintessential example), but I absolutely adore how he reviews games, as it gives me a phenomenal amount of information on whether or not I'd like the game.

But, I digress, and probably over-provide context here. I feel that the core idea of the message I want to convey here is what games mean to me. I am a gamer, and I wear that badge with the same level of pride that I do all of the other ones that I assign myself (for anyone who knows me, I've got an ego that's hard to match, so there's a lot of pride in those labels for me).

Over the years my understanding of my medium of choice has evolved. At first it was an entertaining challenge. I remember my first time playing the original X-Com and was totally engrossed with the complexity of the game, and how much I had to juggle at once to be good at it. I loved the challenge, and I still do today. As I started getting educated and more critical of my environment I got inclining of some of the norms in gaming that were rubbing me the wrong way. The most prominent thing is that gaming was popularly thought of as a 'guy' thing. This bothered me, I never considered women to be any worse at gaming than men, as my mom could regularly trounce me at centipede back in the Atari days. I wanted to understand why, so I researched it. Before that I was never very engaged in the online community of gamers, and when I got there I was rather shocked at some (admittedly not all) of what I saw. Misogyny was common, and women were being harassed out of the scene. Can I point to specific examples? Well, kind of, but my memory from that far back is pretty hazy (I think my memory is crap until about ~3 years ago or so, that's for another post though). I do remember one article I read talking about how in competitive gaming, one woman got sexually harassed out of a competition by her male contender, and afterwards the guy who had done the harassing said that such harassment was a 'part of gaming'. I seriously re-considered if I wanted to be a gamer at that point.

But I persist in calling myself a gamer, not because I feel that sexually harassing women is a part of gaming. Heck, the same group can (and often does) mean different things to different people. I do think I share at least one thing in common with the harassing guy: we both love games. For me that's the essence of my identity as a gamer.

So, I had recognized that gaming was a hostile environment to women, and I disliked that. It's a medium that's important to me, and anything important to me I have a desire to share. I shuddered at the thought that I may not be able to share something so important with most of the people in my life (It's always been for me that most of my friends are women). Most of the times I do share that, I get cynical feedback. I remember one instance of sharing the last bits of Brood War with a female friend, and as we were watching the ending cinematic the only thing she could say about the entire thing was to mutter "cyber barbie" about Kerrigan's appearance.

Now, granted, this isn't someone who's been through the Starcraft campaign, so I understood the emotional connections would be absent, but I still felt hurt. Here was a character that I had seen through countless adventures, who I had watched fall to the Zerg and be reborn as the Queen of Blades, who had slain many other characters I had come to adore. This was a character I was emotionally vested in. What I saw at the end of Brood War was the culmination of all those experiences into one dark, dreadful moment. I wanted to share that dread, that sense of loss and sadness. All, it seems, I could share of that was "cyber barbie". My heart sunk, and I think that was the point I stopped sharing my medium with others. It wasn't something that could be understood by someone who wasn't already there.

It's not to say that I didn't understand where my friend was coming from, games do oversexualize women (Dead or Alive, anyone?). I never saw that as an issue specific to gaming as I see the same thing in every other form of media as well. As my college education continued so did my ability to identify and critique it. I absolutely adore Bioware, and I still roll my eyes at their concept of the female figure. Sometimes my objection over portrayal of women in games pushed me to boycott certain franchises. Tomb Raider is the perfect example, I was just so turned off (ironically) by the physical representation of Lara Croft that I just turned away from the franchise entirely, up until the recent reboot.

I was thrilled when Anita Sarkeesian started Feminist Frequency. Finally there was someone bringing that kind of analysis I was already familiar with (academic) to this part of gaming that I'd been critiquing in my mind in an unstructured and subjective way. Now I had an analytical framework to work with! Shortly thereafter started coming the indie game development scene, and some of the games I love the most today that came from it: Kerbal Space Program, Journey, FTL. Journey especially, as that's when I first started to really profoundly identify women's contributions to game development. Before that it was piecemeal, at best. I was seeing perspectives that I never had before, ways of engaging with my favorite medium that were new and refreshing for me. I still remember the first game I played where I felt that women weren't being blatantly objectified: The Longest Journey. As much as old-school point-and-click adventure games infuriate me (Wait, I need to get the deflated rubber ducky float, patch it, inflate it, and combine it with a pair of huge pliers and rope so I can get the key that's sitting in the subway, so I can open the power junction by the theater to distract the cleaning guy and get in the theater? *seriously?!*), I still love them. Call it an acquired taste (-:

Then I saw something I was not expecting: Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, The Big Bang Theory, game advertisements on television and in theaters. Gaming was becoming mainstream. I was thrilled! To thie day I still don't feel like I can really share my experience as a gamer with most people, but that's more to do with me. I was excited that more and more people would be having the experiences that I've had over the past few decades though. Yes, it is 'just a game'. It's also fair to say that games reflect ourselves, especially in the Bioware games (still annoyed about what I can only refer to as 'BioBoobs', though). I played through Mass effect as a good-ish character. I wasn't afraid of being an asshole if I felt it was necessary, or if something/one rubbed me the wrong way (I was a total ass to Verner).

I also saw a step up of the vitriol that was coming from the kinds of gamers with the same attitude as that one guy who sexually harassed his competitor out of the competition. I couldn't help but resignedly sigh and accept that I was probably going to see more of that. I had become comfortable in my identity as a gamer, and moreso because I wasn't *that* kind of gamer. Certainly a degree of pride about that.

Honestly I never really dug myself into the politics of gaming until I started listening to TotalBiscut. Given that I've got a degree in public policy, one would think this is something that would come up for me more frequently. I haven't been to a gaming convention in a long time (full disclosure though, I did volunteer for Arisia 2013), and it's been hard to find a group of gamers that I really connect with well, so I really haven't been connected well enough to know about any of this.

So then I find out about this whole Zoe Quinn thing, and I rally shouldn't be as riled up about it as I am. Ok, yeah, she's something of a screw-up, that's fine. People can be screw-ups, that's just how it happens. I guess what's been spinning around this for me is that some of the things I've been noticing outside of gaming that I've been annoyed with when it comes to a feminist critique, found their way into gaming. As for those 'things I've been annoyed with', see items 5 and 6 in my previous post. Take those and apply them to other fields, it's something I've been noticing and critiquing. I play a dangerous game though, as in these critiques I tend to put some of my friendships at risk, because I do critique very emotionally-laden topics.

And this is where I try to come full circle, I suppose. It traces back to one of my core values: the things that matter the most to us are the ones we should be critiquing the most, otherwise they have no method of improving over time. I am critical of games, as I've mentioned to the point of boycotting a franchise for awhile because of how I disagreed with it's portrayal of women (Tomb Raider). I even wrote a paper that did a critique of how games present relationship options for the player character. I gave Mass Effect some good shit in that thing, and I absolutely love Mass Effect!

Part of it is also that I think I needed a bit of hero-bashing. I'll come straight out and say that Wil Wheaton's been someone I've admired for awhile, especially given that he started his stardom as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: TNG. He's really embraced the geek/nerd/gamer/whatever-you-wanna-call-it culture when he had every reason to turn away from it. I can't agree with his opinions in this matter, and I feel that his opinions reinforce the anti-criticism spirit that's been surrounding the entire Zoe Quinn issue. That's just something, being a person who absolutely loves games as much as I do and who values criticism as a vital part of how games will grow and evolve, that I can't condone.

So, I'm in a weird and very isolating place, again, where I'm not sure exactly how to express what gaming means to me. In a lot of ways, I guess I'm, again, redefining what it means for me to be a gamer. What it'll morph into, I'm not sure. I do know that my values of critiquing the things I care the most about, and the people who work with/create them, will play heavily into it going forward, however.

I guess to give a TL;DR version: I love games, they're meaningful to me, and I value them. That's why I care about our ability to critique them, as well as how they're made, who makes them, and how we as a culture perceive them.

Cheers folks,

- Jason

Update (9/22/14): I've since moved the sites I get news from to The Escapist, GoodGamers.us, Niche Gamer, and Tech Raptor.

How Feminism Tries to Dominate Multi-Faceted Issues

This has been something of a soapbox rant I've had stewing in my head for awhile now, and I think a situation finally came up that can allow me to articulate it in a more concise manner.

First though, a bit of prior material is a necessity before I launch into this rant -

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/the-death-of-the-gamers-and-the-women-who-killed-them/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T82CGiI9Vb4&list=UUxXUQuvoiIAlpM2osoAitjQ
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1
http://themalesofgames.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-zoe-quinn-story.html

I think this gives a nice overall of the general situation that I can start from.

Secondly, full disclosure: I fully support Sarkeesian's work on Feminist Frequency, and am a funder to the show.

So, let me see if I can first outline all the issues here:
1) Zoe Quinn's ex airing her 'dirty laundry' publicly.
2) The DMCA claim on MundaneMatt's video discussing (in part) what Quinn's ex aired.
3) The misogyny directed at Quinn and (later) Sarkeesian.
4) The lack of ethical standards within gaming journalism, highlighted by one of Quinn's relationships.
5) The emphasization of the feminist aspects of this issue in a way that neglects other aspects.
6) The double-standard of airing men's dirty laundry vs. women's.

Ok, lemme see if I can go down the list here.

1) Generally not a good thing for Quinn's ex to have done. Modern social norms differentiates the public and private spheres, and stuff isn't really supposed to cross from one to the other. Having been in a similar situation myself I can understand the motivation behind his action, but this still demonstrates a lack of good impulse control.

2) So, because of the screwball way YouTube does DMCA claims it's impossible to confirm that Quinn submitted the claim. I'm inclined to believe she did, as the dirty laundry aired by her ex indicates she's got just as much poor impulse control as her ex does, and I'm inclined to believe the information her ex posted. Generally jilted lovers don't BS, and there's enough evidence supporting his story. So I'm running under the assumption it was her.

Now, the claim was officially for using an image from the game, however I'm not inclined to believe that was the motivation for the claim, as if someone really wanted to push that angle, there'd be a LOT of DMCA claims one would have to go through. Timing also makes that motivation suspect. I'm inclined to believe that the claim was an attempt at censoring MundaneMatt due to what he was reporting on.

3) From everything I've read, everyone but those who are directing the bile they are at Quinn and Sarkeesian agree that this is really shitty stuff to do. This is BS, and the people whop are doing this need to stop. Especially airing a person's private information like that, that breaks the public/private divide (mentioned in item 1), puts people in danger, and wastes public resources (police force, specifically). If you're throwing shit around, knock it off.

4) Alright, this is the issue that keeps trying to get sidelined, which I'll discuss in item 5 (and will get to in a moment), but here's the basic jist: Yes, there's no clear evidence that there's journalistic bias because of Quinn's relationship, to focus specifically on that, however, misses a larger point: It's a rather common occurrence for there to be strong personal relationships between indie developers and indie journalists. Quinn's situation just happens to highlight that yes this DOES happen. Does it always bias journalism? No. Can it? Yes. Is there any mechanism to protect against this bias in place? No. It's that last bit that this issue is all about.

5) This is the first of these points that really gets under my skin. First, I'm a declared feminist. It's been a major part of my academic studies, and I appreciate the critical perspective on gender that a feminist analysis brings to an issue. As such it REALLY annoys me when people 'cry feminism' in the way I see here. I reference the Ars Technica article (the first link) as the most mundane example where the non-feminist issues are barely given a sentence, and dig up some of Wil Wheaton's actions and statements on the issue to see the more extreme examples.

I see this a lot, where there's a feminist aspect to an issue that tries to totally dominate the conversation. As if somehow because there's misogyny going on it somehow has to totally override any other issue present int he conversation. This is bad form, through-and-through, and no single issue should ever dominate a conversation. Everything in life is multi-faceted and it's totally legitimate for one issue to bring light on other issues, like how Quinn's dirty laundry highlights issues in game journalism. This is not a problem, so if you're telling people to stop talking about the issues in games journalism because of the shit that's being thrown at Quinn and Sarkeesian, knock it off. It may not be *your* biggest concern in the situation, but that doesn't give you the right to try and invalidate it for others.

6) This is the other one that gets on my nerves. Basic jist is that when a man's dirty laundry is aired it's seen as a social triumph. When a woman's dirty laundry is aired, it's seen as a reflection of a misogynist society. I'm not saying that it should be lauded or condemned when this stuff happens, just that there's a clear gender divide here.

Now, some interesting observations looking at this rather holistically:

a) First, the public/private divide. Part of the feminist argument supporting Quinn is how this stuff should have never come to light. This is ironic because one of the core feminist concepts is "the personal is political," which makes sense if your a woman in a society that 'privatizes' women's abuse at home. It's an argument that legitimizes bringing what has been historically viewed as a private matter into the public sphere and being addressed.

Now we have a situation that's the inverse of what the saying was designed for here. We have a woman acting in an abusive (will dig into this definition in a moment, bear with me) nature in a private context, and a man who's turning it into a public issue. This is NOT something that feminist should be opposed to, quite the contrary it's vital that the private light gets a public spectacle, otherwise harm that is happening in one's private sphere is ignored. I would posit that what Quinn's ex did is perfectly in-line with feminism, and should not be decried.

I do feel the need to remind people that feminism is NOT about protecting women, but understanding the power imbalances between men and women, with an eye on re-balancing them. It's horribly inappropriate to take a feminist stance and claim that Quinn's ex shouldn't have aired her indiscretions, as doing so is perfectly in-line with "the personal is political."

The challenge comes in with where do we draw the line in airing people's private lives. I believe most would argue that the line should be drawn around harm. If someone's being harmed, then the private should be public. What defines harm though? It's easy to make an argument that if someone's getting physically beaten in their relationship, that would qualify as harm. What about psychological harm though? There's plenty of evidence supporting that psychological harm is just as damaging, and likely moreso, than physical harm. Yet there's much less consensus that psychological harm is a 'valid' form of harm.

Personally, I'm in favor of getting rid of the entire concept of privacy, as privacy ultimately only serves individual's delusions of security, and allows them to skirt accountability for their actions. My personal opinion though.

b) I seriously think people need to stop listening to the loudest voices in the room. Every side here is responding to the minority of idiots who are screaming their heads off for attention. Gamers aren't total misogynists. Yes, our medium of choice is replete with misogynist themes, so is pretty much every other medium. To claim gamers are inherently misogynist would require us to claim that everyone is misogynistic, which goes well beyond absurdity.

Also, and I think MundaneMatt is a good example of this, by and large people aren't trying to 'quiet' the issue about gaming journalism bias. Yes, there are some who are, but most people latch on to the perspective they're first exposed to the issue from, and assume other perspectives are 'just trying to distract' from it. It's a psychological bias problem, and I know I suffered from it when I first heard this story. MundaneMatt's 'rallying cry' arguments highlight the same degree of idiots on the feminist side of the argument as feminist do of misogynistic gamers.

Now, to be fair, everyone's been fairly decent in recognizing that they're actually addressing a minority of the populations they're targeting, however their analysis tends to stop there. Simply stating that you're addressing a minority isn't enough, the perspective of the majority (or other groups if it's more divisive) needs to be brought in to really highlight that you're talking about a minority. Otherwise people *will* psychologically latch on to the example you provide, and externalize that to the larger group as a whole. In much the same way, the game journalism arguments are being just as blind as the feminist arguments.

So, at this point I've started to run out of steam in soap-boxing on this. There's one more point I'd like to cover though, and that's about what ethical standards game journalists should be held to. Frankly I'm not sure. I do see bias as a huge problem. Yes, people go into an article understanding that the biases of the individual will be reflected in the article, however I doubt that readers fully understand the scope of those biases. TotalBiscut has some very good discussions about journalistic integrity that I think are a great starting point to figuring out what game journalism ethics should be.

Ok, there goes my steam.

Until next time folks.

- Jason

Mapping Poverty in California

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my 'random tangent blog of stuff'. This time, with more 'stuff' and less 'random tangent'! This post is actually for completion of a project in my Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class.  I conducted an analysis of poverty levels in my home state of California, specifically examining poverty by race and family type. So, before I go any further, lemme switch my writing style over from the casual regular blogging Jason to formal academic stick-up-my-ass Jason (-:

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Analysis of Poverty by Ethnicity and Family Type in California

In 2012 California had over 6 million people in poverty, and was also one of the top states for rate of poverty (17%), as well as poverty rate growth (0.4 percentile growth from 2011 to 2012) [1]. Despite this, California still shows itself as the economic powerhouse of the nation, consisting of 13% of the US's GDP [2]. When examining California's GDP per capita, however, it comes out only moderately above the national average ($52,666 state to $49,587 national) [3]. As the 2012 federal poverty line is only $19,090 for a family of three, this means that 17% of the population of California is making about a third, or less, of the state's GDP per Capita. With California's notoriously high cost of living, this data hints at high levels of inequality within the state.

Methodology:

This analysis examines some of the characteristics of poverty in California, using the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 3-year (2010-2012) data at the county level [4]. Poverty is cross-sectioned within each county by ethnicity and family type.

Because of the high proportion of Hispanic's [5] in California (38.2% of the population) [6] data was broken out by Hispanic/Latino status. Unfortunately due to how the US Census Bureau's tables cross-tabulating poverty, ethnicity and family type incorporate race, only three ethnicity categories are available: White non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and Other. Other would include all other non-Hispanic/Latino races, such as Asian, African American, Pacific Islander and Native American. This does not allow analysis on African Americans separately from these groups.

Also due to how the Census Bureau collects data, family type can only be examined on three dimensions: gender of head-of-household, marital status, and presence of children. These three factors create the family type variable, with categories such as single female with kids, married couple without kids, etc.

The map data used is from the US Census Bureau's TIGER Shapefiles [7] for 2012. The counties within California were color-coded based on overall levle of poverty, and an icon was placed in the center of each county representing the race/family type combination with the highest poverty rate.

Because of the low populations in 13 of California's counties (Inyo, Mono, Alpine, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Calaveras, Amador, Sierra, Plumas, Lassen, Modoc, Trinity, Del Norte), they have no data associated with them.

Results:

The poverty rate runs from 5% in in San Mateo county to 22.0% in Tulare county, with the average poverty rate being 12.6%. Five counties had ethnicity/family type groups with 100% poverty rates, however in all cases the sample size for this group was under 35. Excluding those counties with highest poverty rate groups at 100%, 30 counties had Single Hispanic Mothers as the ethnicity/family type with the highest level of poverty, five had Single Other Mothers, three had Single Other Fathers, and two had Single Other Male w/o Kids.

County-level poverty was highest in the southern counties and those in the south central valley of California. The Single Hispanic Mother highest poverty counties are also concentrated in the southern parts of the state, however don't always match with the highest poverty rate counties. For example, the concentration of high poverty counties in the central valley (Tulare, Kings, Fresno, Madera, and Merced counties) have a mixture of Hispanic and Other race single mothers as their highest poverty group, compared to the shoreline counties which, below San Francisco, are all Single Hispanic Mothers as the highest poverty group.

Limitations:

Because the poverty rate is based on a fixed dollar amount, and county costs of living vary across the state, counties are not perfectly comparable to each other. The more rural areas of California, in the central valley, will likely show a higher rate of poverty due to the lower cost of living. This means that poverty in one county is not comparable to poverty in another county.

Also, the number of people relative to the county's population for the highest poverty group is not shown in the map, just the group with the highest poverty rate. This analysis also did not examine the distribution of ethnicity or family type within the state. This means that there could be (and in a few cases are) groups with very high poverty rates that consist of only a handful of people.

Lastly, because only the group with the highest poverty rate is shown, the poverty levels of the remaining groups is ignored. This could potentially exclude groups that have poverty rates that are very close to the highest group.

Conclusions:

Though the limitations of this analysis do hamper the ability to speak to California's poverty issue as a whole, because governance is divided by county (and city within county), this analysis does provide a perspective as to the political scope of poverty in California. With the large majority of counties facing poverty among Single Hispanic Mothers, this would be a very easy group to gain political traction in addressing.

Further study in this area could attempt to control for population distribution within the state, as well as including poverty rates for all groups of race and family type. This could be done with existing US Census data. This would give a clearer picture of what groups in California are in poverty. The unequal costs of living through California is a more challenging problem, and would require a county-by-county assessment to allow for poverty impacts to be comparable across counties.

References:

[1] US Census Bureau, Poverty: 2000 to 2012, http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-01.pdf

[2] US Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP By State, http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htmState, http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htm

[3] Author calculations from a combination of data from US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, Demographic and Housing Estimates 2012, http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml; and US Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP By State, http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htm

[4] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml

[5] Please note that the Latino population is also included under the label 'Hispanic' for this analysis. As there is little consistency is how these terms are used in current literature, Hispanic was chosen as the Census Bureau puts that term first in its labels. This population includes people from Latin America and Spanish descent, such as Mexicans, Colombians, Brazilians, etc.

[6] US Census Bureau, Demographic and Housing Estimates 2012, http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml

[7] http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html

Environment and Circumstance

It's amazing how things change over time, with compassion waxing and waning, belief shifting, absolutes turning murky  The basic philosophical question is 'How do I live a good life?' and I really don't have a good answer for that anymore. I thought I did, but it's so challenged that I have nowhere to stand anymore. Can circumstances really make such a difference? I don't know.

Where and how do I move from here? More importantly, do I even have a choice?

Can I really heal?

*sigh*

Too many questions.

Elections, Political Parties and Thinking Outside the (Comfortable) Box

I watched the first Presidential debate and the first Massachusetts Senate debate this month, and after listening to the candidates in both Republican and Democrat tickets, and listening to the kinds of scrutiny that friends, family, and peers provided, that the questions that are being asked are missing an important quality to elections, and an important line of inquiry that's been observed as lacking in politics for quite some time now: Leadership skills.

Often when people think of leadership skills, the thought turns to how well someone is at rallying people to their cause. We see people like Obama and Romney successfully rallying their constituent base toward a goal, and point to leadership. Is this truly political leadership however? What of the leadership that a President needs to show in working with a hostile (read: of a different political party) Congress? What of the leadership that a Senator needs in working within such an environment? Isn't it the role of these positions to be national leaders, not just leaders within their party?

In watching both debates, I see others critique policy and/or ideology between candidates, reading between the lines to discern facts and data, to identify programs and laws that may be at risk or may benefit, and to dissect rhetorical styles. Despite this, the discussion of who shows leadership skills is absent from these critiques. I would argue that for positions such as these it is probably more vital for a successful President or Senator, or any representative, to show leadership.

I argue this with the following logic: Is the president a data analyst? Sort of. Any president must show an ability to understand information presented and select among various options. I would argue that a President has many staff who's job it is to provide data, and explain that data, so this is a delegatable responsibility. Does the president make decisions impacting programs and policies? Again, sort of. Outside of ideological reasons, a President needs data to decide how to change programs, and that data is supplied by... yep, that's right, staff members. There are also staff who make program recommendations too, another delegatable task. Even if we have a president who's acting ideologically, regardless of data, there still exists two very big power blocks, Congress and the courts. Since government decisions, and even political rhetoric, is very seriously data-driven, and politicians aren't really coming up with data or recommended actions on those data by themselves, it's safe to assume that any president has access to information on all the various information and recommendations to make a decision.

So then what of that decision? Isn't that capacity to choose part of the reason we vote for a candidate? Again, sort of. What about implementation? What about political process? If it was just a matter of making the decision then there really would be no need to speak of leadership beyond galvanizing the electorate, that's the only group that would matter. This would also be consistent with a parliamentary system, something we distinctly don't have in the United States.

Ok then, what about implementation, what's required in implementation? This is where the broader concept of leadership comes in. A President can't just say to Congress 'I want this legislation.' and it happens. This has been tried numerous times unsuccessfully. Obama's administration is about as repeat with this as can be. Since Congress serves as the first gatekeeper for a President, then it makes sense that a President must work with Congress in creating legislation (also since the President has the veto, more on later). If Congress is of the same political party majority as the President, this doesn't tend to be a problem, as the President's already galvanized his own party behind him. What of the current setup? We have a split Congress. Ut uo, now the President needs to work with someone outside of the political party. Existing leadership fails here, and new leadership skills are needed. This is the 'between the isle' leadership that is often spoken of, but I would argue rarely seen.

Let's start dissecting leadership then, beginning with a definition: For simplicity's sake I'll use a somewhat political, and fairly simple, definition. The ability to bring together people and direct them towards a common goal. This was exceptionally clear in Obama's 2008 campaign, he galvanized the voter base for a very strong victory. The rhetorical style was addressing Democrats, clearly, as that was his core audience. However it was also addressing moderates in a persuasive way. One thing I can say with complete confidence, it wasn't addressing Republicans. Obama wasn't trying to show leadership with Republicans, just Democrats and moderates. The same can be said of his competitor, McCain, in that he was trying to lead Republicans and moderates, and not Democrats. This is clear in how issues are addressed ideologically, stylistically, and what issues are raised within each group. Common themes among Democrat rhetoric: Taxes on big business up, middle class taxes down. Common Republican rhetoric: Military spending and job creation incentives for businesses. Democrats respond much better to democratic rhetoric than Republicans do, and vice versa. In many ways they're like different languages.

That's where this key point comes in with leadership. How does one lead both their own party, and the opposing party? Since we're in a gridlocked Congress there's no way around the need to address both parties. Likely over the next few years there will be a similar gridlock, and in future presidencies this is unlikely to change altogether that much. Oh sure a few may be all one party, but that's more an abberation than a regular occurance. Well, building off my previous example, how one communicates with a group helps to drive how much leadership one is allowed to have. Yes, there are other qualities here, but they all hinge on a single skill: communication.

Quick dissection: communication is the art of sending a message to a recipient, they translate it, send a return message which you translate, and reply to their message. It's cyclical, and dependent on the communication skills of both (or multiple, the model is scalable) parties. The interesting thing about communication is that both parties have influence to help the process at any stage. A sender can work with a receiver in helping the process of translating the message, and vice versa. This becomes more challenging the less effort and/or the less that either party wants to communicate with the other, assuming that language barriers aren't even a problem. Probably the most interesting quirk of communication is how it rests outside of the realm of fact. Facts can be brought in to a communication circut, but the communication is about the exchange, not the information being exchanged so much.

So, let's recap for a moment here: Leadership's an established necessary component for a President (and Senator, will get back to later) to have, and leadership is contingent on communication. Well, let's see how our Presidential candidates stack up in regards to this communication test. Based purely on face value, after the first presidential debate it seems pretty clear that both Obama and Romney have hit what can only be described as epic fail on basic communication. Evidence: both parties made statements that the other refuted very directly, multiple times, but was never addressed. Obama regarding the $5 trillion tax cut, which Romney refuted multiple times, and Romney on the committee that makes decisions on people's medical care, which was refuted by Obama multiple times. Now let's set aside issues of what is the factually correct information for a moment, this is about communication, not fact-tallying.

Again, I'm taking this whole thing at face value, I'll get into another rant on the Presidential debates another time.

So, let's look at this from a communication-based perspective, and qualify my 'epic fail' remark earlier by creating something of a rubric. If leadership, in galvanizing people in support of a common goal, is the objective, and communication is fundamental to achieving this end, then it strikes me that choices in communicating should reflect a furthering of the kind of communication that will create leadership. Well, I could just arbitrary throw stuff out there that sounds good, but let's be more logical about this. In the most basic sense, communication fails as soon as either party ceases to want to communicate, this can be a ceasing of either broadcasting a message, or of receiving a message, or of putting effort into translating the message, as any significant break in this chain from either party will de-rail the conversational cycle. Or put more simply, in order to even be communicating with you, I need to be willing to pay attention to what you're saying, try to understand it, and say something back to you. If I want to have a conversation that is successful on the most basic level, then I should be saying something to you that will motivate you to repeat this same process for me, and you will want to say something that will motivate me to repeat the process again for you. For simplicity's sake, let's call this successful process conversation.

Ok, we have a rubric now, each party must not only be motivated to receive, translate, and send information, but also must be willing to send information that motivates the other party to repeat the process for them. Remember how I said that the sender can influence the receiver's translation of material? This is one way how.

With this rubric, let's go back to the Presidential debate. Obama talks about a $5 trillion tax cut, Romney rebuts it, Obama repeats the same information about the $5 trillion tax cut, Romney repeats the same information. Repeat about 3 or so more times. Were I Romney I'd start to get pretty pissed off at Obama for not responding to what I was saying, and would be discouraged in communicating with Obama, at least on this issue. Fail: motivate continued communication. It's a little harder to tell where the fail was with Obama, as he clearly responded to other parts of Romney's responses but not that one. It likely wasn't some sort of reception problem. Was there a translation problem, did Obama not understand what was being said? Again, not likely, Obama responded quite directly to other statements that Romney had made through the debate. So the issue was likely in transmission, or put simply, Obama chose not to respond to that issue. Once, maybe even twice, this can be chalked up to random error. This was recurring within just a few minutes, so it's hard to qualify this as just a simple mistake or error on Obama's part. Erego, deliberate. This isn't a failure of transmission, but a failure of the transmission in a way that motivates a response. The deliberateness of it is what moves this from a simple communication fail to the colorfully expressed 'epic fail.' It's one thing to mess up a conversation, something else entirely to deliberately mess it up like that.

Remember though, Romney did the same thing to Obama later in the debate. Yes you can argue post hoc, but that's a fallacy I'll dig into another time.

So, let's bring this back around to the leadership issue. We have two Presidential candidates who, on national television, deliberately messed up their lines of communication with each other. This seems ominously familiar… I think I’ll make a bit of a leap here and say that what was observed here parallels the same dialog that has been occurring in Congress, and between the President and Congress for as long as I can remember. Recollecting from many of the house committee hearings I’ve had the (mis)fortune of watching, the same communication snafu shows up regularly.

So, let me bring this full circle here, and assert why this was a such a big fail for both candidates. We have here two people who are representing themselves AND their party, to the entire American audience, and even world audiences. They are both role models, for those within their party, and windows, for those outside. The common criticism is that politics have broken down. I present to you the above analysis of communication in the presidential debate as to a likely source of that breakdown: failure of basic communication, and through that failure of a capacity for us to witness, in a very real and substantial way, for the two people currently bestowed with the responsibility of representing themselves and their party to the American people, modeling a complete failure of across-the-isle communication skills.

With the connection between communication and leadership, this boils down to a failure of bipartisan leadership skills that are being nationally modeled. The danger here is in assuming that either candidate even has this capacity, which I can’t say there’s any strong evidence for through the debate, either of their campaigns, or their political careers.

I really shouldn’t have to explain why this is a bad thing.

But wait, there’s more! Returning to the beginning of this rant, I said I watched not just the Presidential debate, but the Massachusetts Senate debate too! Lo and behold, much to my (non)surprise, the same pattern was there too. Repeat everything I just said about the Presidential debate to the Mass. Senate debate.

*sigh*

So, what’s the solution? Well, this is where I change gears a little, and start to move into problem-solving mode. I would first generally state that I assert it’s important for scrutiny of a political candidate to include an assessment of their leadership and communication skills to those outside of their party.

Then, in addressing the actual behavior of the candidates: It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that both of them have some sort of personal defect, or ulterior agenda, and with their behavior outside of the debate, this would seem supported. However, let’s remember that the Presidential debate is one of the few instances where the candidates really do become much more than just this speech here, or that proposal there. There’s a level of national representation that the debate communicates to the nation, and the influence that the candidates can have on the electorate is probably at its highest at this point. I.E. it matters what they do in general, but it really matters during the debate. So what can be done differently?

Well, that’s where I have to draw in from elsewhere for inspiration. The little known of Third Party Debate (thank you NPR! Link here: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/06/162438686/the-npr-third-party-candidate-debate). Here we have two people running for President, rather seriously too (they’re both on the Mass. Ballot, and many other states too), having a debate along similar lines (albeit much shorter) to what we saw in the regular Presidential debate, yet what’s missing here? The candidates aren’t failing to communicate with each other.

This is probably why it goes so much faster than the Presidential, and the Mass. Senate, debate.

Ok, let’s be fair, that’s really a format issue. The questions in the Third Party debate aren’t designed to solicit cross-talk between the candidates. Is this really a bad thing though? They’re not modeling bad leadership… just not modeling good leadership either.

Let’s look at this from a broader perspective though: debate format, especially around the kinds of questions asked. The questions in the regular Presidential debate were intentionally contentious, asking specifically about what the differences in policy were between the candidates. The Third Party debate was just asking about the individual candidates policy. That’s quite a difference in response based on a fairly small change in the question! (Survey and interview researchers, take note here J)

Well, it can be argued that it’s more to do with the character and communication skills of the Third Party candidates. I’m skeptical on this, but won’t refute that possibility straight-up. I’m not sure their communication skills are any better than Obama or Romney, as they seem to actually be less clear in some more basic mass-audience communication than either of them. Since we don’t see cross-party communication, it’s hard to gauge there, but considering there’s really only room upward from the examples we have elsewhere… that they didn’t break format and turn it into a communication fiasco at least gives some hint that there’s some communication aptitude there. Not really much to go on, so I can’t really rule it out.

In regards to their character, again I’m not sure, both candidates speak with the same passion, zest, and enthusiasm as the major party candidates. I’m not convinced here, but won’t rule it out.

What’s that leave then? Well, what about motivation? Perhaps the main party candidates had ulterior motives for communicating in the way they did. This starts to get into Presidential debate politics, which could fill more pages than I’ve written here, and as much as I’d love to get into it, I must draw the essayist line somewhere, and address it another time. To summarize my thoughts on this issue (for elaboration another time), I’m strongly in favor that this is a major contributing factor to the reason that the debates are showing such epic failure of leadership.

I would return to my original thesis, though, that perhaps they just don’t know how to lead from across the aisle, and/or the existing format encourages communication fail. I can’t speak much to altering people’s character, so perhaps then, a good start would be to consider alternative debate formats? If the current format encourages poor cross-aisle leadership, then perhaps a neutral, or positive debate format would at least not be such a bad example for the nation?

If nothing else, I really want to see some good examples of people working together, not tearing each other to shreds. We see plenty of that already.

-         Jason Cherry

A New Life, A New Me? Maybe, Maybe Not.

So, I moved across the country and am now residing in Boston, Massachusetts. My life is totally different now, and I think it's for the better. This is definitely a life more suited to me, I will say that.

It's interesting though, as I kind of expect to 'wake up' from this, and go in to work at my old job. It's something totally different here, but I'm not sure I'm any different. A lot of this could be because I have such a strong self-presence as it is, that external factors don't really change it. I'm not sure how to evaluate that though.

With all I've been learning though, maybe I should design a research study to test it (-:

I dunno though. I have more control on my schedule, and more unscheduled responsibility. I'm rather pleasantly surprised how well I've handled that as unscheduled responsibility (read: homework) has historically been a problem for me, but I seem to be keeping up with things very well this time. I'm reading more than I ever have before, and retaining it better than I used to.

Yet many of the same problems I had before followed me here, naturally those dealing with relationships. I'm now at two busts, one friend-zoned, and one potential. Plus I'm still dealing with the emotional fallout from my marriage. *sigh*

I guess in aggregate I have to say I haven't really changed, which isn't a bad thing, I really like who I am.

- Jason

A Crazy Idea on Prison Reform?

I was just doing a mental exercise yesterday, and I ended up coming up with a prison system reform idea, lemme run through the exercise though. I was qualifying why I believe in the death penalty, and the circumstances I believe it's applicable. That was pretty straightforward: 1) subject is non-reformable, and 2) the net detriment from killing the subject is lower than the net detriment of letting the subject live.

Alternatives to death penalty were A) let them loose, and allow them to continue inflicting social harm, or B) segregate them from society so they can't continue inflicting harm on society.

After working with option B in my head for awhile, I started to contemplate the prison system as being treated like a segregated community from the citizen community. What are the rights and responsibilities of the citizenry towards prisoners in a case like that? Granted it's kind of how it is today, but what I was thinking was a little different. What I was thinking was that there was a large plot of land that was cordoned off from society, where prisoners could go and build their own society, with it's own economy and so on. Almost like a foreign nation. That way, being a criminal means 'deportation' to the prisoner nation, instead of to a resource-intensive prison. It's less resource-intensive, because the core expense of the prison system at that point would be, effectively, border patrol, as having guards go through the prison nation would be completely useless.

Because the prison nation would have it's own economy and it's own citizenry, it would have it's own GDP, methods of production, and trade, including trade with the regular citizenry. Effectively international trade. Now, some things would be just stupid to trade for, like weaponry. This is a nation of criminals, and it's not exactly smart to give criminals weapons. However, if they're producing common goods and similar stuff, there's not much of a problem in trade there. The prison nation would have it's own laws and government and would (with trade support) be functionally a nation. Immigration would be irrelevant, as the point is to segregate from the main population.

Then I started to think about what the equivalent of reform programs would be in this system, and that's where I started to get more flexible on the idea of immigration. Organizations could exist in the prisoner nation that train, mold and rehabilitate prisoners back into mainstream society. Because there's savings in the reduced cost of enforcement (now just border control), the remaining funds can be put on these kinds of social programs, providing an opportunity to migrate prisoners back to society. With an appropriately rigorous curriculum, it could work very effectively.

An even more interesting thing is that the prisoner nation could have it's own prisoner nation, so the 'dregs of the dregs' could be similarly segregated. It's infinitely regressible too.

Just a crazy thought while I was driving home from Reno today (-:

- Jason