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The idea of a permanent underclass has recently been embraced in part as an online joke and in part out of a sincere fear about how A.I. automation will upend the labor market and create a new norm of inequality. In an A.I.-dominated future, those with capital will buy “compute” (the tech term for A.I. horsepower) and…
Infocom's interactive fiction, like most interactive fiction, is generally held by players to not have replay value in the usual sense, much as one cannot simply "replay" a riddle to which one knows the answer (although one can pose it to another, think about it again once the answer has been forgotten, or appreciate…
The rules of Vice City call for a vast accumulation of cash, cars and cronies, of weapons and real estate. Most of these activities are outside the law, but law is just part of a larger algorithm. In any case, the story and the art are arbitrary, mere decoration. If in utopia, everything is subordinated to a rigorous…
It is difficult to, either quantitatively (through sales, net worth, or awards) or qualitatively (through an objective hierarchisation of cultural products) provide an indisputable metric for ‘fame.’ First, there are contextually contingent variables like streaming or internet relevance preventing me from drawing…
In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players. They had two instruments at their disposal: the score required for a free game, and the match…
Engagement algorithms are simple. If you, the user, have engaged with a certain topic in the past, you are likely to engage in the future. So when a new piece of content is created on the platform that belongs to that topic, why not show it to you? You might even give it a thumbs up (or like, or heart). This selection…
Bell came up with “nonlocal” games, which require players to be at a distance from each other with no way to communicate. Each player answers a question. The players win or lose based on the compatibility of their answers. One such game is the magic square game. There are two players, Alice and Bob, each with a 3-by-3…
Called the "null move" technique, it tells the engine to "pass" for one side. That is, to evaluate a position as if one player could make two moves in a row. If the position has not improved even after moving twice, then it can be assumed that the first move is a dud and can be quickly discarded from the search tree…
Most technologies in the Star Wars universe that don’t have some capability of being used in war… well, they kinda just suck. There are so many areas where it seems like average Star Wars tech should outdo itself given how advanced the military-grade technology is, but in practice it doesn’t appear to make much…
The main equation that Virtuology (VG) could be theorized is: VG: U D, which means: Virtuology: Upload Download. This equation, as I believe, is summarized the entire new science, i.e. Virtuology (VG). For example, it is used with MSCOW.7 It is implemented also in Large-scale Distributed Systems and Energy Efficiency…
A game called “Th is Is Not a...” encourages multiple solutions and is played in a relaxed environment that encourages creativity. Students pass around an object—such as a toy telephone—and say, “This is not a....” Younger students name an object that is not a toy telephone (for example, “This is not a pencil.”)…
News misleads. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated. News is irrelevant. Out of the…
Experience may blind us from recognizing obvious solutions to problems. Research shows that physicians and health care professionals are likely to overlook the correct diagnosis in cases which do not match their experience [1]. Similar findings have been reported concerning difficulties in reframing clinical…
Our Sunday mornings began with the smell of a big breakfast. Our traditional Sunday “worship” took place in our kitchen. We worshiped each other and thanked the adult income-makers for providing us all with good food, a roof over our heads, and all the comforts we never took for granted. Sunday breakfast was a time…
If you give two programmers the same problem—it depends on the problem, but problems of a more mathematical nature, they can often end up writing the same code. Subject to just formatting issues and relabeling the variables and the function names, it's isomorphic—it's exactly the same algorithms. Are we creating these…