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Achievement Porn

petermichaud.com

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Re: Achievement Porn

#31

Post by mechanical_fish »

sgoranson wrote: post #19

Trying to define what should be meaningful for other people is pretty arrogant and an insular perspective on life. My personal take on reality is that the whole shebang is a "meaningless treadmill", but I'm willing to accept that it might not be true for the next guy.

I agree. My take on this essay is that it is but an early milestone on the path to enlightenment. It asks an interesting question, but ends in a total cop-out, where the author literally claims that divining the meaning of life is "easy":

The easy part to culling the bullshit is to ask yourself: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life?

Easy for him, maybe.

It's fine to make the limited argument that certain games devolve a bit too quickly into flavorless tickling of the brain's pleasure centers. So long as you are clearly arguing about taste in game design, not about the ultimate meaning of life.

But when you decide to delve further, to the point that you've argued not just that crack cocaine and MMORPGs are ultimately meaningless, but also that education, money, casual acquaintances, success, and writing comments on HN are ultimately meaningless, shouldn't you keep going until you get to the end? Which would be something like:

All achievement is porn; that is, it is ultimately empty.

Although I would never phrase it that way; I prefer a more classical phrasing, like this [1]:

Life means suffering.

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof.

Now that is a general principle.

---

[1] I cribbed these lines from http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html , because that's what came up in Google. There are probably a few other sources... ;)

Re: Achievement Porn

#32

Post by J3L2404 »

Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy HN, I think "Achievement Porn" is a danger on this site - I've recently recovered from an unproductive karma obsession. Although necessary for HN, karma is of little value (over a minimum threshold), except maybe for credibility reference for certain comments. The occasional binge can be instructive - everything in moderation I suppose(including moderation).

Re: Achievement Porn

#33

Post by jim-greer »

mixmax wrote: post #10

This gem is from the posters resume page: So this guy dies and goes to Heaven, and when he gets to Heaven, he’s trying to explain to God how he spent his life. Wait, wait, God says. Let me get this straight I gave you a body able to swim oceans and climb mountains Yeah, the guys says. and you sat in a cubicle? Right. I gave you creativity, and you made widgets? Yes, the guy says. The one thing I withheld from you, th…

I gave you creativity, and you made cranky blog posts?

Re: Achievement Porn

#34

Post by barrkel »

electromagnetic wrote: post #29
barrkel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make a distinction between exercise and work. The things you do repeatedly, all else being equal, are the things you get better at. Do actual physical labour, and you'll get stronger; do fake physical labour in a gym, and you'll also get stronger. But modern life doesn't need much in the way of actual physical labour. FWIW, I've never been in a gym in my life, and view the religion of the church of the gym with som…

> But modern life doesn't need much in the way of actual physical labour. Ha! Come work my job. Did you ever wonder how houses were built, or how shelves are stocked in supermarkets, or how trucks are loaded . . . just because you work in a cubicle doesn't mean everyone in the western world does. Despite a recession, the construction sector in the majority of the world is still rapidly growing, in parts it stayed wel…

I stand by my statement: in the days of farming, easily 90% or more of the population was doing hard physical labour. (And I don't work in a cubicle. Actually, I work from home.)

And BMI was just a useful shorthand to indicate that I wasn't e.g. overweight or obese (or a musclebound athlete).

Re: Achievement Porn

#35

Post by jff »

See here's the thing, ragging on the education system is so overdone, such an easy target, such a bullshit "I wasn't the best so it didn't matter anyway" thing, that as soon as somebody does it in these inevitable articles, I tune out.

Seriously, every time somebody in one of these articles tries to get their pseudo-philosophical think on about education or achievement or whatever, they dive straight for AND OF COURSE WE ALL KNOW SCHOOL IS SO MEANINGLESS FNAR FNAR.

Re: Achievement Porn

#36

Post by Alex3917 »

matt1 wrote: post #30
Alex3917 wrote: post #24

Rule of thumb: Any organization that allows you to level up is out to fuck you, take your money, or both. Examples: School, corporations, scientology, military, world of warcraft, etc.

What's the difference between "leveling up" and rising in a meritocracy? Ideally in any organization those talented enough to run it will rise to the top and "level up". If education and training help you achieve that, what's the problem?

Merit is continuous and not discrete. When you take a continuous function and try to make it look discrete, what you'll notice is that there is 'some extra' between the actual merit curve and the stepwise function that touches it. These so-called meritocracies are just a way to skim that extra off the top.

Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get to 'level 3' trumpet player you'd need to spend X years and Y thousands of dollars, you'd instantly see it was ridiculous. School is the same way, you just don't realize it because that's the way it's always been presented to you.

Re: Achievement Porn

#37

Post by Androsynth »

I recognize this, it was auto-generated by the Arrogant Crank's Mad-Lib Blog Tool. Seriously, plug in 'work life balance' and this could be the year 2000, 'too much tv' and its 1990... Will this be all we hear for the next decade as social games take over and Jesse Schell is proved correct?

Re: Achievement Porn

#38

Post by jim-greer »

proxy wrote: post #21
tumult wrote: post #5

I got a 360 recently to play an arcade scrolling shooter port. Microsoft requires game publishers to have a certain minimum number of those popup achievements in the game before they approve it for production. Cynically, the publisher (a medium-sized Japanese company) created achievements for it like "Cleared level 1" "Shot an enemy" "Cleared level 2" "Died" "Defeated a boss" "Touched a power-up" "Score was a multipl…

http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked

Play it on our site and the achievements are permanent and public:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/achievement-unloc...

Re: Achievement Porn

#39

Post by starkfist »

Alex3917 wrote: post #36
matt1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between "leveling up" and rising in a meritocracy? Ideally in any organization those talented enough to run it will rise to the top and "level up". If education and training help you achieve that, what's the problem?

Merit is continuous and not discrete. When you take a continuous function and try to make it look discrete, what you'll notice is that there is 'some extra' between the actual merit curve and the stepwise function that touches it. These so-called meritocracies are just a way to skim that extra off the top. Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get t…

Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get to 'level 3' trumpet player you'd need to spend X years and Y thousands of dollars, you'd instantly see it was ridiculous.

There are widespread teaching systems for musical instruments that work exactly like this. Especially for piano and orchestral instruments. There are organized competitions for different "levels" and books of exercises and pieces also divided into levels. Even within orchestras, there is leveling - you're either violin 1 or violin 2, within those groupings you're first chair, second chair, and so forth.

I always found the piano contests a bit ridiculous, but with an orchestra you do need some sort of leveling system to filter people into the various roles.

Re: Achievement Porn

#40

Post by shawnps »

I disagree with his statement that learning is not itself an achievement. I enjoy learning on its own, and see it as an achievement in itself. I often learn things without the goal of applying them to anything in life, just the goal to learn them and know about them.
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