You Can't Fix What's Broken For Them

While the general point of the article is on a different topic, this paragraph by Scott Adams is worthy of some discussion all by itself:

When I was younger and dumber I thought I could transform unhappy people into happy people by giving them whatever they wanted, or fixing whatever they thought was broken. This approach worked approximately zero times. Once a dopamine addict’s alleged problem is fixed, the addict still needs the next high. So they magnify small problems into big ones just to feel something. Or they create a problem where there was none. 

There are indeed miserable people who - all protests to the contrary - wallow in their misery. It's not just restricted to borderlines and cluster-B types who are nothing but a ball of fear and misery insofar as anyone can tell. The person who is so addicted to the rush of drama they simply have to manufacture some where none exists over the tiniest things.

It's a given among those with experience treating addicts of any sort that you cannot fix them - they have to fix themselves, and they will likely only do so when there is no other option, when they're down as far as one can be. A significant percentage don't before something fatal happens. 

Anything you do to help them out with their self-caused disasters, and eventually even simple human kindness, simply enables them, allows them to avoid their problems and the mess it's causing with their lives.

Infogalactic, Gab, and Helping Out

A theme that Vox Day has been hammering lately as Apple plays stupid games with accepting an iOS Gab app, as Wikipedia, publishing, the SF world, and so forth becomes progressively more converged, is that of helping out.

Every little bit helps. Even if you cannot provide assistance to a good project, you can help suffocate the beast by starving it of oxygen and resources.

If all you can do is to minimize your facebook usage, do so.

If you can start using Gab at gab.ai instead of Twitter, in whole or in part - do so.

Cite Infogalactic at infogalactic.com instead of Wikipedia.

If you have to post a reference to a mainstream media article at Salon, the Huffington Post, the NYT, the WashPo, and so forth, archive it first, and link to the archive. This not only starves them of ad revenue, it also minimizes the chances that they silently "correct" the article later.

If you can tell friends, family, and others about them, do so.

If you can contribute time to edit at infogalactic, do so.

If you can contribute to gab, the infogalactic "burn unit", or something similar, do so. They'd rather have steady, small contributions than big, showy ones.

If you have a choice between a book at a big 5 publishing outfit, and something less mainstream like Baen, Castalia House, or a number of excellent independent authors  - consider the alternate sources first. Castalia alone is taxing my ability to keep up with the reading, even without considering Nick Cole, Brian Neimeier, B V Larson, and others.

Every little bit helps. It matters not if you can only do one of these things, or all of them.

Go forth, help us take over the world, and have fun doing it!

What is Not Permitted is Forbidden - RPG's and Detailed Skills Systems

Over at the Black Gate, a Game Master discusses why he ran an old-school style game for his friends instead of Pathfinder, a system he's also very familiar with.

I used this when explaining S&W to one of my new players. Now, in Baldur’s Gate, he would click on the ‘Find Traps’ skill and if a trap was nearby, it would be outlined on screen in a red box if detected. And he is aware that in a modern game (like Pathfinder), you would roll a 20-sided dice against your Find Trap skill.

But I explained it won’t work that way in S&W. After I described the environment, he would have to tell me how he goes about looking for traps. Does he examine the ceiling? Does he roll a round stone across the floor? Does he put his fingers in the mouth of the idol (always a dangerous move!)?

To try and bluff your way past the guard at the city gate, you don’t simply roll against your Bluff skill. You have to tell the same story to the Referee that your character is telling to the guard. With appropriate gestures (heh heh).

 One of the things that grew to really annoy me about Pathfinder - outside of the "on rails" modules and the ever increasing bloat of rules (also brought up) was the implicit assumption, especially in society play, that when it came to skills or achieving something, if it wasn't allowed, it was forbidden.

It felt like you had skills for everything. Except that no individual character, or small group of them, could have skills in everything. And if the module or adventure called for a knowledge: obscure plants, and you didn't have it? And it was over a 10 DC? And you didn't have hours to spend at the library?

Tough.

Yes, I know that in homebrew play, the GM could do as we did with ACKS, T&T, or others, and if you came up with a plausible reason, or everyone had a default zero skill, or....

But if you played by the rules - required for society play - knowledge skills had to be trained. If a skill test was called out, and you weren't, you were screwed. If you failed the roll - no matter how well you role played or justified knowing that based on your character, background, etc. - you were screwed. And it was all or nothing.

In short - skills, which at first look like a good thing, remove your ability to choose, and judge.

As an aside, virtue is something that must be chosen - virtue compelled is not virtue. Creating more laws putting in place what must be done not only creates more ways for someone to become a criminal, but even in compelling them to do the right thing, removes choice. Forbids that which is not required.

When All Solutions are Bad...

Peter Grant, science fiction author, former soldier, now preacher, discusses possible solutions to ongoing black poverty and alienation in response to Fred Reeds article on Milwaukee.

Go read them both.

Peter offers several things we can try to do, but the biggest and most immediate one is this:

I can offer one response to Fred's "What now?" It's based on cold, hard reality, learned in Africa over many years of traveling that continent and seeing what works and what doesn't. It's not politically correct, it's not merciful, and it's not very helpful . . . but it's practical.

Simply put, it's like this: YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU GET.

Right now, the US government and US society are subsidizing the current mess in our inner-city communities. We're paying through the nose for it, directly and indirectly; and we're getting what we pay for. 

Solution? STOP PAYING FOR IT. 

Cut off the funding. Now. Completely. Not a dime more for failing schools, subsidized programs producing more failures, 'Blackness' orientation/education/promotion/whatever. Shut them all down. 

I can already hear the screams, "But you can't do that! You'd leave a vacuum!" 

So? 

What we have now has always failed, is continuing to fail, and will continue to fail. We aren't doing those trapped in its coils any favors by going on paying for them to fail. We may have nothing worthwhile to replace the programs we're cutting, but at least we'll stop wasting money hand over fist.

One factor to consider is what lifeguards are taught - that many drownings involve two victims. The man who was drowning, and the one who went out there unprepared, and was dragged down, overcome,  by the first victim in a panic. Also - airlines tell you to put your own mask first, before your kids for a similar reason.

You also do alcoholics and addicts no favors by continuing to enable them, sometimes you HAVE to cut them off.

I'm not sure we can rule out "cut them off" - but if all we have is multiple modes of failure, then the one that results in fewer victims MAY be our best course. It at least holds out a hope that in cutting them off from the crutches of dependency, they may get their lives in order if only because they are left no other choice.

Read both articles.