121900+ entries in 0.039s
mircea_popescu: the naming of the thing is now hazed in the mists of history.
mircea_popescu: indoor_jellyfish a lot of the stuff is pretty perplexing.
mircea_popescu: it's so fucking weird - kid evidently comes from money. he didn't find a brothel ? a roach peddler ? nuttin' ?
☟︎ mircea_popescu: the most shocking thing to me re anglospace is and remains the incredible textual productions of people who evidently master no references. it's an endless outpour of "music" from people who don't recognize any notes.
mircea_popescu: holy shit, these people redefined the (rather common) name of Marcel!
mircea_popescu: heroes 2/3 had much better solution through army dampening model (you DID NOT lose army!). at least imo.
mircea_popescu: dune 2 solved the problem by a) making the quads shit and b) overpowering the turrets AND c) forcing you to keep resetting your base through "levels".
mircea_popescu: experience shows it is exceedingly difficult to build 4X games that don't die thus (more recent players will know this as "zerging")
mircea_popescu: but the cavalry rushes were pretty sad affairs specifically because a) game ended cca 1k bc ; b) the score was otherwise unbeatable ; c) wtf srsly.
mircea_popescu: then you could rush with knights. then you could rush with etc.
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo civ was very weak because it had a number of "rush". i could consistently win rushing the (large landmass) globe with cavalries.
mircea_popescu: of all the billions they wasted, this particular stuff is not the worst.
mircea_popescu: kinda why it's so scandalous the arab teens are ripping uncle sam's overtrained, overfed volunteers a new hole.
mircea_popescu: but in general, on the basis of the horrid ad&d of average gameplayer, computer should be capable of getting pretty close to "every time" just by... you know, not being a crazed teenager.
mircea_popescu: (it stands to reason that if YOU are trying to find the enemy / rabbit / whatever you want to take stationary positions and watch ; yet people don't usually want to play a game against ai that does mostly this.)
mircea_popescu: there's other considerations in play. optimal strategies usually tend to be too stable to be "fun" ; so the designer is stuck with a pretty complex bag.
mircea_popescu: turns out topic's been studied by eg, pascal, ever so long ago.
mircea_popescu: you know the esprit de finesse / esprit de geometrie classification right ?
mircea_popescu: i'm not even sure the case of breach was yet born when the problem truly was "nobody could have predicted". virtually all go "o hey, if we as much as gave a shit for seven straight seconds..."
mircea_popescu: ("would you trust surgeon x to cut out your appendix ?" "it depends. would he be watching tv while doing it ?")
mircea_popescu: as evidenced by the fact that once you stop to consider it, a minute's all it takes.
mircea_popescu: you know i clip these and store them in a large wooden chest.
mircea_popescu: thestringpuller ai is ai, sensory advantages are sensory advantages. different categories.
mircea_popescu: genius game from this perspective ; in any discussion of "video games help kids" i always think of supaplex.
mircea_popescu: esp as a kid, the first time you figure out you CAN fucking turn them. because at first you know, kids are cowardly, they kinda lose control at the crucial moment.
mircea_popescu: yeah ok this is pretty good ; reminds one of sa of its glory days.
mircea_popescu: "better ai" is no improvement when it traduces in practice to "must play a game with known/computable solution" .
☟︎ mircea_popescu: (it's also not terribly fun to play over the age of about 12 or so, for this very reason. supaplex, which had dumber scissors (always left/right hand rule) AND allowd you to turn them around was much more interesting game (when scissors applied))
☟︎ mircea_popescu: it's actually a reasonably interesting and very studied problem.
mircea_popescu: it is a solved problem. the only way you don't get killed if the implementation is, willingly or accidentally, bad.
mircea_popescu: not surpassed so far ; not likely to ever be (it also helps that... obviously)
mircea_popescu: imo the best ai any game ever displayed to date was pacman.
mircea_popescu: but anyway, sure, "people have come to expect" all sorts of weird shit.
mircea_popescu: encryption and cryptographic signatures solve opposite problems : secrecy and publicity.
mircea_popescu: it is also not uncommon to prepare food after shitting without washing hands.
mircea_popescu: so then what do i care that he is saying that i told him "x" ?
mircea_popescu: so what exactly is your interest if they lose the plaintext ?
mircea_popescu: seems very much a "ustards do chivalry, like they saw in rome, france"
mircea_popescu: let's say it was an early luxury we did for a time enjoy
mircea_popescu: makes much more sense to do it pairwise ; or at any rate p2pish
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform ima add it to list. but first i wanna finish the anhero niceguy.
mircea_popescu: ima bbl ; shinohai if moar noobs show up do pacify them for a few hours.
mircea_popescu: even 1 out of 1k is a high enough bar for most people.
mircea_popescu: and this from someone who doesn't fwis even much care for rats.
mircea_popescu: "oh your world won't work, demiurge" "no problem, i'll add ai to it" "idiot"
mircea_popescu: which is a loud testament of their idiocy - much harder to do BOTH world AND AI at the same time.
mircea_popescu: every other game company - makes design ; tests game. s.mg stuck making design, then trying to figure out what design is actually trying to do, so it can be tested p[roperly.
mircea_popescu: anyway, this wasn't deliberate part of the design. it's just that it apparently flows from the prime principles that design rests on and implements.
mircea_popescu: because some people (me, daniel, diana, etc) are such perfectionists, we kinda debalanced the economy to where it atm has high need of you know, plain old noobs.
mircea_popescu: note that it's a very performant simulation. just like irl - "shit" is not "objectively" low value. you could, conceivably (60% shrimp world by mass) arrive in a situation where shit is in high demand ; meat not so much.
mircea_popescu: no ; it's a volume-vs-quality issue. sometimes i just need a lot of cruddy flotsam for a job ; it's wasteful to use hand carved 1700 bedposts for it, so to speak.