Azarkon

Life has nothing to do with it :D http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ I should mention that a paper generated by the above program managed to make it into an actual academic conference... Edit: More computer generated fun! http://uzful.org/generators_online/on_line_generators.php

Am a fan of Kath Soucie in Icewind Dale II & BG II, personally. A person's voice probably changes over time, though. But I imagine professional voice actors/actresses likely possess tone ranges that normal people don't.

Coming up with "new" stuff is easy: simply use a random number generator. It's coming up with useful new stuff in a short period of time that's hard

Scaling is like Communism... Great in theory, terrible in practice. If there weren't scaling, my enjoyment of Oblivion would probably double, simply because I'd feel a sense of accomplishment when I best a level 10 monster at level 5, and a nervous anxiety each time I venture into a dungeon for fear of what might lie behind the door. As it is, I have neither the opportunity of challenging monsters too strong for me nor the choice to spend a day training up and p0wn the world. In the end, it's about player freedom and immersion. For a longer explanation, just take a look at the TES boards.

One other advantage human brains have over computers is that neurons are highly parallel in that a huge number of them can be active at the same time, producing very complicated behavior due to the number of connections they have. OTOH, we're only starting to enter the age of parallelizable computers - up till now it's an instruction at a time execution, which cannot be compared to millions of neurons activating in synchrony.

It's not exactly an anachronism, because it begs the question of what constitutes as intelligence, which in turn determines our moral disposition towards using machines as "tools." (You're right in that it's not a scientific analysis - it remains a controversial question even to this day, I think) True, AI is unlikely to move in the direction of larger look-up tables, but even the most compliated of neural networks can still be reduced to a set of Turing complete logic gates, which are just 1's and 0's. From that perspective, intelligence (even human intelligence) may simply be the offspring of complexity, with little to do with the soul or lack thereof within its component parts - yet we are unwilling to make that distinction because to do so would mean that a giant look-up table, if it's ever made, is capable of intelligence and should be treated like a person. I think this is of great relevance to the topic, actually. To use, morally, an "unliving entity" as a sex toy on the basis of its behavior being "only programming" might be considered a horrendous act of dehumanization (and very likely will eventually happen) if it cannot be established what intelligence and self-awareness truly entails.

What I got out of the whole debate with Searle's model is, in fact, that look-up tables, if large enough, can't be distinguished from actual intelligence. Imagine a look-up table with an entry for each unit of time in a person's life crossed with each possible stimulus during that life: the resulting look-up table would be the equivalent of the person, even if it's not doing any real "thinking."

Do humans have souls? Well you, certainly, think that you are possessing of consciousness. But bracket that for a moment and think about everybody else: would it be that much of a stretch to believe that they were all intelligent (or not so intelligent) machines? Ever heard about Searle's Chinese Room problem? http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDi...hineseroom.html The ontological questions aside, whether we can exploit robots depends on the cost factor. As someone else already said: humans are cheap. Genetically engineered "humans" are even cheaper. Do you consider a genetically programmed organism that happens to look like a human a robot? What line do you draw, given that they might very well be the equivalent of mentally disabled people?

And ugly people. Anti-socials. Diseased. Impotents. Societal outcasts. Fetishists. Old people. Misanthropes. Collectors. People with overly high standards. People wanting a harem... The list goes on. But why project the issue onto the less fortunate? (and really, do you not think that these problems will be solved long before we perfect love androids?) The most obvious market for android lovers is right here in the heart of "normal" society: people who don't want the commitments, repsonsibilities, and/or sacrifices of real relationships. Don't think these people exist? Look at the teenage pregnancy and divorce rates. If android lovers were perfected in the morrow, human relationships will be in deep doo-doo.

I am an equal opportunity lover. :cool:

I voted genetics, but it's really a vote for the evolutionary process, which can be applied to silicon-based life forms just as easily as carbon-based ones. Trying to create truly intelligent AI via the traditional route of engineering leads you to the interesting epistemological question of whether it's even possible to understand something more intelligent than you. Since understanding is critical to engineering and we aren't even close to understanding our own intelligence, I'll go with the "we'll grow'em first" crowd.

Much more fun (and challenging, I'd suspect) to break his hash encoding of the answers: http://intelligence-test.net/part1/script2.js

What do you mean "if they take away casual piracy?" It's effectively already gone. Especially if you take the context that I was using it in (which I think you are since you quoted the text). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was thinking more in lines of movies and music, sorry. In terms of software, "casual piracy" nowadays seems to involve passing a CD and telling the person how to download the NoCD crack. My point is that there is only a certain degree of control you can have over what consumers do with their media before you start overstepping your bounds and starting losing sales. In terms of games, Starforce might be very close to that line.

Problem with that is that if you took away "casual piracy," the mass consumer will likely get pissed. Go after the hardcore pirates, and the public is behind you every step of the way. Go after the casual buyers, and the public might very well turn against you. It's a fine line that big business is just beginning to learn. Personally, Stardock's approach seems the most farsighted. We are entering a digital age where the Net is poised to become a household item just as television did. Continuous, free updates along with multiplayer services are extremely good at dissuading piracy. That's one of the reasons why the MMORPG model is so attractive: you can emulate a MMORPG, but never to the quality of service provided by the commercial product. Quality service can't be pirated - at least not easily - and therefore represents the best bulwak. Sadly, this is an issue for single player RPGs, which are expected to be complete out of the box. You can always add new units and maps and features to strategy and FPS games, but what can you do in the case of CRPGs where the first run-through is all that really matters?

Things were simpler when the leaders of a country were assassinated, tortured, and/or butchered alongside their families upon being overthrown. In some sense, that still seems to be the best solution, as the mere presence of fallen demagogues appears to bring about instability. The conquerors of old were wise to remove them at their roots.

Recognized by academics, perhaps, but still not necessarily popular. High fantasy is more or less a popular culture movement. Yes, and also that popularity is determined by the zeitgeist. Artists do not create the cultural sensibilities of an age - we (the readers) discover, through their works, what was already there but never coherently presented. Just because the discovery itself is the act of genius as opposed to creation from a vacuum does not invalidate the merits of genius. Note that I'm not arguing anything about the creative potentials of the imagination, only that you cannot create popular desire. There is a reason why fantasy and SF did not come into popularity until the 20th century, and it has both to do with the lack of incentive from the authors' point of view and the lack of interest from the readers'. It has little to do, by comparison, with whether Tolkien lived in the Middle Ages. But that's a kind of deadend argument, isn't it? We can't predict what would have happened without Tolkien... Thus, my argument has always been a philosophical one: if you assume that Tolkien created the landscape of modern fantasy, then you assume that a single person can have such influence that history bends according to his whims. Yet imagine that Tolkien, instead of writing LOTR, had written post-apocalyptic SF - would history, then, accord to post-apoc literature the same treatment as modern fantasy? I am most doubtful.

Far from it. That's the basis of meta's contention with me, but it's not what I implied. Rather, I insisted on a partial separation of genius and popularity - that Tolkien's legacy in the form of high fantasy was not particularly exceptional (therefore, any name would do), but that it is also independent of his literary merit. Legacy in the form of influence, it must be understood, depends on the reception of a work either during or after its publication and therefore necessarily depends on the intersection of the zeitgeist and the author's sensibilities. Many now-renowned works of art were "rediscovered" in the sense that their recognition came long after the initial reception or, in many cases, the author's lifetime. This observation implies that the process of canonization and popularization depends on historical changes and reevaluations. Yet it does not mean that the work and the author have no merit on their own. Lord of the Rings was and is a great endeavor of world creation, and while this factor no doubt led to its popularity, its popularity alone does not guarantee its artistic merit, nor vice versa. Therefore it becomes possible to argue about Tolkien's expendable position in the rise of modern fantasy without implicating that he was a mediocre artist or that his "merits" rise only from fortunes of circumstance. I am much more akin to think of Tolkien as a catalyst that both hastened and added to the modern fantasy movement than as the "father" of modern fantasy without whom we would be playing in a completely different fantasy landscape.

The details may or may not be important to his popularity. What I *know* they're unimportant to, though, is his *legacy* in the form of high fantasy. Tolkien spent pages upon pages detailing every single aspect of his various cultures, and yet every fantasy world that's been created post-Tolkien reinvents the wheel in a different fashion. Are D&D elves Tolkien elves? They share surface physical and "skill-based" similarities - straight from Legolas's skill with the bow and the elvish "grace" and infravision. But Tolkien's High Elves were not snobbish Englishmen or druidic hippies! Are modern fantasy orcs related to Tolkien's orcs? Certainly - but Tolkien's orcs were "fallen" elves that looked more like ghouls than the green-skinned, stupid Warhammer orcs of this day and age. And of course, the wizards? Tolkien's wizards are akin to angels. They're not physically decrepit but mentally acute mortals that conveniently mirrored the geek's conception of himself. Balrogs are fallen angels, not balor demons from another dimension. The list goes on. Here's a question: why does it matter whether Tolkien was a genius or not? You keep throwing out the term as if it related to the discussion of his influence on high fantasy, and cite musical geniuses as your examples. But genius is neither an indicator of popularity among the masses (ie Joyce, Melville) nor vice versa (ie Britney Spears). And how exactly would it look? What's the source of your conviction other than doubting the other side? I believe that high fantasy would have undertaken the same motifs and world views with or without Tolkien because of its symbolic relationship with the zeitgeist of our time. The Western thirst for a "struggle" between Good vs. Evil dates all the way back to Christianity and was bound to manifest in a mythological "fantasy" during a time when religion was being phased out of society. It makes perfect sense that Tolkien, a British author, would be the one to write LOTR and not an American - because Britain's faith in Christianity was shaken deeper than the US's and had a much richer tradition of myths and legends. If not for Tolkien, another British author - perhaps Lewis - would have attempted the same and the product, though not exactly matching Tolkien's version, would have been similar enough to serve the same functions. Why? Because the underlying desire high fantasy attempts to assuage is fundamental to Western society. The rise of SF and popular fantasy at the turn of the century is a well studied phenomenon in modern criticism. I suggest you pick up some books on the matter - the underlying relationship between the two genres is exactly the same nexus of changing societal values manifest in two opposed, but mutually dependent world views (namely, a secular belief in progress vs. a fantastical nostalgia towards the bygone past). The recognition of their genius, or rather their popularity to be more exact (for many are the geniuses that are not acknowledged), is based on the zeitgeist. History creates (artistic/literary) geniuses, not the other way around. Of course, I'm being a bit loose with my definitions: here, "genius" indicates a person of great *impact*, rather than a person of great talent. This is a necessary compromise of the definition, for we'd not know people of great talent unless they also had great impact.

Fine, fine. Semantics and all that jargon. We're still dealing with the same thing here, because we already depend on technology, unless the argument is to reverse all the 'progress' we've made so far and return to primitivism. Sure, but those organizations are just as likely to ban the practice outlined by the OP and, consequently, be potentially weeded out of the gene pool.

I thought that was a given? Seeing that the alternative - dying on average at ~20-25 - is not likely desirable, I fail to see how: Should lead to any new causes for concern. Genetic manipulation is not likely to be prohibited in the case of correcting genetic defects such as that might result from the OP's concerns.

Hey, classical music is still alive. Just because we haven't had a 'popular'' composer since Shostakovich died doesn't mean the genre went belly up... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My point exactly.

Tolkien did not purposefully tap into the demand. He indicated so himself afterwards by estranging himself from the "popular" fantasy movement, which he labeled as the cult-like dredge that inevitably latches onto greatness. What you fail to understand, however, is that Tolkien's detailed studies in appendices had little to do with his popularity and influences on high fantasy. As the good professor himself observed, people were not so much interested in depth as they were interested in surface archetypes. Hobbits, elves, wizards, orcs, and the struggle between good and evil (often characterized as West vs. East), nature and industry, all set against a medieval "epic" time - these were Tolkien's so-called "legacies" on high fantasy. The rest wasn't popular, and therefore are no more than footnotes in history. As far as my credentials with LOTR goes, I would refrain from making impossible suppositions, metaldigital.

Tolkien's tastes and biases were not so much the tastes and biases of an individual as they were of a society. If Tolkien was eccentric and exceptional, then his ideas would not have been widely embraced. Popularity, and thus legacy as a cultural icon, only comes from a writer's ability to match the sensibilities of a nation or, at the very least, the cultural elite. His success, therefore, came about for the same reason Harry Potter did - because he captured the imagination of the masses. Principle to any discussion of popularity must be the following premises: that the artist does not "invent" the market. Desire is intrinsic, sensibility predetermined by culture and circumstance. The only caveat lies in an author's (or a director's, or a musician's) ability to satsify such desires with his or her craft. If Tolkien had not played his pipe to the rhythm of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, embraced its mythical and religious traditions, and sounded the notes of Western destiny, he would not have been popular, and "high fantasy" would have been created by another who did exactly that. My argument has always been thus: without Tolkien, the artifice of "high fantasy" might have been different (and it likely would have arisen in popularity later), but its core principles, sources, and themes would have remained the same. I have no reason to believe that if it were not for Tolkien, high fantasy would be dethroned by dark fantasy, low fantasy, SF, eastern wuxia, or whatever else you might come up with. LoTR is too archetypal, its roots too deeply mired in Christianity and the Manichean world view of the West, for that to have happened. A single man cannot change the direction of the wind. But he can set his sails and ride to history's platonic shores. He can be the first to lay claim to the uncharted land. Yet never make the mistake of assuming that he's the only sailor of the throng, the only captain who ever distantly gazed. As long as the wind blows, men will set their sails and engrave their legacies. History does not care: any name will do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_subgenres

I assume you mean "high fantasy," since fantasy (ie sword and sorcery: Conan) existed before Tolkien. Yes, high fantasy might've looked different, but it still would have existed, and it would still have demonstrated the same formal properties of high fantasy, and likely utilized the same set of myths. You're free to debate that, of course, but offer something more substantive.