I run Jeopardy games at PAX whenever I can. These are custom-built game shows in every sense of the word — handmade buzzers, bespoke software, and custom-created questions by and for the PAX attendees. It’s trivia, so it’s not all going to be stuff that you know immediately — but my question team and I take great pains trying to create content that geeks in attendance\u00a0might be able to recall with a little hint or some mental effort.<\/p>\n
This year at PAX Prime, after one of the questions went unanswered, a contestant (who passed an entrance exam\u00a0before they were selected) complained, “But I wasn’t alive<\/em> then!”\u00a0<\/p>\n It was all I could do not to lose my shit.<\/p>\n Jump forward a few months. I create puzzles fairly often at work, and recently made one based on American money — an alternative math problem involving the rank of the US Presidents in relation to their appearance on currency denominations. It was supposed to be tricky, and it was in an environment that several dozen people at the minimum would solve collaboratively with Google at their disposal. This was criticized by multiple people as ethnocentric — \u00a0“How are we supposed to\u00a0know who’s on your money? We don’t live there.”<\/p>\n Once again, it was all I could do not to lose my shit.<\/p>\n The reason I am actively attempting to retain my fecal matter is that these are both examples of a self-centered attitude that infuriates me, and something I fear is a cultural shift: The idea that if knowledge is not something that does not already have a personal investment or personal experience, then it is of no value. \u00a0What you know, you know because you know it, and there’s no need to concern yourself with anything else.<\/p>\n Imagine the field of anthropology in a world where people were uninterested in what happened outside of their zip code. Imagine\u00a0astronomy as researched by people who ignored other planets because, well, they had only lived on Earth. Imagine history only going back as far as your own lifetime, where humans had\u00a0no awareness of anything that came before their oldest citizen. Imagine life\u00a0in a bubble of your own existence.<\/p>\n We truly live in the Information Age (and I am convinced that when the second Ice Age inevitably arrives, this is what modern society will be retroactively be called). The Internet has become the standard repository for human knowledge, without borders — a simple Bing\u00a0search can turn up information from Indonesia, culture about Calcutta, facts in Farsi. Puzzle solvers — particularly those working on collaborative puzzles that benefit from parallel human processing —\u00a0have\u00a0never had an easier\u00a0method\u00a0of research. \u00a0There is no longer any restriction on what you know or how you know it (unless you live in China). The \u00a0only barrier to this enlightenment\u00a0is a personal defense mechanism\u00a0of”I want to remain just as fucking stupid as I am right now” — and somehow, that’s supposed to be okay<\/em>.<\/p>\n What’s lacking, then, is not knowledge — it’s curiosity<\/em>. It’s a willingness,\u00a0<\/em>if not an outright desire, to look for information that you do not already possess. It’s the realization that trivia, by its nature, is probably shit you don’t already know unless you’ve looked for more data\u00a0than you would normally digest. It’s the understanding that all information has an origin, and you should be ready\u00a0to research that origin\u00a0if you want a deeper understanding of the information. — particularly if the information itself is being presented as a challenge.<\/p>\n As my parents used to say whenever I would ask them questions: If you don’t know something, look it up.<\/strong>\u00a0You cannot function in modern society unless\u00a0you become informationally self-sufficient — and this goes triple\u00a0if you choose<\/em> leisure activities that inherently require the acquisition of esoteric knowledge. Do not expect the rest of the world to wear your blinders when you are opting into<\/em>\u00a0activities that demand\u00a0your willingness to learn. Don’t wander into a World Cup match\u00a0and then whine,\u00a0“Well, I don’t know how to play! How am I supposed to win?” This is not a game about you. It’s simply not your game at all, so get the fuck off the pitch.<\/p>\n My advice: Be\u00a0smart enough to acknowledge you don’t know everything, then\u00a0be smart enough to know how to learn more. And if you aren’t smart enough for either of those, at least be smart enough to know that you shouldn’t be opting into activities you aren’t equipped to handle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I run Jeopardy games at PAX whenever I can. These are custom-built game shows in every sense of the word — handmade buzzers, bespoke software, and custom-created questions by and for the PAX attendees. It’s trivia, so it’s not all … Continue reading