[ExI] farmville, was RE: RPGs and transhumanism

[spike]

... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
Subject: Re: [ExI] farmville, was RE: RPGs and transhumanism

spike wrote:
> ...On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
...
>
>> Would anyone here speculate about the wildly popular Farmville increasing
the demand for actual farmland?  ...
>   

>...I am sceptical about how many actually do farming due to farmville. It
compresses farming into a series of quick actions and rewards, while real
farming seems to be about having a really long time horizon. Plants vs.
zombies is not quite like real gardening...

Ja.  We keep getting annoying requests from a dear cousin to go in and
unwilt her wheat.  What kind of yahoo wrote a sim in which you can bug
someone else to come in and unwilt your crops?  Absurd.


>...I wonder what games actually make people go out and do things in the
real world? ...
--
Anders Sandberg

I know the answer!  Flying.  I took flying lessons in college in Cessna.
Later flew battle simulators with WW2 style planes.  Then I got a chance to
fly with a colleague in his Pitts Special aerobatic stunt biplane:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=pitts+special&cp=7&
qe=cGl0dHMgcw&qesig=EDSWfjuoobKZ_xritaf6Qw&pkc=AFgZ2tnh5IeVvB3SPqXAiA-LSyU1Y
aiU2rNj_3395lN5Jjaw55jkIrBqjFng4k4gWuoogF-zkQDAfEqQbqxI1mb8b6iFcw3gcQ&bav=on
.1,or.&wrapid=tljp1298821434369012&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PnFqTe2
TMYKusAPuuOSmBA&sqi=2&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1078&bih=681

His was a dual seat dual controls, so he let me fly it.  It could do things
I never imagined a plane could do, far more power to weight than the WW2
birds.  I had an intuition for flying aerobatics from that flight simulator.
Aerobatic maneuvers are actually most of what did with the sim: fly stunts
until the goddam Nazis showed up, shooting at me and spoiling my fun.

spike