It's a matter of time

Though you'd best be careful; in the long-run, we are all dead.

Twelve and counting. This has been a productive Festival, and a great month. Freakouts were far fewer in frequency than forecasted.

Except for that.

Re: The 'dota' thing: Suffice to say, I have replies to all your misgivings and objections, but be satisfied with this for now:

"Don't hate the playa, hate the game."

I think that more than satisfies many of the comments on the previous post, in many more ways than one.

Also, this is terrifyingly bad:

Complex multivariate analysis

...using Dota

No, wait, don't go away i'm being serious.

Lately, i've been freaking out (and listening to that Jaydiohead mashup thing, which is really quite good) about evaluative procedures and judgments. The DoTA aspect of this is just another notch in the wall, so to speak, though it relates more specifically to issues of measurability and baseline testing.

First: A little (humourous) context. The spark that lit the tender was the one and only, the incomparable DFW. And more specifically, the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address, which you should read, if you haven't already. Really, he says it better than I can:

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

(if you're confused, there's are a cute parable involved, which he sets out in the beginning.) See, was it wrong of me to take the interpretation of this as, 'Yes of course, that's right. Consider all the variables, double-check your evidence, engage in some hardcore Bayesian inference and examination...right? That's what he meant when he said those things right?'*

Maybe. I doubt it, but I wouldn't put it past him. Either way, it inspired what it did, and I started to thinking about more general methods of evaluation. More grist for the mill: The article in the NYT that got press from one of the more populated areas of the sane interwebs, including a writeup by the Situationist.

What I was thinking with the NYT article was this: it's true, we do self-handicap all the time! But that was obvious. What I'm thinking of is how to obtain an honest (loaded I know) or atleast, empirically valid method of determining intelligence, aptitude or whatever else. If self-handicapping pushes your scores down, and self-affirmation drives scores up, is it possible to design an evaluative procedure that will give you an honest indication of your scores, one that isn't 'tainted' by self-handicapping or self-affirmation?

I don't know. It could well be that it doesn't matter.

Anyway, back to the point(ish). As i've said before many times, one of the reasons I find DoTA to be such a compelling game to play is that it's such a complex edifice. Even within the relatively narrow goals of winning a game, there's so many factors to consider! Hero choice, item choice, item builds, the skills of the various players, hero synergy, game modes and on and on and on. And lest you think that that seems like a short list, when there are 93 heroes (all of which possess a minimum of 4 unique abilities), with literally over a thousand items, with (usually) 5 players a side, 15+ game modes...you can see where i'm going here. This thing has an absolutely MASSIVE number of variables.

Let's try to answer that example question which I hinted at; What are the factors most responsible for winning the game? You can quickly intuit some responses, but the more interesting, more worthwhile, more correct thing to do would be to measure what factors are crucial in determining who wins, because this is how science works.

But, as i've mentioned, how the fuck do you measure such nebulous factors such as player ability? What is your control? What are your baseline measurements? Simply put, how the fuck do you maintain ceteris paribus?

This issue gets even murkier if you consider questions of game balance. Say you decide to increase one specific heroes damage dealing spell by 100. How do you find out how this affects the overall gameplay? How do you figure out the the untold number of synergistic and antagonistic effects with items and other heroes and game modes and so on?

Obviously, this matter is not entirely new. There exist a whole field of problems like these within the social sciences, known as "wicked problems". To quote teh wiki:

"Wicked problem" is a phrase used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.

See the similarities? Continuing:

Rittel and Webber's (1973) formulation of wicked problems^[2] specifies ten characteristics, perhaps best considered in the context of social policy planning. According to Ritchey (2007)^[3], the ten characteristics are:

1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
10. The planner has no right to be wrong (planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).

Look me in the eye and say DoTA doesn't satisfy that.

Classically, a whole range of societal issues are traditionally considered wicked problems. Crime, poverty, healthcare, taxes, (un)employment**, climate change, abortion***, you name a societal hot-button issue, it's probably a wicked problem.

Why this is interesting in the realm of gaming is that wicked problems are often contrasted with 'tame', or 'simple problems'. Simple problems are those often found in mathematices and puzzle solving; a classic example would be a sudoku puzzle. It's a closed, definitionally-complete system; it has clear, explicit rules, which can be applied in an algorithmic manner to complete the problem. Simple problems are such that you can increase the scale of the system without necessarily increasing the complexity of the system; fundamentally, a 81 x 81 sudoku is no different in solution methods than a 9 x 9 one. You can have even simple problems that have enormous algorithmic complexity that are still closed; for all its complexity, chess is still a 'simple' problem.

The parallels with contemporary gaming should be obvious. Gaming, for all its lush, multi-faceted verisimilitude, is supposed to be a closed system. Despite the complexity of the algorithms used today, they're still (supposedly) algorithms, and those things have to end somewhere...right? One of the reasons I love gaming so much is that effectively, in the end they're 'just' complex puzzles, albeit with nicer graphics and more interesting gameplay. In the end, every game can be gamed; that is to say, you can obtain and follow a series of rules and steps that will allow you to achieve a win condition.

DoTA seems to defy that categorisation. To try to figure out why you won or lost, or even how to win or lose, seems to be, at best, intractable; at worst, impossible. In summary: DoTA is the game that defies being gamed. DoTA is the wicked problem, borne out of simple dynamics.

I don't actually know whether I adequately elucidated the questions I was having with evaluative procedures.**** I hope one of the major points got across: that a traditionally solvable, procedurally-evaluative field has now been transformed. It starts making me question a whole lotta other issues, I guess.

There. That was my rambly, multi-disciplinary answer to why I play DoTA. Now leave me alone, I gotta go do more...'research' DoTA.

*And you people wonder why I am no longer romantic.

**Tangential sidenote: Employment is an interesting subject to study within the context of psychology of schools of economic thought. It seems to be that to idealogues and bad economists, employment is basically seen a simple problem, solvable within (idealised) market conditions. The application of the supply-and-demand formula is apparently all that is needed; lower wages, and employers hire more. Raise wages, and employment falls. The Austrian School is probably the one most susceptible to this idea; I was wondering if the Chicago School would do it, but they seem to have too much sense to make such a mistake. It'd be interesting to see if there are other traditional economic problems that suffer from this perception issue.

***In fact, it was my research into the issue of abortion that I first ran into the idea of wicked problems.

****Actually, I think this is standard procedure for me. Whenever I don't know the answer or find it difficult to answer the question, I just ramble off into all these interesting tangents and sideshows and hope you get lost in the damn house of mirrors. And if you're a marker, hopefully the house that gives me high marks.

I have no idea why I just did this post. I think part of the motivation comes from some kind of latent guilt i'm feeling, now that people are going into honours or going overseas to learn or going to Melbourne for a friggin intensive Chemistry Olympiad training session. This is my one productive thing over the summer.

Actually, that's probably another post I should do sometime: How is it that nowadays, I have no idea what motivates me to do anything anymore. I used to know, or atleast I used to think I knew; and I even used to think I knew quite well what my motivations were. But now, these days, I barely have any idea why I do what I do. Crazy. But that'll be for another post, for another day...

I couldn't pass this up

It's just too funny!

See, back in the day (and still true to some extent in the presentish sense), Mr. Edelstein was my favourite movie reviewer. He possesses a keenness of wit and vigour; that indie movie sense that saw through the semi-shallowness of "I-don't-drink-fucking-Merlot" Sideways and gave Eternal Sunshine best movie of the year. Most importantly, he maintains this idiosyncratic emotionality that is repeatedly endearing. Witness his reaction to the watching of the first Funny Games:

I watched to the end, removed the DVD from the player, and snapped it over my knee. Then, with a pair of scissors, I cut the halves into quarters, walked the pieces to the kitchen garbage can, and shoved them under the debris of the previous night’s dinner.

Anyway. The point of all this is merely to point out that the remake of Funny Games has been garnering some attention as one of the worse movies of the (last) year. The critical reviews are eminently amusing, thought I should probably warn you that Hoberman is being a supercilious prick. Again.

One other thing I have found: Jaydiohead?! (Interrobang go!?)

Dirt Off Your Android - Jaydiohead

Sexual or otherwise

Union forever motherfuckers

Bad, dreamy juju. I went fishing, and the cold and the beer didn't keep me there. I like the sitting around drinking beer thing than the casting out and catching, stabbing, scaling, gutting a fish thing. I gots me a fish. Too small though. The other fish we caught though was delicious. Really, really good, soft and tender with that sweet saltwater tang. The crabs were...unusual, to say the least.

This isn't how I want to be writing, and strictly speaking, not what I want to be writing about. But this heavy fuckin juju is weirdin' shit up. Skip the forbearance and skip the forboding, and fucking definitely skip this short choppy descriptive sentence bullsheet. It's certainly an unusual way to try and cut out a path of neutrality through this thicket. Which is really a strange way of looking at things in the first place.

I've been reading Don Delillo! I'll write a solid review when I finish his shiznit, which suffice to say, seems to be pranksterish to the extreme. There's just so many ways to analyse his shit, it just becomes static, white noise. He's smart, somewhere.

A sobering reminder

When you wake up on Christmas Day, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looking forward to all the wonderful scooters and knitwear and shiny gadgetry Santa the home invader has deposited under whatever kind of arboreal arrangement you've got going, remember this:


Somewhat unrelated, that sentence above is quite likely by far the longest sentence I have ever done.
Mix and match:
1) Happy/Merry/Sad
2) Multiple/singular/Dawkinsian
3) Denominational/dimensional
4) Celebratory/suicidal/awkwardly familial
5) Christmas/Holidays/'thang'.

Technocratic linguistics

We should all learn Esperanto dammit!

From here, as always:

I'm a native German and English speaker myself. Sitting in both boats as I do, I can understand the sensitivities involved with favoring one language over another. But I find that English is really easily the best language for international communications.

English has several features that I think make it a better language. It's semantically open, unlike French. Adding new words to English is very simple. We can even create new verbs and nouns from the last names of people (ie. bork). It adapts existing foreign words easily. I'm often able to use "uber" and "verboten" in English without getting at looks.

English doesn't require special accent marks in order define meanings. English has simplified definite and indefinite articles. Compared to German, "a", "an", and "the" are much simpler. English features no real gender. No worries about matching verbs, nouns, and articles; or even changing the meaning of a word. For possession, the Saxon genitive is efficient and simple. It accomplishes more in less space to say "John's car" rather than "the car of John". English also features simplified demonstratives, and very simplified declension of nouns. None of the der, den, dem, des conflicts that plague German and make it difficult for non-German speakers to learn. In English the placement of adjectives doesn't affect its meaning. In French you have scenarios like "un homme grand" (a great man) and "un grand homme" (a tall man). In English, you rely on the context of the adjective. Finally, English has a more direct simplified sentence structure.

of course, English has its downside, thinking contextually in English to find meaning vs thinking literally in French can create some confusions, I'm sure.

Sure, some people advocate English everywhere just because they're linguistically lazy and somewhat arrogant, but truly, there legitimate reasons for stressing English as an international language of commerce vs say, Irish where it can take an "aoi" to stress a "long i" sound, or Chinese were choosing a written form is as much a decision about your politics as it is about efficiency (simplified used in China vs traditional used in Taiwan).

Obviously, there are points worth debating here. I'm willing to let certain features go; the differentiation of 'a' and 'an' isn't strictly necessary in my books. It can be retained for aesthetic purposes if you wish, as could a whole host of other linguistic features.

One day, we will all speak in binary or hex, and it will be good.

Matter of time I suppose

Begun has, the Photoshopping

A distinguished pantheon

OKAY

Nickels in front of fucking bulldozers

You've all seen this by now, I sincerely hope.

BUT HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT. Selling crack-laced baby formula will make you less money than this scheme, and is (probably) illegal in many many countries.

But who the hell invented picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer...from consumers?!?

Too much awesome?

Perhaps.

This is seriously good. Fans of Crooked Timber should have already seen it, but for the rest of you, this is quite funky. What is that music?

I think we have a winner!

Another snarky statesman!

The Coolidge effect:

The term comes from an old joke, according to which President Calvin Coolidge and his wife allegedly visited a poultry farm. During the tour, Mrs. Coolidge inquired of the farmer how his farm managed to produce so many fertile eggs with such a small number of roosters. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters performed their duty dozens of times each day.

"Perhaps you could point that out to Mr. Coolidge," pointedly replied the First Lady.

The President, overhearing the remark, asked the farmer, "Does each rooster service the same hen each time?"

"No," replied the farmer, "there are many hens for each rooster."

"Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge," replied the President.

Goddamn it

How many times does this need to be said

This. is. Bullshit. I sincerely hope that this is appealed, and smarter heads prevail.

What is wrong with people? Can we stop legislating against thoughtcrimes already? I don't care how many impure thoughts you have, and I don't care how they're represented. Until you come back to me with some goddamn actual evidence of harm committed, I don't give a shit how perverted you are. And don't even try the enabling argument.

First the filter, now this. So much for judicial review...

A question we all need the answer to

So, umm....yes?



I especially admire their incredible jaw muscles. Originally from this.

Cute little placeholders

Dotting coffee tables of idleness

This has to stop. Today. Forever.

Neat

Trying to put it all together

Jonathan Haidt - 5 Moral Values Behind Political Choice

It's a nifty video. Watch it.

A couple of things I gathered: 'The for or against disease' How to interpret/apply this in political (social, intellectual) life? I think it's the idea of compromise. Though even that feels like i've compromised on the meaning of the phrase.

See, I agree that we should try and understand our opponents and examine our biases and all that jazz, but it seems to me that conservative 'traits' are such that they are inherently against that sort of thinking. Libruls, atleast to me, are at the very least not entirely against listening to their opponents and questioning their biases and so on; they have 'traits' that actually encourage those things. The very 'traits' that mark conservatism (order, stability, deference, respect) seem to work against conservatives in questioning their biases, listening to their opponents and so on.

This is kinda sorta what I meant when I tried to figure out a method of distinguishing between geuninely trying to reach mutual understanding ('communicative action' or some variant, in the Habermasian jargon) versus communication in order to push a view or obtain some goal ('strategic action' in the Habermas, or 'dogmatic thinking' to borrow a term from Sam).

It seems that, within this no doubt simplified structure, liberals are much more likely than conservatives in aiming for and obtaining communicative action.

The way dialogue should be

The way my entire goddamn life should be

This really happened.

On trying to get rid of a dusty pile of Richard Dean Anderson (that's "MacGyver" to you) figures from SG-1:

ASSISTANT: I wonder if I am adequately explaining the freeness of him.
CHRIS: I really think I’ve got it.
ASSISTANT: He could go home with you right now.
CHRIS: Uh huh.
ASSISTANT: I could just, you know, pop him in your bag.
CHRIS: Or you could not.
ASSISTANT: He’s poppable.
CHRIS: Palpable, even.
ASSISTANT: Oh, touche!
CHRIS: Thanks.
ASSISTANT: So you’ll take one!
CHRIS: I didn’t say that.
ASSISTANT: Oh, come on.
CHRIS: What guarantee do I have that it won’t come to life and try to murder me in my sleep?
ASSISTANT: What?
CHRIS: I would like some sort of guarantee that this is not a killer doll. Like Chucky.
ASSISTANT: It’s not Chucky.
CHRIS: No, it doesn’t look like Chucky. But it could, you know, sympathize. With the killing.
ASSISTANT: But MacGyver is a good guy!
OTHER ASSISTANT: It’s Captain -
ASSISTANT: Nobody cares.
CHRIS: So was MacBeth. Then he murdered the King of Scotland.
ASSISTANT: Good point.
CHRIS: I thought so.
ASSISTANT: But this figure wasn’t made in Scotland! HA!
CHRIS: Where was it made?

It gets better. And there's more.

Slooooooow

as anti-gravity snails

I like this story. Jonathan Lethem is a pretty cool guy, and I am wayyyyy behind the times. What to do.

It's official

And I believe I can call this:

Boston Legal has jumped the shark. Or nuked the fridge, if you prefer it that way.

What makes me say this: the teaser sequence for the eight episode of season five. When you resort to slo-mo action sequences, badly choreographed "fight" scenes with funny noises, you have lost.

The show was increasingly looking this way anyway; it's a formulaic show, and this was bound to happen. It's a heady mix of legal procedural utopianism with high-quality, high-caliber actors, even if I can't stand some of them; James Spader, shithead with that hypnotically powerful voice; Shatner, oh Shatner, with your despicably fantastic acting; and that royal vixen and diva that is Candice Bergen, who is still so damn hot at her age. It so happens that this formula David E. Kelley concocted was one with remarkable staying power.

Oh christ, an addendum: This episode continues ascend the hill of mediocrity; hot-button issues and excessive self-reflexivity does not bode well for your future.

Seriously

Is there anything Bruce Lee can't do? In this, he sells me a phone:



Purchase his product! Otherwise, he will turn those nunchucks on you.

Long overdue accounts

Amidst all these recounts, I felt I should I add my own.

I realise that I haven't been entirely honest recently. This is not an admission of wrongdoing. I have mainly been omitting, possibly embellishing, rather than fabricating. Very few things survive in thin air.

Most of this has come from oversight, tiredness, impulse, laziness and acquiescence: this is not an admission of blame. I'm wondering, however, whether it be worth my time to fully figure out all my reasons and dealings, and in fact deliver a more fleshed out account of the 'facts', so to speak. Interestingly, figuring out what to correct is in itself a somewhat opaque enterprise.

I need an excuse to write and think anyway. I can admit I haven't done much of that recently.