Back in 2011 I wrote a post titled “Since when did young adult fiction become the cure for cancer?” It was a response to all the YASaves hysteria. The main point of my amazing post (grin) was that the people complaining about some YA content wanted not to ban books, but to simply have a way to more easily evaluate if they wanted to buy a particular book in the first place.
They want to avoid purchasing what they thought was a box of Marshmallow Mateys only to open it and find a bunch of bicycle sprockets.
Last year I decided to work on a solution. I have some ideas. But before I get ahead of myself and build something, I want to really understand if it’s a problem worth solving. I want to chat with others who do care about content to see what aspects of this are important to them and what they’re doing now to find this information.
So, if you wish books had ratings for sex, violence, and language, then I want to talk to you. It will take about 20 minutes. If you’re open to chatting, leave a comment, or click Contact above and fill in the form.
Because I live up in the middle of nowhere, we’ll have to chat via a web meeting. But never fear: I’ll host that. All you’ll have to do is show up and answer my questions 🙂
“Mandate” is one of the stupidest words used in politics today.
A mandate is an order, a command from the boss. A requirement.
Some restaurant owners mandate their employees wash their hands after using the bathroom. I personally like restaurant owners who mandate that.
States mandate that people who drive cars have car insurance. I like that mandate as well.
But do political representatives receive mandates?
When a politician wins an election, does he or she receive a mandate from the people?
For example, when Obama spanked John McCain in 2008, and the Democrats swept into power, did they have a mandate from the American people to enact certain legislation?
Obama had 52.9% of the voters behind him. McCain had 45.7% of them.
Many Democrats at the time claimed a mandate from “the American people.” But if you know some elementary school maths, you’ll quickly recognize that 52.9% is nowhere close to 100%. Or 90%. Or even 70%.
52.9% is close to, well, 50%. That’s half. As in half a pizza. Here’s a visual for the maths-impaired.
Clearly, 52.9% is nowhere close to “the American people” or “voters.”
But this was lost on politicians who had the brain capacities of gerbils. They thought the elections magically evaporated the will of 45.7% of the people. They though the other half had suddenly disappeared. They thought government by and for the people meant government by and for half the people.
Hold on, John. In the Senate, Democrats won 57 seats, Republicans 41. In the House it was 257 to 178, or 59% to 41%.
Yeah, like I said. About half.
But such maths were beyond them. And so they began to push through legislation that only half the country wanted. Sometimes much less than half, as in the case of Obamacare.
They weren’t governing America. They weren’t leading America. They were leading half and oppressing the other half because they had “won the election.”
So, my fellow Americans, should winning an election give you the right to force something onto the other half of the populace they don’t want?
Is this what America is all about? Is that the freedom from tyranny we celebrate every fourth of July?
The Republicans won a great victory in this year’s election, taking back the Senate and expanding their seats in the House. In the Senate, it will probably be 53 to 45. In the House, 244 to 184.
But does this mean the American people have clearly given them a mandate to enact certain legislation? Does it mean they’re supposed to ignore the other half of the country and ram legislation down their throats they don’t agree with?
I’m a true blue conservative. Or true red, or whatever the color is. After the last six years, I never want to have legislation rammed down my throat again. And I’ve also come to the realization that I never want to do that to the other guy.
America hasn’t given the Republicans a mandate. Nor, as President Obama recently claimed, have they given Washington a mandate to “get stuff done.”
Getting stuff done is exactly the problem.
We don’t want you to get stuff done.
We want you to get stuff done that the vast majority of us agree on!
But, John, does that mean you want us to compromise on our principles?
No. I don’t want to compromise. I’m not interested in going along to get along. But I’m also not interested in a representative government that fails to represent HALF of us.
Here’s my proposal. Let’s go back and start over.
Let’s get rid of Obamacare and put something in its place that at least 60-65% of us can agree on. Maybe 70% of us. It won’t be a liberal weed dream. It won’t be a right wing vision of glory. But whatever gets enacted will be something all of us agree are good things.
And it will force us to win others to our way of thinking if we want to get the rest of the stuff we think is so splendid.
But, John, what if folks can’t agree?
Then we don’t enact. This forces us to use persuasion. It forces is to think win-win. It forces us to behave like a nation that loves freedom.
Immigration. Do we want an American where the president acts like a tyrant and forces something down half of our throats? Or do we want to enact something 65-70% of us can agree on?
The budget. Let’s roll back all the nonsense and get a spending plan that 65-70% of us can agree on.
What about the 30%? I don’t want to oppress them, but 100% ain’t never gonna happen. Let’s be practical. Besides, requiring a large majority means Washington will be at least by and for most of the people. And that’s better than what we have today.
So, do we have a mandate? If anything, I would hope the mandate would be to do stuff that represents America, not one party.
Edit 11/10/2014
And today I find this–an explicit example of the gerbil-brain thinking I reference above. This fine fellow is one of the architects of Obamacare, explaining that the law was written in a way to bamboozle the American voter. What we need in Washington is honest debate and persuasion. Not duplicity and lies. I’m appalled. This is the get-stuff-done-I-have-a-mandate mentality. Not the get stuff done that most of us agree on approach. These folks have completely misunderstood the purpose of government.
Are you ready for a story that’s heroic and inspirational? And poignant. And action-packed. And all true.
I just finished Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown by Eric Blehm. And wow. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have read this book.
It tells the story of Adam Brown who was killed while on assignment in 2010. But this book isn’t about a special operations battle in Afghanistan, although the battle is detailed. It’s not a war book. Although it tells about many episodes in the life of a Navy SEAL operator. No, this book starts when Adam was a kid.
It like the story of Louis Zamperini that’s told in Unbroken by Laurel Hillenbrand (and, yes,the film adaptation missed so much of the story, including the most important part,that if you haven’t read that book, you are missing out on an absolute treat). In this one, Brown starts out as a boy with bright promise, but after he graduates from high school, he makes a number of bad choices and drives his life right off a cliff.
You’ll be flipping the pages to see what helps him turn it around and whether he can make the change permanent, or if he’ll lose everything, including the love of his wife and kids. You’ll also be amazed at his grit. It’s a tremendous read. If you can listen to it on audio, you’ll enjoy the narration by Paul Michael. Either way, if you like stories about redemption and triumph amidst struggle, if you like books about special operations forces and elite soldiers, then you’re going to love this book. Highly recommended.
*
The 12th Man is a 2017 World War 2 historical drama based on the true story of Jan Baalsrud. He and eleven other Norwegian resistance fighters set off from the UK on board a fishing boat with six to seven tons of TNT to sabotage some German military facilities.
However, their mission falls apart soon after reaching Norway. A German warship attacks. The resistance fighters set fire to the TNT on their boat and jumped into the water just off shore. Eleven of the fighters are caught by the Germans. The twelfth, Jan Baalsrud, gets shot in the toe, but still runs across land and manages to elude immediate capture by swimming across the fjord, in the dark, in the freezing, winter water.
Yeah, and that’s just the beginning. The story is about his attempt to get to the safety of Sweden, a neutral country. I watched this with my teenage daughter, and we were riveted with the suspense and action. And we were amazed at what this guy endured.
You will have to read English subtitles during a large parts, but we found that after a few minutes, we really didn’t notice it. It was a great date night. If you like war movies and action, I think you’ll love this movie.
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Tonight I ate a dish that instantly became one of my favorites. My oldest daughter and her husband found it. They love it and shared it with Nellie. And since it was her night to cook, she decided to give it a try. My first bite was wow.
It’s a baked casserole, a cross between lasagna and spaghetti, called “MillionDollar Spaghetti” from tastesbetterfromscratch.com. Just click on the link the get the recipe.
Now, here’s the thing: you can use spaghetti pasta, or you can make it totally low carb by replacing the pasta with cooked spaghetti squash like we did. The low carb version was awesome. I can’t wait to heat up the leftovers tomorrow.
By the way, here’s a quick way to cook spaghetti squash.
First, cut the squash in half lengthwise. The easiest and safest way I’ve found to do this is to place the uncooked squash on a cutting board. Next, get a big knife and set it along the line you want to cut. Finally, rap the spine of the blade smartly with a thick stick or long block of wood until the knife cuts through all the way. Using a knife this way is called batoning because you’re using a baton, a stick. It’s a slick and safe way to cut a hard squash.
Once you have cut the squash in half, scrape out the seeds with a large spoon.
Next, pour about a quarter cup of water into the hollow of the squash, and then turn the squash hollow-side down on a plate or microwave dish. Microwave the half on high for five to six minutes. It’s done when you can easily pierce the outside with a fork.
Remove the plate with hot pads and use a fork to scrape out the cooked squash. Voila! Cooked spaghetti squash in less than 10 minutes.
You can also just bake the halves in the oven for 40 minutes on 375 degrees. Baking gives the squash a slightly richer flavor. In this method, you brush the halves with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper then put the sides face-down on a baking sheet. Again, it’s done when you can easily pierce the outside with a fork.
*
And here’s one more because it’s Christmas. I attended a young women’s meeting for my local congregation not too long ago. As part of the program, one of the leaders read a picture book called You Are Special by Max Lucado.
It’s about these small wooden people called Wemmicks who stick gold stars or gray dots on one another. The pretty or talented ones always get stars. The others, like Punchinello, get the ugly gray dots. And then one day Punchinello finds a happy Wemmick that has no dots at all. In fact, no dots stick to her. How does she manage it?
It’s a great little tale with an important insight. After hearing it, I knew I needed a copy of the book to read to all my grown up kids.
Well, from what people have been posting, he seemed like the devil. But I know how the internet can be. Mitt Romney at one time was the devil. Now, I think he’s been degraded in those quarters to janitor of the hot place. Yeah, that one Romney who is out raising tons of money to help fix blindness among the poorest of the poor, that evil son-of-a-gun.
So when I saw there was a new head honcho in town, I decided to see what he was all about.
I did try reading various posts on the internet, but after a dozen or so of those, I realized it would just be easier to go to the source. And so I went to Vox Day’s website and clicked the contact link, which popped up an email.
I asked Day if he’d mind answering a few questions.
He agreed.
What you will read below is our conversation, arranged for easy reading.
Why am I doing this?
Well, who doesn’t want to scoop the devil? But beyond that, I agree with George R. R. Martin: internet conversations that are not moderated to maintain a tone of respectful disagreement are a bane upon us all. Actually, Martin said they were part of the devil’s alimentary canal, but I didn’t want to confuse the topic.
So I’d read a number of posts that Day had made and others folks had made about Day and saw all the bad juju going back and forth. And I wanted to know what this guy actually believed. Once I understood that, if I disagreed, then I could disagree in a way that I think is actually productive.
We talked about some of his views on two subjects—race and women. Are his ideas provocative? Well, you need to know what they are before you decide.
Conversation
Brown
Vox,
I’m following the conversation about the Hugos. Many of the conversations claim you are a racist and misogynist. Knowing how labels and slurs can magically become fact, I wanted to go to the source and understand what it is you truly believe. I’ve done some reading on your site. I’ve seen attack pieces such as this http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale#cite_note-real-ass-13.
But it’s all so scattershot and snippets out of context. I’m wondering if you might answer some questions. If so, my first questions are about your views on race.
Do you believe Black Africans have, in general, less genetic potential for intelligence than White Europeans?
Do you believe the same for the darker Asians like those from India or Indonesia?
Which genetic group has the highest genetic potential for intelligence at this time?
My response to those who claim I am racist or misogynist is simple: why do you reject science, history, and logic? It is not hateful to be scientifically literate, historically aware, and logically correct.
Pure Homo sapiens sapiens lack Homo neanderthalus and Homo denisova genes which appear to have modestly increased the base genetic potential for intelligence. These genetic differences may explain the observed IQ gap between various human population groups as well as various differences in average brain weights and skull sizes.
Yes, East Asians have been observed to have considerably higher IQs than Southeast Asians.
The Chinese. Their average IQ is higher than the Ashkenazi Jews, who are genetically a refined group of Semitic-Italian crosses. To be more specific, the highest average IQ is found in Singapore.
No, the genetic groups are the Homo sapiens sapiens/Homo neanderthalus crosses, the Homo sapiens sapiens/Homo neanderthalus/Homo denisova crosses, and the pure Homo sapiens sapiens. These broadly align with Europe, Asia, and Africa, but not exactly.
Let me see if I’ve captured your overall approach. You feel it’s important to examine and conduct science without regard to political correctness. For example, if Vanhanen and Lynn say IQ is genetic, you feel the most appropriate thing to do is not attack them for being racists, but simply examine their data and conclusions dispassionately. It’s important to question it. Argue with it. Try to falsify, as we do with any other scientific claim. But not dismiss it simply on the basis that it doesn’t agree with our what we feel is morally right. Correct?
Day
Yes. Science and history and logic exist regardless of whether we are happy about them or not. We have to take them into account.
Brown
It appears the Lynn & Vanhanen book suggests the genetic IQ differences were caused, not by Homo crosses, but by natural selection operating in colder climates over long periods of time. Can you provide another reference that discusses the DNA tracing and IQ correlation of the various crosses?
Day
There are many articles on the Internet about DNA and IQ, I suggest you simply search them out and read a few. The data is conclusive, the rationale explaining the data is not.
Brown
I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you said the rationale explaining the data is not conclusive. What do you mean by that?
Day
Regarding rationale, the data is beyond dispute. But we cannot explain why the data is the way that it is, we can only construct various explanatory hypotheses. Historical explanations are, for the most part, scientific fairy tales, literal science fiction.
Brown
I read your comment to Jemisin about African exposure to Greco-Roman culture. It seems you’re suggesting societies can’t make large change their culture (values and beliefs) over a few generations, or within one generation. Is that what you’re claiming? It doesn’t seem like you’re making a genetic-intelligence argument since 1,000-2,000 years seems too short for any type of significant evolution. Of course, if it’s a cultural argument, then I don’t see how it’s possible to say it’s impossible for a bunch of Jemisons to accomplish this since she was raised with the Western culture. Confused on your base point here.
Day
Yes, I am claiming that societies are incapable of moving from full primitivism to full civilization within the time frame that primitive African societies have been in contact with what we consider to be civilization. It is a genetic argument. It takes that long to kill off or otherwise suppress the breeding of the excessively violent and short-time preferenced. African-American men are 500 times more likely to possess a gene variant that is linked to violence and aggression than white American men.
Brown
Two more questions. It doesn’t sound like you’re against immigration per se. You just think that if a society wants to continue, they need to breed. Right?
Day
I am against large-scale immigration, particularly population-replacement immigration. Limited immigration, no problem.
Brown
I suspect someone is going to wonder if your ideas on race and IQ and violence mean you favor some type of eugenics program. So let me ask you: do you believe in selective breeding or sterilization? If so, would that be to promote the Homo crosses you think are better? Or just any trait from any group you think is superior?
Day
No, I am not a eugenicist. I oppose forced selective breeding and sterilization. However, I also oppose dysgenic and dyscivic social policies, which is presently what we have across most of the West.
Brown
As much as I want to ask more about what you consider dysgenic and dyscivic policies, I think it would just lead to another topic, which would lead to another. Let’s talk about your views on women. Here are my initial questions.
Do you believe a country is better off when women cannot vote?
Do you believe a country is better off when women are not afforded equal education opportunities as men?
What are the top topics of education do you think would be beneficial for women?
I’ve read this post http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2012/06/scientist-beats-up-pz.html. It sounds like you think the main objective of a country or culture with regards to women should be to reduce female promiscuity (not necessarily male promiscuity) and increase the number of children each female bears. Is that correct?
Referring to that same post, are you saying that genital mutilation and acid burnings are legitimate ways to treat women? Or are you saying that they are bad things, but that the societies that do such things have lower female promiscuity rates and higher fertility rates, and so it’s a small price to pay?
Day
Yes, in a representative democracy. However, note that I favor universal direct democracy and the jury is out there.
It depends. It increasingly appears that a society is improved by widespread female education through high school, and harmed by it beyond that level. If you look at the demographics, a society that sends its women to college stops breeding. How this is supposed to benefit a society, I do not understand.
Again, it depends. If a society is demographically dying, then yes, it had better do something to get its birth rate up or it will cease to exist. This isn’t rocket science. If a society is stable or growing demographically, it has no need to concern itself with such policies.
You appear to have misread the post. PZ Myers claimed that there was no rational case to be made for the Taliban’s activities. I responded by demonstrating that the Taliban’s behavior is entirely rational, it is merely the consequence of different objectives and ruthlessness in pursuing them. But the mere fact that I am capable of observing a logical syllogism does not mean I share the assumptions involved or advocate the conclusion. Considering that the Taliban defeated the Soviets and appear to have outlasted NATO, I think it is remarkably stupid to dismiss them as irrational simply because they are willing to defend their way of life.
Brown
Even though it appears I misread the exchange with PZ Myers, your answers to 2 and 3 suggest you prioritize fertility rates as the main goal a society should have towards women. As long as the population is stable or growing, you feel a society can examine other goals or objectives. But only if those goals or policies do not negatively impact the population rate. Correct?
Day
Yes. The NATIVE population rate. Immigration is used to cover up demographic decline, but it changes the nation.
Brown
Okay, what’s the reason you feel women shouldn’t vote in a representative democracy? And do you think only certain types of males should vote?
Day
The reason women shouldn’t vote in a representative democracy is they are significantly inclined to vote for whomever they would rather f***. Hence the studies about height and hair being relevant to US presidential politics. That’s why women’s suffrage was pushed by the Communists and why it is the first plank of the Fascist Manifesto.
In a representative system, yes, only certain types of males should vote. And before you leap to any silly conclusions, please keep in mind that I have lived most of my life in political systems where I am not allowed to vote. Voting does not equal maximizing freedom and liberty.
Brown
First, what types of males do you think should vote in a representative government and what’s the main reason why?
Second, do you believe large numbers of males will vote based on sexual attractiveness as well when females are running for office?
Day
Men who demonstrate sufficient long-term orientation and a willingness to put the national interest above self-interest.
No, men aren’t wired the same way.
Brown
How would you identify the types of men you mention? Military or law enforcement service? How would you determine who had a long-term view of things?
Day
I have never given any thought to how such men would be identified. Every method is bound to fail in time.
Personally, I’d like to see direct democracy tried. We now have the technology, and it would be MUCH harder to corrupt than representative democracy. At least we don’t know exactly HOW it would fail.
Brown
Vox,
This has been really helpful to me. I think it would be helpful to others wanting to understand you. Agreeing, of course, is a different matter. But that’s a different subject. Would you be okay with me posting this conversation on my site?
Day
Sure, do as you see fit. The usual suspects will have their own hissy fits, but that’s of no concern to me. I find it amusing when people tell me they disagree with some of these things. Do they not understand that it is not me with whom they are disagreeing, but reality? Why people can understand that if pandas don’t breed, they will go extinct, but fail to grasp the same thing is true of nations is beyond me.
Comments
You will notice I wasn’t trying to challenge his ideas. Does that mean I agree with them lock, stock, and barrel?
No. I’m very skeptical about a lot of them.
But as I stated above, before I agree or disagree with someone, I need to understand them. And the best way to understand someone is to ask questions, listen, and verify I’ve understood accurately. The worst way to understand is to start with an attack.
In this stage, the goal is not to trick someone. It’s not to convince them that they’ve contradicted themselves. It’s not to prove any point.
It’s to hear them out. And if there are things that don’t make sense, to ask questions of clarification.
But what do I think about his ideas?
Well, let’s look at them.
Scientific Inquiry
I have to agree with his idea that we should try to look at science dispassionately. I think it’s dumb to reject someone’s science simply because the results offend our sensibilities.
We reject science because there are issues with the data, or the experiments, or conclusions. We reject it because it doesn’t fit with the observations. Or because we can’t replicate the results, or because it fails to predict as it claimed it could. But we only hurt ourselves when we reject it because it doesn’t fit our current political beliefs.
Okay, fine. But what about his views on race and women?
The Rhetoric of Offense
Well, they’re bound to rile feathers. And Day sometimes seems to go out of his way to state them in a way he knows is offensive. I didn’t feel he did that with me. But if you read the links above, you can see he does employ it with others.
Here’s my take on this. The rhetoric of offense is different than the rhetoric of explication. The latter is meant to explain. The former’s goal is to cause injury. It has no interest in sharing ideas. It only has interest in injuring someone, either to try to gain relief from an attack or to beat someone into submission, or because seeing folks get all riled up provides amusement.
A good portion of Day’s posts that I’ve read, admitting it’s nowhere near exhaustive, seem to contain a lot of the rhetoric of offense. And I think this dramatically undermines his ability to get others to consider his ideas, let alone believe them.
Sure, the attacks might bring like-minded folks to his side. But, for the most part, it does not provide the ground in which insight grows. Offense closes both parties off to challenges, biases, and ideas. It closes them off to new information. And new information is such an integral part of learning.
Some people say that tone shouldn’t matter. For example, you may lace the fact that the earth revolves around the sun with expletives, or say it to me sweetly, but the fact remains that the earth revolves around the sun. So asking for a more respectful tone is an ad hominine attack, a logical fallacy. It has nothing to do with the argument.
But here’s where I believe the anti-tone folks go wrong. Offense changes the message. When you call me a jackass, you’ve selected to promote one message over another. It doesn’t matter if you’ve couched your attack in a well-reasoned point because you have decided to no longer communicate your point. You’ve decided to communicate the offense instead.
Can’t we do both?
Not really. It’s like playing a country western tune of reason softly in the background while shoving a 110 decibel speaker blasting an annoying alarm in my face.
It’s like taking the statement “the cow jumped over the moon” and saying “the the the the the the the the the the the the the the” followed by a barely audible statement of the rest. All the receiver hears is “the”. And that’s what they respond to.
This means there’s no fallacy at play because there is no argument being communicated. Instead, you’ve communicated an attack. And invited a response to precisely the same.
If the speaker wants someone to consider his ideas, then he needs to speak in a way that invites consideration. I know, you can do that, and the receiver may still go into what sometimes feels like “a hissy fit.” We see this all the time, don’t we? Communication is indeed a two-way street. However, if the guy who was trying to explain decides to switch and respond with an attack, that’s his choice. But don’t call it explication or reason or conversation.
Day was perfectly polite to me. And I know it’s incredibly difficult sometimes to not attack when being attacked. I know his ideas, even when stated reasonably, will rile some folks. But it’s also true that he sometimes loads his communications with things he knows will offend. Things meant to injure and ridicule. Things which show little regard for others. I find it counterproductive. I think it’s wrong. But I also condemn the same tactic from the other side. And, yes, there is probably a time to use the rhetoric of offense, but that’s for another post.
Okay, but what about his beliefs, John?
Votes for Women
Do you agree it would be better for our nation if women didn’t vote?
No.
I’m not convinced men aren’t affected by charisma. What? When males get in a group, all are equally popular? Or popular only because of their ideas, not their looks, money, power, physical prowess, etc? Nor am I convinced that women can’t be long-term thinkers. I haven’t seen any science that supports that idea. And my personal experience has been just the opposite. The women I know think a lot about the future. Furthermore, when I include women in councils, we usually come up with much better ideas.
Now Day might suggest there’s science to look at. That’s his prerogative. I’m incredibly skeptical. But I think the most productive thing to do in reaction to his claim is to gauge whether you think it merits serious consideration. If it does, or if you’re curious, examine the evidence and report your results. If it doesn’t, just say you haven’t seen anything to suggest its worth looking into further.
Education for Women
What about his idea that the most important thing for a society is to maintain the population, which means the most important thing for a woman is to have babies, and that education undermines this and therefore should be avoided?
In one way, he’s right. If you want to maintain a certain population, you do indeed have to breed.
But if that’s your goal, I don’t see education in general as the determining factor. Mormon women have, as a group, much more education than the average female in the United States AND they have more babies. Lots more. I don’t think it’s education per se. I think it’s the values and beliefs some education fosters.
There are some groups that are taller on average than others, some that are shorter. On the face of it, I don’t see why some groups might not have a genetic disposition to more of one kind of intelligence and other groups less. I haven’t looked into this much. I don’t know anything about Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo neanderthalus, Homo denisova, and the various crosses.
However, I do question if IQ isn’t more about nutrition and early learning. I wonder if IQ tests really measure intelligence or just one type of problem solving. And I’m skeptical that it’s really that big of a difference. Maybe it is. I admit my ignorance and curiosity on this topic openly.
Race and National Success
What about his claim that Homo sapiens sapiens, which he claims are what we find in Sub-Saharan Africa ancestry, have more genes for violence than we do up north and so can’t at the present time build as successful a society?
This one makes no sense to me. I don’t see a difference in violence levels. Like the Romans weren’t violent? Or the Germanic tribes? Hitler and all those that followed him didn’t do violence? Napoleon and his armies? I don’t see how we selected against violence and short-term thinking. I’m incredibly skeptical of these claims.
Now, it could be he needed more space to lay them out. After all, I wasn’t asking for evidence or a full treatise. Only what he believed. But as it stands right now, I’m betting the types of violence he’s looking at are driven more by culture than anything else. And I don’t believe people are genetically predisposed against democracy.
Frankly, the ideas laid out in Guns, Germs, and Steel seem more predictive to me about what makes peoples successful than Homo crosses. But of course I’m always open to new information. However, even if this claim is true, it’s a fallacy to peg each member of a group to the average. People lie along a bell curve for all sorts of things, and it might be that any one person or community or even nation might actually have less of this than another from a different group.
Bottom line
Vox Day wasn’t the devil, dang it.
He is someone who espouses a couple of ideas that I agree with and a number that seem flat out wrong to me. He appears to be someone who enjoys the rhetoric of offense. I may investigate some of his claims. I may not. I am new to the topic of genetics, and am curious. Whatever I do, I found it useful to try to see for myself what the man believes. One thing that he and I agree on is how we should react to claims made with the purpose, not to offend and injure, but to expand our knowledge.
Now, I have no idea what types of comments this post will bring. Please note that I did not ask Day for his sources, or to lay out all the evidence he feels backs up these beliefs. That’s much too big for this post. You can certainly share your ideas and the science you find compelling. But this is my site, and by golly I request that if you post and want to express disagreement, that you disagree respectfully. Name calling, high-octane expletives, etc. will not fly here. Any post that fails to avoid this will be deleted. You can certainly try again, but if any prove unwilling to abide by this rule, I’ll simply block you to save myself some time.
I am much more interested in a discussion here than attack and offense.
Larry Correia is a big-booted barbarian who likes to fight in a cage. And a lot of us love to watch big-booted barbarians go at it.
We like demanding matches. We like a little blood and good sportsmanship (of course, sportsmanship in the cage is different than in other venues). And we respect both sides for showing up and giving it their best.
This last week Larry Correia battled with Alex Dally MacFarlane (and Tor, the silent partner, who thought her new column would be a great idea and has given her their big platform to talk) and Jim Hines. If you didn’t watch the match, here are the links.
I’ve enjoyed reading the give and take in this fight. For me, the barbarians seem to have landed more blows (and done so with many more funny and memorable one-liners.) But that doesn’t mean Alex Dally MacFarlane shouldn’t crusade.
And I mean crusade, as in battle.
Underneath it all MacFarlane wants to change something. She wants to change hearts and minds. A lot of us want to change hearts and minds about various things. A lot of us will show up and risk getting bloody for such things in a variety of settings. Heck, Correia the Barbarian was even willing to spend two years of his barbarian life trying to change hearts and minds in a setting where big boots are not allowed (poor Correia, more sad puppies).
But here’s the deal.
If you want to win someone like me, you’re going to do it not by scolding or brow beating me or by mandating something and then trying to back it up with sticks.
You’re going to do it by writing something so delightul that I cannot but help listen to you.
You’re not going to tell me what I can’t write.
You’re not going to tell me what I must write.
You’re going to model writing that makes me want to write that thing.
You’re going to be like Tolkien and spawn five decades of writers who want to do nothing more than imagine worlds filled with strange races and wonderous settings and weird talking tree men who have lost their wives.
You’re going to invite like-minded folks to join you in creating wonders. Or in just having a good old time. And not worry about other writers inviting folks to their creations, which might be totally different from yours.
And those wonders and good times are the things that will work the magic.
Miguel Sabido is a master of entertainment with message. Here’s a great piece in The New Yorker introducing him, his work, and methods. Notice what made his stuff so effective. The new ways of thinking he wanted to offer were never found in the A story. They were never found in the B story.
Why?
Because the number one thing the story had to do was suck people in (entertain).
And so the new thing to consider was in the C story.
MacFarlane, put it in the C story. And build a Middle-earth. Or a ring world. Or at least some vampires that sparkle.
In the meantime, I’ve got a barbarian book on the shelf that looks like a mighty good time. I think I’m going to give it a read.
I’ve come to realize I didn’t understand the process of impeachment and the standards by which it is conducted. Here are a few key things I’m betting most of us didn’t know. Some of them will surprise you.
First, the process has three steps:
The Congress starts an investigation, which can be conducted by any part of that body—the House, Senate, a special counsel, etc.
The House leadership decides on whether to vote on “articles of impeachment.” The articles need only a simple majority to pass. If they do pass, the person is impeached. However, the articles of impeachment are not a conviction; they are a formal allegation of wrongdoing. The analog to this in the criminal justice system is an indictment.
The Senate then holds a trial to decide if the allegations are true with both sides bringing witnesses, evidence, cross-examination, etc. The chief justice presides when the president is impeached. If two-thirds of the senators deem the allegations true, then the person is convicted and removed from office and may be barred from holding future positions. If the super majority isn’t reached, the person is acquitted of the charges.
There are two big questions in all of this. First, what standard of proof is used for passing the articles and then convicting the person of the allegations?
It appears that the standard of proof required for impeachment and conviction is left to the discretion of each individual representative and senator. There is no standard defined. So while some may use the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, others may not.
Second, what can someone be impeached for?
According to the constitution they can be impeached for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” However, the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined in the Constitution itself.
The most authoritative explanation of what “high crimes and misdemeanors” are appears to be a document written by the staff of the House Judiciary Committee. The latest version of this was written in 2015 and is called “Impeachment and Removal.”
According to the Wikipedia article on impeachment, “While this document is only staff recommendation, as a practical matter, today it is probably the single most influential definition of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.””
A key take away from that house committee report is that not all crimes are impeachable offenses and not all impeachable offenses are crimes. So what are grounds for impeachment? Well, it’s a bit vague.
In 1788, Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Paper 65 that impeachment was for “the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” The House Committee report expounds on that, including the following general grounds:
“Constitutional wrongs that subvert the structure of government, or undermine the integrity of office and even the Constitution itself”
“Abuse of the particular powers of government office or a violation of the “public trust””
The report goes on to say the following.
“Congressional materials have cautioned that the grounds for impeachment “do not all fit neatly and logically into categories” because the remedy of impeachment is intended to “reach a broad variety of conduct by officers that is both serious and incompatible with the duties of the office.” Nonetheless, congressional precedents reflect three broad types of conduct thought to constitute grounds for impeachment, although they should not be understood as exhaustive or binding: (1) improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office; (2) behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office; and (3) misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain.”
But the report doesn’t give much definition beyond this, just a few examples of what individuals have been impeached for since the founding of the country. What does all of this mean?
I think the Wikipedia article sums it up well.
“Several commentators have suggested that Congress alone may decide for itself what constitutes a “high Crime or Misdemeanor”, especially since the Supreme Court decided in Nixon v. United States that it did not have the authority to determine whether the Senate properly “tried” a defendant. In 1970, then-House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford defined the criterion as he saw it: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.””
Impeachment is a political remedy, not a criminal justice or civil justice one. And given the vague definition of grounds for impeachment and the lack of any required standard of proof, what this all means, unfortunately, is that the process, especially in our current climate, is going to be rife, not with objectivity, but partisan politics. On both sides.
Doesn’t the question of whether it is “a problem worth solving” depend critically on how many people would actually derive a benefit?
You could interview dozens of people who say that they would like book ratings, but that is just a drop in the bucket to the hundreds of millions of people who read books.
Do you have an idea of what percentage of book readers say they would like to see books with ratings?
Also, even if some people say they would like to see books with ratings, how useful are the ratings really? Sure, parents could avoid buying books for their children based on the ratings. But will that really stop children from reading certain books? Wouldn’t a large number of children actually want to read a book more if it appears to be forbidden fruit? Couldn’t such children go to the library or the bookstore themselves to read such books? Or borrow them from friends? Or download them from the Internet?
Good questions all, John. They’re all part of what customer discovery is meant to find out. I have my hypotheses; the customer discovery process helps me validate and test them.
As far as how useful ratings are to folks, my hypothesis is that they’d be as useful as they are to folks who see movies. And a heck of a lot of people use movie ratings of one kind or another.
How will interviewing a few people who self-select to say they “wish books had ratings for sex, violence, and language” help you find out what percentage of book readers want book ratings?
It seems to me the only reasonable way to answer that question is to survey a statistically significant number of book readers, in as broad and unbiased a sample as possible.
For answering the question of what percentage of book readers want a rating system, your sample would be useless since you have asked them to self-select for wanting a rating system.
I doubt your hypothesis that book ratings would be as useful as movie ratings. The difference is that movie theaters and many movie sellers will not allow underage people to view movies not rated for them. But I find it very unlikely that libraries, and unlikely that most bookstores, would be willing or able to prevent certain people from reading books based on ratings.
Also, if I understand you correctly, the book ratings would be more complicated than movie ratings. Restricted movies are basically R rated movies, or PG-13 parents strongly cautioned. The R-rating is simple for movie theaters to enforce — check ID and if under 17 then no go.
But with a book rating not just based on age of reader, it would be nearly impossible for libraries or booksellers to enforce. So children would have a much easier time getting books that there parents don’t want them to get as compared to getting into a movie theater to watch an R-rated movie.
It seems to me that book ratings could possibly have the opposite of the intended effect. If parents try to prevent their children from reading books with certain ratings, then those books will become more desirable to many children, and children will seek those books out specifically. And since such books will be easily available from the library, booksellers, friends, or the Internet, then those books rated for racy sex, extreme violence, or banned language may be read by even more children than if there were no ratings to steer the children towards the thrilling “forbidden” books.
By the way, most of my doubts are in regards to using such a rating system for “young adult” books, since I am assuming that such a rating system would be used by parents in an attempt to prevent their children from reading certain books.
However, if we are talking about people making decisions for their own reading, then it seems to me that the rating system makes more sense. I know some adults do not want to read books that use certain words they do not like, or which describe sex or sexuality in a straightforward or explicit manner. Such people could make their own reading decisions based on book ratings.
In such a case, I can see your survey providing useful information. For people deciding whether they want to read a book, what information would they like that is not currently provided by cover blurbs or amazon reviews? That would be the area that book ratings might be helpful for some people.
John,
Interviews are only one part of a larger customer discovery or development process. I’ll be doing other things to assess market size. In this part of the process I’m looking to talk to early adopters, folks who have a large problem they want to fix.
As for parents and ratings, you’re making an assumption about the goal of this that’s incorrect. I’m not seeking to provide a solution to a rating enforcement need. This isn’t a policing solution. It’s a customer information solution. What customers do with it is beyond the scope.
And it would be for all books, but YA book readers and purchasers are probably a key market segment. Also, it’s incorrect to assume that YA is read only by youths. A very large portion of YA is read by adults–30% or 60%. I can’t remember the number, but it was large. Many adults read YA because it used to be a “safe” genre. And because it moves more quickly.
A rating system may be useful, but I’ve found that by going to websites like Amazon and reading the customer reviews I can get a pretty good feel for a book’s content. Could this be a problem that is already solving itself?
I’m one of those adults that like to read YA because it is ‘safe’. My children are a little too young right now to read heavily (mt oldest is 9), but I’m already encouraging them to find out what others have said about a book before reading it.
I’m not entirely sure where you’re going with this, but I’ve got a few questions/thoughts on the matter.
1) This is the digital age. Five minutes with Amazon, Good Reads, Wikipedia, or Google is about all you need to find out every plot detail of most novels, let alone if it contains graphic content.
2) Most people pick up books upon referral, usually given by people who have similar tastes in fiction. We’ve all had people who have different tastes refer us to books that weren’t to our individual liking. With these people common sense tells you after one such experience to not read books they tell you about.
3) Presentation is more important in written fiction than in any other medium. You can present the exact same action sequence, featuring the exact same dialog and actions three different times, and depending on presentation they can all have completely different tones. One presentation you might find offensive, another you’re completely okay with. A rating system, V for violence, does little to distinguish between the two.
With all that being said, I think a rating system would be redundant. We’ve been trained for decades to check movie or even video game ratings, and if it wasn’t for that those rating systems would be just as redundant.
On a side note, I somehow doubt that most of the adults who read YA do so because it’s safe. I would be if there was a poll, most of these readers would list pace as the primary reason for reading YA, maybe even the lack of political fluff as the second reason.
Pete,
It might be. This is, in part, why I’m conducting interviews. I want to see how people for whom this is an issue are currently resolving the issue. So far, some have mentioned reading the reviews on Amazon but a surprising number are simply reading into the books and getting annoyed.
James,
My response to your points.
1) You’re making an assumption about what people do. That’s your hypothesis. The question is: is it valid? Specifically, is it valid for lots of folks who are looking to vet books for sex, violence, and language? I’m making assumptions as well. And the validation for those assumptions are going to be found by talking to folks. If I talk to lots of folks who have this issue but solve it in two seconds with internet searches, then there’s no need to proceed and develop the solution. If not, then it suggests I make a wider search.
2) Sometimes. You’re making another assumption that would need to be validated. I just talked to a fellow whose friend usually recommends great stuff. He recommended a book. The fellow I talked to found nothing objectionable in the first chapters and so put the audio in the car with the kids. 1/3rd the way into the book, a character started to drop the f-bomb all over the place. In this case, the fellow I talked to was annoyed because he had just wasted time and money on a book he was going to return. But he wasn’t going to immediately discount everything his friend would recommend in the future either. And what if he does stop listening to that friend’s recommendations? That still doesn’t prevent him from having the same experience in the future.
Getting out and talking to people is helping me see if my assumptions are correct.
3) A rating as you suggest doesn’t make much distinction. But I haven’t suggested any solution yet. I’m still in problem validation mode.
As for redundancy, this is yet another hypothesis. Rating systems might be redundant for a lot of people. They might not be for a lot of people. My question at this point is whether there are enough people with this issue to warrant further investigation.
As for your side note, I didn’t say “most” 🙂 I said “many.” But that too is an assumption that needs to be validated.
When doing product development, the first thing we need to do is validate as many of the key assumptions as possible. That’s what I’m currently in the midst of. And the best way to do that is to form my hypotheses and then talk to people who have this issue, not speculate about what they might or might not do 🙂
Does it make better sense now?
I really don’t hate the idea of some sort of content label for books; especially if it was something along the lines of “Contains Mild Profanity, Violence, and Sexual Content.” As the parent of a two and a half year old, I pretty much put blind faith into the idea that her pop-up books won’t broach any topics I don’t think she is ready for. Once her books start having chapters, I’d rather not have to read them to know what’s in them.
I don’t have the delusion that I can completely prevent her from seeing content I think is too adult, but this would be a convenience for what will no doubt be an uphill battle.
John
My points weren’t criticisms but just general thoughts I had while reading your post and a few of the questions you will hear from potential customers. Also, after thinking about it for a few minutes, I’d have to retract my guess of pacing being the number one reason for adults reading YA and put nostalgia in its place followed by pacing.
James,
I didn’t take them as criticisms 🙂 But they did come across as statements of fact. What I was trying to clarify is that I think they’re actually assumptions, hypotheses. When developing a new product, the key thing is to ID key assumptions and then validate them.
As for why so many adults read YA, I think your first assumption about pacing is probably more accurate. My wife and I read a lot of YA, and we don’t do it for nostalgic reasons. But that’s my assumption. I could be wrong. When trying to develop a product, I think it’s important to label such things as assumptions until we have data that validates them.
I work in a school library (grade 7-12) and while we have a separate section for senior fiction and in a few cases some books are labeled 11-12 only. While I like to think myself as well read, there is only so much time in a day to research content on books we are ordering for the library. I think something simple as content warning regarding violence, sex and language would be useful as despite what people think not all reviews single out these items. It could be something as simple as a sticker on the book, or more information on the publisher’s website.
As for enforcement, it is easy here as we can limit what the students are allowed to read without written consent from their parents.
Depending when the round table chat is going to take place, I may or may not be available as I will be on vacation soon (all 14 days of it).
Cheers,
David
Thanks, David. I’ve sent you an email. These are all one-on-one chats.
Jennifer B. told me about your quest and asked if I’d be willing to contact you and help out with your survey. I am an avid “filter” user for both books and movies (and everything else)and would be willing to chat if it would helpful. I’m an avid reader and am mother to many readers (one of whom is a voracious reader). There are numerous blogs and sites already devoted to this issue (which I applaud) but the more the merrier. =)
I think a rating system for books would be very useful! When I browse through a selection of movies to rent I can glance at the back cover and instantly have an idea of whether it has content I’d be uncomfortable with, but when browsing through a bookstore or library I have to look up every book and read several reviews (which isn’t even possible to do on my phone–yes it’s the digital age but not everyone has a smartphone), or else read the back cover and decipher whether it hints at any mature content by using words like “raunchy.” For a long time I’ve been wishing there was something simple stamped on books so it could save me the time, especially since I’ve been in the situation more than once in which I’d already gotten the book home and put hours into it just to come across a very explicit scene I didn’t want to read.
I agree with many that we shouldn’t be trying to ban books, and I would hypothesize that a rating system may actually help steer people away from that as a solution. With the current system of books being either available or banned, and access of information being either extensive research or reading through all of it yourself, anything people find objectionable they feel must be banned so others will know it has that content before they read it unknowingly. Moving to a system that gives a clear idea of what kind of content is in books right away could give at least a framework to organize the chaos and offer a saner alternative to banning. School library staff would save countless hours of research to make sure they carried literature that was appropriate. My eighth grade science teacher probably wouldn’t have gotten away with including in his curriculum for several years his own novel, which contained an alien rape scene–perhaps school administrators with the apathy not to read through the book may have at least referred to its rating.
Although it wouldn’t be made for the purpose of censorship through laws, a rating system could mean a guideline for parents as well—as another comment said, it’s sure to be an uphill battle for parents guiding their children toward wholesome media. Yes, some kids would jump at the opportunity to seek directly after “forbidden fruit,” but don’t you think those kids find ways of doing that already? Is that reason enough to limit information on texts that are available to the public in order to hope kids don’t come across something inappropriate on their own? As well as benefiting adults in their reading selection, that prior information about a book could mean the difference for a lot of the kids who are honestly just looking for a good story. Personal responsibility needs to be adopted at some point, and making the decision not to choose a movie (or book) because it has a certain rating can be much easier than getting halfway through it and disciplining oneself not to continue.
I had no idea I had this much to say about the idea, and I’m sure I would be even less eloquent about my argument in person (that’s probly why I wrote all that down), but I would be open to an interview. =)
I was sent over to your site by Rachel on Goodreads. I have considered the idea of book ratings before, but find it pretty problematic. All the same, I would be interested in an online chat or phone call about this, if it helps you in your research.
I usually do a lot of research into books my kids will have a chance to read, and then I use that research to decide if I am going to read it to approve it for them. This represents a lot of steps and effort for each and every book, which gets tiring after awhile. Half the books I read a year are for my kids, and I read about fifty books a year. I sometimes would like a simpler method of screening for content. For me this does not represent censorship in that I don’t debate the existence of certain books, only whether or not I want to give a large amount of my time and energy to reading them. And may I say, this is one of those reasons why I look forward to my kids growing up and making their own choices. 🙂
Here are a few of my initial ideas:
pro:
Fewer surprises when finding good lit for my kids, and for myself. I have done extensive research on a certain book and risked not reading it, only for my daughter to encounter multiple adult scenes in what was supposed to be YA historical fiction.
con:
even the movie ratings that have been with us for so long can not be trusted. Their standards have shifted over the years. They are not specific enough- but then how can they be?
The same scene done differently in a classic novel as opposed to a modern novel could end up looking the same as per rating, but feel very differently to the reader.
How would a rating system offset the expansion of the definition of YA to include everyone from early 20s to the preteen?
Would it be able to be controlled to prevent the slide along the continuum of standards? In other words, looking at movie ratings, what was an R movie in the 60s is now a PG-13, or even a ‘hard’ PG.
Would a rating system be able to keep up with the many books that come out each year? There are more books than movies, by far, aren’t there?
Some of the things my very particular daughter wishes to avoid would be very difficult for a rating system to capture. The result for me would be reading everything anyway. To be honest, it comes down to this: I wish there would be a thorough and trustworthy system, but nothing will ever replace my own work. I just can’t see how a rating system could replace the running lists and perceptions I have in my head. In some cases, it could help a little. But would it really simplify things for me, or just set me up?
I would be curious to see how a rating system affects school and public libraries. There’s a political pit for you to be stepping into!
Finally, I am glad to see a discussion on this. If books for children weren’t being changed so quickly, we might not even need to discuss the issue.
I would love to see some kind of rating on books, as this can be very hard to find out without skimming the book or reading reviews which frequently give away important plot points.
An easy implementation could be something along the lines of low, medium & high for the categories of language, violence, & sexual content. It might look something like this for an age 11 book:
L:low
V:med
S:low
Or for an adult sci-fi book that I may want to avoid:
L:high
V:high
S:med
They wouldn’t have to be colored green or red to indicate “bad” or “good”, as this varies by individual, but could still give someone an idea before they get 1/4 of the way into a book and have to put it down in disappointment.
Back in 2011 I wrote a post titled “Since when did young adult fiction become the cure for cancer?” It was a response to all the YASaves hysteria. The main point of my amazing post (grin) was that the people complaining about some YA content wanted not to ban books, but to simply have a way to more easily evaluate if they wanted to buy a particular book in the first place.
Doesn’t the question of whether it is “a problem worth solving” depend critically on how many people would actually derive a benefit?
You could interview dozens of people who say that they would like book ratings, but that is just a drop in the bucket to the hundreds of millions of people who read books.
Do you have an idea of what percentage of book readers say they would like to see books with ratings?
Also, even if some people say they would like to see books with ratings, how useful are the ratings really? Sure, parents could avoid buying books for their children based on the ratings. But will that really stop children from reading certain books? Wouldn’t a large number of children actually want to read a book more if it appears to be forbidden fruit? Couldn’t such children go to the library or the bookstore themselves to read such books? Or borrow them from friends? Or download them from the Internet?
Good questions all, John. They’re all part of what customer discovery is meant to find out. I have my hypotheses; the customer discovery process helps me validate and test them.
As far as how useful ratings are to folks, my hypothesis is that they’d be as useful as they are to folks who see movies. And a heck of a lot of people use movie ratings of one kind or another.
How will interviewing a few people who self-select to say they “wish books had ratings for sex, violence, and language” help you find out what percentage of book readers want book ratings?
It seems to me the only reasonable way to answer that question is to survey a statistically significant number of book readers, in as broad and unbiased a sample as possible.
For answering the question of what percentage of book readers want a rating system, your sample would be useless since you have asked them to self-select for wanting a rating system.
I doubt your hypothesis that book ratings would be as useful as movie ratings. The difference is that movie theaters and many movie sellers will not allow underage people to view movies not rated for them. But I find it very unlikely that libraries, and unlikely that most bookstores, would be willing or able to prevent certain people from reading books based on ratings.
Also, if I understand you correctly, the book ratings would be more complicated than movie ratings. Restricted movies are basically R rated movies, or PG-13 parents strongly cautioned. The R-rating is simple for movie theaters to enforce — check ID and if under 17 then no go.
But with a book rating not just based on age of reader, it would be nearly impossible for libraries or booksellers to enforce. So children would have a much easier time getting books that there parents don’t want them to get as compared to getting into a movie theater to watch an R-rated movie.
It seems to me that book ratings could possibly have the opposite of the intended effect. If parents try to prevent their children from reading books with certain ratings, then those books will become more desirable to many children, and children will seek those books out specifically. And since such books will be easily available from the library, booksellers, friends, or the Internet, then those books rated for racy sex, extreme violence, or banned language may be read by even more children than if there were no ratings to steer the children towards the thrilling “forbidden” books.
By the way, most of my doubts are in regards to using such a rating system for “young adult” books, since I am assuming that such a rating system would be used by parents in an attempt to prevent their children from reading certain books.
However, if we are talking about people making decisions for their own reading, then it seems to me that the rating system makes more sense. I know some adults do not want to read books that use certain words they do not like, or which describe sex or sexuality in a straightforward or explicit manner. Such people could make their own reading decisions based on book ratings.
In such a case, I can see your survey providing useful information. For people deciding whether they want to read a book, what information would they like that is not currently provided by cover blurbs or amazon reviews? That would be the area that book ratings might be helpful for some people.
John,
Interviews are only one part of a larger customer discovery or development process. I’ll be doing other things to assess market size. In this part of the process I’m looking to talk to early adopters, folks who have a large problem they want to fix.
As for parents and ratings, you’re making an assumption about the goal of this that’s incorrect. I’m not seeking to provide a solution to a rating enforcement need. This isn’t a policing solution. It’s a customer information solution. What customers do with it is beyond the scope.
And it would be for all books, but YA book readers and purchasers are probably a key market segment. Also, it’s incorrect to assume that YA is read only by youths. A very large portion of YA is read by adults–30% or 60%. I can’t remember the number, but it was large. Many adults read YA because it used to be a “safe” genre. And because it moves more quickly.
A rating system may be useful, but I’ve found that by going to websites like Amazon and reading the customer reviews I can get a pretty good feel for a book’s content. Could this be a problem that is already solving itself?
I’m one of those adults that like to read YA because it is ‘safe’. My children are a little too young right now to read heavily (mt oldest is 9), but I’m already encouraging them to find out what others have said about a book before reading it.
I’m not entirely sure where you’re going with this, but I’ve got a few questions/thoughts on the matter.
1) This is the digital age. Five minutes with Amazon, Good Reads, Wikipedia, or Google is about all you need to find out every plot detail of most novels, let alone if it contains graphic content.
2) Most people pick up books upon referral, usually given by people who have similar tastes in fiction. We’ve all had people who have different tastes refer us to books that weren’t to our individual liking. With these people common sense tells you after one such experience to not read books they tell you about.
3) Presentation is more important in written fiction than in any other medium. You can present the exact same action sequence, featuring the exact same dialog and actions three different times, and depending on presentation they can all have completely different tones. One presentation you might find offensive, another you’re completely okay with. A rating system, V for violence, does little to distinguish between the two.
With all that being said, I think a rating system would be redundant. We’ve been trained for decades to check movie or even video game ratings, and if it wasn’t for that those rating systems would be just as redundant.
On a side note, I somehow doubt that most of the adults who read YA do so because it’s safe. I would be if there was a poll, most of these readers would list pace as the primary reason for reading YA, maybe even the lack of political fluff as the second reason.
Pete,
It might be. This is, in part, why I’m conducting interviews. I want to see how people for whom this is an issue are currently resolving the issue. So far, some have mentioned reading the reviews on Amazon but a surprising number are simply reading into the books and getting annoyed.
James,
My response to your points.
1) You’re making an assumption about what people do. That’s your hypothesis. The question is: is it valid? Specifically, is it valid for lots of folks who are looking to vet books for sex, violence, and language? I’m making assumptions as well. And the validation for those assumptions are going to be found by talking to folks. If I talk to lots of folks who have this issue but solve it in two seconds with internet searches, then there’s no need to proceed and develop the solution. If not, then it suggests I make a wider search.
2) Sometimes. You’re making another assumption that would need to be validated. I just talked to a fellow whose friend usually recommends great stuff. He recommended a book. The fellow I talked to found nothing objectionable in the first chapters and so put the audio in the car with the kids. 1/3rd the way into the book, a character started to drop the f-bomb all over the place. In this case, the fellow I talked to was annoyed because he had just wasted time and money on a book he was going to return. But he wasn’t going to immediately discount everything his friend would recommend in the future either. And what if he does stop listening to that friend’s recommendations? That still doesn’t prevent him from having the same experience in the future.
Getting out and talking to people is helping me see if my assumptions are correct.
3) A rating as you suggest doesn’t make much distinction. But I haven’t suggested any solution yet. I’m still in problem validation mode.
As for redundancy, this is yet another hypothesis. Rating systems might be redundant for a lot of people. They might not be for a lot of people. My question at this point is whether there are enough people with this issue to warrant further investigation.
As for your side note, I didn’t say “most” 🙂 I said “many.” But that too is an assumption that needs to be validated.
When doing product development, the first thing we need to do is validate as many of the key assumptions as possible. That’s what I’m currently in the midst of. And the best way to do that is to form my hypotheses and then talk to people who have this issue, not speculate about what they might or might not do 🙂
Does it make better sense now?
I really don’t hate the idea of some sort of content label for books; especially if it was something along the lines of “Contains Mild Profanity, Violence, and Sexual Content.” As the parent of a two and a half year old, I pretty much put blind faith into the idea that her pop-up books won’t broach any topics I don’t think she is ready for. Once her books start having chapters, I’d rather not have to read them to know what’s in them.
I don’t have the delusion that I can completely prevent her from seeing content I think is too adult, but this would be a convenience for what will no doubt be an uphill battle.
John
My points weren’t criticisms but just general thoughts I had while reading your post and a few of the questions you will hear from potential customers. Also, after thinking about it for a few minutes, I’d have to retract my guess of pacing being the number one reason for adults reading YA and put nostalgia in its place followed by pacing.
James,
I didn’t take them as criticisms 🙂 But they did come across as statements of fact. What I was trying to clarify is that I think they’re actually assumptions, hypotheses. When developing a new product, the key thing is to ID key assumptions and then validate them.
As for why so many adults read YA, I think your first assumption about pacing is probably more accurate. My wife and I read a lot of YA, and we don’t do it for nostalgic reasons. But that’s my assumption. I could be wrong. When trying to develop a product, I think it’s important to label such things as assumptions until we have data that validates them.
I work in a school library (grade 7-12) and while we have a separate section for senior fiction and in a few cases some books are labeled 11-12 only. While I like to think myself as well read, there is only so much time in a day to research content on books we are ordering for the library. I think something simple as content warning regarding violence, sex and language would be useful as despite what people think not all reviews single out these items. It could be something as simple as a sticker on the book, or more information on the publisher’s website.
As for enforcement, it is easy here as we can limit what the students are allowed to read without written consent from their parents.
Depending when the round table chat is going to take place, I may or may not be available as I will be on vacation soon (all 14 days of it).
Cheers,
David
Thanks, David. I’ve sent you an email. These are all one-on-one chats.
Jennifer B. told me about your quest and asked if I’d be willing to contact you and help out with your survey. I am an avid “filter” user for both books and movies (and everything else)and would be willing to chat if it would helpful. I’m an avid reader and am mother to many readers (one of whom is a voracious reader). There are numerous blogs and sites already devoted to this issue (which I applaud) but the more the merrier. =)
I think a rating system for books would be very useful! When I browse through a selection of movies to rent I can glance at the back cover and instantly have an idea of whether it has content I’d be uncomfortable with, but when browsing through a bookstore or library I have to look up every book and read several reviews (which isn’t even possible to do on my phone–yes it’s the digital age but not everyone has a smartphone), or else read the back cover and decipher whether it hints at any mature content by using words like “raunchy.” For a long time I’ve been wishing there was something simple stamped on books so it could save me the time, especially since I’ve been in the situation more than once in which I’d already gotten the book home and put hours into it just to come across a very explicit scene I didn’t want to read.
I agree with many that we shouldn’t be trying to ban books, and I would hypothesize that a rating system may actually help steer people away from that as a solution. With the current system of books being either available or banned, and access of information being either extensive research or reading through all of it yourself, anything people find objectionable they feel must be banned so others will know it has that content before they read it unknowingly. Moving to a system that gives a clear idea of what kind of content is in books right away could give at least a framework to organize the chaos and offer a saner alternative to banning. School library staff would save countless hours of research to make sure they carried literature that was appropriate. My eighth grade science teacher probably wouldn’t have gotten away with including in his curriculum for several years his own novel, which contained an alien rape scene–perhaps school administrators with the apathy not to read through the book may have at least referred to its rating.
Although it wouldn’t be made for the purpose of censorship through laws, a rating system could mean a guideline for parents as well—as another comment said, it’s sure to be an uphill battle for parents guiding their children toward wholesome media. Yes, some kids would jump at the opportunity to seek directly after “forbidden fruit,” but don’t you think those kids find ways of doing that already? Is that reason enough to limit information on texts that are available to the public in order to hope kids don’t come across something inappropriate on their own? As well as benefiting adults in their reading selection, that prior information about a book could mean the difference for a lot of the kids who are honestly just looking for a good story. Personal responsibility needs to be adopted at some point, and making the decision not to choose a movie (or book) because it has a certain rating can be much easier than getting halfway through it and disciplining oneself not to continue.
I had no idea I had this much to say about the idea, and I’m sure I would be even less eloquent about my argument in person (that’s probly why I wrote all that down), but I would be open to an interview. =)
I was sent over to your site by Rachel on Goodreads. I have considered the idea of book ratings before, but find it pretty problematic. All the same, I would be interested in an online chat or phone call about this, if it helps you in your research.
I usually do a lot of research into books my kids will have a chance to read, and then I use that research to decide if I am going to read it to approve it for them. This represents a lot of steps and effort for each and every book, which gets tiring after awhile. Half the books I read a year are for my kids, and I read about fifty books a year. I sometimes would like a simpler method of screening for content. For me this does not represent censorship in that I don’t debate the existence of certain books, only whether or not I want to give a large amount of my time and energy to reading them. And may I say, this is one of those reasons why I look forward to my kids growing up and making their own choices. 🙂
Here are a few of my initial ideas:
pro:
Fewer surprises when finding good lit for my kids, and for myself. I have done extensive research on a certain book and risked not reading it, only for my daughter to encounter multiple adult scenes in what was supposed to be YA historical fiction.
con:
even the movie ratings that have been with us for so long can not be trusted. Their standards have shifted over the years. They are not specific enough- but then how can they be?
The same scene done differently in a classic novel as opposed to a modern novel could end up looking the same as per rating, but feel very differently to the reader.
How would a rating system offset the expansion of the definition of YA to include everyone from early 20s to the preteen?
Would it be able to be controlled to prevent the slide along the continuum of standards? In other words, looking at movie ratings, what was an R movie in the 60s is now a PG-13, or even a ‘hard’ PG.
Would a rating system be able to keep up with the many books that come out each year? There are more books than movies, by far, aren’t there?
Some of the things my very particular daughter wishes to avoid would be very difficult for a rating system to capture. The result for me would be reading everything anyway. To be honest, it comes down to this: I wish there would be a thorough and trustworthy system, but nothing will ever replace my own work. I just can’t see how a rating system could replace the running lists and perceptions I have in my head. In some cases, it could help a little. But would it really simplify things for me, or just set me up?
I would be curious to see how a rating system affects school and public libraries. There’s a political pit for you to be stepping into!
Finally, I am glad to see a discussion on this. If books for children weren’t being changed so quickly, we might not even need to discuss the issue.
I would love to see some kind of rating on books, as this can be very hard to find out without skimming the book or reading reviews which frequently give away important plot points.
An easy implementation could be something along the lines of low, medium & high for the categories of language, violence, & sexual content. It might look something like this for an age 11 book:
L:low
V:med
S:low
Or for an adult sci-fi book that I may want to avoid:
L:high
V:high
S:med
They wouldn’t have to be colored green or red to indicate “bad” or “good”, as this varies by individual, but could still give someone an idea before they get 1/4 of the way into a book and have to put it down in disappointment.
Thanks, Collin 🙂