Why dumb toys make kids smarter
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
The lesson doesn't work if your parents actually buy you the cards (rather than giving you pocket money and watching with bemused tolerance as you spend it all on slips of cardboard), though, like this kid's parents apparently did.
It's too bad I didn't read this comment earlier today or I would have quizzed her about her childhood obsessions.
Googling a bit I found an article http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/national/28alpaca.html?pag... implying that the "people are realizing this is a bubble" stage of the bubble stretches as far back as 2004. And one guy quoted in the article says:
When I started, I would tell people I thought the market would be good for another five years. Well, I've been saying that for 15 years
Still, alpacas wouldn't be the first bubble in a useless commodity to stretch on for several generations. (That honour belongs, I suppose, to gold -- a bubble at least five thousand years old and still going strong.)
http://www.agecon.ucdavis.edu/extension/update/articles/v9n3...
Go to a farmer, say, "Let me rent your Alpaca for 100 dollars per year", then sell it on the open market for (whatever) 1000 dollars. Then, wait for the prices to crash, buy them back for 50 dollars. Profit. That's what short selling is. Warning: One Alpaca could just as easily bankrupt you.
1. Short selling works for commodities because both sides of the deal agree on the equivalence of entities (a stock, gold brick, whatever). However, what are the specs that make another alpaca equivalent? Some negotiation would be involved.
2. Trust. The seller has to trust me to return an alpaca. To them, someone approaching with such a deal might as well be Bernie Madoff. Ironic given that they themselves have already opted into a bubble of equal proportion.
Anybody have any ideas? The effective value of these animals will approach zero. It's just a matter of when.
At the simplest, it is a player versus player game. You are playing against peers that are getting smarter and more experienced matching yourself. This is way more meaningful than playing against computers.
A few more insights in order of skill.
Critical thinking is key. There are usually multiple ways to win. When direct damage is not going to cut it, you might have to go to plan B or C. Given your collection of cards, you can make multiple types of decks. You have to categorize all your cards and try to build a team out of them.
It teaches economics. Kids are (usually) limited by your allowance. Some cards are really good (or rare) but maybe buying 10 cheaper alternatives makes for an overall better deck. You already have certain cards, can you trade for the remaining ones? (Bartering and sales is a skill in it's own right) Can you feel that in the new season the archetype will be an aggressive deck causing this card you own to go up in price?
It involves next level thinking. Your opponent executed a seemingly unfavorable move. Is it because he has a trick up his sleeve? Or is he trying to bluff you? Is he trying to read if you have a trick? This of course varies based on skill but it is something experienced players learn (even young ones)
You have to deal in possibilities and assess your situation. You know your opponent has used x out of his 4 possible copies of this card. He has only (4-x) left in his deck of 50 so he is unlikely to draw it. Maybe the current board position is favorable for you, you are ahead in life so you should win within 4 turns. Or maybe you have 2 cards left in your whole deck that can help you win, you have yet to draw them but you need to set up the board position so that if you do draw it...
(In all card games, advantages can be distilled into two types: tempo and card. Tempo is when you are getting out ahead of an opponent in terms of board position. Card is when you have more cards in your hand. Aggressive decks sacrifices card for tempo, control sacrifices tempo for cards. Control decks chance of winning increases as the game wears on.)
Buying and collecting the cards is the dumb part.
We always kept a rule book around for disputes, and I became the guy entrusted with settling them - interpreting applicable rules and coming up with a judgment.
Fast forward a decade and I figured I would try my hand at the LSAT. Lo and behold - I got 172 without ever studying for it. Never went to law school, but analytical thinking is still a useful skill, regardless.
This is a great opportunity for hackers to build large, profitable businesses.
Actually, I guess there is Typing of the Dead...
Sadly, it's discontinued, and a used PC version now sells for more than the original price. There's a sequel, but it's unlikely to see a port to English. Kids are doomed to a zombie-free Mavis Beacon typing experience.
My impression of 'dumb' means stupid - to me the complexity involved in these cards raises them above dolls and the like.
It may have something to do with the American use of the word 'dumb'?
I guess that the appeal of Pokemon and similar dumb phenomena (somebody correct me if I'm wrong, I'm too old to have played any of these games myself and too young to have children who have) is twofold -- there's the "game" part and then there's the "collection" part. The "game" part is pretty "smart" as a game, and one could easily imagine a card game with a similar sort of game mechanic that could be bought for a few dollars. But it's the "collection" part of the game that makes it so addictive, expensive, insidious, and the source of much needless (and dumb) social anxiety among children.
When I was younger I played Magic. At first, I did okay. I had some decent cards and, with some luck, would win often enough. However, as the game evolved, better and better cards came out and if I wanted to have any success I needed to keep buying cards. So no matter how much strategy I came up with, I just didn't have the cards I needed (its possible that I was too young to really come up with good strategy, but given that most of the other people were about the same age, buying cards was probably my best chance at winning).
If this weren't the case, then the card manufacturers would not have a way to keep making money. I got into some other card games as well, and I remember one was particularly well balanced such that new cards weren't "better" than old ones. As I remember, the game didn't last long and was soon discontinued. Anecdotal, yes, but the key is that "game" and "collection" intertwine.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/02/avatar-augmented-realit...
I personally would love to see more than just a simple animation. Think strategic missions, a decision engine etc.
On the other hand, this might also take away a lot of imagination and storytelling aspect of these toys. All you needed for D&D was a good Dungeon Master and a couple of dices. :)
I think games like this encourage imagination as basically a prerequisite to play, whereas video games are almost the opposite.
Practice, repetition, rehearsal.
"... Something else happened early in second grade. One afternoon, while watching the Phillies march to their World Series title, my wife taught our son how to read a box score—how math and symbols represented the game’s progress. Within a two-month span, our son lost every last drop of his interest in Pokémon, and he fell in love with sports. ..."
Motivation.
"... According to Dr. Silvia Bunge, a neuroscientist at U.C. Berkeley, the presence of dopamine triggers a meaningful tweak in the tuning function of brain cells. Dopamine depolarizes neurons and improves their firing rate; their response to optimal stimuli becomes sharper, and the background buzz of relevant stimuli is quieted a little. In other words, each neuron operates sort of like a motivated child: It becomes focused, less distractable, and when it does something right, it recognizes that in the moment—it hangs on to that information, ready to use it again. ..."
Distraction.
Maybe I just have the wrong thing in my mind for the word "dumb" though, I am not sure.