I wouldn't try that on the "shifty tiles," either.;)
Of course, this is a first generation device - you can't expect it to allow you to run full tilt, jump sideways (or jump at all, probably), fall down, etc. It is a pretty cool experiment though, and well worth investigation in my opinion. My gut feeling is that this approach isn't going to go too far, but I'm sure we can learn something from it.
Ask anyone who suffers regularly from motion sickness to ride a Tilt-A-Whirl but keep their eyes closed. They will *still* end up dizzy and sick.
That statement is in direct agreement with what you quoted from the previous poster:
If what your eyes tell you (you're moving) is out of sync with what your inner ear tells you (you're not moving) a lot of people get nauseous and toss their cookies.
In this case, your eyes (closed) tell you that you're not moving, but your inner ear tells you that you are moving. Thus, they're out of sync and you get sick. Having a visual frame of reference (looking out the window, looking out of the tilt-a-whirl) may not always help, but it does help people sometimes.
One of the many awesome extensions for FireFox is flashblock, which replaces flash objects with an icon that you can click to allow that 1 flash object to display. I still boycott flash based sites to the extent that I reasonably can, but every once in a while you want to see flash content, and the extension makes that easy.
Yes, most politicians try to be seen as religious. I find it annoying, but nothing more than that until it creeps into their policies.
GWB mentions God a lot, but I think the reason people have consider him more of a zealot than others (Kerry, for example) is the fact that many of his policies seem to be based on religion rather than on a sound logical footing. You mentioned the "faith based initiatives," which I do have a problem with - not only because it allows government to sponsor religion, but because it allows the government to neglect our modern secular institutions.
Other places this crops up is through the legislation of morality - a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, for example. There's absolutely no basis for such an amendment other than religion.
The best evidence of the Bush/religion problem, though, is his lack of respect for science. Here we are in the 21st century, and the leader of our country isn't rational enough to base his policies on our most effective way of understanding the very universe in which we live? Insanity. The only thing more insane is that we don't call him on it.
Oh, and as far as being "scared" by religion - I'm certainly not personally scared by it, but I'm concerned about the future of humans if we can't get past such an irrational belief system. When you live in one world and pretend that you live in another, you're blind.
I don't know if I agree with your politics, but we're both fighting the same uphill battle - I'm consistently forced to vote for someone other than the candidate I want to vote for. Why? Because of the way our electoral system works. When it's winner take all, voting for someone who has little chance of winning means sacrificing your vote.
The only solution to this problem is electoral reform. Instant runoff voting or something. No, I'm not an expert on electoral systems and the tradeoffs between them, but experts do exist. I suggest that we, as a democracy, use the information gathered by these experts to refine our system a bit.
There was a great article comparing different systems in a recent Scientific American, but unfortunately it's not available electronically without paying for it. I read the print version and it looks like we have a lot of options - I suggest we try them out. The only reasonable place to start is at a local level, so if you're really concerned about the issue then push for change in your local government's voting system!
Just for the benefit of anyone who bothered to read the AC's post...
Yeah! Since it's too complex to understand, why not redefine "intelligence" to a more-easily-meetable standard with no observed empirical relation with the previous definition, and work towards that? Why not??
Cockroaches gather information from their environment, process it, and produce output. You might not call that intelligence, as intelligence implies some sort of abstract reasoning, but you could also say that our "intelligence" is merely a more complex way of doing the same thing. In fact, there seems to be a gradient of information processing complexity from bugs up to humans. Many of the organisms in between are able to behave in "intelligent" ways, depending on your definition.
So, you want to make an artificial brain that you can have a conversation with. Do you think you'll have better luck aiming for that level of complexity on the first shot, or do you think it would be smarter to make a bug-level brain, understand how it works, then build your way up from there? If you ask me, it seems like the *only* way to do it. In fact, I'm guessing that artificial brains aren't going to be designed by anyone, but developed through artificial selection. Humans didn't just evolve out of nowhere - our brains followed a long and complicated path to get to where they are today.
Maybe a cockroach brain isn't advanced enough to make for an interesting opponent, but I don't think it would take much more. Super ant brains, maybe. The cool thing about moving from expert systems to true simulated "brains" is the emergent behavior. Characters can react to their environment in ways that today's characters can't. With a good physics engine, the character would be able to use its limbs to balance or otherwise control movement in a very believable way.
BTW, what makes you think FPS/etc. AI isn't already more advanced, relative to its regular operating environment, than cockroach instincts?
Now that would be a cool experiment - Quake3 bots vs giant cockroaches with rail guns on their heads! Of course I don't mean actual cockroach brains. I mean a brain with the same level of complexity as a cockroach brain, but evolved to have whatever instincts you require - like the ability to aim a rail gun.
Not true. The only reason this happens with politics is that the parties evolve over time in order to cling to about 50% of the voters. Maybe 50% of people like apples, I'm not sure. I'll bet if the question was, "do you like to watch movies?" then the results would be highly skewed.
OK, the grandparent's example maybe wasn't so great - but just because something is a yes/no question and is a matter of opinion, there is NO REASON to expect the answers to be near 50/50.
The best way to show this is with an example, like... give me a minute...
OK, say you take a random sample of people and ask them if they enjoy going to the dentist. It's totally a matter of opinion - there are some people out there who just loove going to the dentist. Most people hate it. It would not be 50/50.
There are a billion other examples, but it really only takes 1.:)
Yeah, but once we figure it out, you'll be shelling out big bucks every couple of years for a new AI card for your PC.;)
Seriously, though, AI got off to kind of a false start - everyone thought it was going to be easy for some reason. With what we know now, true AI is theoretically possible, but would require an insane amount of processing power to simulate human intelligence.
Why start at that level, though? One of the things that we seem to be figuring out is that human intelligence is not the right starting point. Why not start with insect "intelligence"? Then you move on to birds, etc. In fact, you could do some pretty cool stuff with a simple level of intelligence - I'll bet FPS enemies would be more interesting to fight against if they had simulated cockroaches brains, rather than being driven by a grab bag of tricks.
I think the poster was assuming that an interesting virtual reality environment would include other (virtual) entities to interact with. A strict definition of virtual reality in no way requires this, though.
The poster is also assuming that the simulated entities would have to have true intelligence (and thus pass the turing test). This isn't really a requirement, either. Virtual reality doesn't have to be indistinguishable from ordinary reality. A simulated environment full of polygonal simpletons could be considered virtual reality - it just wouldn't be a very good approximation of "real" reality.
Back on topic, we're a very very very long way from virtual environments that are indistinguishable from reality. Graphics keep leaping ahead, and in the next decade or two video games will look "real" - on a screen. To be immersed in that environment and to interact with it in a way that seems real - that's not happening for a while. For one thing, it's going to require some sort of crazy brain tap interface.
I completely disagree with you about the effectiveness of Bush trying to kill evildoers, but let's put that whole issue aside for a moment. Assuming that you'll vote for Bush based on his foreign policies, how can you look past everything else he stands for? Do you actually agree with any of the following?
* Legislating morality
* Invading the privacy of individuals
* Cutting funding for basic social services
* Loosening restrictions on air and water pollution
* Putting the interests of corporations before the interests of citizens
* Acting in opposition to the scientific community with *no* counter argument
I mean, I don't know about you, but these are things that I absolutely can't tolerate. Not only is the Bush administration guilty of all of the above, but they are totally brazen about it. They're saying to the American people, "Hey, watch this. And fuck off, I don't care what you think." They think they're above the law, and by now they practically are. Time to reign in your government, because it's being run by assholes that will fuck us all over for money. Yeah, most politicians will do that, but when you catch 'em you gotta call 'em on it. Time to get your pitchfork and head for Washington!
And quit shrugging. If you've got an argument, then share it. If someone has a better argument, don't blow it off - dispute it or accept it. This cannot be a "whatever" situation. This is serious shit, and people not paying attention is how we got into this mess (no, GWB does not make up the entire mess - he's just the immediate problem. We have systemic problems with our electoral system, corruption, corporate power, etc. that will not be fixed as long as we remain a nation of complacent and uneducated non-thinkers).
10 out of 10 Terrorists agree - Anybody but Bush in 2004
Silly to reply to a sig, but I think you have that backwards - terrorists would want you to vote for GWB.
There's nothing terrorists like more than for us to barge around like assholes and rile up a bunch of otherwise complacent folks. Not to mention the bonus of having Americans lose their freedoms to repressive security measures and enforced morality, and the total disregard of science and reason by the US government.
Not to say that no other administration would make these mistakes, but I can't imagine anyone else screwing our country to the degree that Bush/Cheney/etc. have. I'm sure that 10 out of 10 terrorists would agree - Bush in 2004 means holding back the advancement of peace, progress, and prosperity in the world. Now how do you think they would vote?
Information (i.e. software) is not necessarily affected by gravity. However, I don't know of any way to represent information in our universe that doesn't require something that *is* affected by gravity.
So does software weigh anything? I guess it's just a matter of how practical you want to be. It's like asking whether an idea has any mass - can the idea exist without a brain/note/hard drive to store it?
So how do you suggest we understand the unexplained (by current theory) gravitational effects? You offered several hypotheses, but not a way to determine which is the best one.
Obvoiusly, you have to take each hypothesis, *assume* that it's true, and then see if it makes any measurable predictions.
Just because there are other possibilities does not mean that this one should be ignored - it is plausible enought that somebody ought to play around with the idea and see what happens. That doesn't in any way preclude investigating other possibilities.
Maybe I'm remembering "Young Zaphod plays it Safe" wrong, but it seems like it was pretty funny. Wasn't that the one where he sat on the dead body, so he switched to the spare suit (mechanical suits that walked around on their own), and then proceeded to puke inside of it when he saw the mess on the back of the first suit?
Not up to the caliber of the books (certainly nothing can compare to the first HHGTTG book), but it was a decent little short story, in my opinion.
I recommend you pick up a cheap paperback copy of the first book - it's a pretty short read, and I swear that I laughed my ass off when I read it. When I got to the end, I flipped back to the first page and started reading again.
I think that's the only book I've ever done that with.
I can't remember exactly, but didn't Marvin get his peg leg in a later book? I think it was after Ford, Arthur, et al. left him in the ship that was flying into the sun (after they left the restaurant at the end of the universe). Hard to say what order things happened in in those books, though, what with all of the skipping about in spacetime.
Regardless of the continuity issues, though, this Marvin doesn't look like what I've always pictured - I saw him as taller and metallic, with a more squarish head.
Maybe the cute plastic Marvin will work. I'll wait till I see the movie and then form an opinion. I serously doubt that I'll get the kind of enjoyment out of the movie that I got from the books!
Yeah, everybody knows that. But some people also keep hoping Lucas will get his head out of his ass. Not much chance, I know, but some people are just optimists.
...and then Congress could cut NASA funding accordingly (by at least $20 million).
Seriously, that's what would happen. I like the idea of having more of a say in what gets funded, but I'm not sure how we can make it work.
Right now the process is extremely indirect - I write a letter to my representative who then *maybe* takes my opinion into consideration when voting on something that indirectly affects whatever it is I'm concerned about. How could this process be improved? What is the most direct way for US citizens to cut military spending by 10% and use that money to increase education funding by 100% (based on the current 50% of our budget going to defense, and 5% going to education)? I don't know. The real trick is not breaking everything in the process. If military spending were suddenly cut by 70%, it would probably be a disaster. Plus, there *are* unpopular/uninteresting things that must be funded.
The only way out of the problem is election reform. If we had some sort of instant runoff system, where you could rank your top n choices for office, then the quality of candidates would improve. Pressure your representatives to improve our electoral process!
Just don't tell them why you think it's a good idea - they'll want to keep the current system in order to protect their phony baloney jobs. Harrumph!
I just finished Metroid Zero a while back, and I gotta say that it's an awesome game. To anybody who enjoys the 2D Metroid games, I highly recommend it - especially if you played the original Metroid on the NES. Easily rivals Super Metroid, and the nostalgia factor really kicks in sometimes (remember the Kraid theme?).
He was ambidextrous in the original LOZ too - the "facing left" and "facing right" sprites were the same sprite reflected.
I wouldn't mind playing through Zelda II again, it's been a long time. That old gold-plated cartridge is probably still floating around my parents' garage, but I suppose it would be easier to just pick it up for my GBA.
Outlawing leg shots seems like a pretty dumb rule. Too easy? What, is jumping also against the rules?
I always thought outlawing head shots was just cruel. You get tagged in the head, your glasses cut your nose, and you have to stay in?;D
Dodgeball was always one of my favorite games for some reason. I guess because I always sucked at any kind of team coordination. It's one of those games that really gives you incentive to try, too - do you remember the feeling of panic when an opponent was aiming for you at close range? Or when you were the only person left on your side? I had a PE teacher in high school that thought it was funny to throw in a couple extra volleyballs once there were only a few "dodgers" left. Fun game.
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Of course, this is a first generation device - you can't expect it to allow you to run full tilt, jump sideways (or jump at all, probably), fall down, etc. It is a pretty cool experiment though, and well worth investigation in my opinion. My gut feeling is that this approach isn't going to go too far, but I'm sure we can learn something from it.
GWB mentions God a lot, but I think the reason people have consider him more of a zealot than others (Kerry, for example) is the fact that many of his policies seem to be based on religion rather than on a sound logical footing. You mentioned the "faith based initiatives," which I do have a problem with - not only because it allows government to sponsor religion, but because it allows the government to neglect our modern secular institutions.
Other places this crops up is through the legislation of morality - a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, for example. There's absolutely no basis for such an amendment other than religion.
The best evidence of the Bush/religion problem, though, is his lack of respect for science. Here we are in the 21st century, and the leader of our country isn't rational enough to base his policies on our most effective way of understanding the very universe in which we live? Insanity. The only thing more insane is that we don't call him on it.
Oh, and as far as being "scared" by religion - I'm certainly not personally scared by it, but I'm concerned about the future of humans if we can't get past such an irrational belief system. When you live in one world and pretend that you live in another, you're blind.
The only solution to this problem is electoral reform. Instant runoff voting or something. No, I'm not an expert on electoral systems and the tradeoffs between them, but experts do exist. I suggest that we, as a democracy, use the information gathered by these experts to refine our system a bit.
There was a great article comparing different systems in a recent Scientific American, but unfortunately it's not available electronically without paying for it. I read the print version and it looks like we have a lot of options - I suggest we try them out. The only reasonable place to start is at a local level, so if you're really concerned about the issue then push for change in your local government's voting system!
So, you want to make an artificial brain that you can have a conversation with. Do you think you'll have better luck aiming for that level of complexity on the first shot, or do you think it would be smarter to make a bug-level brain, understand how it works, then build your way up from there? If you ask me, it seems like the *only* way to do it. In fact, I'm guessing that artificial brains aren't going to be designed by anyone, but developed through artificial selection. Humans didn't just evolve out of nowhere - our brains followed a long and complicated path to get to where they are today.
Maybe a cockroach brain isn't advanced enough to make for an interesting opponent, but I don't think it would take much more. Super ant brains, maybe. The cool thing about moving from expert systems to true simulated "brains" is the emergent behavior. Characters can react to their environment in ways that today's characters can't. With a good physics engine, the character would be able to use its limbs to balance or otherwise control movement in a very believable way.
Now that would be a cool experiment - Quake3 bots vs giant cockroaches with rail guns on their heads! Of course I don't mean actual cockroach brains. I mean a brain with the same level of complexity as a cockroach brain, but evolved to have whatever instincts you require - like the ability to aim a rail gun.The best way to show this is with an example, like... give me a minute...
OK, say you take a random sample of people and ask them if they enjoy going to the dentist. It's totally a matter of opinion - there are some people out there who just loove going to the dentist. Most people hate it. It would not be 50/50.
There are a billion other examples, but it really only takes 1. :)
Seriously, though, AI got off to kind of a false start - everyone thought it was going to be easy for some reason. With what we know now, true AI is theoretically possible, but would require an insane amount of processing power to simulate human intelligence.
Why start at that level, though? One of the things that we seem to be figuring out is that human intelligence is not the right starting point. Why not start with insect "intelligence"? Then you move on to birds, etc. In fact, you could do some pretty cool stuff with a simple level of intelligence - I'll bet FPS enemies would be more interesting to fight against if they had simulated cockroaches brains, rather than being driven by a grab bag of tricks.
The poster is also assuming that the simulated entities would have to have true intelligence (and thus pass the turing test). This isn't really a requirement, either. Virtual reality doesn't have to be indistinguishable from ordinary reality. A simulated environment full of polygonal simpletons could be considered virtual reality - it just wouldn't be a very good approximation of "real" reality.
Back on topic, we're a very very very long way from virtual environments that are indistinguishable from reality. Graphics keep leaping ahead, and in the next decade or two video games will look "real" - on a screen. To be immersed in that environment and to interact with it in a way that seems real - that's not happening for a while. For one thing, it's going to require some sort of crazy brain tap interface.
* Legislating morality
* Invading the privacy of individuals
* Cutting funding for basic social services
* Loosening restrictions on air and water pollution
* Putting the interests of corporations before the interests of citizens
* Acting in opposition to the scientific community with *no* counter argument
I mean, I don't know about you, but these are things that I absolutely can't tolerate. Not only is the Bush administration guilty of all of the above, but they are totally brazen about it. They're saying to the American people, "Hey, watch this. And fuck off, I don't care what you think." They think they're above the law, and by now they practically are. Time to reign in your government, because it's being run by assholes that will fuck us all over for money. Yeah, most politicians will do that, but when you catch 'em you gotta call 'em on it. Time to get your pitchfork and head for Washington!
And quit shrugging. If you've got an argument, then share it. If someone has a better argument, don't blow it off - dispute it or accept it. This cannot be a "whatever" situation. This is serious shit, and people not paying attention is how we got into this mess (no, GWB does not make up the entire mess - he's just the immediate problem. We have systemic problems with our electoral system, corruption, corporate power, etc. that will not be fixed as long as we remain a nation of complacent and uneducated non-thinkers).
Silly to reply to a sig, but I think you have that backwards - terrorists would want you to vote for GWB.
There's nothing terrorists like more than for us to barge around like assholes and rile up a bunch of otherwise complacent folks. Not to mention the bonus of having Americans lose their freedoms to repressive security measures and enforced morality, and the total disregard of science and reason by the US government.
Not to say that no other administration would make these mistakes, but I can't imagine anyone else screwing our country to the degree that Bush/Cheney/etc. have. I'm sure that 10 out of 10 terrorists would agree - Bush in 2004 means holding back the advancement of peace, progress, and prosperity in the world. Now how do you think they would vote?
So does software weigh anything? I guess it's just a matter of how practical you want to be. It's like asking whether an idea has any mass - can the idea exist without a brain/note/hard drive to store it?
Obvoiusly, you have to take each hypothesis, *assume* that it's true, and then see if it makes any measurable predictions.
Just because there are other possibilities does not mean that this one should be ignored - it is plausible enought that somebody ought to play around with the idea and see what happens. That doesn't in any way preclude investigating other possibilities.
Maybe I'm remembering "Young Zaphod plays it Safe" wrong, but it seems like it was pretty funny. Wasn't that the one where he sat on the dead body, so he switched to the spare suit (mechanical suits that walked around on their own), and then proceeded to puke inside of it when he saw the mess on the back of the first suit?
Not up to the caliber of the books (certainly nothing can compare to the first HHGTTG book), but it was a decent little short story, in my opinion.
I think that's the only book I've ever done that with.
Regardless of the continuity issues, though, this Marvin doesn't look like what I've always pictured - I saw him as taller and metallic, with a more squarish head.
Maybe the cute plastic Marvin will work. I'll wait till I see the movie and then form an opinion. I serously doubt that I'll get the kind of enjoyment out of the movie that I got from the books!
Seriously, that's what would happen. I like the idea of having more of a say in what gets funded, but I'm not sure how we can make it work.
Right now the process is extremely indirect - I write a letter to my representative who then *maybe* takes my opinion into consideration when voting on something that indirectly affects whatever it is I'm concerned about. How could this process be improved? What is the most direct way for US citizens to cut military spending by 10% and use that money to increase education funding by 100% (based on the current 50% of our budget going to defense, and 5% going to education)? I don't know. The real trick is not breaking everything in the process. If military spending were suddenly cut by 70%, it would probably be a disaster. Plus, there *are* unpopular/uninteresting things that must be funded.
Just don't tell them why you think it's a good idea - they'll want to keep the current system in order to protect their phony baloney jobs. Harrumph!
I wouldn't mind playing through Zelda II again, it's been a long time. That old gold-plated cartridge is probably still floating around my parents' garage, but I suppose it would be easier to just pick it up for my GBA.
I always thought outlawing head shots was just cruel. You get tagged in the head, your glasses cut your nose, and you have to stay in? ;D
Dodgeball was always one of my favorite games for some reason. I guess because I always sucked at any kind of team coordination. It's one of those games that really gives you incentive to try, too - do you remember the feeling of panic when an opponent was aiming for you at close range? Or when you were the only person left on your side? I had a PE teacher in high school that thought it was funny to throw in a couple extra volleyballs once there were only a few "dodgers" left. Fun game.