Azarkon
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Posts posted by Azarkon
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The whole process is bogged down by the logistics of playing 300+ mods. According to what I read, the panel of judges, and in particular Kevin Bartlett, only played the top ~25 mods as voted by the community. This essentially means that both categories of the contest were "popularity" contests, to a large degree, and we'll never know whether some truly excellent mods were missed.
But how is this different from real life job recruiting, where connections can land you a job over dozens of more qualified people whose resumes sit in the corner of an assitant's office gathering spider webs? The meritocratic ideal is never followed to the letter, and that's just the way the world works.
I surmise that Bioware indeed never expected to receive so many contestant mods, and so set aside only a relatively short amount of time to reviewing them. Hence the necessity of basing perusal on community votes.
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Nope. This is capitalism.
But eliminating the exploitive business class and returning the profit to the workers was one of the central tenets of Communism. We are obviously dealing with commies here!
:D
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Getting rid of the middle men and turning profits back to the workers that produce them!? This is Communism, I say! GDC is RED!
:cool:
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I left that particular person in the church and came back for him. Quite tempting to have him tag along though since he's both a decent warrior and immortal.
That's what I intended to do as well, but it made no narrative sense. The point of going to Kvatch was to fetch said person to safey, and going dungeon crawling to open the gates of the castle while he's in the church (or in toll) just felt wrong, especially since none of the guards there even acknowledged his presence.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to not talk to him until you're done with the castle quest. But damn, you'd think that after hyping up the narrative around the guy they'd expect you to search for him first as opposed to trying to retake the city, especially since he was standing right there in the chapel.
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I think I'll like the scaling feature of the game when I actually get to play it. Hopefully it means that I can send my character where I like and where I think the narrative and his personality dictate he should go, rather than having to run around doing lots of silly, out-of-character sidequests just in order to level up sufficiently to fight the next big monster.
If I ever manage to get my computer back, I'll enjoy this game.
It's a huge immersion breaker because the narrative doesn't match up with the world. The problem with Oblivion is that it doesn't quite make sense, even if you started off following the narrative: Kvatch is apparently under siege by a legion of stunted scamps and daedric churls, which the guards make short work of at level 1. I happened to have followed the narrative at this point instead of going off to do side-quests (after all, saving the world is more important!), and it just felt out of place when the guard captain's all bravado and glee after defeating a few scamps.
In the end, I feel more *forced* to do silly, out of character sidequests in Oblivion than almost any other game I've played simply out of a sense of wanting to play the game as it's meant to be played (which apparently isn't the same as following the narrative). That is - wanting to see Oblivion in all its glory, engaging in epic battles, etc. instead of finishing the game at level 1 after defeating a bunch of stunted scamps. Here's a game where I'm actually *afraid* to continue with the main quest lest I end up not experiencing 90% of the actual game.
Oh and, whoever designed the main quest in Oblivion... There is a discontinuity smack in the middle of Kvatch when the captain ushers you on to recapture the castle but you're supposed to deliver a certain someone to a safe place. You'd think that the captain would understand that you've practically got the most important person in the empire with you, but no - he suggests that you attack the castle at once with that certain person in toll, despite the fact that he's the one person all of Oblivion is after. *shrug*
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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PS Searle's thought experiment suffers from the reductio ad absurdum: specifically a computer is just "a CPU and a look-up table": this is only true of computers and not the later neural networks, which are more closely aligned with the parallel processing model of the human mind.
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."
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I was serious about my question.
Would something we create, that gained it's own consciousness, able to act independently like a normal living breathing human, have a soul? Could it feel?
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?
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For some people this could probably prove a pretty good thing.. severly handicapped or mentally ill people (who needs love, but is generally on the less recieving end)! this of course leads to the moral question of it being ok to brush away this particular problem by giving these individuals artificial "soulmates"...
I don't believe however that it's a good idea for "normal" people to indulgence in deep love commitments with these kind of surrogates .. we are already going towards a society that customizes life in every detail! I still wanna be a romantic on this issue!
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.
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I am an equal opportunity lover. :cool:
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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.
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Much more fun (and challenging, I'd suspect) to break his hash encoding of the answers:
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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.
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).
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.
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I am typically of the mind that we tend to be more tech savvy, and finding games is pretty easy for us. It isn't really a hard thing to do...as long as you have an idea on what you are doing.
I think it's understated how effective "casual piracy" such as simply burning a CD after you buy a game and giving it to friends.
Though I do think the increased popularity of P2P software for music is making this distinction less obvious, as people become more familiar with sharing files over the internet.
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?
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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.
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Partial seperation of genius and popularity? Okay: but the point of genius is that it may take some time to be recognised from the milieu. But if it is genius, then it will be recognised. Popularity is not taken as a snapshot.
Recognized by academics, perhaps, but still not necessarily popular. High fantasy is more or less a popular culture movement.
Not sure what point you are making here; that (immediate) popularity is no measure of merit?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.
I can't see how "anyone" could have reproduced the immediate impact and legacy of Tolkien. The landscape would be significantly different, without himBut 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.
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Azarkon's comments create the question of whether Literary Merit even exists.
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.
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I don't know why you think that the details are not important to Tolkien's popularity. How can anyone say that: has there been a study done to explain the popularity, or is it just a bunch of speculation by certain individuals?
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.
Why ever not? That is an arbitrary distinction. Why are you so keen to isolate genius: trying to customise your criticism to Tolkien? And in what universe do you live where Mozart is not popular and still regarded and evermore so, a genius.
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).
No, but it sure as hell has a lot to do with HOW "high fantasy" would look if Tolkien had died in the war.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).
WTF? So you are positing that there is some sort of Jungian collective consciousness that ejaculates genius into a (randomly chosen) person, who is merely the embodiment of this phenomena? Is that it?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.
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1. People don't die at twenty without technology. Without knowledge, maybe, but not technology: farmers don't need super-growth fertilizers, they just give a higher yield.
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.
2. You hope that genetic manipulation wouldn't be banned. Some religio-political systems don't agree with basic medical practices: Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, don't permit blood transfusions.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.
China
in Way Off-Topic
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Not possible in both cases.
A US trade embargo would actually worsen the situation (where did it not worsen the situation? I've got a long list of countries where the US trade embargo simply led to more suffering down the line, rather than the intended outcome of promoting democracy), since it'd encourage a ultranationalist regime to take power in China - one that is mostly distinctly hostile to the US and the rest of the world and which will be in a position to launch a war of conquest ala Germany in WW2.
The US might survive the war, but I doubt any East Asian countries will.
The problem with the Chinese government remains one of corruption: the central government, insofar as it goes, seems to be on the right track of promoting development and capitalism. The Chinese President, Hu Jintao, even announced a five year plan for redistributing the country's increasing wealth to these exact impoverished peasants you see here. However, any such attempt is held back by the inherent corruption of the bureaucracy, where local "officials" act like gang bosses in keeping the people down and the money to themselves. A crackdown of such corruption is made especially difficult by the fact that they own the police - and have enough friends in the central government to prevent easy ousting.
One argument Western thinking likes to bat around is that China would be better off under a democracy. Frankly, I don't think so. The combination of democracy and capitalism has no way of preventing what you see here from happening - which is essentially the growing gap between rich and poor, and the exploiting of the poor by the rich (and the powerful, which in China is the same thing). In fact, the only revoultion I can see happening in China is not a democratic evolution but a return to the old Maoist form of Communism where 800 million peasants launch a Cultural Revolution against the intellectuals and capitalists in the country. Suffice to say, not a good idea.
So ultimately, I have no clue as to what might eventually happen in China. However, I do know this: third world countries will never attain the benefits of true democracy. India has not (the class/caste system remains the dominant social device, despite democracy, and continues to impoverish and exploit the majority of the country), Iran has not, and neither will China. Only by becoming a first world country, it seems, can democracy really succeed.