Month: February 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

I was watching my child get ready for bed. He placed his stuffed animals in a deliberate order. As I watched him stalling (he often does), I wondered about the role of playing. the more I thought about it, the more I wondered the extent to which it is actually a simulation. Not particularly this, but rather all playing.Of course, the next thought was of young mammals fighting and chasing one another around in the cute ways that make Animal Planet so popular. We have countless times heard this referred to in terms of developing coordination and dexterity that will be needed to make one’s own way in the adult world. What does this mean, though? For what it’s worth, this interpretation is accurate, but in the broader context it is unnecessarily limiting. Consider this play as the conduct of simulations. Suppose a child is playing with cars. How closely to the movements of the cars reflect reality? Perhaps the cars travel in slow motion. Children will address concepts that are almost entirely foreign to them. What six year old understands gravity? Yet they know enough that the jumping car will decelerate as it rises and decelerate as it falls. As well, the arc of the vehicle through the air is a reasonably good facsimile of a parabola. Listen to the conversations between action figures. The child tends to change the dialogue even for similar imagined situations. Note in particular how much better the child’s dialogues improve over time. Certainly much of this improvement is due to the intellectual growth and experience of the child. Nevertheless, I suspect the hours of playtime simulation have almost certainly contributed significantly. I wonder if anyone has ever really addressed this idea.

A few nights ago, my wife and I hitched up the wagons and headed in to the big city to pick up the in-laws at the airport. On the way back, she was complaining about the lack of crappy 80s hair metal on my iPod. We started naming off as many crappy 80s hair metal bands and their crappy songs as we could. After a while, I had one song painfully stuck in my head: Kix’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes.” We dropped off her parents. As we approached our own house, I said, “That stupid song is playing at home right this very moment.” As soon as I walked in the door, I turned on the TV and looked for the appropriate channel.

The screeching of “Don’t Close Your Eyes” immediately sounded through the living room. On the one hand, it was somehow like victory. On the other hand, it sort of bugged me. I can readily see how some people would look at this as something more than a funny coincidence. In this case, it was something of no consequence whatsoever. If it had been some “intuition” of great consequence, this sort of thing could make someone a believer in the paranormal. Worse, it could reinforce the already deluded. Of course, if I had the time, I could run through the stats: How many iconic songs are there in each little niche genre? How are the playlists made for those music channels on DirecTV? Would we still call it a “hit” if it had come up as the next song, rather than the first? I think the combination of these could give us a double digit percentage probability.

It all comes down to one truth, though.

Weird stuff happens.