qui tacet consentire videtur

One of my unit’s ‘cohesion’ activities was laser tag at a public-sector ‘resort’ (for lack of a better word). I hadn’t played laser tag since late primary school - some 8-10 years ago - and that was with my small group of friends. If that group maybe one or two remained close to me… the rest left east and west at different times or became different people on different paths. Anyway.

So we clerks paired up with the junior officers and cadet dropouts against the signallers and storemen. For all their tactics and advanced leadership training, the officers and cadets did marginally better than the clerks. They were completely pwned by the signallers and storemen. I did pretty well, 3rd place for the day - and I probably have the least real military background of the lot. Adverse outcome?

The junior officers and cadet dropouts employed their tactical training to the game, when the mechanics of laser tag are more like CS: small penalties to being shot, accuracy less important than volume i.e. You score more points per frag than you lose for being tagged, the sensors are hard to set off at a distance. These two features of laser tag render the standard logic (and an important logic it is) of ‘making shots count’ and ‘not getting killed’ irrelevant. In laser tag, risk-aversion is not the optimal strategy.

Laser tag is probably not a good training method to internalize risk-aversion. Neither is counterstrike and most FPS games. Save functions, reset buttons, iterated rounds between terrorist and ct… all of these diminish the importance of not getting killed. What is the best way to replicate real world incentive systems into video games? Iron-man no-save rules, single deathmatch tournaments are some.

In my view arcade shooters like time crisis and house of the dead have incentive structures that represent the closest thing to real life - you pay cash every time you get hit. The incentive here is to be very, very good at not getting slashed by zombies and cyborg ninjas. Perhaps the ’survival’ in ’survival horror’ is more important than we realize.

Abstract of a paper in Psychological Science. I wish I had JSTOR access…

In a longitudinal study of 140 eighth-grade students, self-discipline measured by self-report, parent report, teacher report, and monetary choice questionnaires in the fall predicted final grades, school attendance, standardized achievement-test scores, and selection into a competitive high school program the following spring. In a replication with 164 eighth graders, a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, a questionnaire on study habits, and a group-administered IQ test were added. Self-discipline measured in the fall accounted for more than twice as much variance as IQ in final grades, high school selection, school attendance, hours spent doing homework, hours spent watching television (inversely), and the time of day students began their homework. The effect of self-discipline on final grades held even when controlling for first-marking-period grades, achievement-test scores, and measured IQ. These findings suggest a major reason for students falling short of their intellectual potential: their failure to exercise self-discipline.

I guess I’m in trouble since I have neither high IQ nor strong self-discipline, given my poor quant/mathematical aptitude and my predilection to procrastinate work for anime/k-drama/j-drama/etc.

I think its useful to identify the specific traits that lead to success, and I’ve always known that motivation beats talent - the Rock Lee theorem, if you will - but I wonder if innate intelligence and rationality are correlated, and efforts to separate rationality (self-discipline here) from innate intelligence (IQ and variants) are on the wrong direction. More intelligent people should be more rational - logic abilities like pattern recognition, quantitative/calculation skills, should help individuals predict their own action-outcomes and encourage rational decision-making like delaying consumption and gratification. And all of these make up what we would consider intelligence, ‘reason’. So while its useful to say that perhaps one component is more useful than another, I would ask about how one component affects and is affected by the other. In the context of the research, though I haven’t read the actual paper, I wonder if they should be looking at why their high IQ sample set doesn’t correlate with the high discipline outcomes, and what possible factors could be at play.

In a conversation with Palinurus and Oikono over dinner, I mentioned that the recent controversy over Melvyn Tan, the draft-dodging pianist, tended to conflate separate issues and resulted in an unlikely public consensus. Palinurus suggested that a similar process was at work in the public outcry over the other recent controversy over the hanging of Australian drug mule Nguyen Tuong Van. The issues:

1. Should Melvyn Tan be punished in an equal fashion as any other draft dodger in Singapore, regardless of his individual achievements and international standing?
1b. OR, if Melvyn Tan was indeed equally punished, is the sentence for this crime too light?
1c. AND, why is there not enough public condemnation of the man?
2. Should Melvyn Tan be punished for draft dodging at all, when he has renounced citizenship, not lived in Singapore since the age of 12 and never returned since (until now)?
3. Should draft dodgers be punished in this fashion at all, and is our system of conscription just?

There is a huge public outcry in the media over first issue, about the perceived special treatment of elites, which Palinurus half-jokingly suggested might be due to egalitarian-fetishist hatred of elites/fear of genius and a celebration of mediocrity mentality. Or, a vindictive desire that others must suffer as much as they have. Regardless of the non-rational/emotional nature of this issue, the other issues of whether Melvyn should be tried for this particular crime, given his somewhat extenuating circumstances, and of the catch-22 nature of citizenship/conscription in Singapore, only tend to come up in discussions on Young Republic or in camp.

What happens then is that people conflate the issues and the answer for one overrides the answers for others. They conflate justice with consistency in punishment and perversely, end up advocating equal injustice. The media frames the first issue and people naturally say ‘yes’, but frame the other issues and the answer becomes ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ - but nobody sees the separate issues.

1. Should Nguyen Tuong Van be sentenced and hanged in a manner consistent with Singapore law?
1b. regardless of his extenuating circumstances?
1c. regardless of the appeals of the international community?
2. Is the death penalty for capital crimes justifiable?
3. If so, does drug trafficking constitute a capital crime? OR, is our mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking policy just?

The first issue is about the rule of law and consistency, and to a certain extent, some nationalist sentiment over sovereignty. The public tends to agree with the government’s position on consistent sentencing and independence from foreign pressure, but doesn’t consider whether the sentence in question is just. The second issue is a perennial debate, and the third issue based on a particular position on the second. The process of conflating issues and selective framing is similar. Personally, I’m torn between being consistent with libertarian positions, and a pragmatist ‘public-choice school’ position on the second and third issues - which makes the whole business uncertain, and I wonder if my certainty over the first issue is warranted.

On another note, things like this putative boycott of Singapore goods and services, and this denial of service, seem counterproductive and plain dumb. It’s like they never learn from history, and it doesn’t help change public sentiment here either.