1–20 of 33
Metagaming refers to the relationship between the game and outside elements, including everything from player attitudes and play styles to social reputations and social contexts in which the game is played. Post-game locker room conversations about the match are metagame interactions. Memorizing words in the Scrabble…
Why isn't using a degenerate strategy considered cheating? Degenerate strategies take advantage of weaknesses in the rules of a game, but do not actually violate the rules. What kind of player would play in this way? The answer is both a dedicated player, who is overzealously seeking the perfect strategy, and an…
In The Interactive Book, designer and scholar Celia Pearce presents a different typology for understanding the ways games manifest information. She proposes four scenarios: · Information known to all players: In Chess, this would consist of the rules of the game, board layout, and piece movement parameters. ·…
What does it mean to say that games take place within set boundaries established by the act of play? Is this really true? Is there really such a distinct boundary? In fact there is. Compare, for example, the informal play of a toy with the more formal play of a game. A child approaching a doll, for example, can slowly…
...where does probability theory come from? What is its source? Clearly, like many other sciences, like arithmetic itself, probability theory emerged from observations of certain real-world phenomena, namely, random, unpredictable phenomena. And it is exactly these kinds of observations—fundamental to the formation of…
Game designer Robin Hunicke has noted that Facebook is actually a complex, massively multiplayer online game, with challenges, rewards, and levels just like any other. Think about it for a second and you'll realize that the rules are simple: be the most fun, intelligent, witty, caring version of yourself. The benefits…
Propositions are supposed to be idealizations, rather like numbers or vectors or some other abstract formulation. It looks at first very powerful, and for some purposes it’s very useful. But it takes you away from enlightenment because it gives you this false sense that you haven’t understood something really until…
Never before have so many people been connected together in an instantly responsive network through which memes can spread faster than natural viruses. But the notion that taking the whole world online would create a utopia of netizens, all equal in cyberspace, was always a fantasy—as much a delusion as Luther’s…
It’s a common misconception that someone who’s good at math is someone who can compute quickly and accurately. But mathematics is a broad discipline, and there are many ways to be smart in math. Some students are good at seeing relationships among numbers, quantities, or objects. Others may be creative problem…
Filters in a digital world work not by removing what is filtered out; they simply don't select for it. The unselected material is still there, ready to be let through by someone else's filter. Intelligent filters, which is what we need, come in three kinds: A smart person who takes in a lot and tells you what you need…
A child stacks and packs all kinds of blocks and boxes, lines them up, and knocks them down. What is that all about? Clearly, the child is learning about space! But how on earth does one learn about time? Can one time fit inside another? Can two of them go side by side? In music, we find out! It is often said that…
"These remarkable creatures combine the characteristics of animals and plants and so I call them animal-plants. ..." "All right. Don't get angry. Just explain how your creatures avoid getting dried up like mummies." "That is simple. Their skin is covered with a glassy layer, thin and flexible but absolutely…
First and foremost, we crave satisfying work, every single day. The exact nature of this “satisfying work” is different from person to person, but for everyone it means being immersed in clearly defined, demanding activities that allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts. Second, we crave the experience, or at…
The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration and not the sayings of human beings…
The room is made i.^ up of four curtains, used to create four walls in a rectangle, defined by two types of information: geometric (two short walls and two long walls) and color information (one red wall). Now, think about the corners. If you are using only geometric information, pairs of corners are identical. There…
You may find this difficult to understand but it is very easy for one in prison to lose his sense of self. And if he has been undergoing all kinds of extreme, involved, and unregulated changes, then he ends up not knowing who he is. Take the point of being attractive to women. You can easily see how a man can lose his…
In 1838, Matthias Schleiden, a botanist, and Theodor Schwann, a physiologist, both working in Germany, had claimed that all living organisms were built out of fundamental building blocks called cells. Borrowing and extending this idea, Virchow set out to create a “cellular theory” of human biology, basing it on two…
The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned…
The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called 'deep truths', are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.
The perfect parent, if she (or he) existed, would devote herself full time to the care and teaching of her child. She would begin, even before conception, by shoring up her folic acid reserves and purging her body of any chemical remotely suspect. Once pregnant, she would never touch a drop of alcohol, pump her own…