Small Type in a Big Game

Fire Emblem: Three Houses suffers from accessibility hindsight

If you’re reading this on a desktop computer, this image is roughly the size of the Switch screen. Hold your Switch up to compare.

The wild success of the Nintendo Switch has led Nintendo, along with numerous third-party studios, to practically trip over themselves in order to publish their franchises on the successful platform. For Nintendo the latest is the 15th installment in the long running strategy-RPG series, Fire Emblem. The latest game, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, was recently released and has been a critical and commercial success. This genre of game is very text heavy with just the dialog between characters matching or exceeding the word count of most novels.

As a fan of the series, and someone who has worn corrective glasses since elementary school, and an advocate for others I wanted to take a look at a particularly dim1 design choice in the latest game.

The fonts are tiny and faint.

The typographic choices in this game are irritating at best – for someone with good-to-slightly-below-average vision – to abruptly exclusionary to those with stronger vision impairment. I want to take this opportunity to critique the design choices. We’ll discuss how we can determine if this is problematic, examples of the issue taken from the game, suggestions for improvements, and a look into how this could be fixed while admitting difficulties. Most importantly I want to make a persuasive “Why?” as to spur the developers of this game – and any others reading – to actively improve accessibility in their games.

So please, set down the excellent Hogwarts simulator/Persona 5 cross-over for a minute, rub your eyes, squint a little, and settle in.

How to measure “too small”

First, let’s learn a little about what a typical person can see at 20/20 vision.

This is a Snellen eye chart.

The way it works is that an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) places you 20 feet from the chart and has you read the lines until you are no longer able to distinguish the text clearly. The last line you’re able to read to a good degree is what your vision is scored at.

The eighth row down with the red line is what should be legible for folks at that distance with 20/20 sight.

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, “A person with 20/20 vision can see what an average person can see on an eye chart when they are standing 20 feet away.”

Dr. McKinney, an ophthalmologist and glaucoma specialist at Eye Health Northwest in Oregon City, Oregon also claims, “that only about 35 percent of all adults have 20/20 vision without glasses, contact lenses or corrective surgery. With corrective measures, approximately 75 percent of adults have 20/20 vision”

So most people don’t have 20/20 vision. According to research from the National Eye Institute, “More than 33 percent were nearsighted and 36 percent had astigmatism, which causes fuzzy vision, the team reported. Another 3.6 percent were farsighted, meaning they can see at a distance but not up close.” 2

With assistance about 75% of adults can have 20/20 equivalent eyesight. That leaves out one in every four persons. This is assuming perfect math and statistical accountability. Those are large numbers of people who are impacted by poor accessibility design.

If you have poor vision or lost your glasses, your visual acuity would be worse. Let’s say it was something like 20/100. This means that the smallest line on the eye chart that you can read at 20 feet can be read by someone with perfect vision who is standing 100 feet away.

The E on the Snellen chart is about 3.5 inches tall. That makes the line of text demarcated at 20/20 appear at about .38 inches tall. Roughly equivalent to a font size of 42px – viewed at 20 feet.

Now let’s talk about what is accessible at the size and distance of typical electronic device usage, with an obvious focus on the Nintendo Switch.

Accessibility recommendations

From the Game accessibility guidelines, a set of guidelines created by a group of developers, specialists, and academics in 2012 states:

“Use an easily readable default font size”

“Small text size is a very common complaint amongst people with vision impairments, whether medical (such as long sightedness) or situational (such as small mobile screen, or a living room that does not physically allow for a large TV close to a couch).”

What are their recommendations? They quote the Amazon Fire TV UI guidelines.

“Amazon TV have 10-foot-UI guidelines that include text size recommendations, of 28px minimum when viewed on a 1080p screen. When viewed on an average size screen this tallies for what would be expected for someone with 20/20 vision while using the Snellen Chart. However because it does not take any degree of vision impairment into account, use 28px as a minimum rather than a target, aim to exceed it wherever possible.”

That last bit is most important.

“use 28px as a minimum rather than a target, aim to exceed it wherever possible.”

Most of this essay will focus on the frustration with Fire Emblem’s type choices in handheld mode. This is where the issue is most egregious and the easiest for me to simulate with screenshots. However, let’s talk for a second about what 20/20 means for someone sitting in front of a television.

According to Amazon’s guidance the minimum target is 28 pixels at 10 feet. That’s pretty close to half the size of 42 pixels at 20 feet. Close to what we’d judge “perfect” 20/20 vision at with the Snellen chart. So, while I’m using back-of-the-napkin math, this issue is not unique to handheld mode, and would benefit players using larger screens.

Microsoft, makers of the Xbox series of home consoles, also provides solid guidance around accessibility, including building your game with diverse visual acuity in mind.3

“Can you effectively play the game on a small monitor or TV sitting at a distance?”

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/gaming/accessibility-for-games

This is even well known outside of the video game industry. For web developers 🙋‍♂️ this is best represented in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. First published in 2008 (only a few years after the Xbox 360 and PS3 were released) the guidelines cover numerous points in regards to accessibility, including that of the appearance of text.

“Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.”

https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#resize-text

The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 7:1

https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#contrast-minimum

App developers too have had guidance around the legibility of text in mobile apps. From Apple’s User Interface Guidelines,

“Use text size to help determine contrast. In general, smaller or lighter-weight text needs to have greater contrast to be legible. “

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/accessibility/overview/color-and-contrast/

Heck even printers have figured this out decades before LCD screens! According to The Print Handbook, a guide for people who print things, Designer Andy Brown states that if your viewing distance from your text is at 10ft (like say for a poster) your minimum text size should be 25pt. While points to pixels is not perfect, that’s pretty close to the Amazon recommendation of 28px minimum at 10ft. And Andy’s guide is not specifically for accessibility, just a general rule of thumb.

Oh, it can’t be that bad!

Let’s take a look at a few examples from the game.

These are taken directly off the Switch in handheld mode at 720p and are unedited.

As I mentioned earlier, if viewing this critique on a desktop computer, the images should be sized roughy at the same physical size as the screen on a Nintendo Switch. 4

Take a look at the text below the image in this tutorial dialog. 5

That text is rendered in a serif font, probably a variant of Times New Roman, in a size of 17 pixels. How do I know? I brought the screenshot into my image editing tool of choice, Pixelmator Pro, and measured.

Another example.

I’ll be ready to fight as soon as I find my glasses.

This is another screen where the font is 17px.

Now is a good time to mention that serif fonts, like the one predominantly used in Fire Emblem, are worse from an accessibility standpoint. Sans-serif fonts – those without the little strokes at the end of a letter – are generally better for accessibility.6

Another?

17px again.

Ok, and how about some dialog boxes?

Well, here things improve slightly. The text is 24px in size. That is closer to the minimum recommendation of 28px shared above. The line height is about 1.25x.

Ok, but what about at 1080p. Well, I can’t take a native 1080p screenshot from the Switch. All screenshots (and video) are captured at 720p from the Switch. ಠ_ಠ

Which means that on one hand it’s hard to give examples from that resolution, but on the other hand that resolution is not as easy to portray regardless. When reading this article on the web you’re much more likely to be at a closer distance to your screen, similar to when you play your Switch. A 1080p screenshot would need to be viewed from a similar situation as you would a TV – further away with the image full-size on a larger screen.

Contrasting views

The text is not just too small. Fire Emblem also has an issue with contrast.

The common appearance of text in-game.

The font is not a solid black, but for what I can only assume were design aesthetics – to give the dialog boxes a parchment-like quality – the type is a shade or two lighter brown color. On a light brown background.

That’s a contrast ratio of 5.7:1, well below the 7:1 suggested by WCAG.

This persists through nearly every dialog in the game: quests overview, dialog boxes, inventory menu, and even the calendar; which is not brown on brown, but light gray on dark purple!

Thankfully it’s just the days of the week that are low contrast. But look at that bottom banner text. 😬

Here’s a really bad (or good‽) example. Can you easily read the blue text in the lower left corner? Try opening this at full size too.

The Fire Emblem Awakening foot gremlin strikes again!

What does better look like?

Well, let’s start at the most simple. Increase the contrast.

This is the same dialog mentioned before with Caspar. The only difference is I changed the text color to be a solid black. The font size is the same 24px.

Here’s another.

Here we can see the same improvement.

What if we actually made the font bigger? How much larger could we go? Let’s take another look at the dialog with Caspar.

The font is black and set to 28px – our minimum recommendations from earlier. I’ve kept the text roughly within the same margins as the original dialog and the same line height.

Again, with the other dialog.

overflow: visible;

Whoops! There are some challenges in just increasing font size.

What if we try and fill the space by increasing the font size and using us as much available space? Here’s a mockup at 32px.7

Again with the professors.

Even with expanded margins and line height, the text would need to be modified. Either larger boxes, or splitting up the dialog.

Note: A larger line hight along with better character spacing also helps folks with disabilities like dyslexia; which is not demonstrated in these mock-ups.

What are some solutions?

So it’s easy to arm-chair critique the many years of development a game goes through by a team of professional game designers. It’s a little more difficult to suggest solutions.

So in the spirt of being constructive, here are a few. I’m afraid many of them are in the game developer’s hands.

As a consumer you options are:

  • Deal with it, which is the least helpful and most “there’s not a problem” way to handle this.
  • Use a larger screen and/or sit closer. Affording to buy a new TV to play a video game, much less the space constraints of a larger screen, are out of reach for many folks. This also has apparent downsides according to my mother (and many medical professionals) circa 1990 when I was nine and sat inches from the TV. 8
  • Use the Zoom feature on the Nintendo Switch.9 This is clunky and feels very second-class.
  • Contact Nintendo and politely let them know of the issue. Pray to Sothis that they fix it.

For the developers in the room, a few things to consider:

  • Plan ahead for accessibility early in the development of your game.
  • Hire an accessibility consultant if you don’t have anyone in-house to help. They will identify more problems than just small text – from color issues, audio, interface elements, controls and more. Hire them early and throughout the development process – before you design yourself into a corner.
  • Learn from existing solutions within the video game industry and outside. Ensuring your product-that-appears-on-a-screen has legible text is much closer to solved than you may think!
  • Error on the side of caution – bigger text means a more inclusive game without sacrificing the enjoyment of anyone.
  • Make game-wide text adjustable if possible – some folks can’t see small text. Some like it big. Some prefer higher information density. Some folks have cybernetically grafted hawk eye implants. This requires more development time and adds complexity, but has a net gain of fewer white guys with opinions 10 writing critical think pieces on their blog and more people being able to enjoy your work.
  • Test in multiple play situations, with people of various backgrounds. Not all people who will be enjoying your game will be doing so in ideal scenarios. Play on public transportation with unpredictable ambient light. Visit a friend’s house with big TV. Visit a friend’s house with a smaller TV. Have your dad play it on his recliner in low light. Let him rest when he falls asleep. He’s tired.
  • Remember that not everyone will have a pair of headphones handy or can turn the volume up (or can even hear!) to listen to the audio. For many people of all kinds, the text is the primary method of understanding and enjoying your work. As you are developing, play the game without sound. Are there any nuance or cues missing without audio? Can you represent them on-screen with text or indicators? Are those visual cues legible‽
  • Developers often work in a well-lit office space in front of a nice 27+ inch high density monitor. Not everyone playing will be doing so in front of a 60+ inch HDTV on a couch perfectly situated like an IKEA display room. Life is full of variance and the Nintendo Switch is designed to be enjoyed within such variance.

“So Nintendo just needs to make the text bigger?” Well, no. There is difficulty in this work; undoubtedly so when not considering this from the onset and having to react after a game has been published.

As pointed out, some text boxes are quite full even with the current, too-small, text. These assets would need to be changed and there are many different kind of boxes containing text across the game.

Breaking up these text boxes is not as easy as just setting a font size and margin. As the voice acting is tied to the text visible on screen, timing of the spoken dialog would need to be changed to match. That would require some very specific edits to the existing recordings at minimum, and may even entail re-recording lines (especially if there’s not a natural break in the spoken words as it matches the text on-screen).

At minimum, the developers could revisit the font used and increase the contrast. They could perhaps better fill existing text boxes that currently have room. Ideally they would increase the size as much as possible, mostly in menus and dialog boxes. Ideally, all of this and learn from this shortsightedness in preparation for their next game.

With so many games originating in languages other than English, and so many being localized into other languages, developers should establish a flexible system for displaying text in their game early in development. This will not only approve accessibility in relation to visual acuity as we’ve discussed, but accessibility in culture and context! Making it so you can accommodate multiple scripts and directions is easier to do along side considerations for accessibly. 11 12

Et Conclusion

I set out to create a fair and constructive critique of a problem that is not unique to Fire Emblem: Three Houses 13 and I hope I have done so. If you found this useful, please share. If you have suggestions, please leave a comment. If you want action, please contact Nintendo and your favorite game studio.

See also

Link List – January 8, 2019

Some things I’ve recently watched/read/listened to that I recommend.

  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
  • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
  • We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • This was a fascinating episode of “Reply All” that talks about social media hacking, the people and culture behind it, and the impact having “just a social media account” hacked can have on a person.
  • Super Smash Bros
  • Child of Light
  • She-Ra – great reboot on Netflix
  • Anastasia The Musical – great lead, amazing costumes, and technically complex set. The IT/AV nerd in me was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was impressed that everything ran so smoothly.

Some things I helped with:

A bunch of random links:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-assessment

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8vi02i/dads_of_reddit_what_is_your_advice_for_new_dads/

https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/8valyl/incredible_1080p_oncar_footage_of_the_1962_monaco/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8vc6b3/senior_citizens_of_reddit_what_were_the_elderly/

https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/8uj63t/21311_lego_ideas_voltron_revealed/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8uicjx/when_did_you_have_the_most_difficult_time_staying/e1fmsok/

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/8s7y24/til_of_the_bullshit_asymmetry_principle_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/a5lktv/the_privilege_of_the_petersonian_the_importance/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture

https://kottke.org/18/07/hidden-treasures-of-amsterdams-river

https://kottke.org/18/04/dna-sites-show-why-we-need-a-hippocratic-oath-for-data-science

https://kottke.org/18/04/the-culinary-wonders-of-msg

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/9tv799/steve_jobs_explains_why_a_companys_product/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy

https://lithub.com/fascism-is-not-an-idea-to-be-debated-its-a-set-of-actions-to-fight/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/25/17279294/toronto-massacre-minassian-incels-internet-misogyny

https://medium.com/s/story/how-white-people-handle-diversity-training-in-the-workplace-e8408d2519f

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-government-sponsored-cyber-militia-cookbook/

https://nadiaeghbal.com/independent-research

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/26/17613844/racial-diversity-poll-twitter-white-people

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018

https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-or-2018/public/schedule/detail/67172

https://twitter.com/jamchamb_/status/1025977659522789376

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=All%20Tea%20No%20Shade

https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

https://sexismfieldguide.com

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/08/sharp-objects-female-journalists-in-culture/567898/

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/18/distributed-teams-are-rewriting-the-rules-of-officeless-politics/

https://www.vulture.com/2018/08/penn-jillette-in-conversation.html

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17252410/jordan-peele-obama-deepfake-buzzfeed

http://jnack.com/blog/2018/08/23/absolute-witchcraft-ai-synthesizes-dance-moves-entire-street-scenes/

http://jnack.com/blog/2018/08/26/everybody-dance-now-amazing-performance-transfer-tech/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/opinion/the-expensive-education-of-mark-zuckerberg-and-silicon-valley.html

https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/26/17613844/racial-diversity-poll-twitter-white-people

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-government-sponsored-cyber-militia-cookbook/

https://hbr.org/2018/07/youre-never-going-to-be-caught-up-at-work-stop-feeling-guilty-about-it

https://vimeo.com/283555096

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/09/17/linus-torvalds-empathy

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html

https://twitter.com/i/moments/1039567055060492288

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/matreon-the-patreon-platform-for-emotional-labor

https://eand.co/if-the-point-of-capitalism-is-to-escape-capitalism-then-whats-the-point-of-capitalism-bedd1b2447d

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/up-next

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSJXKoD6mA8&index=2&list=PLhV3K_DS5YfJ5raH7_jw3DVvLHWwoxJzR

“Changing the World” by Erica Joy Baker – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi02tn3K2b4

“Machine learning failures – for art!” by Janelle Shane – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yneJIxOdMX4

https://seths.blog/2018/10/non-profit-overhead/

https://kottke.org/18/10/stochastic-terrorism

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html

https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/who-is-poppinkream-the-reddit-user-fighting-for-a-fact-based-internet.html

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2018-in-review/the-year-in-good-men

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1074856487514726400

“Rules for Online Sanity” https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=582aad955a2c357f3c39654b4&id=44b268dc3b

https://blog.vrv.co/merrittk/5216/how-the-it-crowd-gave-us-one-of-the-most-beautiful-moments-in-sitcom-history/

Let me know with a comment or email if you find any of it interesting. It’s like a newsletter about random stuff I like. Subscribe!

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Expertise has been dying since the dawn of time

I recently finished reading the book “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters” by Tom Nichols. If you’re an expert, or a layperson, this book helps provide context into how we have gotten into a situation, exacerbated by technology, where expertise is devalued and the general pubic is disinterested. It provides an interesting – if not perennially oft-repeated – concern for our ability to rationally think about our world.

tl:dr; Refine your ability of metacognition. As Nichols puts it, “the ability to know when you’re not good at something by stepping back, looking at what you’re doing, and then realizing that you’re doing it wrong.”1

I’m a little surprised I enjoyed this book as much as I did. I disagreed with parts of it, but on the whole found it to be a rather level-headed approach to the presented concerns. The book reiterates other sources going back decades – dare I say centuries – of shared concerns over the disinterest and disaffection toward expertise. Nothing exceptionally novel, but I enjoyed having it summarized and presented in a single tome. I appreciated that the author (a self-professed expert) didn’t decry any one corner of society at fault for our diminishing interest and respect for expertise – he even provides advice for experts and laypeople alike. Which is good. Civilization is a team sport after all. No one part alone can solve the problems of the whole. 

The original essay that prompted the book (in itself a pseudo-too-long-didn’t-read) is worth reading if the prospect of a full-length book bores you.2 The essay was originally published in the conservative-leaning Federalist website. Admittedly not a source of information I would normally frequent, which I hope speaks a little to my own ability to consider knowing what I don’t know. This humbly makes me a little hopeful that I’m not falling head first into the very concerns the book lays out. Maybe. 🙂

I wanted to share some notes I kept as I read. May they whet your whistle. I recommend the book.

p55, on conspiracy theories, “Conspiracy theorists manipulate all tangible evidence to fit their explanation, but worse, they will also point to the absence of evidence as an even stronger confirmation.” Which I think is an interesting and obvious explanation that buttresses with the axiom from George Carlin, “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” 

p58, continuing on the kind of personalizes that attract conspiracy theories (or maybe it’s the other way around), “More important and more relevant to the death of expertise, however, is that conspiracy theories are deeply attractive to people who have a hard time making sense of a complicated world and who have no patience for less dramatic explanations. Such theories also appeal to a strong streak of narcissism: there are people who would choose to believe in complicated nonsense rather than accept that their own circumstances are incomprehensible, the result of issues beyond their intellectual capacity to understand, or even their own fault.”

p64, on the difficulties of conversation between experts and the general public, “That’s why one of the most important characteristics of an expert is the ability to remain dispassionate, even on the most controversial issues. Experts must treat everything from cancer to nuclear war as problems to be solved with detachment and objectivity. That their distance from the subject enables open debate and consideration of alternatives, in ways meant to defeat emotional temptations, inducing fear, that lead to bias. This is a tall order, but otherwise conversation is not only arduous but sometimes explosive.”

p99-100, on the difficulties universities have in providing a physically safe space, while allowing for intellectually challenging discourse, “…the protective, swaddling environment of the modern university infantilizes students and thus dissolves their ability to conduct a logical and informed argument. When feelings matter more than rationality or facts, education is a doomed enterprise. Emotion is an unassailable defense against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. And when students learn that emotion trumps everything else, it is a lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives.”

P109, on the Internet and its impact on expertise and dissemination of non-expertise, “The most obvious problem is that the freedom to post anything online floods the public square with bad information and half-baked thinking. The Internet lets a billion flowers bloom, and most of them stink, including everything from the idle thoughts of random bloggers and the conspiracy theories of cranks all the way to the sophisticated campaigns of disinformation conducted by groups and governments.”

p124, of course, no book about knowledge would be complete with out a mention of Wikipedia an prime example of non-experts coming together to share expertise on every topic. From Nichols, “Even with the best of intentions, crowd-sourced projects like Wikipedia suffer from an important but often unremarked distinction between laypeople and professionals: volunteers do what interests them at any given time, while professionals employ their expertise every day. A hobby is not the same thing as a career. As a saying attributed to the British writer Alastair Cooke goes, “Professionals are people who can do their best work when they don’t feel like it.” The enthusiasm of interested amateurs is not a consistent substitute for the judgment of experts.”

p132, on the difficulty of having an equal and civil conversation on the internet,  “The anonymity of social media tempts users into arguing as though every participant is the same, a group of peers starting from the same level of background and education. This is a rule very few people would use in real life, but on the Internet, the intellectual narcissism of the random commenter displaces the norms that usually govern face-to-face interactions.”

p145, on journalism, modern media, and the decline of trust, “This doesn’t explain, however, why Americans erroneously end up thinking they’re better informed than the experts on the myriad issues flooding across their screens. For this, we have to look a little more closely at how the public’s relationship with the media developed after the 1970s. The decade of Watergate, “stagflation,” and defeat in Vietnam is the benchmark not only because it was on the cusp of the addition of new technologies like cable, but also because those developments coincided with an accelerating collapse of trust in government and other institutions in American life. The growth of new kinds of media and the decline of trust are both intimately related to the death of expertise.”

p159,  journalism continued. I don’t 100% agree with this, perhaps because I’m skeptical of anything posted on the internet, but many folks are not and I think this is at least a little thought provoking, “This shallowness is not because journalism attracts unintelligent people, but because in an age when everything is journalism, and everyone is a journalist, standards inevitably fall. A profession that once had at least some barriers to entry is now wide open, with the same results we might expect if medicine, law enforcement, aviation, or archaeology were suddenly do-it-yourself projects.”

p162, on hoaxes and exploiting laziness in journalism, “Sometimes the errors are trivial and amusing. In the great “chocolate helps you lose weight” hoax, for example, the hoaxers never thought they’d get as far as they did; they assumed that “reporters who don’t have science chops” would discover the whole faked study was “laughably flimsy” once they reached out to a real scientist. They were wrong: nobody actually tried to vet the story with actual scientists. “The key,” as the hoaxers later said, “is to exploit journalists’ incredible laziness. If you lay out the information just right, you can shape the story that emerges in the media almost like you were writing those stories yourself. In fact, that’s literally what you’re doing, since many reporters just copied and pasted our text.”

Oof.

p167, on admonishing experts and giving advice, “To experts, I will say, know when to say no. Some of the worst mistakes I ever made were when I was young and I could not resist giving an opinion. Most of the time, I was right to think I knew more than the reporter or the readers, but that’s not the point: I also found myself out on a few limbs I should have avoided. In fairness to journalists, I have found that they will respect and report your views accurately—only on a few occasions did I ever feel ambushed or misquoted—but they will also respect your principled refusal to go too far out of your lane. It is your obligation, not theirs, to identify that moment.”

This was quickly followed by four recommendations for consumers of news which I’m denoting here for future reference and import as a whole. 

“Be humble. That is, at least begin by assuming that the people writing the story, whatever their shortcomings, know more about the subject than you do. At the least, try to remember that in most cases, the person writing the story has spent more time with the issue than you have. If you approach any story in the media, or any source of information already assuming you know as much as anyone else on the subject, the entire exercise of following the news is going to be a waste of your time.”

“Be ecumenical. Vary your diet. You wouldn’t eat the same thing all day, so don’t consume the same sources of media all day. When I worked in national politics, I subscribed to a half-dozen journals at any given time, across the political spectrum. Don’t be provincial: try media from other countries, as they often report stories or have a view of which Americans are completely unaware. And don’t say you “don’t have the time.” You do.”

“Be less cynical—or don’t be so cynical. It’s extremely rare that anyone is setting out intentionally to lie to you. Yes, the people writing the stories often have an agenda, and there will always be another Sabrina Erdeley out there. And yes, the journalists you’re reading or watching will get some things wrong, often with an astonishing lack of self-awareness. None of them have a monopoly on the truth, but they’re not all liars. They’re doing the best they can, by their lights, and most of them would be glad to know you’re keeping tabs by reading other sources of news and information.”

“Be more discriminating. If you see something in a major media outlet that doesn’t seem right to you, finding some half-baked website isn’t the answer. Websites that are outlets for political movements, or other, even worse enterprises that cater specifically to zealots or fools, will do more harm than good in the search for accurate information. Instead, ask yourself questions when consuming media. Who are these writers? Do they have editors? Is this a journal or newspaper that stands by its reporting, or is it part of a political operation? Are their claims checkable, or have other media tried to verify or disprove their stories?”

“Conspiracy theorists and adherents of quack medicine will never believe anything that challenges their views, but most of us can do better. And remember: reading and following the news is a skill like any other at which we get better by repetition. The best way to become a good consumer of news is to be a regular consumer of news.”

p200, on experts and predicting the future. I won’t quote this entire section, but I liked that the author admitted the difficulties of experts in not offering predictions of the future as that is one thing people do refer to experts for – advice on what to do based upon knowledge of the past. The foxes and hedgehog metaphor is one I have heard before and find to reoccur in life.

p205, There is some great advice on how experts can work to repair the relationship with the general public. Encouraged reading.

p207, the author complains that we have too many sources as a cause of our problems, but I’m reminded of Shirky’s writing that it’s not “information overload” (there’s always been more books/movies/news than single person could digest) but “filter failure” (the access to so much with little effort causes a sense of overwhelming urgency) that is our biggest struggle as individuals. Quick advice: Turn off your notifications friend.

p222, on advice to experts and giving advice, “Experts need to own their advice and to hold each other accountable. For any number of reasons—the glut of academic degrees, the lack of interest on the part of the public, the inability to keep up with the production of knowledge in the Information Age—they have not lived up to this duty as conscientiously as their privileged position in society requires. They can do better, even if those efforts might, in the main, go unnoticed.”

p226, Americans, remember we are a republic not a democracy. An interesting take I had not considered as important in the context of expertise, but I can see that if individuals lack a basic understanding of how our government work (like this delineation), then we are speaking from ignorance – which is an equal part of the death of expertise. 

Some better written reviews of the book:

Link List – July 3, 2018

Here are some interesting links I’ve collected in the last few months. I want to share them. With you! So sit down, open a few tabs and enjoy. Beats spending your time doing laundry. 😉

I’m perpetually doubting my own skills and eager to improve and learn what I know; and what I don’t know. This short video and related articles on the Dunning Kruger effect is something everyone should watch. Especially those who think they’re unaffected.
https://kottke.org/18/06/the-dunning-kruger-effect-we-are-all-confident-idiots

You don’t have the right to believe whatever you want to
https://aeon.co/ideas/you-dont-have-a-right-to-believe-whatever-you-want-to

The whole family watched this fun video from PBS Eons (and Hank Green!) about how the T-Rex lost its arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=772GiBXnWoQ

Something that might explain why some folks are on edge about race-related matters in America. Unfortunately they’re wrong, but it provides some thinking on how folks think. I always thought the US was a melting pot of multiple flavors. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/opinion/america-white-extinction.html

Mr. Rogers was a big part of my childhood. Both my parents worked and I was a latchkey kid for most of my adolescence. As such, Mr. Rogers raised me and he’s a model for what kind of man I try to be like. There’s a documentary and book coming out soon about him. One of the things that has come out of this look into Rogers work is this set of rules for talking to children. I think they apply in our writing and working with communities. “Freddish” imbues writing with clarity, positivity, and simple understanding.
1
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/mr-rogers-neighborhood-talking-to-kids/562352/

I find these sort of introspective investigations of journalistic entities by other journalists to be a weird hyper-meta narrative of how organization and the news they produce are created. This one in particular, as Vice is a rather unorthodox and divisive group.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/inside-vice-media-shane-smith.html

I’m not a people manager, but I’d like to be one day. Like many of Rands’ past writing on the subject, this one seems incredibly apt for me. I’m not a very confrontational person. Sometimes you need to say the hard thing. That’s hard!
http://randsinrepose.com/archives/say-the-hard-thing/

As someone who works remotely (and believes everyone within a single organization should if anyone does) I found this manifesto useful. It covers tips on creating a remote-only org, how it changes the act of working, and it’s advantages.
https://www.remoteonly.org

Related to the two prior links, personal development has been on my mind as of late. Austin Kleon shares a note on figuring out what you want to learn. “the easiest way to re-invent yourself is to find something new to learn.”
https://austinkleon.com/2018/05/16/what-do-you-want-to-learn/

When seeing someone who I don’t recognize, but who obviously recognize me, I like to remind them (and myself) that sorry, my brain stopped storing that pattern and I’ll need you to help me create a new one.
https://kottke.org/18/05/mosaicism-or-dna-differences-from-cell-to-cell-not-just-person-to-person

Ok, I’m running low on time here. So more links, less talking!

Trump stuff 🤮

Other stuff

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Dangerous Data

I once worked on the data management team for a large healthcare provider. There is an incredible amount of power and possibility in using data to empower and enact dramatic changes – especially in large traditionally slow-moving organizations. That said, there is an inherent risk for our own individual and group biases to seep into the algorithm and output from such systems.

In this episode of TED Radio hour, “Can We Trust The Numbers?” computer and data scientists share some of the overlooked aspects of where data science can fail our good intentions.

“It’s more than you think. It’s about power because they get to decide what experiment. It’s about power because they get to math-splain. It’s also about power because they get to decide what success looks like.”

Bonus points for Kathy O’Neil coining the phrase, “Math-splain”.  😀

(via Jackie)