While Einstein contributed extensively to the foundations of Quantum Mechanics, he refused to accept the philosophical ramifications of the whole field. His objection is probably best summarized by his famous quote: "My God does not play with dice."
If you think about it, the thematic differences are pretty profound. General Relativity implies that we can understand, describe, measure, (and potentially control) everything in the universe. Quantum Mechanics implies that we can't.
What I find interesting is that the Western way of understanding the world is very much like General Relativity. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist/matter, which has led to a number of problems. Could some of our more systemic problems today be described metaphorically as stemming from our refusal to admit to this contradiction?
Showing posts with label The World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The World. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
BP's Options
I feel like talking about some current events right now, mostly because the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is such a big deal. Talking about it months from now may or may not make sense, so might as well do it now.
I'm going to come right out and say it: I think this is going to be bad. Really bad. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the oil gushing out right now ends up on the shores of Europe or Africa. BP's CEO made a rather silly statement early on to the effect of "this spill is ok, because the ocean is really really big." I don't have to explain the silliness of that, but I do think that fact matters: it's the reason this isn't going to threaten our survival on the Earth.
So far, every attempt to plug the leak has failed. It's been somewhere around 50 days since the explosion; at this point the specific number of days loses significance. It's pretty clear that they can't stop it with anything other than the slow solution, though we don't know if that'll work either. The amount of oil that has spilled out is a subject of debate over estimates, but by now it's easy to assume it's more than anything in U.S history, and likely will be the worst in world history before it's done.
There are two things I hope will come of this. One is that hopefully this will become a major impetus for alternative energy. That's the easy one. The other probably won't happen, but would be nice, and very interesting: BP needs to change. The way this is going, they are in the running to become... well... "reviled" is a good world. They probably have a chance at surviving this as a company, but I think they'd have a better chance if they change their entire paradigm of operation.
How? By becoming a "do-gooder" company. Currently, BP's purpose in the world is to supply people with petroleum. That mission needs to change to supplying the world with energy, and repairing the damage done. I'd propose that instead of fining them out of business, we should give them a directive that they spend a portion of their time money and manpower to clean up the gulf oil spill, until it is cleaned up.
I remember reading something about that sort of concept of business in the book What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis. The idea is that instead of doing everything you can as a business to extract as much money as possible from the world, you instead extract as little as you can and stay in business. This has two purposes: one, it makes you look better, and two, it makes it almost impossible for some new company to show up and undercut your prices. A company's purpose (morally, logically, philosophically) is to create value, not to extract value. Most oil companies have been in the business of extracting value. Now if BP is to survive, and perhaps even flourish, it needs to start over with a new philosophy of creating value, through clean energy and through cleaning the mess it has made. If it's smart and energetic about it, it can survive and come out of this disaster and in 5-10 years be better off than it was before.
Do I think any of that will happen? No, I avoid having high expectations. Hopes, yes. Expectations, no.
I'm going to come right out and say it: I think this is going to be bad. Really bad. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the oil gushing out right now ends up on the shores of Europe or Africa. BP's CEO made a rather silly statement early on to the effect of "this spill is ok, because the ocean is really really big." I don't have to explain the silliness of that, but I do think that fact matters: it's the reason this isn't going to threaten our survival on the Earth.
So far, every attempt to plug the leak has failed. It's been somewhere around 50 days since the explosion; at this point the specific number of days loses significance. It's pretty clear that they can't stop it with anything other than the slow solution, though we don't know if that'll work either. The amount of oil that has spilled out is a subject of debate over estimates, but by now it's easy to assume it's more than anything in U.S history, and likely will be the worst in world history before it's done.
There are two things I hope will come of this. One is that hopefully this will become a major impetus for alternative energy. That's the easy one. The other probably won't happen, but would be nice, and very interesting: BP needs to change. The way this is going, they are in the running to become... well... "reviled" is a good world. They probably have a chance at surviving this as a company, but I think they'd have a better chance if they change their entire paradigm of operation.
How? By becoming a "do-gooder" company. Currently, BP's purpose in the world is to supply people with petroleum. That mission needs to change to supplying the world with energy, and repairing the damage done. I'd propose that instead of fining them out of business, we should give them a directive that they spend a portion of their time money and manpower to clean up the gulf oil spill, until it is cleaned up.
I remember reading something about that sort of concept of business in the book What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis. The idea is that instead of doing everything you can as a business to extract as much money as possible from the world, you instead extract as little as you can and stay in business. This has two purposes: one, it makes you look better, and two, it makes it almost impossible for some new company to show up and undercut your prices. A company's purpose (morally, logically, philosophically) is to create value, not to extract value. Most oil companies have been in the business of extracting value. Now if BP is to survive, and perhaps even flourish, it needs to start over with a new philosophy of creating value, through clean energy and through cleaning the mess it has made. If it's smart and energetic about it, it can survive and come out of this disaster and in 5-10 years be better off than it was before.
Do I think any of that will happen? No, I avoid having high expectations. Hopes, yes. Expectations, no.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Reward vs. Punishment and Success vs. Failure
I'm going to start out with a lot of generalities here, and then work my way down to a more manageable level. By the end, I'm going to make some points about the games industry, especially MMO games.
First off, most of life is about success and failure. For most animals, and for early humans, it was survival vs extinction. Now for a lot of humanity, success and failure are defined more by profit and loss than life and death. As a side note, I'd say that's a basic and logical argument for us being at least slightly more civilized on an absolute scale than we used to be.
Obviously, we all want to succeed, and we don't want to fail. Ever. However, success and failure can not exist without each other. Our society - in a way - uses failure and loss to inform people that they are making bad decisions. And in order to get people to change their behavior, we punish them for failure, and reward them for success. However, when you take these methods to an extreme, or simply use them a lot, people react differently.
Some may stop trying anything, forgoing rewards in order to avoid punishments. In terms of games, this has shown up in recent years by players only wanting to play games where they are rewarded more and punished less, until you get some games that feel like one long sugar high; constant rewards, no punishments. Unfortunately for the players demanding for and playing those games, they feel less of a reward the more of it they get.
And that is the problem: players want only success and reward, and don't want failure and punishment.
The second topic I'd like to tie in is the little thing called a Skinner Box. Basically, it's a container housing a rat, that has various ways of rewarding and punishing said rat. Using it, Skinner could train various behaviors in rats.
Various parts of the world we live in can be described in ways linked to the Skinner Box. We all respond to stimuli, and when we learn that a certain behavior is linked to a certain reward or punishment, we either do that behavior more or less depending on the stimulus.
MMOs have been described as Skinner Boxes as well. In fact, they're probably a little better at that function than most people realized initially. To the point that a large portion of the player base has now been trained to have certain behaviors in games. For instance, most players are extremely risk-averse. If they don't have an obvious advantage, there's a good chance they won't do anything. They also tend to quit if they lose.
However, I think there's an opportunity here. We have these players who only want to succeed and be rewarded, and don't ever want to fail and be punished, and we have them playing in a Skinner Box that has been doing just that. Then we have a few people who came up with games that were Skinner Boxes that had more chances to fail and be punished. Obviously, that's not going to work if we want some more interesting action.
So how about disconnecting reward from success and punishment from failure? Expose players to a game that specifically rewards risk-taking, does have failure as a potential outcome, but doesn't simply punish that failure. I'm not saying "give a big new sword to anyone who dies". I'm saying "If someone just lost a battle, don't have them die, give them multiple interesting ways out."
Planescape: Torment is my idol here. Another game I've heard about that might go the more interesting route is Heavy Rain, though I don't know a lot about it beyond the standard description. In 90+% of games, MMO or otherwise, if you fail at a task, you die. Game over. Insert coin. Try again. Punishment. Many games over the years have worked to dilute this outcome, by making the game easier, or failure less costly. Some RPGs have some way of respawning with minimal penalty so that you don't have to reload from a saved game. But aside from the two titles above, they haven't made failure and death into a part of the narrative of the game itself.
When you fail at something in real life, what do you do? You might complain a little bit, say it wasn't your fault, blame somebody or something else, but at some point you have to do something different. Sometimes you can try again, other times you can't. When you can't, you simply move on. The story of life continues.
Say that forces are fighting for control of a town. One currently controls it while the other invades. If the invader is repulsed, he tries again. If he fails to much, he has to try something different, or retreat for a time to lick his wounds before trying again. Then, he succeeds, and captures the town. What about the defenders? Well, once it was clear they were losing, they made their own retreat. Where do they go? Into the countryside, where the invaders had previously been. The former defenders now become a guerrilla force, striking from a hideout, and gathering their strength and waiting for the opportunity to take back the town.
Basically, what we need is to start creating games that act as Skinner Boxes, but not to reinforce the obvious formulas. Instead, we need to teach players new behaviors, and new values. We need to teach them to value risk taking, not by removing punishments, but by making the standard failure-state lead to new and unseen opportunities.
Imagine fighting a monster in a cave, and if you beat it, you get some treasure, but if you fail to beat it, while fleeing for your lives, it knocks down a wall leading to a never-before-seen cavern leading to perhaps different creatures and treasure.
If you treat the player to enough unusual and inconsistent outcomes instead of "game over", you will begin to teach them to value risk and the potential for failure.
First off, most of life is about success and failure. For most animals, and for early humans, it was survival vs extinction. Now for a lot of humanity, success and failure are defined more by profit and loss than life and death. As a side note, I'd say that's a basic and logical argument for us being at least slightly more civilized on an absolute scale than we used to be.
Obviously, we all want to succeed, and we don't want to fail. Ever. However, success and failure can not exist without each other. Our society - in a way - uses failure and loss to inform people that they are making bad decisions. And in order to get people to change their behavior, we punish them for failure, and reward them for success. However, when you take these methods to an extreme, or simply use them a lot, people react differently.
Some may stop trying anything, forgoing rewards in order to avoid punishments. In terms of games, this has shown up in recent years by players only wanting to play games where they are rewarded more and punished less, until you get some games that feel like one long sugar high; constant rewards, no punishments. Unfortunately for the players demanding for and playing those games, they feel less of a reward the more of it they get.
And that is the problem: players want only success and reward, and don't want failure and punishment.
The second topic I'd like to tie in is the little thing called a Skinner Box. Basically, it's a container housing a rat, that has various ways of rewarding and punishing said rat. Using it, Skinner could train various behaviors in rats.
Various parts of the world we live in can be described in ways linked to the Skinner Box. We all respond to stimuli, and when we learn that a certain behavior is linked to a certain reward or punishment, we either do that behavior more or less depending on the stimulus.
MMOs have been described as Skinner Boxes as well. In fact, they're probably a little better at that function than most people realized initially. To the point that a large portion of the player base has now been trained to have certain behaviors in games. For instance, most players are extremely risk-averse. If they don't have an obvious advantage, there's a good chance they won't do anything. They also tend to quit if they lose.
However, I think there's an opportunity here. We have these players who only want to succeed and be rewarded, and don't ever want to fail and be punished, and we have them playing in a Skinner Box that has been doing just that. Then we have a few people who came up with games that were Skinner Boxes that had more chances to fail and be punished. Obviously, that's not going to work if we want some more interesting action.
So how about disconnecting reward from success and punishment from failure? Expose players to a game that specifically rewards risk-taking, does have failure as a potential outcome, but doesn't simply punish that failure. I'm not saying "give a big new sword to anyone who dies". I'm saying "If someone just lost a battle, don't have them die, give them multiple interesting ways out."
Planescape: Torment is my idol here. Another game I've heard about that might go the more interesting route is Heavy Rain, though I don't know a lot about it beyond the standard description. In 90+% of games, MMO or otherwise, if you fail at a task, you die. Game over. Insert coin. Try again. Punishment. Many games over the years have worked to dilute this outcome, by making the game easier, or failure less costly. Some RPGs have some way of respawning with minimal penalty so that you don't have to reload from a saved game. But aside from the two titles above, they haven't made failure and death into a part of the narrative of the game itself.
When you fail at something in real life, what do you do? You might complain a little bit, say it wasn't your fault, blame somebody or something else, but at some point you have to do something different. Sometimes you can try again, other times you can't. When you can't, you simply move on. The story of life continues.
Say that forces are fighting for control of a town. One currently controls it while the other invades. If the invader is repulsed, he tries again. If he fails to much, he has to try something different, or retreat for a time to lick his wounds before trying again. Then, he succeeds, and captures the town. What about the defenders? Well, once it was clear they were losing, they made their own retreat. Where do they go? Into the countryside, where the invaders had previously been. The former defenders now become a guerrilla force, striking from a hideout, and gathering their strength and waiting for the opportunity to take back the town.
Basically, what we need is to start creating games that act as Skinner Boxes, but not to reinforce the obvious formulas. Instead, we need to teach players new behaviors, and new values. We need to teach them to value risk taking, not by removing punishments, but by making the standard failure-state lead to new and unseen opportunities.
Imagine fighting a monster in a cave, and if you beat it, you get some treasure, but if you fail to beat it, while fleeing for your lives, it knocks down a wall leading to a never-before-seen cavern leading to perhaps different creatures and treasure.
If you treat the player to enough unusual and inconsistent outcomes instead of "game over", you will begin to teach them to value risk and the potential for failure.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Whatever happened to Demos?
I remember about... 10+ years ago, almost every game that came out had a demo you could play as well. What happened to that little policy? Nowadays it seems the only way to find out what a game is like is either to look at the ridiculously funded ads or to ask someone who's already played the game. And that doesn't solve the problem I just ran into.
Last fall my computer died. I lost a lot of files, and some money replacing it, but the important thing is that my new computer is substantially more powerful. However, it's not bleeding edge powerful, and has an integrated graphics card. So I'm finding myself able to play some games that I previously was unable to. But at the same time, I'm finding that it's very hard to determine what games I can play when I have a great processor and plenty of memory, but crap for a video card.
This is where the lack of game demos comes in. If I could obtain a demo of some of the games I'm interested in playing, I could be very sure that my computer can run them or not. Instead, right now I'm stuck trying to decide whether I want to risk $60 on a game that may end up being useless to me. So what options to I have available to me? Risk buying the game, which with my limited income right now is a bad idea. Or pirate the game and test it that way, which has obvious legal and moral issues, and frankly takes a long time these days due to the gigabyte size of recent games. Or just save my money for the day when I can afford a computer that can definitely play the games I want, which is the best decision both financially and academically. Plus, there are lots of games out there I've found that don't have tough system requirements, and are way cheaper to boot.
Listening in, game industry? You just lost a customer because you can't prove your games will work for him. =P
Last fall my computer died. I lost a lot of files, and some money replacing it, but the important thing is that my new computer is substantially more powerful. However, it's not bleeding edge powerful, and has an integrated graphics card. So I'm finding myself able to play some games that I previously was unable to. But at the same time, I'm finding that it's very hard to determine what games I can play when I have a great processor and plenty of memory, but crap for a video card.
This is where the lack of game demos comes in. If I could obtain a demo of some of the games I'm interested in playing, I could be very sure that my computer can run them or not. Instead, right now I'm stuck trying to decide whether I want to risk $60 on a game that may end up being useless to me. So what options to I have available to me? Risk buying the game, which with my limited income right now is a bad idea. Or pirate the game and test it that way, which has obvious legal and moral issues, and frankly takes a long time these days due to the gigabyte size of recent games. Or just save my money for the day when I can afford a computer that can definitely play the games I want, which is the best decision both financially and academically. Plus, there are lots of games out there I've found that don't have tough system requirements, and are way cheaper to boot.
Listening in, game industry? You just lost a customer because you can't prove your games will work for him. =P
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Procedure, Representation and Extendability
I realized something a couple days ago: the computer industry is built on "extendability". This is an oversimplification, but I find those are useful for talking about stuff. =)
First off, a commenter on Nils' blog posted a very interesting link to The Escapist about the future of gaming being procedural. The article also had a link to an interesting youtube video of a "pixel city" the author created using procedural algorithms. This got me started thinking, on a couple of fronts. Today, I figured I'd just stick to the philosophical part of it.
Computers are based on transistors; basically digital switches, though they can also be used for amplification purposes. Engineers started out linking those transistors together with other components to create various electrical devices, most of them analog. Then they used them to come up with logic gates, the basic unit used for building digital devices. They then linked those logic gates together to create various simple logic units; an example might be a simple circuit for adding two binary digits together. Then they linked those units together to create larger units, like a circuit that adds two large binary numbers together. Then they linked those together with other units to create basic processing units. Then they worked on making those processing units bigger (figuratively speaking), by putting more of those subunits together, and allowing them to make more calculations and more quickly, resulting in today's CPUs.
Putting CPUs into computers lead to it being the programmers' turn. Starting out with simple instructions, they created a machine language that was standardized for working with the computer devices and CPU at the lowest level. Then using that language, they created more complex languages, such as Basic. Then using some of the simple units of those languages, and machine language, they created more complex languages, eventually reaching today's level of compexity, which C++ is a good representative of. Then programmers used the basic units of C++, things like ints, floats, chars, and arrays, to create classes, such as strings, lists, stacks, queues, and trees. Using these various data types, they created more complex data types and functions. Now, using all those subroutines and data structures, programmers create complex programs that fulfill all sorts of functions. And they set up ways for different programs to communicate with each other, with their operating system, and with other computers across networks.
Every step along this entire description is a case of people taking smaller pieces and making something of them. Not only that, but then making it so that their creation can then be used as a piece in still larger creations. This is called extendability.
Ultimately, everything in computers is a representation of reality. And everything is extendable. No single person understands all the details of every step listed above. That's like knowing the job and duties of every single individual in the US. However, that segues nicely into a common function of computers: representing the real world. Everything from simple arithmetic, on up to simulations, info search (read: Google), and virtual worlds; they're all representations of the world in various forms.
However, the world itself is "extendable". Collections of atoms form molecules, which then form proteins, which then form organic cells. Those cells group together to form organs, which then work together to make our bodies. Individuals form friendships and families. They also form companies, and teams and organizations, and institutions. Institutions form the basis of state and provincial governments which combined make up countries and nations. Finally, those nations (try to) work together as the United Nations, while also trading across boundaries and forming extra-national institutions, and dealing with multi-national corporations.
No one understands all of this, and there's no way to represent it all. That's why any discipline that focuses on understanding the world around us works at focusing on only parts of the whole in order to simplify and make things understandable for an individual. However, we should always keep in mind that no matter what our understanding is, it is always partial, incomplete, and imperfect. In other words, the world is BIG, and there's no way to get it all - but we'll keep trying.
First off, a commenter on Nils' blog posted a very interesting link to The Escapist about the future of gaming being procedural. The article also had a link to an interesting youtube video of a "pixel city" the author created using procedural algorithms. This got me started thinking, on a couple of fronts. Today, I figured I'd just stick to the philosophical part of it.
Computers are based on transistors; basically digital switches, though they can also be used for amplification purposes. Engineers started out linking those transistors together with other components to create various electrical devices, most of them analog. Then they used them to come up with logic gates, the basic unit used for building digital devices. They then linked those logic gates together to create various simple logic units; an example might be a simple circuit for adding two binary digits together. Then they linked those units together to create larger units, like a circuit that adds two large binary numbers together. Then they linked those together with other units to create basic processing units. Then they worked on making those processing units bigger (figuratively speaking), by putting more of those subunits together, and allowing them to make more calculations and more quickly, resulting in today's CPUs.
Putting CPUs into computers lead to it being the programmers' turn. Starting out with simple instructions, they created a machine language that was standardized for working with the computer devices and CPU at the lowest level. Then using that language, they created more complex languages, such as Basic. Then using some of the simple units of those languages, and machine language, they created more complex languages, eventually reaching today's level of compexity, which C++ is a good representative of. Then programmers used the basic units of C++, things like ints, floats, chars, and arrays, to create classes, such as strings, lists, stacks, queues, and trees. Using these various data types, they created more complex data types and functions. Now, using all those subroutines and data structures, programmers create complex programs that fulfill all sorts of functions. And they set up ways for different programs to communicate with each other, with their operating system, and with other computers across networks.
Every step along this entire description is a case of people taking smaller pieces and making something of them. Not only that, but then making it so that their creation can then be used as a piece in still larger creations. This is called extendability.
Ultimately, everything in computers is a representation of reality. And everything is extendable. No single person understands all the details of every step listed above. That's like knowing the job and duties of every single individual in the US. However, that segues nicely into a common function of computers: representing the real world. Everything from simple arithmetic, on up to simulations, info search (read: Google), and virtual worlds; they're all representations of the world in various forms.
However, the world itself is "extendable". Collections of atoms form molecules, which then form proteins, which then form organic cells. Those cells group together to form organs, which then work together to make our bodies. Individuals form friendships and families. They also form companies, and teams and organizations, and institutions. Institutions form the basis of state and provincial governments which combined make up countries and nations. Finally, those nations (try to) work together as the United Nations, while also trading across boundaries and forming extra-national institutions, and dealing with multi-national corporations.
No one understands all of this, and there's no way to represent it all. That's why any discipline that focuses on understanding the world around us works at focusing on only parts of the whole in order to simplify and make things understandable for an individual. However, we should always keep in mind that no matter what our understanding is, it is always partial, incomplete, and imperfect. In other words, the world is BIG, and there's no way to get it all - but we'll keep trying.
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