[I wrote this months ago. Posting it now (unfinished) to clear out my backlog - ed]

A little while ago, a bunch of us went to see Nick Yee give a presentation about Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) at PARC. Over a beer afterwards, we discussed one of my favourite MMO topics and were neatly divided down the middle on the subject.

The topic concerns bad behaviour by other players in the game and what the developers should do about it. The bad behaviour in question might be stealing or killing or scamming or any number of other things that would annoy other players. But not cheating. We are all agreed that cheating - causing lag to gain an advantage in the fight, using a bug or exploit to create gold or any number of other ways of gaming the system - sucks.

One side, who happen to play rather a lot of MMOs, said that it is the developer’s responsibility to prevent such bad behaviour. The other side, who don’t play so much any more and includes me, claim that the developers should enable the other players to prevent such behaviour.

Broadly speaking, the first group want to narrow the rules of the game to make bad behaviour impossible. The second group want to expand the rules of the game so the players can create their own systems of justice - their own rules, ther own morality - within the game. Martin Fowler calls these attitudes enabling attitudes and directing attitudes.

The ones who play might claim (and do claim) that they have won the argument by the very fact that they play the games in question - but there is a self-fullfilling prophesy at work. The games are targetted at a particular market and those outside the market simply stop playing.

The Constructionists tell us that children learn best when we let them form their own theories about the world by making things. In contrast, the Instructionists tell us that children learn better when we-who-know tell them what the theories are.

I was always attracted by the idea of constructionism, but have not done a great job of implementing it in my parenting. Enter Jazz’s piano teacher.

Teacher : OK, Jazz, I wanted you play this song

Jazz (playing everything except that song) : tinkle tinkle. bong bong bong

Teacher : Oh that’s pretty, Jazz. How would it sound if you tinkle-bonged like this…

Jazz : tinkle bong bong bong. tinkle bong bong bong

Teacher : Very nice Jazz. Let’s write down your song. This is a stave, and you played a G, then an A and…

I was horrified at first. I found myself glancing at the clock and wondering how much I was paying to hear Jazz tinkle-bong around the keyboard with seemingly no structure to the lessons at all. Georgina couldn’t take it at all - she had to leave the room.

[epilogue]

It’s about three months since I started this post and Jazz is doing really well. She is probably at about the same point in her study as she would have been if she had taken a more direct - instructionist - route except that she still loves playing the piano and she loves to compose.

It’s so easy, as a parent or a teacher, to fall into instructionist ways. It takes real discipline to stick with the less-disciplined constructionist approach. I hope I can do it and, if I do, I will be forever grateful to Jazz’s piano teacher for showing me the way.

In my profession, software engineering, only about 10% of the professionals ever read books or practice or attend conferences or keep track of what the gurus are saying or aspire to gurudom themselves. For many, the highest aspiration is that one day they will stop being a software professional so they can manage other software professionals.

Since software first broke out of the academy and started to be used commercially, the main concern of the software establishment has been to prevent the majority - the 90% who have no desire to improve themselves - from doing the wrong thing.

I haven’t seen everything yet but, from what I have seen of it so far, Sturgeon’s Law holds.

90% of everything is crap

That’s certainly true in my profession and that makes me wonder about the others. In particular it makes me wonder about the teaching profession.

When I look back on my schooldays, one thing I remember clearly is that most of my teachers were crap. The ones who stood out all had their own style. They had something that couldn’t be learned from a book. They oozed good-teacher-ness. I think I had maybe three like that in my whole time at school. Dylan had already had four before he left elementary school. I hope he has more but the odds are against it.

The National Review has hosted an excellent debate about the future of Iraq - excellent, because it is one of the few forums where the debaters do not descend into infantile name-calling. I wonder if there really are people who believe the choices are between Cut and Run or Stay the Course … and whether those people should have been allowed to vote.

From their opening statements, first from Peter W. Galbraith:

Reuel, I fully agree that the break up of Iraq is messy and has already cost thousands of lives in Baghdad and other areas where Sunnis and Shia have lived together. But the break up has happened.

Do you believe that the United States should now try to put the country back together? If so, how would you do it? Would you use force to disarm the Shia militias, or do you imagine, as the administration does, that Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s government will suddenly have the will and the power to accomplish this? Would you use U.S. troops as police and peacekeepers in Baghdad? How do you get Sunnis and Shia to see the police and army as national institutions as opposed to sectarian ones?

If our goal is, as President Bush has proclaimed, a unified and democratic Iraq, we will be in the country for a long time. And that means that other national security threats will go unaddressed. Remember, Reuel, that in the nearly four years we have been engaged in a war undertaken to rid Iraq of nonexistent WMD, North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon and Iran made substantial strides toward its own nuclear bomb. Because it is so committed to Iraq, the Bush administration has responded to these developments with a lot of tough talk and no action. Is the unity of Iraq worth this?

and then a response from Reuel Marc Gerecht:

If the Americans start to withdraw from Iraq–if they just announce that they are leaving and give a timetable–we are probably going to see the violence in Iraq explode. Take the killing rate of today and triple it–that would be a reasonable guess of where the Iraqis will be within six months of any “redeployment” of U.S. troops. A Shia conquest of the Arab parts of Iraq is only a matter of time.

In just about every way conceivable, we will be a defeated nation if we leave Iraq as you recommend. All of our enemies will know it. So will our friends. It is hard for me to fathom how this will improve our strategic and moral position in the world.

The full debate:

Wednesday: Peter W. Galbraith
Thursday: Reuel Marc Gerecht
Friday: Peter W. Galbraith
Saturday: Reuel Marc Gerecht

It surprised me how much they agree over the particulars. Reuel’s bottom line is that, if we leave, the country will descend into chaos and America’s standing in the world will be damaged. Peter’s is that the country is descending into chaos anyway whether we stay or go - and the quicker we get out, the quicker the chaos can work itself out.

It was not clear what Reuel thought the outcome would be if we stay - just that we are morally and strategically obligated to do so.

For myself, I am not sure what our moral obligations are. If you start an immoral war that is causing untold misery, is it more moral to stay or to leave? I am not even sure that morals have a role in the decision any more.

The decision should be based on whether staying would prevent disaster or prolong it. Peter W. Galbraith makes a persuasive case that civil war and partition are inevitable either way.

I can’t tell whether this Onion article was a prediction or is just a recent satire:

“My fellow Americans,” Bush said, “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”

Bush swore to do “everything in [his] power” to undo the damage wrought by Clinton’s two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.