May

Ser Homem Branco Heterossexual é como jogar videogame no “modo fácil”

Vejo muita indignação no Brasil sobre cotas, bolsas-família, etc.. e, coincidência ou não, o mesmo tipo de discussão acontece aqui na Inglaterra e principalmente nos EUA.

Nos Estados Unidos esse tipo de ação – ter políticas que levam em conta raça, cor, religião, sexo ou orientação sexual – é chamado de Affirmative Action e data de 1965, mas tem sido discutido mais frequentemente desde a eleição do Barack Obama.

Eu obviamente sou a favor desse tipo de política, mas jamais consegui completamente convencer alguém dos méritos sem entrar em discussões sobre “meritocracia” e “racismo contra os brancos”. Aparentemente esse também é o caso nos EUA, mas o blogueiro John Scalzi fez uma analogia tão clara e interessante sobre o assunto que eu resolvi traduzir pro português aqui no meu tão pouco utilizado blog.

Imaginem a vida no Brasil, nos EUA ou em qualquer lugar do mundo ocidental, como um gigantesco jogo de RPG (aquele tipo em que os jogadores assumem o papel de personagens e criam narrativas coletivamente, como o World of Warcraft) onde tu tem atividades mundanas como ganhar dinheiro, comprar celular ou comer pastel. O nome do jogo seria Mundo Real. Tu instala o Mundo Real no computador e antes de começar a jogar, como em qualquer outro RPG, começa pelos settings e escolhe o nível de dificuldade do jogo, sacaram?

Então, no RPG Mundo Real a opção “Homem Branco Heterossexual” é o nível “easy” – o mais fácil de se jogar. Isso signica que os comportamentos padrões de praticamente todas as esferas do jogo que não são as do seu personagem são mais fáceis do que as demais opções.

Tu consegue passar de fase mais rápido,
Automaticamente tem entradas garantidas em partes do mapa do jogo que outros tem que trabalhar pra conseguir,
O jogo é mais fácil de jogar automaticamente e,
Quando tu precisa de ajuda, é também mais fácil de conseguir do que em outros modos.

Depois de selecionar o nível de dificuldade “Homem Branco Heterossexual” tu tem que criar um personagem, e o número de pontos que tu recebe para criar esse personagem antes de começar o jogo também varia e faz diferença. Começar com apenas 25 pontos pra distribuir nos atributos do teu personagem é uma merda, enquanto, por exemplo, começar com 250 é ter mais pontos do que a grande maioria dos jogadores.

O objetivo do jogo é conseguir pontos, usar esses pontos de maneira inteligente e passar de fase. Se tu começa com poucos pontos e, principalmente, poucos pontos nos atributos principais, ou ainda se tu escolhe mal onde alocar os pontos que tu ganha durante o jogo, o jogo fica muito mais difícil. Mas por tu estar jogando no modo “Homem Branco Heterossexual”, ganhar pontos e passar de fase é, por configuração inicial, mais fácil do que para os jogadores que estão jogando no modo de dificuldade mais alto.

É perfeitamente possível para alguém que esteja jogando o jogo em um modo de dificuldade alto passar de fase mais rápido do que tu, porque eles podem ter recebido mais pontos no começo (como riqueza, inteligência ou contatos) ou porque essa pessoa simplesmente joga o jogo muito melhor do que tu. Mas isso não muda o fato de que tu está jogando no modo mais fácil que tem.

Tu pode perder jogando no modo mais fácil, mas o modo mais fácil é obviamente mais fácil de ganhar do que os outros. Jogadores que jogam no modo “Mulher Negra Homossexual”, por exemplo, jogam em um nível de dificuldade altíssimo.

Mas digamos que tu é do tipo que curte um desafio e quer trocar o nível de dificuldade pro mais alto possível. Bom, o problema é que no jogo Mundo Real tu não ganha mais recompensas ou benefícios por passar de fase no modo difícil. É a mesma coisa. O jogo só é bem mais difícil de jogar e provavelmente bem menos divertido. E só pode jogar uma vez, então não faz sentido nenhum fazer do jogo o mais difícil possível. O objetivo é ganhar o jogo, não aumentar a dificuldade.

Ah, e mais uma coisa. Lembra quando eu disse que tu pode escolher o nível de dificuldade que tu quer no Mundo Real? Eu menti. Na verdade é o computador que escolhe o nível de dificuldade pra ti. Tu não tem escolha, só joga com o que recebeu no começo do jogo e se vira.

Então, isso é o modo “Homem Branco Heterossexual” no Mundo Real (e no mundo real): o nível de dificuldade mais baixo que existe. Se o jogo for o mesmo pra todo mundo (e mesmo que não seja), quando o computador – ou a vida – atribuir pra ti o modo “Homem Branco Heterossexual”, meu amigo, fique sabendo que tudo fica bem mais fácil.

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Uncategorized

Apr

Why is the UK suddenly showing so many signs of racism?

My perplexity to see Britain, the open-minded nation I arrived in five years ago, showing so many cases of racism lately has lead me to think about the reasons such dramatic change in behaviour could happen so quickly.

It made me think of the “in group and out group” theory by William Graham Sumner. He talks about how human beings have evolved with a sense of community from surviving in tribes for millions of years, making us automatically love those who are like us and hate those who are different.

But that doesn’t really explain the actual change in behaviour before and after 2008. After all, if people think in terms of “our group against your group”, then that shouldn’t fluctuate or be affected by economic cycles or any other change in the environment.

David Berrenby invokes evolutionary biologists such as E. O. Wilson and Donald Campbell to revisit that idea, calling it the “Us and Them” theory. According to Berrenby each of us belong to many different groups along the course of our lives, so one person can be an Arsenal fan, a caucasian, a parent, a conservative and an engineer, all at the same time. Not to mention we are actively joining new groups and leaving others as we evolve and change as a person.

In that scenario we choose who is us and who is them interchangeably and according to whatever suits us best in a determined situation. Our minds do work in a matter of “our group and your group”, but it does that instinctively rather than rationally, and adaptively rather than permanently.

Our sense of “Us and Them” will depend on the environment and who’s part of it. In a specific moment we may be more comfortable among people of the same race, but on another it may be nationality, or religion or sport preference that will determine my group, depending on what is most suitable in that situation. It’s a mental reflex based on our preconceptions and is triggered by the unconscious part of our brains.

So when we’re faced with a difficult time such as an economic crisis, politicians are quick to take advantage of that mental predisposition of ours, turning us against immigrants, black people, muslims or anyone who are blatantly different to us. The lack of deeper understanding of a complex situation makes us an easy prey to that kind of simplistic association and consequently to those interested in deviating our attention from the real solutions to the problems we’re facing.

41 days ago Short URL Comments

Marketing

Dec

Why Facebook is great to spread the word effortlessly

A big debate started a few weeks ago, when famous Brazilian actors and actresses produced a video against the construction of the Belo Monte Dam in the Amazon forest, based on Di Caprio’s 5 Friends video attempt to convince Americans to vote in the past election. The Brazilian version was a blatant copy, which is not something I’m specifically against. As Picasso would say: “Good artists borrow, great artists steal”.

The problem was that it was trying to convince people to sign a petition against the building of the Dam with misinformation. So whether you’re pro or against it, I have a real problem with lies that come from powerful influencers people with the objective of changing people’s minds.

The beauty of the internet though, is that people like me can almost have as much power to spread ideas, so I asked my brother, who is an engineer, to research a few stats that would correct the wrong assumptions made by the video, I put them into a slide (see below) which was an easy and simple way of sharing information and we posted it on Facebook. It was all it would take for a couple of thousand people see it and spread it all over Facebook, which means it was seen, if the average person has 200 friends, by over 400,000 Facebook users.

I’m translating it to English here. Have in mind that it has a lot of references to the video, which is in Portuguese, and the Brazilian actors in it:

“Did you know that, despite what Marcos Palmeiras believes, electric energy isn’t only useful to watch soap operas? That access to energy has direct correlation with quality of life, mortality index and education?

The correct productivity index of the Dam is not one third, as affirmed Eriberto Leão, but 39%? A number smaller than Itaipu but larger than the Three Gorges Dam in China, the largest in the world?

Did you know that the global average of wind power generators is 30%?

Moreover, the estimate cost of the dam is R$19 billion, and not R$30bi as Elisangela Vergueiro says she researched. If she had actually researched she’d find out that the dam won’t move nearby people out of their homes.

But have you stopped yo think about how much is 11 Gigawatts?

The video mentions wind and solar power as alternatives, well:

To generate that kind of power you’d need 70 wind power generating parks, by the cost of more than R$60 billion. Not to mention that certainly there aren’t 70 regions in Brazil that would be suitable for that.

On solar energy, its total global generation didn’t pass the 22GW in 2010, and tropical regions aren’t really suitable for it.

Research before forming your opinion and don’t just go ahead signing petitions just because a famous actor told you so.”

157 days ago Short URL Comments

Brazil/Portfolio

Dec

Why build Talent Communities

The reason I designed this infographic was to help my Business Development colleagues to educate the market about Talent Communities. As it’s a new concept, the market is not very sure about its right definitions, even though our experimentations have shown that early adopters are ready for it. BraveNewTalent’s core business model revolves around talent communities and we’ve taken on the task of educating the markets of US, UK and India, using viral marketing techniques for B2B and spending as little as possible. The initial results were very good, with the image spreading rapidly in recruitment blogs, Twitter and Linkedin.

165 days ago Short URL Comments

Marketing/Portfolio/Startup life

Dec

Why technology isn’t the answer for education

A few days ago, London held a TEDx event themed around the Education Revolution, homage and a follow up from the latest TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson where he spoke about changing education paradigms.

Sir Ken, for those who are not familiar, is the most watched TED speaker of all time with over 20 million views on TED.com and YouTube. That’s not only because he’s a pretty charming man (I should just go ahead and admit it) and wickedly funny, but mostly because he talks about a common, global problem, which is the world education crisis.

The discussion started establishing a notion of the core aspect of education, which isn’t about the actual school, textbooks or the classroom itself. The main principle of education lies in the relationship between teachers and students. That relationship is rapidly deteriorating in schools all over the world: from the private school classroom in southern Brazil where my mother teaches Portuguese literature to the streets of Acapulco, where teachers are rallying for better security in the classroom.

An example of that deterioration grabbed headlines in the Brazilian media last week, when a teacher in São Paulo failed to convince a student to turn off his mobile phone and said that the disobedience would be reported to the school board and the student’s parents would be informed. The student then got up from his chair and kicked his teacher on the back, knocking her down to the floor.

Technology, in this case, seems to have (literally) harmed the teacher-student relationship instead of helping it flourish, as most of the subsequent TEDx speakers of the day would seem to believe. If the teachers’ approach to technology today consists in banning tech in the classroom because it distracts their students, it indicates that there’s something fundamentally wrong with that relationship and that the problem lies on the very purpose of the encounter between these two actors.

Ewan Macintosh‘s plea for a pedagogic approach that turns students into problem finders as opposed to just problem solvers was one notable exception during the course of the day. For several decades, we have educated children to solve problems that may or may not appear before them in life. Entrepreneurship and innovation, however, are based on finding problems that need resolutions first and then working around how to solve them.

If the São Paulo teacher was empowered with an educational method that stimulates critical thinking instead of being forced to ask her student to turn off his phone…if teachers worldwide helped students on finding problems that relate to them and encouraged these kids to use technology to research and find solutions to these issues…not only that relationship would be saved, but many of the world’s talent problems would be solved as a consequence.

165 days ago Short URL Comments

Brazil/Education

Aug

Why I refuse to turn 30

Right, so here I am, turning 30 and thinking to myself “Should I be called an adult now?”

My adult definition: An adult is a person who’s no longer dependent on their parents on one hand, and has people depending on them on the other.

The reason for describing it that way is that before the 1960′s there was no such thing as being a young man. You were either a child or an adult, which meant by the time you reached your 30′s you were either an adult or a failure.

As education progressed and life became more complicated than just going ahead, getting a job, a wife and children; people needed study to get ready for adulthood, so younghoodwas invented: this amazing time of life just before turning adult when you’re a student and can enjoy, experiment, have fun with a new sense of independence, but without the responsibilities of having your own family.

Some loved that lifestyle with such fervour that they simply remained in that state forever. Society called them immature and losers. Women didn’t want them, their parents wondered what they did wrong and no respectful careers could be accomplished by such an unorthodox and childish lifestyle.

Life then begun to get a little more complicated, jobs more difficult to master (or more underpaid), women got equality rights and, all the sudden, being an adult meant that both you and your prospective spouses had to go ahead, get a job, to have children by the time you were 30. With that, balancing time for your romantic life got even more complicated and they invented the term “quality time” to justify the small but intense time they spent with their children after the divorce.

Now jobs (those things you had one or two in your lifetime) don’t really exist anymore. Every person is a brand, a business, an entrepreneur. You just never stop being a student. Women can have children later in life and you don’t really want to buy a house because mortgages at this day and age just seem like a stupid idea. We’re all children of divorced parents, so young people choose to start slowly, move in together instead of getting married and adopt a cat to see if they both can handle the responsibilities of becoming an adult.

But now you turn 30 and you’re suddenly not a “youngster” anymore. And you can’t really be called an adult either if the maximum responsibilities you ever took was moving in with your girlfriend to an East London council flat with her cat. So what are you?

Who cares about labels anyway, you may ask. Well I don’t, but as you get older and refuse to become an adult (especially when you’re not even keen on that girlfriend/cat flatshare idea) you’ll always have to explain yourself in social situations, and that bothers the hell out of me.

So instead, while no one comes up with a better term (“stubborn-manchild”?) and I don’t have the patience to read this back to anyone, I’ll simply reply: I’m 29!

Problem solved.

293 days ago Short URL Comments