Links for February 20, 2018
Such negative stereotypes outweighed any kind of empathic warmth that the simulation might have also generated. Blind people don’t need warmth, they need people to respect them as fully functional individuals. What is far more effective at actually building respect and understanding for disabled people is face-to-face conversations with them. As Robert Yang, a video game designer, put it in a scathing 2017 critique of VR empathy experiences, “If you won’t believe someone’s pain unless they wrap an expensive 360 video around you, then perhaps you don’t actually care about their pain.”
But for this fight, it is not enough — indeed sometimes it is even counterproductive — to be a powerful Jedi.... Kylo Ren may be the most powerful person alive at the end of The Last Jedi, but he is broken and sad and incredibly ineffective. We need something else instead of power. We need a different way of getting to our goals, and a different virtue to aspire to.... In TLJ we see the idea of being effective without being violent, without being cruel, without overriding other people, without accumulating “power” in your own person.