‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 676

She was a rather difficult kid to raise.

23 Comments

“She was a rather difficult kid to raise.”

Prodigies of this calibre usually are, as there is (usually) no-one able to understand their world… and once in -their- world, they have no use for the ‘mundane’ world, so they choose to have little to nothing to do with any ‘mundanes’ trying to understand them.

A great pity, really…

Mostly very true. But I do think that in a well-connected world there usually is people able to understand a prodigy’s world: any established genius in the field. Connect a prodigy with a genius and great things usually happen 🙂

However, in this case, chances are Keiko wrote a lot of the Game herself – and changed it a lot, continuously. That might make it hard also for a genius level game developer (in large part since time moves at a relatively much faster pace for an adult). At any rate, they found Jake and he did it.

Her father is not doing her any favors encouraging her to behave like this. For most highly intelligent people sheer intellect isn’t enough, it takes interacting with others to inspire ideas.

Always blame the father!

Interact with others… others that think high heel shoes and big breasts and coca cola are good for you. World is crazy, let her stay sane rather than mix with drug addict school dropouts.

I’m not sure Keiko and sane really go together chief.

I mean… considering that her mother was the one who wanted her to have a real friend, and not her parents, I think it’s safe to assume the father didn’t see any reason for her to be interacting with other people her age.

“She was a rather difficult kid to raise.”

Helped along by her parents being idiots who were more concerned with her potential than her humanity.

With high intellect does come a higher risk of losing faith in humanity. Interacting with people is very important and her parents were sort-of right that interacting with the *right* people is important – and as can be clearly seen on this page you probably needed to be in the Game and real good at it before Keiko would care at all.

And being a wizard at the Game at that age? There is Keiko and there is Jake and they are level genius programmers. See the connection? Genius comes in three flavors: idealistic, pragmatic and evil. If your child will only interact with a genius you better make sure it’s not evil.

So I understand her parents. I think this situation is simply what they had to resort to to find anyone – at a similar age – that Keiko would accept as a friend. If there is anything wrong with this it is the idea that a genius child needs other genius children, they can handle having friends that are adults – said adults just have to be willing to play (at level genius) – and make do with observing other children. According to my admittedly limited experience, that is.

“If your child will only interact with a genius you better make sure it’s not evil.”

If your child will only interact with a genius, you are a bad parent.

I disagree. Getting a child to take interest in something they find entirely incomprehensible and/or meaningless – make no mistake, this is how a child such as Keiko will view almost anyone – is VERY hard to accomplish. A good parent will try and try until they succeed (if it is about something really important, such as interacting with other people).

I know for a fact that until I was maybe 12 years old there was absolutely no chance to make me interested in talking to another person other than through that persons knowledge. Pretty much no one my age fit the bill. About that time I started to value other peoples imagination and creativity as well, which was not enough to make me seem normal but enough to find one or two friends among 30 classmates. When I came to university at age 20 this was finally enough to get a little bit of social life outside family – and to this day I have only added one thing to the list: I may take an interest in someone’s experience, however, that ends as soon as the stories have been told. But at this point I have found several friends with enough intellect and knowledge that I do not lose interest in them.

“I disagree. Getting a child to take interest in something they find entirely incomprehensible and/or meaningless is VERY hard to accomplish.”

I didn’t say “take interest”, and neither did you the first time – the verb was “interact”, and part of boring, normal, “99.99999% of children” parenting is teaching them to “interact” with things they find boring or meaningless, because unfortunately, that’s a significant part of life for everyone, genius or not.

I stand by what I said – bad parenting.

“I know for a fact that until I was maybe 12 years old there was absolutely no chance to make me interested in talking to another person other than through that persons knowledge.”

Being able to interact politely and functionally with people you are not interested in is called “being a normal human being”. Teaching your children to do this, even if they don’t find it “interesting” is called “basic parenting”. Teaching your children WHY one should do this is maybe one step up from that… all the way to “decent parenting”.

Yes, we were talking about different things, as I was not being verbose enough… or maybe I didn’t think it through thoroughly enough. What I said applies to interacting functionally for prolonged and repeated periods of time, so that it is productive – be that in terms of personal development or progress being made on some shared project.

I’d argue that your number has a few too many nines in it – a significant percentage has some form of autism, for example. And regardless of the numbers or labels it is quite clear that Keiko is rather far from normal.

‘Being able to interact politely and functionally with people you are not interested in is called “being a normal human being”.’

By this definition I myself as well as several people I know are only normal human beings for a rather limited amount of time. Depending on exact situation, from a few minutes up to about 90 minutes at a time requiring a good break. Greatly dependent on what is considered “functional”. However, that is often enough and given the right company all of us are productive members of society.

I think it applies to anyone that uninteresting and boring things can be a large part of life – but those are not the parts in which you are most productive and can make the most significant contributions to society. The really good things happen when we use our strengths, which are naturally aligned with our interests.

Thankyou for the discussion by the way, feels nice to have an intelligent and well-worded one even on the internet every now and then 🙂

“I’d argue that your number has a few too many nines in it – a significant percentage has some form of autism, for example.”

It does have a few too many 9s, but not by much. As the parent of a child “on the spectrum” myself, I can say with confidence that it’s a LARGER part of parenting them, not smaller or lesser. It’s MORE important to teach to them if they have a weakness there (of any kind, not just that one), not less.

“By this definition I myself as well as several people I know are only normal human beings for a rather limited amount of time.”

Needing a break from people is also normal, though how much and how often vary widely.

Also, I didn’t saying “LIKING to interact”, only “able”, and you are clearly that. People who are incapable of interacting with others reasonably (or just don’t know how) have a strong tendency to end up very isolated, either (semi)voluntarily or judicially.

“The really good things happen when we use our strengths, which are naturally aligned with our interests.”

Agree on the first part, but disagree on the second. Oh, it’s does happen a good bit, but there are a great many people with strengths they don’t use *because* they aren’t interested. Usually, they have some other strength that they find more interesting (or more lucrative), but sometimes they just get by on more average things that they find more interesting.

“those are not the parts in which you are most productive and can make the most significant contributions to society.”

Meh… the problem is that there are far too many things that society needs significant amounts of that nobody is interested in (“flipping burgers/pushing a broom” types of jobs, for an easy/obvious example, but “farming” is also a pretty good one) and not nearly enough desire or need for the things that people find “interesting”.

A person will generally be far more productive at what they find interesting, yes, but if what they find interesting is “making sculptures out of human feces” (for an intentionally ridiculous example), well, that’s not going to contribute much to society, no matter how productive they are at it.

OOOH! Are we going to see an early version of her game?

James Halliday was kinda like that in Ready Player One (both book and movie). He didn’t really ‘get’ people, but computers, code, games, etc. those were things he could get into. I can understand his position.

It wasn’t until the end that he realized that it was all just digital illusions, fancy smoke and mirrors, but that is all. It didn’t matter, none of it was real. Although it could be argued that the OASIS did matter, but that is because while its content was illusions, the software itself was real, it had a very real impact on the real world – which was why he made the Easter Egg Hunt as hard as possible, to try to prevent someone like IOI getting it.

He also realized how alone he had been.

Sadly, being smart doesn’t necessarily make you wise. And often that wisdom can only come with time. In Halliday’s case he only learned these lessons when it was too late. Kleya – Keiko – seems to have partially learned it from a catastrophe (and I’m still unsure how much she is responsible for it, and how much she is the scapegoat, I’m betting some of both, but I can’t figure how much).

Actually, I can now see a lot of parallels between this and RPO.

You are correct. Let me expand 🙂

Wisdom is what results when a smart person can see the patterns in a large mass of experience. The experience part may be first-hand experience amassed over time, or a lot of reading – but it cannot pre-exist.

My guess is she hacked and backdoor most of the military’s of the world for fun/practice. And eventually those back-doors where found and utilized by the terrorist hacker groups. Likely by exploiting her poor social skills.

That seems plausible.

“Sadly, being smart doesn’t necessarily make you wise. And often that wisdom can only come with time.”

Wisdom does not always come with age…

Sometimes age comes alone.

You know that attitude might be part of the problem, why people were so easily convinced she destroyed the world and killed her mother.

most people never knew her. Sheep are always ready to believe what you tell them.

Ahh, but is D present already in this earlier invented world?

Love the art and coloring in the last panel!

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 676