Chris Crawford on Mortality

http://www.erasmatazz.com/Personal/page70/page453/Sixty.html

by jcw • 16 years ago

46 52 16 years ago

This post brings up the connection between desire for achievement and mortality. The book "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker is an excellent perspective on this phenomenon. The central premise of the book is that, in order to feel comfortable about our own inevitable mortality, we seek achievements that make us feel "heroic" and offer the potential to outlive our physical bodies, thereby diminishing the impact of dying.

I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone, Mr. Crawford in particular. What he describes in this post is clearly in line with Becker's concept of an "immortality project."

tomjen3• 16 years ago

And that is properly why we have a standard of living today that is so high as it is.

alexwestholm2• 16 years ago

Quite likely. I'm not trying to say that this phenomenon is a bad thing (neither is Becker, really), merely that it's a way to look at an individual's motivations. If you accept the premise, then your conclusion is absolutely right. Becker's point, in fact, is that it's a driving force behind much of what we'd call progress and it affects, whether consciously or not, most of the significant decisions we make.

rottencupcakes• 16 years ago

I'm a little disappointed. The title of the post and the beginning of the article had me expecting an interesting piece on mortality and life and regrets, but it ended up being an explanation of interactive story telling and an almost non sequitur story.

I loved the bead idea though. Pure genius to really nail in how finite life is. It hits home for all.

alan-crowe• 16 years ago

The post takes an individualistic view. For an alternative look at http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php, the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which traces the tree from supervisor to PhD student.

Life is short and you cannot expect to achieve much, so be sure to provide a proper write up of the hacks that were hardest to discover. Teach them. Then they will not be lost and progress can accumulate.

jonhendry6• 16 years ago

Crawford has extensive writings at his website, and written a couple of books, and I think taught some, so he's arguably made the effort to pass his work along, in addition to keeping track of where he stands wrt mortality.

michaels0620• 16 years ago

Here is his page on the Le Morte d'Arthur project that he references.

http://www.erasmatazz.com/page78/page397/LMDNotes.html

ldargin2• 16 years ago

That is actually for a very old version. You can run the current version using the SWAT tool. Open"LMD.stw". Run "Lizards->Storyteller Lizard". The download link is here: http://www.storytron.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=1428

mrcharles2• 16 years ago

Not to seem crass, but one would think if his goal was to change games, he might have spent more time actually making them. Being inactive for 20 years (or two stripes in his vase), probably hasn't helped. For all his talk of making sure he doesn't waste a day, it seems he's wasted a lot.

I see this more as a warning story than anything. If you truly love something and want to contribute: Never stop.

The irony is that during his time of not contributing, others have risen and passed him, contributing more to games than he ever did.

The reality is that I had to google him to find out who he was. That is not someone who is committed to his craft.

jonhendry6• 16 years ago

"Not to seem crass, but one would think if his goal was to change games, he might have spent more time actually making them."

He did. He was trying to develop a new form of game. It didn't work, but he tried. At least he was following his vision rather than trying to churn out vapid, ephemeral clones of Angry Birds or Doom or whatever, chasing after money.

raganwald4• 16 years ago

I had to google him to find out who he was. That is not someone who is committed to his craft.

What!?

Google is in many ways a measure of popularity and relevance, not commitment. Chris and the games industry have gone in completely different directions. He is no longer interested in writing games for the same reasons that I no longer play games.

He's off writing what he loves. Saying that others have contributed far more is a lot like comparing DHH to _why and suggesting that DHH has contributed far more to Ruby than _why. Yes, of course, but how does that diminish _why?

mrcharles2• 16 years ago

I would argue that relevance is exactly what he's looking for though.

asmithmd13• 16 years ago

His games pushed them limits and set the standards for what was possible with a computer game in the early 80's.

He literally wrote the book on how to write games for the Atari 800 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Re_Atari

I don't think he stopped -- he tried to pull the industry in a direction he wanted to see it go and has not (yet) been successful.

When Java first started appearing on cell phones in the early 00's I tracked him down and sent him an email asking if he was interested in porting some of his old hits to a phone as they were about as powerful as a 80's PC. He responded with the source code of one I said I enjoyed, Eastern Front 1942, and said go for it. I spent a couple hours trying to make sense of the 6502 Assembly code and quit.

colomon• 16 years ago

That's what 6502 emulators are for! Do you still have the source?

edw519• 16 years ago

I know OP meant well, but I hated this. I hate the beads. I hate the jars. I hate the thinking behind all of this.

For the record, I'm almost as old as OP and this is all the opposite of how I think. I cherish every day. I can't wait to get to work. And to play. And to eat good food, drink good beer, and hang out with good friends and family. Yesterday, I jogged through the woods, emailed 15 friends, had cake and ice cream with my mother, hung out on hacker news, and wrote some really cool code. Today will probably be even better.

Moving a bead from one jar to the other is not only depressing, it's sick. Throw out those jars, OP, and get on doing what you love.

I don't care how old I am or how old anyone else is. I don't even want to think about my death, I just want to keep on living my life.

I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather did, not screaming and yelling like everyone else in the car.

AngryParsley3• 16 years ago

I don't even want to think about my death, I just want to keep on living my life.

Aging is ridiculously unfair, but ignoring it doesn't stop it from happening. The Reaper keeps track of the beads whether or not you do. People get old. Their bodies and minds slowly break down. At some point they have to stop working, stop driving, stop doing lots of things they love doing.

This accounting of days sounds depressing at first, but I can speak from experience: you soon go back to your normal level of happiness, but with a more accurate view of reality. I think a similar thing happens with terminally ill patients, although the time scale is shorter.

The terminal illness analogy maps pretty well to aging. So much so that I encourage people to donate to anti-aging research such as the Methuselah Foundation (https://www.mfoundation.org/?pn=mj_donate) or SENS (http://www.sens.org/donate). I just donated $50 the latter.

adamzap• 16 years ago

How is aging ridiculously unfair?

civilian2• 16 years ago

Really good TED talk from the founder of SENS, Aubrey de Grey: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...

rozim• 16 years ago

The journey is the reward, though it may not seem like it.

reasonattlm2• 16 years ago

An excellent example of how blinkered most people are by the world in which they grew up - people are indoctrinated to live the life their parents lived. But we don't live in that world, and the number of beads in the jar can be radically increased through the application of biotechnology over the decades to come.

[Ob reference: http://www.sens.org ]

If we choose to do that of course. But if everyone walks through life with blinkers, assuming that it can only be the same as that of their parents, then nothing will change.

The future depends on people who break their indoctrination and work to make things different. Acceptance of what you saw as a child is death and stasis.

nir2• 16 years ago

If you're 60 now, you don't necessarily have "decades to come", so the author's sense of urgency is understandable.

reasonattlm2• 16 years ago

You could focus on supporting the cryonics industry instead, if your judgement is that you're on the wrong side of the line no matter what. The same point stands: if you are blinkered, you will not do this.

http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/cryonics.cfm

daredevildave• 16 years ago

I wonder if the iPad and e-readers will provide s better platform for Chris's Interactive Fiction ideas than the Desktops/Laptops. It always seemed like IF was books++ and reading the tablet/e-readers are far better suited to this.

Maybe he was just 20 years ahead of the tech?

raganwald4• 16 years ago

Just out of curiosity... A nano-poll. How many people have spent significant time playing Chris's actual games, like "Balance of Power" (my personal favourite)?

asmithmd13• 16 years ago

I played Balance of power for too many hours until I finally figured out the only way to win was to not play.

I also wasted tons of time on Eastern Front 1942. A great game because UI was so well thought out

raganwald4• 16 years ago

I really enjoyed "Guns or Butter," it really taught me something about economies and infrastructures

lkrubner5• 16 years ago

At the risk of proving that I am immature (since these words can be read as me rejecting my mortality, which he mentions in the article) I wonder why so few of these posts acknowledge the possibility that new technology will allow life to be extended?

A lot of people seem to have a mental block regarding the possibility that our biological clock, like almost everything else, may eventually be changed by technology.

I am especially surprised by science fiction writers. Why are there old people in so much sci fi? Why are there old people on shows like Star Trek? Does anyone seriously think we will grow old and die 500 years from now? And isn't sci fi suppose to lead the way in this area? I mean, what is the point of sci fi, if it doesn't help people imagine how the future might be different? (Obviously, I'm talking about that branch of sci fi that avoids fantasies and dystopias)

Virginia Postrel has sort of hit on this theme in her writing, where she wonders why sci fi tends to be less optimistic than it used to be. The future is no longer what it once was:

http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/002834.html

A lot of things that used to be sci fi are now real: space travel, global communication devices, computers that can fit in your pocket, medical treatments for once untreatable illnesses, etc.

It would be interesting to have a poll on Hacker News and ask people how long they think they will live. Since Hacker News is a community of forward looking individuals (and pro-technology too), such a poll would give a sense of how much a forward thinking group thinks medical technology is going to change in the next 60 years.

hnal9433• 16 years ago

I think we will grow old and die 500 years from now. It may be at a slower rate. I just think that stopping aging is a lot different that slowing it, and preventing death is a lot different than delaying it.

rationalbeaver• 16 years ago

"Does anyone seriously think we will grow old and die 500 years from now?"

Absolutely. Here's a few reasons why I think that way:

A)Even if we somehow solve the problem of aging, some people (quite possibly many or even most) will still choose to live a "natural" life for any number of reasons.

B)History suggests that we will not continue our current rate of progress indefinitely. Who knows how long it may take to recover from the inevitable disruptions.

C)I suspect that, like cancer or practical flying cars, aging is a harder problem than we think it is. Just because we can envision the end result does not mean we can achieve it.

D)Based on current medical trends, any effective anti-aging treatment is likely to be so expensive that the vast majority of people will not be able to afford it.

E)In the end, entropy always wins.

My apologies for all the pessimism. :)

lkrubner5• 16 years ago

I assume you are just joking with the reference to entropy. It is only relevant to closed systems, and organisms are not closed systems. We can remove entropy from a system using energy. That is what food is for - it gives us the energy to remove entropy from our bodies.

jonhendry6• 16 years ago

Extended lifespans sound great if you assume you'll won't suffer some significant financial or career setback that leaves you spending 100 years eking out an existence in a slum.

lkrubner5• 16 years ago

I agree. The risk of setbacks is great. In some sense, extended lifespans makes the gap between the rich and poor seem more unfair. Right now, in the USA, the poor live to be 78 and the rich live to be 84. In the future those numbers might be 78 and 184.

lkrubner5• 16 years ago

I should have qualified my remarks. I recognize that the technologies of the future may only be affordable to the rich. And when I said "die", I meant "die" of old age. I realize that there will always be the risk of getting hit by something large, moving faster - whatever the equivalent of a bus is, 500 years from now.

But seriously, will (wealthy) people age 500 years from now?

lkrubner5• 16 years ago

This thread is interesting to read. Since the audience on Hacker News is likely to be tech-savvy and forward looking, the pessimism here displayed suggests that even tech-savvy people do not see massive extensions of life-span happening any time soon.

powrtoch2• 16 years ago

Putting a finite number of beads in a jar to represent your mortality seems like one of the most harmful psychological priming effects you could undertake. Short of hiring an assassin, I don't know of a better way to ensure that you'll die within a month of some specified date.

If someone recommended that you prepare yourself for your failures by repeating to yourself 50 times a day "I am certain to horrendously screw up everything that I undertake", would that seem like sage advice? All I can say is "don't be surprised when you're right".

Terrible idea.

hnal9433• 16 years ago

The beads represented years of productivity. How many 80 year olds do you know that are not retired from their life's work? Not many.

powrtoch2• 16 years ago

I wonder if this is related to the number of 40 year olds convinced that being useless at 80 is unavoidable.

deadmansshoes2• 16 years ago

There are hundreds of games that revolve around stories, and always have been. Not sure what is so special about the OP's approach.

ldargin2• 16 years ago

In those games, the plot is either pre-written, or based on fixed branching trees, like the choose-your-own-adventure books. In Storytron, the plot is dynamic, based on the user' actions in a dramatic environment.

deadmansshoes2• 16 years ago

Ah ok. Sounds interesting.

civilian2• 16 years ago

My grandfather continued to breed horses until he was 87. He didn't make a decision to stop, he simply had a stroke and has been restricted to a wheelchair.

Now he's 94 and he avidly reads books in English, German and Danish. He's trying to learn about the internet, but hasn't really gotten down the concept of "surfing the web".

Yes, you can be productive past your 80s. I plan to be, but I also have six decades until I'm there.

Chris Crawford on Mortality

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