10 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
The Chess Stress Response
Another aspect of chess as a sport is the intense psychological and physiological exertion involved in a competitive chess game, and the crisis after the game. What sports science calls the "stress response process" is at least as powerful in chess as it is in more physical sports. When I say exertion, I am not referring only to the mental gymnastics of moving the pieces in our minds, but also the huge nervous tension that fills you before and during the game, tension that rises and falls wit...
1 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.
06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Mental Illness is Not Correlated with Genius
What madness may have to do with creativity and genius has continued to intrigue down to this day, with scholars arguing for and against the association, its benefits and its deficits. In 1995, in a large scale and statistically convincing study of 1,004 eminent individuals of the 20th century, psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig argued that no necessary or sufficient correlation, hence no causal connection, between mental illness and creative achievement was to be found. Individuals in artistic profe... 1 notes
notes05 FEB 2016 by ideonexus
The Mind on Music
For some reason that no one really understands, there is a psychological effect upon human listeners in regards to the musical scale. The tonic pitch, or tonal center is not only the mathematical center of the scale, but is the psychological center as well. Human perception of the tonic pitch in relation to the other notes of the scale gives each note of the scale, including the tonic pitch, a distinct "personality" or identity. If we were to label each note of the major scale with a number, ...25 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
RPG as Collaborative Creation
Playing D&D is an exercise in collaborative creation. You and your friends create epic stories filled with tension and memorable drama. You create silly in-jokes that make you laugh years later. The dice will be cruel to you, but you will soldier on. Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again, ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff o f legend.
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
1 28 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
Tension Facilitates Change
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the ... 1 notes
notesBrilliant words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr that apply to many facets of life, but strongly to the purpose of social change.
22 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Representative Juan Mendez Atheist Prayer
Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads. I would like to ask you not to bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people of our state.
This room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of fr... 1 notes
notesGiven as the opening-prayer for the start of the Arizona Legislature.
04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Alexander Graham Bell's Hypothesis
I have read somewhere that the resistance offered by a wire ... is affected by the tension of the wire. If this is so, a continuous current of electricity passed through a vibrating wire should meet with a varying resistance, and hence a pulsatory action should be induced in the current ... [corresponding] in amplitude, as well as in rate of movement, to the vibrations of the string ... [Thus] the timbre of a sound [a quality essential to intelligible speech] could be transmitted ... [and] th...Folksonomies: invention hypothesis
Folksonomies: invention hypothesis
1 notes
notesThat the timbre of a sound may be transmitted across a wire without loosing strength.
21 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Remember Happy Times During Labor
Now we come to a facet of human relaxation that is inescapable. The relationship of mind to body, or the psychosomatic nature of humans. The mind and body are interacting, one helping or hindering the other. It is probably impossible to relax the body completely if the mind is under tension. Vice versa, it is impossible to relax the mind completely if the body is under tension. This is observed also in animals in their need to concentrate during labor and the temporary viciousness of laboring...To get the woman's mind off her present discomfort.
18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Skepticism is Not Enough
As I've tried to stress, at the heart of science is an essential
balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an
openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive,
and the most ruthlessly sceptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new.
This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. The
collective enterprise of creative thinking and sceptical thinking,
working together, keeps the field on track. Those two seemingly
contradictory attitudes are, though, in some ...We must also be open to new and challenging ideas.
