
Why dumb toys make kids smarter - bootload
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-01/why-dumb-toys-make-kids-smarter/
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hughprime
I'd say that getting caught up in a stupid craze is one of the most important
learning experiences that a kid can have. One day everybody suddenly starts
talking about a new thing, and it seems like it's going to be around forever,
so you put all your pocket money into getting as much of it as possible. Then,
a few months later everybody starts talking about some other new thing and
you're left with no money and a whole lot of stuff which you now realize was
worthless all along. Suffer that a few times in childhood and you'll be more
immune to it in later life. Spend $30 on football cards when you're eight and
you'll be less likely to spend $500,000 on suddenly-inflated real estate when
you're 35.

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.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Today, I took my three year-old to our town's annual Fall-at-the-Farm (or
whatever it's called). There was a woman there with two of her Alpacas. These
animals are the greatest but least discussed bubble. Their only economic value
is their wool, and a single alpaca produces about $50 worth each year. Feeding
one of these beasts during that time costs $300! Yet, these animals will sell
at auction for tens of thousands of dollars. It's the same story as every
other bubble, "You make the money when you sell them." If I could figure out
how to short sell these beasts, I would.

It's too bad I didn't read this comment earlier today or I would have quizzed
her about her childhood obsessions.

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mynameishere
_If I could figure out how to short sell these beasts_

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.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I had thought about this. Some problems that might have solutions:

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.

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joez
Pokemon cards and most trading card games are not "dumb." I used to dabble in
a few (notably Magic). Let me go through some of the complexities.

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.)

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hughprime
Playing the game isn't dumb -- or rather it's no dumber than any other card
game, and smarter than most.

Buying and collecting the cards is the dumb part.

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amohr
I played Magic: the Gathering on and off from grade school until I started
dating. One thing it definitely taught me is the importance of a consistent
vocabulary. The rules to the game are written in a sort of legalese - there's
some strange wording, but it's all for the sake of precisely indicating how to
deal with >99% of all situations.

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.

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replicatorblog
How many of you have considered toy related startups? It is a massive industry
($26B) facing disruption from two angles (consolidation of retail and
competition from games) and the major players have a history of working with
small partners and no real internal R&D.

This is a great opportunity for hackers to build large, profitable businesses.

~~~
andreyf
Personally, I'm very interested in the combination of games and education - I
think the next a "disruption" in the field of education will come from games.

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DannoHung
People've been saying that for going on 2 decades. There has yet to be an
educational game that is truly compelling or a regular game that has
significant educational value.

Actually, I guess there is Typing of the Dead...

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jcl
_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.

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redcap
There's a fair bit of information compressed into Pokemon cards and other card
games so it's no surprise that if you're that into it you get good at it
despite being so young. Same with sports - there's a hell of a lot of
information in statistics for a sport like baseball or cricket.

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'?

~~~
hughprime
Perhaps "dumb" in the sense of "that looks like a dumb way to spend all your
free time and money".

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.

~~~
roundsquare
The two end up being intertwined though.

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.

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bootload
_"... Heavily used neurons were learning to fire together, and these chains of
neurons were becoming myelinated in thin sheaths of fat; by this process,
“gray matter” is converted into “white matter.” The sheath surrounding the
nerves acts as an electrical insulator, increasing neural speed by 100-fold.
Active repetition also began tuning up the nerve capsules that connected his
prefrontal cortex to his parietal cortex in the back of the brain. When these
superhighways of nerve tissue come on board, the brain learns to delegate math
to the back of the brain, making computation speed radically faster. ..."_

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.

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Maven911
If Pokemon cards are good for you when you are young, are Magic the Gathering
cards good for you when you older ? :D

~~~
mbrubeck
To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: _Any sufficiently advanced card game is
indistinguishable from Magic._

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aw3c2
Meh, I thought this would be about toys like Lego. The ultimate dumb toy that
makes smart. I mean dumb in a sense that the normal lego stones(?) are simple
things but with imagination you can build anything with them.

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varjag
Just because it hasn't got a microcontroller in it doesn't make it dumb, IMHO.

~~~
aw3c2
It's hard with my limited language skills. I rather meant the roughness. For
example the older modular lego sets where you had lots of similar bricks
(=dumb). Not complex parts (= not dumb). Like a clay brick versus a door. Ok,
that's a bad analogy but it might give a better idea.

Maybe I just have the wrong thing in my mind for the word "dumb" though, I am
not sure.

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ZeroGravitas
Isn't this just a parent-targeted rip-off of _Everything Bad Is Good for You:
How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter_?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_You>

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grnknight
Very very interesting. We've been fighting our daughter's fascination with
Webkins, but it's quite similar when I look at it from the perspective of
Pokemon cards in the article.

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pchristensen
Here's my belated take on it: <http://geekstack.com/blog/opposite-of-a-dumb-
toy/>

