Pure math has been described by one friend of mine as "mathturbation", while another observed that the entire field of computer science has a severe case of "Math Envy". I'm more down with the later opinion.
Seems like that could be a sticky problem. I hope your patent doesn't cause too much friction. I guess you should maybe splurge on a lawyer.
Re:Relation of time / real world currency to gamin
on
Law and Virtual Worlds
·
· Score: 1
regarding:
The premise that investing time and effort into something, even virtual, makes it valuable?? seems ridiculous to me when the end result of such efforts is (realistically) changes in 0's to 1's and vice versa on a remote computer system. It seems like the author is taking the psychological effect of these games as having some sort of value. Who should really care if someone becomes emotionally invested in what really isn't more than a series of pixels on a screen.
As a quick counter-example, what about broadcast television? It has an enormous value solely due to the labor spent on producing it, and all it is is a series of 1's and 0's flashing by on a screen.
The investment of time is the ultimate way to add value. Even when you're working on widgets and selling them, it's reasonable from an economic point of view to base value on the amount of time invested. Whether it was time spent gathering raw materials, shaping them, packaging them or shipping them, it's all about the human effort and time required to accomplish the task.
Next, you get into the concept of utility. You invest time in a product and create a certain amount of value. The value to you is worth at least as much as the utility of the time you could have spent doing something else. You set your price accordingly to include a little profit. Now, someone else comes up and has a certain utility value for your widget which is equal to the value of their time that would be spent creating that widget themselves. If their utility is greater than the price you've set, they buy your widget. They gain because they've gotten more utility for a lower price, and you gain because you've gotten a bigger price than the utility of the time you spent producing.
Even though it looks zero-sum, it's actually a win-win.
This also works when playing poker, it's just that there are no price tags on the hands (ie. hidden information).
Try "Winning at Low Limit Holdem" by Lee Jones. It's in a second edition, which I haven't seen, but his first edition was a pretty good cookbook on how to approach a game full of fish.
It was either Doyle or TJ that said that quote about 'play the man' (I'd be inclined towards TJ, and probably wrongly so). He's spot on, though. If you play the fish as a fish, you just sit and grow leather on your ass until you get a G1/G2 hand and then pray it holds up, and make them pay dearly when it does.
It was actually going with a friend to the book signing party/tournament for the first edition that got me into harder core poker playing. The closest I ever got to the big dance was going out in a supersatellite that paid 11 seats and cash down to 18 in 19th place when my pocket sevens got outrun by a naked ace.
This was followed by compulsive gambling and subsequent reform. Now I only play once a year at a local daily tourney. If I win that I get chips for a local super. If I win a seat, then I go.
You're right that I gave a back of the envelope guess at equity. I did ignore relative skill. I figured relative skill was ok to ignore since we were talking about the final table, where 99% of the field has been washed out.
In any case, I'd be more than happy to buy your chips for 0.30 on the dollar if you were heads up in the final and evenly stacked or the underdog.
While in the end I'd agree that a distinction should be made between $x and Tx, I think he's actually ok not bothering with this explanation for the WSOP. After all, you get T10k for $10k, so it's kind of like real money. If you start getting real technical, and focus on the fact that the most you could win is $1.5MM after gathering together all ~T5MM chips, then your equity is $~=0.3T
Therefore, a T100k bet is like putting $30k on the table. Still a pretty big bet.
I think the word you're looking for is "mondegreen." It was coined by Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He actually uses it in reference to misheard song lyrics ("There's a bad moon on the rise"-->"There's a bathroom on the right").
Your PIN gets automatically generated, then if you change it to something you like more, an offset is stored with your account number. The offset is the difference between the generated PIN and the number you chose.
In California, if you buy something from out of state, you're not charged sales tax. However, at the end of the year, when you file your 540, there's a spot for paying your "Use" tax.
Anything you buy from out of state is supposed to be declared and you pay a Use Tax equal to the Sales Tax you would have paid if you bought it locally.
Other states probably have similar provisions.
Re:Remember in the good ole days
on
Infinite Games?
·
· Score: 1
Actually, it's more like any technical innovation is likely to be profitable for the first time when adopted by the porn industry.
The major project in the last two terms will be treated like an industry development project with schedules, crunch time, and outside evaluations.
So, instead of teaching good software engineering principles that lead to 40 hour work weeks and predictable progress, they endorse burnout. Real smart program.
Living in California, where poker is legal, I can say that there appears to be an unlimited supply of suckers.
Poker players, in general, greatly overestimate their level of skill. The reason that so many stick around is that because of the random element, people are sometimes rewarded for bad decisions. Couple this with selective memory, and the sucker will strongly remember the 4 times out of 48 that he invested $6 to win $60, and will more quickly forget the 44 times out of 48 that he just lost his $6. Even though over the long term he pays $264 to 'win' $240, he's gotten his entertainment. Couple this with the variance involved, and the loser even gets to feel like a winner. 10% of the time, he's got a fat bankroll from a string of unlikely wins, and the other 90% of the time, he's only slightly worse off economically than normal.
The drain on their wealth would be apparent with stringent bookkeeping, but most poker players don't keep good records. Most have a vague sense of being more or less even, or a little ahead. Since most have some kind of day job, their bankroll is functionally infinite, and they don't realize that they are supporting those few that do play with a positive expected value.
Unfortunate that the day of judgement is always Mother's Day. That's also the day before the World Series of Poker at Binion's starts. Maybe a receipt for a supersatellite entry would be a good item. Even better, a no-cash-value entry chip for the $10k final event.
I beleive he's talking about how you only have to keep 1ATM pressure inside the vessel versus the hundreds of ATM pressure you have to keep outside of the vessel.
Actually, if you only play the lottery when the expected value of your ticket is greater than the cost of the ticket, you're coming out ahead. The variance is ridiculous, but the EV is still there.
With the California Lotto, the jackpot has to be greater than about $82MM if you discount the increased probability of a split jackpot because of increased participation. It seems to happen about 7 or 8 times a year.
In an article I read in InformationWeek, a San Diego attorney who represented some of the first group was quoted as saying that PanIP settled for much less as soon as the defendants filed a bunch of motions in court (as if to proceed with a defense).
If you just ignored them, I think they may be able to get a summary judgement, and you'd be scrood.
Re:3d displays cannot work
on
3D LCD Display
·
· Score: 1
So if you run towards something, you're actually going to be seeing into *THE FUTURE*, and if you run backwards, you can look into the past.
Identity Crisis A screenplay Copyright Robert Fagen September 13, 2002
Twenty-five words or less
A software engineer loses himself in a maze of identity, language and symbolism, and emerges to rediscover himself and his family.
Setting
Present-day San Francisco
Synopsis
Often disconnected from those around him, and often relating to machines better than to people, Michael Slayton embodies the pseudo-functional life. He has material comfort and the apparent trappings of success, but yearns for something he cannot identify. He is married to his second wife, Kelly Coleman, and with her has had a daughter named Olivia, who is recently one year old. He has been reasonably successful financially, but has never really gained any traction in accumulating significant assets. He is currently between jobs. His wife is a senior manager at a manufacturing firm, and sometimes cannot understand the eccentric orbit of his emotional distance from her: sometimes quite close and often quite remote.
His wife recently has introduced him to the writings of Walker Percy. The first book of Percy that he read was "The Moviegoer," a novel about a man who lives life as if it were someone else's; a man who takes more from viewing a film than from being with a friend. In reading this, Michael sees much of himself in the attitudes and questions presented by the protagonist about what life is really about, and does what we do really make a difference.
Next on the shelf is "Message in a Bottle," a collection of essays by Percy on language, thought, and humanity's use of communication. The core idea is that language has always been studied in the abstract through the use of logic, semantics and analysis, and never empirically as a natural science. The concepts resonate with Michael, and he resolves to apply Percy's analysis to the creation of artificial intelligence.
Long a dilettante in the field of machine intelligence, Michael is familiar with the various ideas of neural networks, expert systems, decision trees, and other explorations designed to imbue consciousness in silicon. He has, however, rarely if ever built working systems in this area. He starts with Percy's notion of language as a phenomenon sprung whole from the human soul independent of behaviorist theory's ability to explain it. Motivated by what he sees in his daughter, he builds an engine, that he calls Oliver, that listens, and learns to respond in the way that his daughter has recently learned to listen and learned to respond. His system gathers symbols and returns symbols, and draws connections based on the response to it's own communication. As a concept is responded to, the use of that concept is reinforced. Eventually, concepts begin to bubble up from the engine and be expressed, which are responded to and are further reinforced.
Eventually, he exposes his machine child to the world at large, through the Internet. As his 'children' grow up, Olivia is much faster to apprehend the world, due to her wider and richer experience. Oliver, while growing in his ability to communicate, remains limited to the narrower world of electronic communication. Michael becomes more distant from his daughter, and closer to his 'son', until the day that Oliver also begins to assert his independence. All the while, Kelley has expressed growing concern over Michael's immersion in the simulation of a family while his real loved ones carry on independent of him.
Michael retreats farther from the real world as the real world continues to evolve without him. He eventually begins restoring older versions of Oliver to keep him company. Even then, as time passes, each new Oliver learns to want more than can be provided from his relatively static parent. Eventually, Michael gets the hint and re-engages with the world at large in general, and with his wife and daughter, in particular.
More recently in life than when the following story was set, I was part of a counting team, and nearly wound up in Griffin from an incident at Bally's. I've since stop gambling all together, since after all, I have a problem with gambling.
It's quite a heady rush to be making money and know that you're going to profit where most everyone else is going to lose. A kind of ugly duckling fantasy about how some day you'll be recognized for your brains over the brawn of those stupid jocks who tormented you in school.
Eventually, though, I had a moment where I didn't like the company I was keeping. That moment is described below.
--------------
I have a problem with gambling. I didn't have a lot of risk in my real life, so I courted simulated danger across the green felt of a blackjack or poker table. After all, all that's at risk is money. I was lucky enough in my 'real' life that if while at the blackjack table fortune smiled upon me I got to feel good and make some money. However, if I didn't do so well, I could still go home to a warm bed and know where my next meal was coming from. As my once-upon-a-time shrink described to me, gambling was where I got my juice because I had repressed all the rest of the more normal sources of risk and excitement in my life.
I lived for a while with rules that defined how and when I could gamble. I did this, because I recognized I had a problem, but didn't want to give up gambling. Since then, I've abstained completely.
The reason that I set up these rules goes back to an incident from back in my college days. I was taking classes at the University of Arizona in Tucson and working as a programmer at a local real estate development company. One little trick that I played a couple times was to be working late one evening and call my then fiance to let her know I would be working for quite a while. Then I would drive down to the airport and catch an 8 or 9 p.m. flight to Las Vegas to play a little blackjack. The plan would be to fly back on the 7 or 8 a.m. flight and 'awaken' at my desk, having 'fallen asleep' at my keyboard. I would then go straight to classes and most likely sleep there part of the day, and resume my regular schedule late that afternoon.
During one of these trips, I had managed to go through the $200 I had brought in fairly short order. This is not easy to do betting $5 per hand of blackjack, but is well within the realm of possibility. I then proceeded to get $300 from the ATM out of my checking account, which was the daily limit. Unfortunately, that also disappeared around 2:30 or 3. Fortunately (kind of) it was the next day as far as the ATM was concerned, so I managed to get another $200 out of the machine, which was all I had left in the checking account, barring what I needed for rent, etc.
5 a.m. rolls around, and I'm once again functionally broke. It has been a very unusually bad trip, but once again, not unheard of playing $5 blackjack. I had kept $20 aside for getting back to the Las Vegas airport and for getting my car out of the parking lot, but I had nothing left to gamble. I went for a walk out on the strip. I left where I had been playing, which was the Flamingo Hilton, and as I stepped out onto Las Vegas Boulevard South, the pink fingers of a desert false dawn were rising from the east. I believe it was a Wednesday morning. The Strip was absolutely deserted with the exception of myself, a jogger on the opposite side of the street in front of Caesar's Palace and two or three other tired looking people with that thousand-yard stare of the economically shell-shocked.
I stepped out into the street, into the non-existent traffic. I crossed the median and approached the driveway to Caesar's Palace. Before me were the fountains that Evel Knievel jumped across time and again. The sun was starting to peek over the mountains east of town and illuminated the mountains west of town. The sky lightened considerably and the hotel towers and the Fuller dome of the OmniMax theater loomed above me in silhouette as I walked up the driveway.
Ahead of me was an ornate shrine featuring a white elephant. I stopped to consider what Eastern religion this might be a symbol of good luck for. It was done up in an appropriately tacky Las Vegas fashion, however. The entire elephant was covered in various colors of mirrored tile and was dramatically uplit by hidden lights of various colors and several white spotlights. There were coins all around the base of the elephant and a railing with a sign in all languages warning that the railing was alarmed and that the shrine was monitored on video. I remember laughing at the prospect of only in Las Vegas would security be needed at a wishing well.
Even though I don't believe in lucky elephants, I took this burst of black humor for a sign of my luck changing. In that instant I decided that I would either come home a really big winner or a really big loser. $700 was actually the biggest loss that I had ever sustained in Las Vegas, but I was past the threshold of pain. I must credit Mike "Mad Genius" Caro with the genesis of that phrase. It refers to the state where you've lost an amount of money that has numbed you to any further pain of any additional losses. It doesn't hurt any more to lose another $1, so losing it becomes very easy. I decided that I would take my credit card and charge another $700 on it, and I would play for the first time at the $25 minimum tables.
Once I had determined my course, my step lightened. My eyes cleared and my blood once again began to flow. I was back in action. Just the decision to start on this path was enough to lift my spirits. I quickly made my way to the Comcheck machine and ran my card through with aplomb. I punched in a request for $700 and strutted up to the cashier's cage as if I owned the place. I received my seven one-hundred dollar bills and advanced on the casino floor.
I spied my victim. A $25 table right near the main entrance. It was a 6 deck shoe with four players already on it. After all, if I wanted to stage a big comeback, I certainly would want an audience. The poor dealer and pit bosses wouldn't know what hit them.
I sat down and spread those seven insignificant pieces of paper across the felt and watched the dealer push me a stack of even less significant green $25 chips towards me. My destiny hung from those 28 clay discs. I saw visions of them turning into black $100 chips or even purple $500 chips.
At the time, I played a basic strategy and a simple winning progression. I would always start betting one unit, in this case one green chip. If I won the hand, I would let it ride and wager two chips on the next hand. If I won my second hand, I would then wager three chips. If I continued to win, I would wager five chips, then five chips again, followed by seven chips and then ten chips after the sixth win. Starting with the seventh hand, I would treat ten chips like one chip but I would repeat the ten, so the wagering would go ten chips, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, fifty, seventy and one hundred chips. Then in the incredibly unlikely circumstance of getting that far, the series repeats itself, treating 100 chips like 1 chip.
I played for a while, never varying too far from either side of even, when it happened. I hit a losing streak that would not snap. I was down about two chips at the time, but my stack started to dwindle. I got down to twelve chips, then eleven, then ten. When I lost the next hand and I now only had a single digits worth of chips in front of me, I began to seriously question my earlier optimism.
It was now about 6:15 and I had to leave for the airport at 7. I was resigned to play out this particular grim scene to its conclusion, when finally I won a hand. Suddenly I could do no wrong. The next hand, I bet my two chips and won. Then, with three chips wagered, I got a natural blackjack. Because naturals pay 3:2, in addition to the four green chips I received two red $5 chips, two silver dollars and a fifty cent piece. I put this "odd money" out for the dealer as a tip on the next hand where I had five green chips wagered, and won again. I repeated my five chip bet and won. Now I placed seven chips in the circle and got an 11 where the dealer had a 6 up. I placed my recently won profits in the circle beside my bet and doubled down, receiving a single face-down card. The dealer turns over a 4 followed by a face card from the shoe and the whole table slumps in disappointment at the dealer's 20. I haven't looked, but I just know that I have a ten underneath, and the dealer reveals my card to have a lovely face. He restacks my fourteen chips in three piles of four and the remaining pile of two. He places a black chip in front of each of the three piles then places a fourth black chip in front of the pile of two green ones and picks up the two green ones in change.
I take back these four black chips and four of the green ones leaving a ten chip bet out for my next hand. I win that one and the dealer repeats the restacking ritual to pay me with three black chips, taking two green as change. I restore my ten chip bet and once again win. The dealer again gives me three black chips and takes back two greens in change. I stack up all the chips in the circle to make a pile of three black chips and eight green chips.
I won the next hand as well and the dealer paid me with five black chips. Now my progression called for thirty green chips. I began fumbling with the green chips in my stack and adding them to the stack in the circle when the dealer said to me, "Hey buddy, slow down, the casino will still be here tomorrow."
I actually snapped back, "Thanks for the advice, but I know what I'm doing," as I added the green chips to the top of the stack. The dealer looked at me. I honestly do not remember if it was with anger or with pity.
I won that hand as well.
Now my hands were visibly shaking.
I had won ten hands in a row. As the dealer paid me with a purple chip, two black chips and two greens, he called out to the pit boss, "Purple out."
The pit boss looked over and then slowly walked over as he said, "Ok."
My next bet was fifty green chips. I added the purple chip to the bottom of the pile as the dealer got ready to deal the next hand. The rest of the table was quiet. I won.
The whole table cheered. Well, maybe they didn't cheer, but they did make a set of noises that could be interpreted as well wishing. It may have been shock or envy, I don't recall.
As the dealer set out one yellow chip, two black chips and two green chips, I realized two things. First, that I had risen out of my seat, and second, that this yellow chip was worth $1,000. I had just been paid one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars. This was just a bit more than I and my two roommates were paying for rent. Combined. For two months. While I recognized that fact, I was past caring. I realize now that there is a threshold of pain in both directions. There is a certain amount of money that once you win it, you are indifferent to any more.
Mechanically, I put out the $1,750 required by the progression for the next bet. I lost. I once again began shaking. I said to the dealer, "I think I'm ready to go now, please."
The pit boss said, "Son, I think that would be a good idea." Thinking back, I don't believe I'm imagining the look of concern on his face. I also don't believe that he was concerned about losing a couple thousand dollars on his shift. All told, that run of cards had left me with $2,250 on the table. I had made back my $700 cash advance, I had made back my earlier losses of $700 and I had come out to the good by $850. I gave the dealer a $25 chip as I departed and thanked him.
As I looked from him to the other players at the table I was leaving I saw something that scared me. I saw three aging people, smoking, drinking and hunched over in their chairs. They were immersed in their own world and my passing through was a momentary breeze, quickly forgotten. In seeing them, I imagined someone like me, years down the road, having an experience like I just had, and seeing me as one of these caricatures through their young eyes. That is the image that I remember whenever I find myself getting carried away by my addiction.
Slashdot Mirror
...given the current slashdotting.
= 14 77_0_7_0_C
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id
Well, $4 per day, unless you work seven days a week. I usually work about 50 weeks per year and five days a week.
Shouldn't that be pi-ness envy?
Seems like that could be a sticky problem. I hope your patent doesn't cause too much friction. I guess you should maybe splurge on a lawyer.
The premise that investing time and effort into something, even virtual, makes it valuable?? seems ridiculous to me when the end result of such efforts is (realistically) changes in 0's to 1's and vice versa on a remote computer system. It seems like the author is taking the psychological effect of these games as having some sort of value. Who should really care if someone becomes emotionally invested in what really isn't more than a series of pixels on a screen.
As a quick counter-example, what about broadcast television? It has an enormous value solely due to the labor spent on producing it, and all it is is a series of 1's and 0's flashing by on a screen.
The investment of time is the ultimate way to add value. Even when you're working on widgets and selling them, it's reasonable from an economic point of view to base value on the amount of time invested. Whether it was time spent gathering raw materials, shaping them, packaging them or shipping them, it's all about the human effort and time required to accomplish the task.
Next, you get into the concept of utility. You invest time in a product and create a certain amount of value. The value to you is worth at least as much as the utility of the time you could have spent doing something else. You set your price accordingly to include a little profit. Now, someone else comes up and has a certain utility value for your widget which is equal to the value of their time that would be spent creating that widget themselves. If their utility is greater than the price you've set, they buy your widget. They gain because they've gotten more utility for a lower price, and you gain because you've gotten a bigger price than the utility of the time you spent producing.
Even though it looks zero-sum, it's actually a win-win.
This also works when playing poker, it's just that there are no price tags on the hands (ie. hidden information).
Try "Winning at Low Limit Holdem" by Lee Jones. It's in a second edition, which I haven't seen, but his first edition was a pretty good cookbook on how to approach a game full of fish.
It was either Doyle or TJ that said that quote about 'play the man' (I'd be inclined towards TJ, and probably wrongly so). He's spot on, though. If you play the fish as a fish, you just sit and grow leather on your ass until you get a G1/G2 hand and then pray it holds up, and make them pay dearly when it does.
It was actually going with a friend to the book signing party/tournament for the first edition that got me into harder core poker playing. The closest I ever got to the big dance was going out in a supersatellite that paid 11 seats and cash down to 18 in 19th place when my pocket sevens got outrun by a naked ace.
This was followed by compulsive gambling and subsequent reform. Now I only play once a year at a local daily tourney. If I win that I get chips for a local super. If I win a seat, then I go.
But really, I don't have a problem.
You're right that I gave a back of the envelope guess at equity. I did ignore relative skill. I figured relative skill was ok to ignore since we were talking about the final table, where 99% of the field has been washed out.
In any case, I'd be more than happy to buy your chips for 0.30 on the dollar if you were heads up in the final and evenly stacked or the underdog.
Therefore, a T100k bet is like putting $30k on the table. Still a pretty big bet.
Chump yourself
Actually, regarding SprintPCS, you will get to an agent if you also say "Billing Error".
Also see "bit wrangler", and my personal favorite: "network janitor".
I think the word you're looking for is "mondegreen." It was coined by Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He actually uses it in reference to misheard song lyrics ("There's a bad moon on the rise"-->"There's a bathroom on the right").
Your PIN gets automatically generated, then if you change it to something you like more, an offset is stored with your account number. The offset is the difference between the generated PIN and the number you chose.
Interesting. I got it from
7 87 .html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/q130
Wonder who's right.
Off topic, but I believe the quote you're after is "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
Cheers.
In California, if you buy something from out of state, you're not charged sales tax. However, at the end of the year, when you file your 540, there's a spot for paying your "Use" tax.
Anything you buy from out of state is supposed to be declared and you pay a Use Tax equal to the Sales Tax you would have paid if you bought it locally.
Other states probably have similar provisions.
Actually, it's more like any technical innovation is likely to be profitable for the first time when adopted by the porn industry.
The major project in the last two terms will be treated like an industry development project with schedules, crunch time, and outside evaluations.
So, instead of teaching good software engineering principles that lead to 40 hour work weeks and predictable progress, they endorse burnout. Real smart program.
Living in California, where poker is legal, I can say that there appears to be an unlimited supply of suckers.
Poker players, in general, greatly overestimate their level of skill. The reason that so many stick around is that because of the random element, people are sometimes rewarded for bad decisions. Couple this with selective memory, and the sucker will strongly remember the 4 times out of 48 that he invested $6 to win $60, and will more quickly forget the 44 times out of 48 that he just lost his $6. Even though over the long term he pays $264 to 'win' $240, he's gotten his entertainment. Couple this with the variance involved, and the loser even gets to feel like a winner. 10% of the time, he's got a fat bankroll from a string of unlikely wins, and the other 90% of the time, he's only slightly worse off economically than normal.
The drain on their wealth would be apparent with stringent bookkeeping, but most poker players don't keep good records. Most have a vague sense of being more or less even, or a little ahead. Since most have some kind of day job, their bankroll is functionally infinite, and they don't realize that they are supporting those few that do play with a positive expected value.
Unfortunate that the day of judgement is always Mother's Day. That's also the day before the World Series of Poker at Binion's starts. Maybe a receipt for a supersatellite entry would be a good item. Even better, a no-cash-value entry chip for the $10k final event.
I beleive he's talking about how you only have to keep 1ATM pressure inside the vessel versus the hundreds of ATM pressure you have to keep outside of the vessel.
Actually, if you only play the lottery when the expected value of your ticket is greater than the cost of the ticket, you're coming out ahead. The variance is ridiculous, but the EV is still there.
With the California Lotto, the jackpot has to be greater than about $82MM if you discount the increased probability of a split jackpot because of increased participation. It seems to happen about 7 or 8 times a year.
In an article I read in InformationWeek, a San Diego attorney who represented some of the first group was quoted as saying that PanIP settled for much less as soon as the defendants filed a bunch of motions in court (as if to proceed with a defense).
If you just ignored them, I think they may be able to get a summary judgement, and you'd be scrood.
So if you run towards something, you're actually going to be seeing into *THE FUTURE*, and if you run backwards, you can look into the past.
Identity Crisis
A screenplay
Copyright Robert Fagen
September 13, 2002
Twenty-five words or less
A software engineer loses himself in a maze of identity, language and symbolism, and emerges to rediscover himself and his family.
Setting
Present-day San Francisco
Synopsis
Often disconnected from those around him, and often relating to machines better than to people, Michael Slayton embodies the pseudo-functional life. He has material comfort and the apparent trappings of success, but yearns for something he cannot identify. He is married to his second wife, Kelly Coleman, and with her has had a daughter named Olivia, who is recently one year old. He has been reasonably successful financially, but has never really gained any traction in accumulating significant assets. He is currently between jobs. His wife is a senior manager at a manufacturing firm, and sometimes cannot understand the eccentric orbit of his emotional distance from her: sometimes quite close and often quite remote.
His wife recently has introduced him to the writings of Walker Percy. The first book of Percy that he read was "The Moviegoer," a novel about a man who lives life as if it were someone else's; a man who takes more from viewing a film than from being with a friend. In reading this, Michael sees much of himself in the attitudes and questions presented by the protagonist about what life is really about, and does what we do really make a difference.
Next on the shelf is "Message in a Bottle," a collection of essays by Percy on language, thought, and humanity's use of communication. The core idea is that language has always been studied in the abstract through the use of logic, semantics and analysis, and never empirically as a natural science. The concepts resonate with Michael, and he resolves to apply Percy's analysis to the creation of artificial intelligence.
Long a dilettante in the field of machine intelligence, Michael is familiar with the various ideas of neural networks, expert systems, decision trees, and other explorations designed to imbue consciousness in silicon. He has, however, rarely if ever built working systems in this area. He starts with Percy's notion of language as a phenomenon sprung whole from the human soul independent of behaviorist theory's ability to explain it. Motivated by what he sees in his daughter, he builds an engine, that he calls Oliver, that listens, and learns to respond in the way that his daughter has recently learned to listen and learned to respond. His system gathers symbols and returns symbols, and draws connections based on the response to it's own communication. As a concept is responded to, the use of that concept is reinforced. Eventually, concepts begin to bubble up from the engine and be expressed, which are responded to and are further reinforced.
Eventually, he exposes his machine child to the world at large, through the Internet. As his 'children' grow up, Olivia is much faster to apprehend the world, due to her wider and richer experience. Oliver, while growing in his ability to communicate, remains limited to the narrower world of electronic communication. Michael becomes more distant from his daughter, and closer to his 'son', until the day that Oliver also begins to assert his independence. All the while, Kelley has expressed growing concern over Michael's immersion in the simulation of a family while his real loved ones carry on independent of him.
Michael retreats farther from the real world as the real world continues to evolve without him. He eventually begins restoring older versions of Oliver to keep him company. Even then, as time passes, each new Oliver learns to want more than can be provided from his relatively static parent. Eventually, Michael gets the hint and re-engages with the world at large in general, and with his wife and daughter, in particular.
More recently in life than when the following story was set, I was part of a counting team, and nearly wound up in Griffin from an incident at Bally's. I've since stop gambling all together, since after all, I have a problem with gambling.
It's quite a heady rush to be making money and know that you're going to profit where most everyone else is going to lose. A kind of ugly duckling fantasy about how some day you'll be recognized for your brains over the brawn of those stupid jocks who tormented you in school.
Eventually, though, I had a moment where I didn't like the company I was keeping. That moment is described below.
--------------
I have a problem with gambling. I didn't have a lot of risk in my real
life, so I courted simulated danger across the green felt of a blackjack
or poker table. After all, all that's at risk is money. I was lucky
enough in my 'real' life that if while at the blackjack table fortune
smiled upon me I got to feel good and make some
money. However, if I didn't do so well, I could still go home to a warm
bed and know where my next meal was coming from. As my once-upon-a-time
shrink described to me, gambling was where I got my juice because I
had repressed all the rest of the more normal sources of risk and
excitement in my life.
I lived for a while with rules that defined how and when I could
gamble. I did this, because I recognized I had a problem, but didn't
want to give up gambling. Since then, I've abstained completely.
The reason that I set up these rules goes back to an incident from
back in my college days. I was taking classes at the University of
Arizona in Tucson and working as a programmer at a local real estate
development company. One little trick that I played a couple times was
to be working late one evening and call my then fiance to let her know
I would be working for quite a while. Then I would drive down to the
airport and catch an 8 or 9 p.m. flight to Las Vegas to play a little
blackjack. The plan would be to fly back on the 7 or 8 a.m. flight and
'awaken' at my desk, having 'fallen asleep' at my keyboard. I would
then go straight to classes and most likely sleep there part of the
day, and resume my regular schedule late that afternoon.
During one of these trips, I had managed to go through the $200 I had
brought in fairly short order. This is not easy to do betting $5 per
hand of blackjack, but is well within the realm of possibility. I then
proceeded to get $300 from the ATM out of my checking account, which
was the daily limit. Unfortunately, that also disappeared around 2:30
or 3. Fortunately (kind of) it was the next day as far as the ATM was
concerned, so I managed to get another $200 out of the machine, which
was all I had left in the checking account, barring what I needed for
rent, etc.
5 a.m. rolls around, and I'm once again functionally broke. It has
been a very unusually bad trip, but once again, not unheard of playing
$5 blackjack. I had kept $20 aside for getting back to the Las Vegas
airport and for getting my car out of the parking lot, but I had
nothing left to gamble. I went for a walk out on the strip. I left
where I had been playing, which was the Flamingo Hilton, and as I
stepped out onto Las Vegas Boulevard South, the pink fingers of a
desert false dawn were rising from the east. I believe it was a
Wednesday morning. The Strip was absolutely deserted with the
exception of myself, a jogger on the opposite side of the street in
front of Caesar's Palace and two or three other tired looking people
with that thousand-yard stare of the economically shell-shocked.
I stepped out into the street, into the non-existent traffic. I
crossed the median and approached the driveway to Caesar's
Palace. Before me were the fountains that Evel Knievel jumped across
time and again. The sun was starting to peek over the mountains east
of town and illuminated the mountains west of town. The sky lightened
considerably and the hotel towers and the Fuller dome of the OmniMax
theater loomed above me in silhouette as I walked up the driveway.
Ahead of me was an ornate shrine featuring a white elephant. I stopped
to consider what Eastern religion this might be a symbol of good luck
for. It was done up in an appropriately tacky Las Vegas fashion,
however. The entire elephant was covered in various colors of
mirrored tile and was dramatically uplit by hidden lights of various
colors and several white spotlights. There were coins all around the
base of the elephant and a railing with a sign in all languages
warning that the railing was alarmed and that the shrine was monitored
on video. I remember laughing at the prospect of only in Las Vegas
would security be needed at a wishing well.
Even though I don't believe in lucky elephants, I took this burst of
black humor for a sign of my luck changing. In that instant I decided
that I would either come home a really big winner or a really big
loser. $700 was actually the biggest loss that I had ever sustained in
Las Vegas, but I was past the threshold of pain. I must credit Mike
"Mad Genius" Caro with the genesis of that phrase. It refers to the
state where you've lost an amount of money that has numbed you to any
further pain of any additional losses. It doesn't hurt any more to
lose another $1, so losing it becomes very easy. I decided that I
would take my credit card and charge another $700 on it, and I would
play for the first time at the $25 minimum tables.
Once I had determined my course, my step lightened. My eyes cleared
and my blood once again began to flow. I was back in action. Just the
decision to start on this path was enough to lift my spirits. I
quickly made my way to the Comcheck machine and ran my card through
with aplomb. I punched in a request for $700 and strutted up to the
cashier's cage as if I owned the place. I received my seven
one-hundred dollar bills and advanced on the casino floor.
I spied my victim. A $25 table right near the main entrance. It was a
6 deck shoe with four players already on it. After all, if I wanted to
stage a big comeback, I certainly would want an audience. The poor
dealer and pit bosses wouldn't know what hit them.
I sat down and spread those seven insignificant pieces of paper across
the felt and watched the dealer push me a stack of even less
significant green $25 chips towards me. My destiny hung from those 28
clay discs. I saw visions of them turning into black $100 chips or
even purple $500 chips.
At the time, I played a basic strategy and a simple winning progression. I would always
start betting one unit, in this case one green chip. If I won the
hand, I would let it ride and wager two chips on the next hand. If I
won my second hand, I would then wager three chips. If I continued to
win, I would wager five chips, then five chips again, followed by
seven chips and then ten chips after the sixth win. Starting with the
seventh hand, I would treat ten chips like one chip but I would repeat
the ten, so the wagering would go ten chips, ten, twenty, thirty,
fifty, fifty, seventy and one hundred chips. Then in the incredibly
unlikely circumstance of getting that far, the series repeats itself,
treating 100 chips like 1 chip.
I played for a while, never varying too far from either side of even,
when it happened. I hit a losing streak that would not snap. I was
down about two chips at the time, but my stack started to dwindle. I
got down to twelve chips, then eleven, then ten. When I lost the next
hand and I now only had a single digits worth of chips in front of me,
I began to seriously question my earlier optimism.
It was now about 6:15 and I had to leave for the airport at 7. I was
resigned to play out this particular grim scene to its conclusion,
when finally I won a hand. Suddenly I could do no wrong. The next
hand, I bet my two chips and won. Then, with three chips wagered, I
got a natural blackjack. Because naturals pay 3:2, in addition to the
four green chips I received two red $5 chips, two silver dollars and a
fifty cent piece. I put this "odd money" out for the dealer as a tip
on the next hand where I had five green chips wagered, and won
again. I repeated my five chip bet and won. Now I placed seven chips
in the circle and got an 11 where the dealer had a 6 up. I placed my
recently won profits in the circle beside my bet and doubled down,
receiving a single face-down card. The dealer turns over a 4 followed
by a face card from the shoe and the whole table slumps in
disappointment at the dealer's 20. I haven't looked, but I just know
that I have a ten underneath, and the dealer reveals my card to have a
lovely face. He restacks my fourteen chips in three piles of four and
the remaining pile of two. He places a black chip in front of each of
the three piles then places a fourth black chip in front of the pile
of two green ones and picks up the two green ones in change.
I take back these four black chips and four of the green ones leaving
a ten chip bet out for my next hand. I win that one and the dealer
repeats the restacking ritual to pay me with three black chips, taking
two green as change. I restore my ten chip bet and once again win. The
dealer again gives me three black chips and takes back two greens in
change. I stack up all the chips in the circle to make a pile of three
black chips and eight green chips.
I won the next hand as well and the dealer paid me with five black
chips. Now my progression called for thirty green chips. I began
fumbling with the green chips in my stack and adding them to the stack
in the circle when the dealer said to me, "Hey buddy, slow down, the
casino will still be here tomorrow."
I actually snapped back, "Thanks for the advice, but I know what I'm
doing," as I added the green chips to the top of the stack. The dealer
looked at me. I honestly do not remember if it was with anger or with
pity.
I won that hand as well.
Now my hands were visibly shaking.
I had won ten hands in a row. As the dealer paid me with a purple
chip, two black chips and two greens, he called out to the pit boss,
"Purple out."
The pit boss looked over and then slowly walked over as he said, "Ok."
My next bet was fifty green chips. I added the purple chip to the
bottom of the pile as the dealer got ready to deal the next hand. The
rest of the table was quiet. I won.
The whole table cheered. Well, maybe they didn't cheer, but they did
make a set of noises that could be interpreted as well wishing. It may
have been shock or envy, I don't recall.
As the dealer set out one yellow chip, two black chips and two green
chips, I realized two things. First, that I had risen out of my seat,
and second, that this yellow chip was worth $1,000. I had just been
paid one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars. This was just a bit
more than I and my two roommates were paying for rent. Combined. For
two months. While I recognized that fact, I was past caring. I realize
now that there is a threshold of pain in both directions. There is a
certain amount of money that once you win it, you are indifferent to
any more.
Mechanically, I put out the $1,750 required by the progression for the
next bet. I lost. I once again began shaking. I said to the dealer, "I
think I'm ready to go now, please."
The pit boss said, "Son, I think that would be a good idea." Thinking
back, I don't believe I'm imagining the look of concern on his face. I
also don't believe that he was concerned about losing a couple
thousand dollars on his shift. All told, that run of cards had left me
with $2,250 on the table. I had made back my $700 cash advance, I had
made back my earlier losses of $700 and I had come out to the good by
$850. I gave the dealer a $25 chip as I departed and thanked him.
As I looked from him to the other players at the table I was leaving I
saw something that scared me. I saw three aging people, smoking,
drinking and hunched over in their chairs. They were immersed in their
own world and my passing through was a momentary breeze, quickly
forgotten. In seeing them, I imagined someone like me, years down the
road, having an experience like I just had, and seeing me as one of
these caricatures through their young eyes. That is the image that I
remember whenever I find myself getting carried away by my addiction.