02 NOV 2018 by ideonexus
Input and Output Randomness
The fundamental difference between randomness that support strategy and randomness that under cuts strategy, input randomness allows the player to build the strategy output randomness undercuts it and limits your ability to plan ahead. For example let's look at Pandemic this is a great example of input randomness flicking the cards is certainly random, create a situation that the players need to react to that reaction is completely deterministic. If for example you have to roll dies if you re... 1 
notes
notesInput randomness is a random initial state for a game, while output randomness is rolling dice or drawing cards during the game. The second removes strategy from the game.
25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
Anger isn't Necessary and Gets In the Way
A prominent author who recently disagreed with me on a technical matter quickly labelled me as belonging to a ‘department of bullshit’. Ouch! How is it possible not to get offended by this sort of thing, especially when it’s coming not from an anonymous troll, but from a famous guy with more than 200,000 followers? By implementing the advice of another Stoic philosopher, the second-century slave-turned-teacher Epictetus, who admonished his students in this way: ‘Remember that it is we... 1 notes
notes15 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
Theoretical Uncertainty has No Meaning
If one looks at the history of knowledge, it is plain that at the beginning men tried to know because they had to do so in order to live. In the absence of that organic guidance given by their structure to other animals, man had to find out what he was about, and he could find out only by studying the environment which constituted the means, obstacles and results of his behavior. The desire for intellectual or cognitive understanding had no meaning except as a means of obtaining greater secur... 1 notes
notes23 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Certainty in Alchemy
"We have a phenomenon very like that in industry," Galiagante said when she was done. "It's called green thumb syndrome. It sometimes occurs when a new plant establishes a complicated but known procedure for the first time. Your people set it up perfectly but nothing happens. The oxides won't reduce, the catalysts won't… cattle. Punishing the technicians accomplishes nothing. The reaction simply refuses to run. Eventually management will fly in somebody who's worked on the procedure before ...Folksonomies: alchemy
Folksonomies: alchemy
1 notes
notes22 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Being in a Car Affects Our Sense of Personal Space
Psychologists have noted that people driving a motor car react in a manner that is
often completely unlike their normal social behaviour as regards their territories. It seems that a motor vehicle sometimes has a magnifying effect on the size of a person’s personal space. In some cases, their territory is magnified by up to ten times the normal size, so the driver feels that he has a claim to an area of 9 to 10 metres in front of and behind his motor car. When another driver cuts in front o...Folksonomies: perception personal space
Folksonomies: perception personal space
1 notes
notesThe car magnifies our personal space perception, making us angry when others violate it.
28 APR 2012 by ideonexus
There is No Lying in Science
However, all scientific statements and laws have one characteristic in common: they are “true or false” (adequate or inadequate). Roughly speaking, our reaction to them is “yes” or “no.” The scientific way of thinking has a further characteristic. The concepts which it uses to build up its coherent systems are not expressing emotions. For the scientist, there is only “being,” but no wishing, no valuing, no good, no evil; no goal. As long as we remain within the realm of scienc... 1 notes
notesScience is about right and wrong, the search for truth.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
William Lawrence on the Need for Free Science
Lawrence eventually went on to broaden his attack. Science, he argued, had an autonomous right to express its views fearlessly and objectively, without interference from Church or state. It must avoid ‘clouds of fears and hopes, desires and aversions’. It must ‘discern objects clearly’ and shun ‘intellectual mist’. It must dispel myth and dissipate ‘absurd fables’.19 The world of scientific research was wholly independent. ‘The theological doctrine of the soul, and its separ...Folksonomies: freedom scientific integrity
Folksonomies: freedom scientific integrity
1 notes
notesScience must operate without fear of oppression or reaction from authorities.
03 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Carl Sagan on the Audacity of John F. Kennedy's Moon Miss...
Once upon a time, we soared into the solar system, for a few years. Then we hurried back. why? What happened? What was Apollo really about?
The scope and audacity of John Kennedy's May 25th 1961 message to a joint session of Congress on "Urgent National Needs" -- the speech that launched the Apollo program--dazzled me. We would use rockets not yet designed and alloys not yet conceived, navigation and docking shemes not yet devised, in order to send a man to an unknown world--a world not yet...
1 Sagan describes his reaction to Kennedy's speech to a joint session of Congress asking for funding for the Apollo program.
