tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post2505516428002213490..comments2024-01-25T13:46:11.967-06:00Comments on The Bronze Blog: Magic > MagickRyan Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750814560493466382noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-56505987106906256252009-06-13T03:53:36.831-05:002009-06-13T03:53:36.831-05:00I don't know but I've been told
Diedre'...<i>I don't know but I've been told<br />Diedre's got a network node.<br />Likes to press the on-off switch<br />dig that crazy Gaian witch.</i>James Knoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-30725277862560554542009-06-12T15:51:55.918-05:002009-06-12T15:51:55.918-05:00Oh, so you meant this one. ;-)Oh, so you meant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node_(physics)" rel="nofollow">this one</a>. ;-)Berlzebubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12781519370029903495noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-67092196014086997222009-06-12T15:23:09.639-05:002009-06-12T15:23:09.639-05:00Actually, I was just being slightly vague, forgett...Actually, I was just being slightly vague, forgetting which word was correct, and thinking of one that kind of works. What I meant was, a chaotic system will tend towards specific states: these are attractors. However, sometimes an attractor is actually several states that the system oscillates between.<br /><br />I don't think node is the word here, but I was thinking of, like... acoustics and such. Wave theory.MWchasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08195851187187771113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-22238159238299802672009-06-12T14:58:09.892-05:002009-06-12T14:58:09.892-05:00@ Debra:
I'm curious, not worried,
When this c...<b>@ Debra</b>:<br /><i>I'm curious, not worried,<br />When this country socializes health care, won't our records become government property?</i><br />Not without violating <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html" rel="nofollow">HIPAA</a>. Even then, that's just your medical history.<br /><br /><i>And wouldn't that add enormous amounts of info to the DOD World Sentient Simulation project.</i><br />How would that information add anything other than your medical history?<br /><br /><i>Does anyone know what this project looks like? Is it just data being submitted or its it 3D?</i><br />From what I read of it, it seems to give some sort of readout of scenarios (graphs, colored maps, etc.), but I can't find anything about 3D. There is some suggestion that they hope to be able to allow "play" in a simulation, but it's too vague to figure out if it would be virtual reality or at a keyboard.<br /><br />Actually, everything I've read about it is vague. There's talk of 'predicting', but nothing that talks about the accuracy. How far in the future has it predicted an occurence, how much information do they put into the program, how do they make sure the information is reliable...?<br /><br />The whole thing sounds like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims" rel="nofollow">Sims</a> experiment. Considering the Butterfly Effect, which MWchase alluded to earlier, at best it would be able to perform calculations on likely outcomes for a large populace, and even then the results would be limited to a finite period of time. Each time it started to depart from the current happenings, it would have to be reset and fresh data entered.<br /><br />It's a cool toy, but that's about it.<br /><br /><i>Also, what is a node?</i><br />I believe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node_(computer_science)" rel="nofollow">this</a> is what MWchase was referring to.Berlzebubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12781519370029903495noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-91727544582422170812009-06-12T14:12:56.553-05:002009-06-12T14:12:56.553-05:00The big problem with making accurate simulations o...The big problem with making accurate simulations of very chaotic systems, like humans, is that for any long-term accuracy, essentially you'd need a computer bigger than what you're simulating.<br /><br />And meanwhile, they have yet to create a realistic simulation of a single human.<br /><br />Even getting past all the laws-of-physics barriers to such a wide scale simulation, you can bet if info about such a project got leaked, there'd be riots.Bronze Doghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10938257296504189967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-25662657479576521552009-06-12T13:58:43.218-05:002009-06-12T13:58:43.218-05:00Well, aside from the fact that there'd be less...Well, aside from the fact that there'd be <i>less</i> reason for government insurance to try to get access to health records than traditional insurers do (since government coverage is supposed to be relatively unconditional), all the data in the world won't help without the power to process it, and I just don't think the current DoD budget (which is pretty big) can buy that much processing power.MWchasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08195851187187771113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-19049555628642462662009-06-12T13:46:43.863-05:002009-06-12T13:46:43.863-05:00I'm curious, not worried,
When this country so...I'm curious, not worried,<br />When this country socializes health care, won't our records become government property? And wouldn't that add enormous amounts of info to the DOD World Sentient Simulation project.<br />Does anyone know what this project looks like? <br />Is it just data being submitted or its it 3D?<br />Also, what is a node?debrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04062941456175687962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-23947632481662092122009-06-12T12:48:39.565-05:002009-06-12T12:48:39.565-05:00Checked Wikipedia... The scenario that Harsh Real...Checked Wikipedia... The scenario that Harsh Realm is about sounds ridiculous. How would a virtual person influence the real world like that? I mean, I get that you're worried about this, but the computational requirements are... They're insane.<br /><br />Not only would you need to simulate over six billion people to a high level of detail, you'd also need a real-time or better weather simulation (weather affects stuff like driving, where people walk, and therefore congestion, etc.) Researchers can still get publicity by trying to simulate part of a single brain. If you look at the budget-per-amount simulated on this, there's no way the DoD can afford this thing. If it could, AI would be a garage industry. I mean, I'm not accounting for economies of scale, but I'm also using their entire budget to guess the cost, which is clearly wrong. My point is, 3D printing hobbyism has gone further than AI research, and people are buying stuff that's nearly five times the cost I'm projecting.MWchasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08195851187187771113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-61666895982461554522009-06-12T00:34:17.824-05:002009-06-12T00:34:17.824-05:00Are any of you familiar with the comic book series...Are any of you familiar with the comic book series "Harsh Realm"? I net- flixed the TV series and watching it tonight.debrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04062941456175687962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-9857164018567921122009-06-09T09:49:03.769-05:002009-06-09T09:49:03.769-05:00Why would the D.O.D want this? If the data is so e...<i>Why would the D.O.D want this? If the data is so extremely limited and in flux, what purpose does the outcome serve. </i><br /><br />Well, the military have a policy of looking at <i>all</i> possibilities, not just the likely ones... Then, of course, there's the usual bureaucratic turf-wars stuff - departmental funding, who's got the most staff, whose got the shiniest toys... <br /><br />I've worked in both government and the private sector, and in both cases a lot of stuff goes on that's got <i>nothing</i> to do with the ostensible purpose of the enterprise, and <i>everything</i> to do with managerial empire-building. For example, I've once saw a company bring in contractors on 4-figure day rates (plus substantial expenses) because some manager didn't want to admit that his staff had nothing to do, because he was worried they'd get re-assigned to someone else's team, thus shrinking his empire. So I ended up getting charged out at something like $2000 a day on a four-week contract, whilst that organisation's permanent salaried staff sat around reading books. Funnily enough, that company (a major UK financial services company) is no longer in business. Since the military can more-or-less never go broke, they can indulge their fantasies as long as they like, with the taxpayer picking up the tab. Have you seen some of the crazy shit DARPA gets up to?<br /><br /><i>Dilbert</i> is a much more realistic portrayal of organisational reality than any conspiracy theory. As always, Hanlon's Razor applies: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Although I do subscribe to the later modification which notes that sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice...Duncnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-52009126432215483622009-06-09T09:46:08.278-05:002009-06-09T09:46:08.278-05:00Gaming would be one good application for the thing...Gaming would be one good application for the thing. It'd probably produce more realistic NPCs.<br /><br />Of course, MW's got the usual good point: There's no shortage of government officials willing to throw money at stupid things that'll be of no use to the government or the people.<br /><br />Just because the air force spent millions on teleportation doesn't mean they'll accomplish anything. The real world isn't like the Civilization series, where research never ends in failure, or all options have a result.Bronze Doghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10938257296504189967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-38784450203323870792009-06-09T08:20:29.448-05:002009-06-09T08:20:29.448-05:00It looks to me like the taxpayers here are display...It looks to me like the taxpayers here are displaying considerably more realistic attitudes than the people paying for things, with tax money. Near as I can tell, the people who write the checks figure this will work just fine. ... Somehow.MWchasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08195851187187771113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-58279652889248093062009-06-09T07:48:18.981-05:002009-06-09T07:48:18.981-05:00Why would the D.O.D want this? If the data is so e...Why would the D.O.D want this? If the data is so extremely limited and in flux, what purpose does the outcome serve. <br /> It seems like working on this project would be the ultimate job for a gamer, no?debrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04062941456175687962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-21093529065216421922009-06-08T17:32:24.199-05:002009-06-08T17:32:24.199-05:00And like I said... Every variable you come up wit...And like I said... Every variable you come up with is going to matter. This is a system that, in its ultimate form, will easily be dealing with trillions, if not more, degrees of freedom.<br /><br />Anyway, what it actually sounds to me is more like a crowd simulation, or something, with a high degree of verisimilitude.<br /><br />Alternatively, this is the problem of strong AI plus the problem of simulating the body, plus stuff like ballistics and other physics stuff, all times several billion.MWchasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08195851187187771113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-56035006145164864552009-06-08T16:35:35.411-05:002009-06-08T16:35:35.411-05:00The fundamental problem with something like the Se...The fundamental problem with something like the Sentient World Simulation program is that <i>people are weird</i>. I can't emphasise that enough - <i>really</i> weird. <i>If</i> there are universal laws of human behaviour (and I'm not convinced there are), we don't know what they are yet.Duncnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-87525679557161373052009-06-08T15:32:40.274-05:002009-06-08T15:32:40.274-05:00I agree re fantasy worlds. I think that's a bi...I agree re fantasy worlds. I think that's a big part of why science geeks tend to like fantasy: because it gives them new material to sink their pattern-recognition neurons into.<br /><br />Facebook has definitely gone horribly wrong in a law-of-unintended-consequences kinda way. It should have been fairly obvious from the get-go that people would start to see Friends[tm] as a way of scoring social points. It's very similar to the spam problem: people engage in both direct marketing and "friend-farming" in real life, too, but it's massively easier online. The result is that the signal/noise ratio drops like a guillotine.Lifewishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07133804300464048756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-27012579426385879542009-06-08T10:26:18.302-05:002009-06-08T10:26:18.302-05:00Who's knocking anything? There's a trope a...Who's knocking anything? <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife" rel="nofollow">There's a trope about it</a>. And an <a href="http://xkcd.com/214/" rel="nofollow">XKCD comic</a>. I'm pretty sure those are among the rules that come after #34.Tom Fosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13796424725228769265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-31441344568383798562009-06-08T09:48:51.245-05:002009-06-08T09:48:51.245-05:00The trick to dealing with embarrassment is to igno...The trick to dealing with embarrassment is to ignore most of your Friends™. Some people will actively try to gather as many Friends™ as possible, but the actual point is...<br /><br />No, scratch that. I'm just on FaceBook so I can grab my friends' personal information at a moment's notice. (That, and it gives me access to a sometimes-insanely-buggy chat setup. Which I access from Adium, so I don't have to deal with FaceBook's... everything that isn't an actual message in chat.)<br /><br />Back to magic, I have to echo the sentiment about the skill that sleight-of-hand takes. I've never tried, but the whole idea of something not being impressive because it's based on deception and misdirection... The act creates a conflict between what seemed to happen, and how the world works. The more skilled a magician is, the bigger the conflict they can create and sustain.<br /><br />And people are all about conflict.MWchasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08195851187187771113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-30987168549052245712009-06-08T09:39:54.856-05:002009-06-08T09:39:54.856-05:00Finally getting back online from my new apartment ...Finally getting back online from my new apartment with cable modem.<br /><br />I didn't know anything about that program or whatever before reading the responses, and I'm along the same general lines.<br /><br />Human beings are very chaotic systems (specifically meaning that human behavior is very sensitive to a large number of inputs).<br /><br />As for online personality quizzes, yes, that's incredibly incomplete data, on top of its shallowness, it's especially bad because the subjects know they're being tested. Some may try to bias results. Kind of like I did recently, indulging in a bit of guilty pleasure: Picked up Pokemon: Mystery Dungeon and biased the starting test to end up a Mudkip, since I hear people like mudkips.Bronze Doghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10938257296504189967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-66516235982825819982009-06-08T05:37:35.295-05:002009-06-08T05:37:35.295-05:00Don't knock TvTropes man!Don't knock TvTropes man!Valhar2000https://www.blogger.com/profile/05467019327257867276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-24621861390902578612009-06-08T00:11:13.134-05:002009-06-08T00:11:13.134-05:00Debra: The quizzes on Facebook are really no diffe...Debra: The quizzes on Facebook are really no different from the ones that have been circulating the Internets since people realized you could combine HTML forms and Buffy quotes. The only thing sinister is in how much time they waste, but Wikipedia and TV Tropes are far worse offenders at that.Tom Fosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13796424725228769265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-77129764015741166182009-06-07T23:55:30.054-05:002009-06-07T23:55:30.054-05:00Dark Jaguar:
I hear its amazing when the famous pu...Dark Jaguar:<br /><i>I hear its amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hari Kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!</i><br /><br />That's it buddy! My flying monkeys are on their way right now!James Knoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-61611230871758514872009-06-07T23:26:18.793-05:002009-06-07T23:26:18.793-05:00No Tom, i have never taken a quiz on YourTwitFace....No Tom, i have never taken a quiz on YourTwitFace. I was on Face for a month and was embarrassed by the posts that my old High School friends were posting, like "Philip is at the Dentist". So I closed my page.debrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04062941456175687962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-39098348063882157422009-06-07T11:57:45.197-05:002009-06-07T11:57:45.197-05:00Debra, have you ever taken a personality quiz on F...Debra, have you ever taken a personality quiz on Facebook? They aren't actual personality quizzes. Actual personality quizzes that psychologists use to find out actual things about your personality are developed using what we actually know about psychology and neuroscience, are tested and verified extensively, and are phrased in meticulously careful ways so that the questions actually measure what they're purported to measure. <br /><br />The quizzes on Facebook are developed by teens with universally poor spelling, using character traits defined in the broadest possible swaths and awkward questions drawn from quotations and actions to determine which Naruto character best matches your choices from eight nonrepresentative answer possibilities. <br /><br />If the government is using online quizzes to find out information about the populace, then the government is made up entirely of fourteen-year-olds of average intelligence with too much time on their hands.Tom Fosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13796424725228769265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13030925.post-43673365860369948152009-06-07T02:25:09.490-05:002009-06-07T02:25:09.490-05:00Okay in addendum, I don't bother with facebook...Okay in addendum, I don't bother with facebook. I don't have a mysapce page, and I don't share information with anyone. Further, those tests don't record anything as a general rule. It's a simple script. Even the embed codes aren't linking to any saved data, it just "fills out" the answers you gave all over again and puts that in your sig, though it's beyond me why anyone would put one of those on their page as a mark of pride or whatnot.<br /><br />Besides those things are bunk! The Final Fantasy quiz always says I'm Kefka! What was I SUPPOSED to do? NOT burn down that guy's house and poison his family?<br /><br />Debra: I hear its amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hari Kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!"Dark Jaguarnoreply@blogger.com