Why dumb toys make kids smarter

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-01/why-dumb-toys-make-kids-smarter/

by bootload • 17 years ago

91 33 17 years ago

hughprime4• 17 years ago

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.

smokinn• 17 years ago

My brothers got that harsh realization with Pokemon. They got some very rare card (don't remember which, never got into it myself) that was supposedly worth 65$ the Pokemon book said. The guy at the shop wouldn't give them anything more than a free new pack for it though. Suddenly the fact that things are really only worth what someone will pay, not what a book says became much more clear.

ShabbyDoo3• 17 years ago

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.

hughprime4• 17 years ago

That's interesting, I didn't know about the alpaca bubble. Now I'm fascinated.

Googling a bit I found an article http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/national/28alpaca.html?pag... implying that the "people are realizing this is a bubble" stage of the bubble stretches as far back as 2004. And one guy quoted in the article says:

When I started, I would tell people I thought the market would be good for another five years. Well, I've been saying that for 15 years

Still, alpacas wouldn't be the first bubble in a useless commodity to stretch on for several generations. (That honour belongs, I suppose, to gold -- a bubble at least five thousand years old and still going strong.)

mynameishere• 17 years ago

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.

Grinnmarr• 17 years ago

Alpaca's can qualify you for certain tax breaks making them a worthwhile investment if you qualify.

bootload• 17 years ago

"... 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.

redcap2• 17 years ago

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'?

hughprime4• 17 years ago

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.

redcap2• 17 years ago

Tell me about it - there's a summer activity here in Tokyo which involves kids going to various stations here and getting a Pokemon stamp - have to collect them all. The only thing they might learn is where all the stations are.

roundsquare• 17 years ago

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.

bastian• 17 years ago

Talking about the "collection" part of the game and how addictive it is, Mattel has some augmented reality cards up it's sleeves:

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/02/avatar-augmented-realit...

I personally would love to see more than just a simple animation. Think strategic missions, a decision engine etc.

On the other hand, this might also take away a lot of imagination and storytelling aspect of these toys. All you needed for D&D was a good Dungeon Master and a couple of dices. :)

aarongough• 17 years ago

I think that 'Dumb' in this case is more likely to represent the fact that the cards themselves don't do anything. They're 'Dumb' in the sense that they're much more inert by themselves than say a video game is.

I think games like this encourage imagination as basically a prerequisite to play, whereas video games are almost the opposite.

joez• 17 years ago

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.)

hughprime4• 17 years ago

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.

mbrubeck2• 17 years ago

The headline confused me too. I thought maybe it was referring to "dumb" toys being ones that force kids to read/think/calculate/imagine for themselves (as opposed to "smart" toys like some video games that do it all for you and let you go into a near-trance). But that seems only loosely connected to the body of the article.

dazmax• 17 years ago

Just the rules of Magic cards involve a lot of mental computation. The full rulebook actually includes a description of stack-based execution of triggered events to avoid race conditions and ambiguities, and it is possible to build decks that exploit card combinations to create infinite loops that win instantly.

replicatorblog• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

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...

Maven911• 17 years ago

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

mbrubeck2• 17 years ago

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced card game is indistinguishable from Magic.

rms• 17 years ago

And then after a while the Magic players start playing poker.

amohr• 17 years ago

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.

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

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

aw3c22• 17 years ago

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.

varjag• 17 years ago

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

aw3c22• 17 years ago

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.

grnknight• 17 years ago

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.

pchristensen• 17 years ago

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

Why dumb toys make kids smarter

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