[HN Gopher] The Feelings Monster: building a character with all ...
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       The Feelings Monster: building a character with all the feels
        
       Author : nickmain
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2022-11-30 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | floren wrote:
       | The Feelings Monster looks like it should be selling me cheap
       | cell phone service
       | (https://d2z1w4aiblvrwu.cloudfront.net/ad/7EZD/cricket-wirele...)
        
       | collegeburner wrote:
       | this article managed to singlehandedly make me bearish on msft.
       | when will bigtechs stop wasting money on trivial PC bullshit and
       | focus on earnings?
        
         | remexre wrote:
         | This is literally a tool for children to use in classrooms to
         | learn about how to respond to their emotions reasonably
        
           | collegeburner wrote:
           | yeah it strikes me as a complete waste of time. nobody needed
           | this 70 years ago, they learned reading writing and
           | arithmetic fine and no weird "tools" required. why is msft
           | wasting time on this? using senior designer time on whether
           | some character should have thumbs and eyebrows? what???
        
             | jjulius wrote:
             | >yeah it strikes me as a complete waste of time. nobody
             | needed this 70 years ago.
             | 
             | On the contrary. As someone currently raising children, I
             | can confidently say that historically, we have done a
             | terrible job of teaching people how to have, be OK with,
             | and process feelings in a healthy way. We may not have done
             | this 70 years ago, but we certainly needed it then, just as
             | much as we do now.
             | 
             | And that's setting aside the fact that, "We didn't need X
             | back in the day, so why do we need it now?" is a generally
             | terrible take.
        
             | jacksnipe wrote:
             | What an uninformed opinion. Just because you don't need
             | them doesn't mean nobody does. Autism is a real problem,
             | and solving real problems is something companies do for
             | profit, not because it's "PC".
        
               | collegeburner wrote:
               | ole reliable "you came to a different conclusion than me
               | so you must be uninformed". come on. this is not MS' core
               | competency and it's a diversion of resources. i'm hearing
               | about how azure has capacity problems but they're sinking
               | dollars into this?
               | 
               | why not just let the autism research guys or whatever
               | develop this stuff?
        
               | jjulius wrote:
               | >... it's a diversion of resources.
               | 
               | How do you know that resources were diverted? Are you
               | suggesting that the same people responsible for Azure's
               | capacity issues are the same people working on this?
               | Because these are two wholly different things that
               | require different sunsets of skills.
               | 
               | >why not just let the autism research guys or whatever
               | develop this stuff?
               | 
               | Why not just let the plumber fly the plane? Why not just
               | let the cook captain the ship?
               | 
               | Autism researchers partner with people who can develop
               | these tools. That's what's happening here.
        
               | jacksnipe wrote:
               | Do you really think that the designers and frontend
               | engineers working on this would have been put to better
               | use working on capacity issues?
               | 
               | If this makes more money than it cost, then what does it
               | matter?
        
             | jackson1442 wrote:
             | Nobody needed mobile phones, computers, or hacker news 70
             | years ago either.
        
             | citizenkeen wrote:
             | Agreed, we should model our educational frameworks on the
             | way they did it in the 50s, when men were men and women
             | knew their place.
             | 
             | We've learned nothing new about childhood development in
             | the last 70 years, pretending otherwise is a waste of
             | senior designer time.
        
             | kmeisthax wrote:
             | Oh right I forgot that emotions were invented by the woke
             | cancel mobs
        
             | hackish wrote:
             | Because we should, and we do, get smarter with every
             | generation. This Feelings Monster seems to focus on soft
             | skills and SEL. Still, your comments imply you may have
             | issues with advancing educational tools or with technology
             | companies investing in educational features over profits.
             | 
             | Yes, learning arithmetic on chalkboards worked fine, but
             | should we stop improving our methods and tools because
             | we've already met some arbitrary bar of what you think was
             | once good enough? No, we should improve them by any measure
             | whenever we have the chance.
        
               | collegeburner wrote:
               | really? have our educational outcome metrics grown to
               | reflect that? why are we lagging so much further behind
               | other nations than we were at that time?
               | 
               | yes, i have issues with companies investing in anything
               | over profits. that's generally how companies operate.
               | while i recognize there are those who disagree i think
               | charity belongs separately.
               | 
               | and anyway character development is the purview of
               | parents not schools. public education should teach
               | specific academic material and nothing more.
        
               | jjulius wrote:
               | >and anyway character development is the purview of
               | parents not schools. public education should teach
               | specific academic material and nothing more.
               | 
               | Public education needs tools. This is a tool. The article
               | literally calls it "a teacher's aid".
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-30 23:00 UTC)