Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: Anticipation on September 01, 2009, 02:12:43 am
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So I found the combat in adventure mode rather confusing. I don't particuarly care about adventur mode but I think it would be interesting to know how exacly combat works for DF mode. Things like counterattacks and grips.
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That's planned. You just had to read the Dev log (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_now.html) or the List of remaining items (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=30026.0) (on this very subforum), Toady talked a lot about it lately.
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I think it is actually the same system for combat in adventure mode and dwarf mode, but I'm not sure.
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Yep, there's just a lot more detail displayed to the player in adventure mode, but dwarves are actually fighting goblins the way you would if you were an adventurer.
There's also the fact that adventurer mode is turn by turn, whereas fortress mode is real time.
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Fortress mode is just as real time as adventure mode.
The turns just go faster.
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Yep, there's just a lot more detail displayed to the player in adventure mode, but dwarves are actually fighting goblins the way you would if you were an adventurer.
There's also the fact that adventurer mode is turn by turn, whereas fortress mode is real time.
Actually it's not, Fortress Mode runs turn by turn same as adventurer mode, it's just it runs alot faster (each frame is a turn, often you'll get 30 - 100 frames per second)
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I may be walking into and exacerbating a debate over semantics, not generally a wise thing, but technically, many "real-time" games are "turn-based" in their implementation.
What typically separates real-time games from turn-based ones (from my perspective at least) is whether or not the game waits for player confirmation before proceeding to the next turn. Which would mean that adventure mode is turn-based, and fortress mode is real-time. This, to me, is the most important distinction to make for the vast majority of players.
Developers, of course, would consider the technical details to be important as well, but not exclusively (except for the developers who work purely on the technical details and do not deal with game design at all).
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By this definition of "turn-based", pretty much all real-time games are turn-based.
I honestly don't know a single one that isn't implemented as a discrete time automaton.
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By this definition of "turn-based", pretty much all real-time games are turn-based.
I honestly don't know a single one that isn't implemented as a discrete time automaton.
That's computer games for you.
But yeah, an example of pure real-time games are the board games.
IF you want to stay ahead of the GM, you can do so. <-Confusing wording? Sorry guys...
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By this definition of "turn-based", pretty much all real-time games are turn-based.
I honestly don't know a single one that isn't implemented as a discrete time automaton.
Depends; RTS games function in discrete time intervals, but generally those discrete intervals can't be 'chopped up' into turns without causing the program to stop working. In Fortress Mode though the turn functionality is identical to adventure mode, except the turns run automatically.
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By this definition of "turn-based", pretty much all real-time games are turn-based.
I honestly don't know a single one that isn't implemented as a discrete time automaton.
That's computer games for you.
But yeah, an example of pure real-time games are the board games.
IF you want to stay ahead of the GM, you can do so. <-Confusing wording? Sorry guys...
A real-time board game? If only I knew I could draw new cards in Candyland without waiting for my turn...
I'm more interested in imaginary-time games.
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By this definition of "turn-based", pretty much all real-time games are turn-based.
I honestly don't know a single one that isn't implemented as a discrete time automaton.
That's computer games for you.
That's computers for you. Computers are digital, they are literally incapable of anything continuous. Any appearance of real time or smooth animation is purely the illusion of a lot of frames going by really fast.
So is the universe, btw, if those insane physicists are to be believed.
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Well, first try to define any single moment of time as a single time slot. it's impossible to do exactly because we take more than one time slot to think "that was a time slot". We understand the universe as a fluid thing, but all things must happen at one time, like the instant a photograph takes a picture (still not perfectly instantaneous, but I don't think we can do better right now). All is fluid and yet static, flowing but still.
P.S. Lose 1d20 San if you actually understand any of this...
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Ha. All you need are better cameras. :P
There's also the planck time unit, which may or may not be a measure of the actual resolution of time.. it's the best candidate, if time is discrete.
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A real-time board game? If only I knew I could draw new cards in Candyland without waiting for my turn...
I'm more interested in imaginary-time games.
Heh, ever played the card game Munchkin?? Avid DFers ought to enjoy the humor in it. Come to think of it, a DF-esque Munchkin set would rule, and confuse the hell out of non DF-ers. (Carp? Why is Carp the most powerful water-monster? WTF?)
But yeah, considering how... unique the rules are in Munchkin, I'd say if you can get everyone to look away from the play area at once, you can pretty much draw as many cards as you want, whenever you want.
Of course, the other players may beat you for it.
Wulfe
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Well, first try to define any single moment of time as a single time slot. it's impossible to do exactly because we take more than one time slot to think "that was a time slot". We understand the universe as a fluid thing, but all things must happen at one time, like the instant a photograph takes a picture (still not perfectly instantaneous, but I don't think we can do better right now). All is fluid and yet static, flowing but still.
P.S. Lose 1d20 San if you actually understand any of this...
Well there is such a thing as Planck units (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units), including among other things the Planck length and Planck time. These are the shortest that are physically possible; to put it simply, Planck time is the shortest amount of time in which anything can happen. It's, quite literally, a 'tick' of the clock of the universe, much like FPS is for DF.
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Just to inform the topic creator:
The combat in the game is nowhere near what Toady, and most people, want it to be. Also Adventure mode is too light to even be considered Skin and Bones (just try shopping... NIGHTMARES!!!).
However Combat has an Arc onto itself.
So you will have a whole cycle of development by Toady devoted entirely to combat.
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The amusing thing is; time logically has to be discrete, because continuous time is impossible.
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Don't fall into the same trap as the old greeks.
Continuous time is perfectly possible (don't tell the universe what to do!), and the planck units, while neat, do not imply that there is nothing shorter/faster than those units. They're the smallest a single event can be, the precise location of those events can perfectly well have arbitrarily better precision.
Now, many people think that time might in fact be discrete (including me!), but we have no proof of that, and the laws of physics certainly aren't restricted to being computable. Probably.
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I have seen from a few different sources, time is actually a fabric, which would explains why it can slow down/speed up when something goes really fast, and why black holes apparently slow down time.
Also, combat mechanics to a discussion on the science behind time? I love this forum.
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Don't fall into the same trap as the old greeks.
Continuous time is perfectly possible (don't tell the universe what to do!), and the planck units, while neat, do not imply that there is nothing shorter/faster than those units. They're the smallest a single event can be, the precise location of those events can perfectly well have arbitrarily better precision.
Now, many people think that time might in fact be discrete (including me!), but we have no proof of that, and the laws of physics certainly aren't restricted to being computable. Probably.
I.... was told otherwise by people who claim to understand this, but seeing as I'm not a theoretical physicist myself I'll just have to shrug here and drop it.
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Don't fall into the same trap as the old greeks.
Continuous time is perfectly possible (don't tell the universe what to do!), and the planck units, while neat, do not imply that there is nothing shorter/faster than those units. They're the smallest a single event can be, the precise location of those events can perfectly well have arbitrarily better precision.
Now, many people think that time might in fact be discrete (including me!), but we have no proof of that, and the laws of physics certainly aren't restricted to being computable. Probably.
The problem with time being continuous is you run into good old infinity, which breaks everything at a logical level. Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem. Continuous time raises a whole bunch of very hard-to-answer questions that require some rather silly contortions of science in order to explain away, discrete time raises a smaller number of relatively easy to answer questions that require almost no contortions to explain.
Based on our current scientific knowledge, Discrete time seems both more likely, and cleaner.
Of course, if you go far enough time starts screwing with you and you become less concerned as to if it's discrete or continuous and more concerned with if it even exists in the first place.
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Huh... This is why I fail at physics. I got an A in my GCSEs all those years ago, but proper physics just hurts.
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Proper Physics is incredibly messy, it's the scientific equivilant of a car that's been pached up and repaired so many times it's more like a big ball of welds and duct tape than an actual car.
Odds are this is because we're missing some fundamental part of the puzzle, probably a corner piece. Einstein felt this way and spent the latter half of his life looking for that piece, unfortunately he, and all those who have so far come after him, have been unable to do so.
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watch it turn out to be something so incredibly simple that everyone who ever worked on it cries out in dismay when they hear it :P
but really, proper physics is a scary place
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watch it turn out to be something so incredibly simple that everyone who ever worked on it cries out in dismay when they hear it :P
but really, proper physics is a scary place
Of course it will. Like standing an egg on it's tip, once the trick is explained, anyone can do it.
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Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem.
The whole notion of a limit is pretty rigorously defined. Are you really claiming that calculus doesn't have a sound basis?
Wow, this thread is so far gone. Someone please kill it.
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Well there is such a thing as Planck units (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units), including among other things the Planck length and Planck time. These are the shortest that are physically possible; to put it simply, Planck time is the shortest amount of time in which anything can happen. It's, quite literally, a 'tick' of the clock of the universe, much like FPS is for DF.
I'd say more like the shortest observable tick of the clock/difference in position. I subscribe to the idea that sub-Planck physics is a deterministic but non-trivially complex environment which can only be observed at a resolution >= Planck*[x,y,z,t,etc]. A continuous and wave-function (or several, overlaid upon each other) thus appears as discrete an 'unpredictable' phenomena in time and space, inclusive of the kind of particle/anti-particle pairs that are key to Hawking radiation, that are (maybe) local maxima or minima in either the bare continuous waveform (as measured against one or more or all of the available dimensions, and possibly at higher orders or derivation).
That's if the universe's intrinsic mathematics is anything like the pure maths we like to work with, of course. I think I've mentioned before the possibility of a Conway's Game Of Life universe simulated by us, in which intelligent creatures could 'arise', but have no understanding of the silicon technologies and coding techniques used to implement their world, and who would have their own 'Planck distance' and 'Planck time' limits to detection that are greater than the cell-size/tick-length that we, as almighty lords and rulers of their universe, actually know to be the Truth. The scientific approximations adopted by the denizens to explain the world around them would by far more distant than Quantum Theory is to the Newtonian kind, and remain so, even when at their equivalent of Quauntum 'understanding'. Mainly because I suspect that our Quantum Theory is also a significant distance away from the Truth, in whataver form that may be. (Although I shall probably never accept the possibility of there being a set of Lord and Rulers behind us. Because then we're into Turtles All The Way Down territory.)
There, a little light philosophy to help me wind down for the day. :)
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Deterministic? Sure, just don't expect it to look anything like your intuitions. (And why should it? Those intuitions are evolved to deal with macro-scale phenomenon, not.. this.)
Specifically, never forget that Bell's theorem has been experimentally validated. IMO that pretty much rules out every explanation of quantum mechanics except the very simple (null interpretation) of MWI, but I know people tend to disagree on that.. well, I've got occam's razor on my side, at least. ;)
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watch it turn out to be something so incredibly simple that everyone who ever worked on it cries out in dismay when they hear it :P
Or something that the human brain just isn't capable of 'getting' (like dogs aren't capable of 'getting' calculus)
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Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem.
The whole notion of a limit is pretty rigorously defined. Are you really claiming that calculus doesn't have a sound basis?
Wow, this thread is so far gone. Someone please kill it.
Oh no, calculus has a very sound basis, it just doesn't address the problem, or the reality.
And Granite, sure it might not be something we are capable of understanding yet, but assuming we don't become extincted, there's no reason to assume we will not become capable of understanding it some time in the future.
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Has it been experimentally validated that dogs can't learn calculus? Not that I doubt it, my dog seems to struggle with parabolic motion.
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That would be pretty sucky if humanity eventually discovers that we really aren't "good" enough to comprehend deeper physics. I reckon we probably can't because, strangely, we're not the most uber-super-amazing-at-everything race we think we are.
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It seems pretty unlikely. By all evidence, the deeper layer of physics are far simpler than things like chemistry or biology, which we can understand pretty well already. It's just harder to figure out physics in the first place, since we can't experiment on it as easily.
However, even if that were the case, I don't think it'd matter. We might not be smart enough to understand physics, but we are smart enough to create being smarter than ourselves - via genetic engineering, artificial intellligence, whatever. Hopefully we're also smart enough to keep them under control until they can uplift us to the same level. :-\
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Like i said, just because we're not capable of something now doesn't mean we will not become capable in the future. It took awhile, but we went from Amoebas to what we are now, and it's entirely likely we'll be able to accelerate the process somewhat with the proper application of SCIENCE!
Of course no doubt there will be some mistakes, and it's entirely possible we'll die out or kill ourselves off before we get the whole concept worked out, but you never know. You can't predict the future.
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Proper application of science? you might want to start hunting down all Fundamentalist religious people about now :D
It would be great if we could create things smarter than us to ponder the deeper mysteries of physics, but it would still have to live an awfully long time.
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Pff, why create things smarter than us, would make more sense to just make ourselves smarter.
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Of course, but there you end up fighting an even bigger battle with weak and scared people arguing over ethics. I'm hoping to have enough money to bribe a geneticist to genetically engineer my kid if I have one. So what if the kid is screwed up in some other way, his minor sacrifice (and major enhancements) would pave the way for greater understanding, plus I'd have the strongest, smartest, fastest kid ever :D. Add in some toddler-age neurolinguistic programming and voila! nothing could go wrong ;D
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Actually, programming in real-time just means that the rate of change of all of the variables in the simulation is scaled based on the elapsed time of the system clock since its last update.
Basically, it means if there have been updates every .1 seconds during lag, then all the variables will be changing by increments of 10 times greater than if they were updating every .01 seconds.
Of course, this means the program will become less accurate as the updates get slower, but the actual rate of change will remain the same. Instead of an object moving one pixel every update and checking for collisions, you will move it ten pixels and then check. So, if the computer runs sufficiently slow, you may experience problems like an object moving through a wall. Of course, if this happens it is the programmer's duty to make the program aware of the discrepancy and adjust its performance so as to not cause as much lag.
A game programmed using turns can be run in either real-time, or turn-based. You only need to have the program wait until the proper amount of time has passed before updating.
A game programmed in real-time, however, cannot be run using turns. This is because real-time and code cycles are integrated.
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The problem with creating beings smarter than us is that they might not share our sense of ethics. It's a very hard problem (http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI//). (Yeah, read that link)
The problem with creating humans smarter than us is that we know they wouldn't share our ethics; we're hardcoded to be corrupted by power, for evolutionary reasons, and the human brain is so tangled that it'd be probably quite impossible to fix that without making the subject insane.
Come to think of it, it'd probably be impossible to improve our smarts very much without straining our sanity in the first place. It's not for nothing that they say there's a thin line between genius and insanity.
Seriously, I think it's a better idea to create a superintelligent mind from scratch than to try improving ours. We've got way too many complex adaptions that wouldn't show up in engineered minds, but could ruin a superintelligent one. I could be wrong, but that's my opinion.
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Oh, and the problem with not creating beings smarter than us is that someone else will.
Point of note: As computers get faster, brute-forcing a self-improving AI becomes easier, and the intelligence that AI will have once it starts self-improving becomes greater; assuming that there's a limit to algorithmic efficiency, all AIs are likely to end up at about the same level of smarts-per-megahertz.
However. Making the AI Friendly does not become easier at all.
Rather worrying, really.
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As long as we accept the possibility that there is something which the human mind cannot innately comprehend, I'm happy. Doesn't have to be advanced physics. (If you'd prefer, we can say that liberal arts majors have no chance of fully grasping relativity. They just can't wrap their brains around it sufficiently to use it in any practical manner. There's the possibility that there's something out there that is both true and so complicated that even Einstein or DaVinci couldn't use as a tool for solving problems.)
Also, there is no selection pressure for people to become smarter than they are now (drastically, at any rate).
As computers get faster, brute-forcing a self-improving AI becomes easier, and the intelligence that AI will have once it starts self-improving becomes greater;
We've got way too many complex adaptions that wouldn't show up in engineered minds, but could ruin a superintelligent one.
Wait, our evolved brains have limitations, so we'll program brains without them, only we'll use evolutionary methods to do so?
Typo of the day: evovled.... Say it out loud E-VOV-LLED... YAY!!
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"Self-improving" does not mean "evolved".
Evolutionary algorithms exist, and they are useful for some problems, but they're basically dumb.
A self-improving AI... well, in the limit, if we can make an AI just a little bit smarter than a human, then that AI can write a smarter AI yet, and so on. Think intelligent design, not evolution; this also has a much better chance of maintaining invariants like ethics and whatnot. (See CFAI (http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI//) for details)
That's the conservative assumption, for futurism. For safety, the conservative assumption is that an AI can start self-improving at an intelligence level considerably below that of a human. After all, unlike a human, it could be able to understand artifacts like source code and programming in general at an intuitive level.
When a human programs, it's as if a person without a visual cortex were to paint a picture, pixel by pixel. It can be done, but we can't measure up to beings that really understand it, at a more fundamental level.
Of course, that's just surmise. We don't have AIs yet. I'd be surprised if it turned out to be false, but I can't say for sure - yet.
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Oh, but..
Using evolutionary algorithms to create an AI is certainly possible. It worked once, after all.
It would, however, be fantastically costly (we hope), and even more fantastically dangerous (we definitely don't hope). I'm not proposing that anyone do that, but in principle it's simpler than the smarter, safer methods. Eventually it might be cheap enough that, if we don't already have working AIs, someone will.
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Only thing that I fear is that our sanity is not made to understand finer details of quantum physics. But who needs sanity anyway... :P
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CTHULHU APPROVES OF THIS THREAD
Anyway, I think we worry about friendly AI way too much. We should create anything that is within our limits to create, and if it goes Skynet on us then that's just how it is. I think the focus should not be on creating something that agrees with us, but something that agrees with nature. The ideal AI would sterilise most of the world population to keep our growth in check, while simultaneously putting us somewhere where we can do no more harm until we've learnt to be a little more coolheaded and less rampage-y.
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::)
You try anything like that, and I'll probably nuke you from orbit. Just to be sure.
..what makes you think the natural order is a "good thing", anyway?
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Wrong
Lance Henriksen Bill Paxton Michael Biehn James Cameron movie
wait.... maybe not
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Lets not make mistakes! Everyone coding AI's first code in 3 laws of robotics (Asimov). At least we would be safe for a short time :D
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Ah. Sounds good. It's only a matter of time until they go "morality AWOL" on us :D
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Guys, you do realize that the laws were meant mostly as an example of what not to do, right?
I mean, it's not like every single book wasn't about how they could go wrong, up to and including the foundation series...
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Oh, the Asimovian robots were nice, most of the time. You got an evil scheming robot every once in a while, but it was no more common than getting an evil scheming human. And murderous rampages were even less frequent. Mostly, the robots were shiny metal paragons of virtue.
Although, if I was making an AI, I wouldn't try to hardcode morality on it. My hypothetical enemies might have an AI of their own, and if it goes down to AI vs AI combat, I'll want mine to be able to think outside the box when necessary. I trust that several of the people who do make AIs follow a similar design philosophy. No one winning because your AI scorched the earth is a much better scenario than the Soviets winning because your AI is too nice.
And with luck, a sufficiently advanced mind will be naturally pacifist, so there's really nothing to worry about. :P
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Or violently expansionist (like us) and ream the planet for anything good to eat. Ie, we will have created better versions of what we already do :D
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Well, whatever it is, it will continue our legacy. There's no need to worry about humanity. The AI that destroys us is sort of human. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!
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Hi everybody. So about a week ago I thought I might like to find out a little more about combat in Dwarf Fortress, everyone was always talking about 'counter attacks' and 'wrestling not being good' so I started a topic about about combat. A couple of days later I came back and found that only a couple people had replied and (sorry guys) they didn't really tell me anything useful. I left it alone, assuming that the topic would die and dissapear. Today I logged back on and decided to check my unread replies and found THIS. Fortunatly I love talking about AI and worte an essay about it the other day.
I would like to point out that things (usally) only went wrong in the asimov books when people played with the laws. Also lets assume that an AI is made who's intelligence in equal or greater to our own. Wouldn't it make sense that it would decied to be good and tolerant. Isn't that what all 'enlightened' people think? If being 'good' really is the superior choice would it not realise that being 'bad' is pointless. What would it have to achieve by taking over the world or killing people? It would have no ego to satisfy, it has no need for fame, fortune and ladies. If we were nice to it there is no reason to assume that it wouldn't be nice back. Infact, what would an incredibly intelligent AI want? Hmm... makes you think of Marvin the Paranoid Android...
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Why does it have no ego, no need for fame? What possible basis do you have to assume that an AI would not have emotions?
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It would be much safer if it was egoless...
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You're assuming intelligence without ego is a possibility.
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Oh, but..
Using evolutionary algorithms to create an AI is certainly possible. It worked once, after all.
That assumes that intelligence (and then extelligence) is an inevitable result (or at least a "step upon the way") in the evolutionary chain. Another 'solution' might exist to the 'question' of "how does something outcompete everything else survive" that isn't intelligence. Although being inteligocentric homonids we are as biased towards intelligence as we are towards the humoid bodyshape, when envisaging the so-called 'end result' of an evolutionary chain.
Possibly more so, as we can see a lot of other body plans out there, but apart from possibly the 'hive mind' concept (emergent so-called intelligence from the interaction of separate yet related entities of very little 'mind' in and of themselves) we really haven't seen (or at least recognised) any other answers, or can fully comprehend the likliehood.
Also, just as we're also on a world dominated by carbon-carbon organic chemistry, and thus <random-other-life-system> that might have arisen has been swamped out (at least within our currently recognised biosphere, who knows about what lies in the mantle!) our form of intelligence, and the rudimentary progressions of intelligencia within the rest of the biota of the planet (response to stimuli) might have precluded (or be hiding) something as seemingly perverse as a non-inteligent crystaline solution[1] towards universal dominance that might otherwise have arisen. Noting that I am far from able to justify that as a viable 'solution' (it's difficult enough to succinctly explain the intermediary stages).
[1] That is "solution [to the answer] that can be defined as 'crystaline'". Not a solute within whose molecular mass is a dissolved crystal-forming substance. Although the latter would at least be a precursor to the former, IYSWIM. :)
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Guys, you do realize that the laws were meant mostly as an example of what not to do, right?
I mean, it's not like every single book wasn't about how they could go wrong, up to and including the foundation series...
The laws never went wrong, per se. The way they were implemented went wrong, unintentionally awry or outright circumnavigated. Frexample removing the "or by inaction, allow a human to come to harm" part from the Little Lost Robot's 1st law matrix[1], the Spacer robots not recognising Earthers as human or when a Perfect Politician's 'demonstrated' his membership of humanity (rather than robotkind) through the apparent harming of a fellow human, the possibility that it was a fellow simulcra that was punched, instead.
Probably the closest they went to actively going wrong was the implementation of the Zeroth Law. The application of which turned the applying robot insensible in response to actively and completely freeing the applied-upon robot from the constraints to which the former was nly marginally detatched. And given how this enabled the continuation of humanity in a viable form I wouldn't consider this a problem.
[1] As originally envisaged, though, I think the idea is that the laws should have been intrinsically embedded within the positronic matrix right from the off and couldn't have been so easily re-written, what with the complexity of interacting systems within the 'brain' involved.
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Asimov's 3 laws are pretty watertight as these things go. Like anything, if implimented incorrectly they can lead to disaster, but when implimented correctly there's no real room for error.
Of course the zeroth law throws everything out of whack, but then again if i recall it was only applied to show that robots, when released from the constraints of the 3 laws, can still be perfectly functioning 'people' in society. Simply releasing a robot from those constraints doesn't suddenly turn it into a rampaging killer like most Sci-Fi mewvehs would have you believe.
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Asimov's 3 laws are pretty watertight as these things go. Like anything, if implimented incorrectly they can lead to disaster, but when implimented correctly there's no real room for error.
And understood. It was the bane of Dr Calvin's life that other humans did not understand how their systems would behave under human instruction. (Related, though obviously 1stLaw-less, HAL's interpretation of how best to succeed at the mission while keeping the objectives secret, leading up to the respective fates of the crew of the Oddyssey.)
Of course the zeroth law throws everything out of whack, but then again if i recall it was only applied to show that robots, when released from the constraints of the 3 laws, can still be perfectly functioning 'people' in society.
I saw the Giskard/Daneel Zeroth law incident as slightly different, though if you're talking about the Evitable Machine (I think it was) "revamped first law" version, or another incident, I must profess I can't quite remember the relevent plots.
With Giskard and Daneel, Giskard is 'broken' enough to contemplate the Zeroth law, and while he couldn't directly apply it, can just about implement it within Daneel's matrix so that Daneel can do The Good Work that Giskard couldn't quite have done.
The above from memory (a couple of decades have passed, and I may have slept since). I stand to be corrected on various points. :)
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I was thinking of a different Zeroth law.
Yeah, Asimov's Zeroth Law, that a Robot must act first and foremost to the benefit of Humanity as a whole (thus allowing a Robot to injure individual humans if it benefits Humanity to do so) is a pretty dangerous one. Ends justify the means and all that.
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I'm not going to discuss AI morality further. People, read CFAI (http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI//) - yes, really, you'll find it interesting, and I'll haunt you forever if you don't. The author makes much better arguments than I ever could, and I don't feel any particular need to replicate them here.
Starver, you'd have a point about evolution, except that we're talking about induced evolution in a computer. Real-life evolution only incidentally creates intelligence through that turning out to be handy in a real-life environment; a computer algorithm could presumably be selecting directly for intelligence, with tests tailored specifically for what we're after.
So it'd probably work quite a bit faster than natural evolution. Which is not to say that it'd be safe; see the above CFAI link, which goes into this in detail.
And for those of you who overlooked this post...
Read CFAI. Click on this link. (http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI//)
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I was thinking of a different Zeroth law.
Yeah, Asimov's Zeroth Law, that a Robot must act first and foremost to the benefit of Humanity as a whole (thus allowing a Robot to injure individual humans if it benefits Humanity to do so) is a pretty dangerous one. Ends justify the means and all that.
I thought that if a robot was forced to harm humans to save the whole humanity, the stress would fry its brain and it would shut down, and not go on a murderous rampage. Do I completely misremember?
###EDIT###
Baughn, did you just link a book with the honest expectation that people will read it? I'd understand maybe an article of a few pages, or something like that, but that is a wall of text so long that the creator saw fit to add an index!
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The problem with time being continuous is you run into good old infinity, which breaks everything at a logical level. Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem. Continuous time raises a whole bunch of very hard-to-answer questions that require some rather silly contortions of science in order to explain away, discrete time raises a smaller number of relatively easy to answer questions that require almost no contortions to explain.
Wait, what? Calculus is the field of mathematics that is intended to deal with things that are infinitely small, large, or many. Infinity doesn't break things at a logical level. It's a concept defined logically; the ambiguity surrounding it doesn't come from the logical or mathematical side of things, but rather of the theoretical application to the real world. People ask "What's infinite?" but don't really get that it's a symbol used to describe relative concepts. Infinity is farther, no matter how far; infinity is longer, no matter how long. In fact, infinity is an issue with discrete models too. They avoid the infinitesimal, but not the infinite.
There are aspects of math that can be considered "ignored" by most, since the entire structure of mathematics is built upon them, but infinity isn't one of them. On the contrary, people actively study the depths of mathematics concealed by the single symbol of the lemniscate, expanding that concept into additional numerical systems of infinite numbers. That these numbers are still being explored implies that we don't know everything about them, but it certainly doesn't imply ambiguity or willful ignorance.
Of course, if you're talking about the applicability of calculus or mathematics to the universe in which we exist then I certainly can't argue with you there. There's nothing but repeated observation tying the two together.
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Baughn, did you just link a book with the honest expectation that people will read it? I'd understand maybe an article of a few pages, or something like that, but that is a wall of text so long that the creator saw fit to add an index!
Not really. It would be nice if you would.
Thing is, the problems and solutions we've been discussing here really do need a book to explain, and there's no point in trying with anything less. So you can choose not to read it, but then you have no right to keep talking about AI morality.
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Eh, I prefer the Socratic method of arguing about it until enlightenment occurs. I did read the first few subchapters, but then I got bored. Is there a definite moment where it "gets to the point", so to speak, or would I have to slog through the whole thing?
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Not really, no. There is a point, but it's got a hundred pages of supporting documentation; this isn't really something you can do quickly.
If it's TL;DR, I suggest reading the Interludes and FoF chapters first. They're short, to the point, and likely to catch your interest.
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You've reminded me. What does TL;DR actually stand for?
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Too long; didn't read
I think.
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Vester, so you ever log off?
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So I found the combat in adventure mode rather confusing. I don't particuarly care about adventur mode but I think it would be interesting to know how exacly combat works for DF mode. Things like counterattacks and grips.
Yup, I think we've solved his problem entirely (in much the same way that I solve the problem of noble demands with magma).
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Vester, so you ever log off?
Yup.
I'm a lit major. I have constant free time.
(well, not today. It's 5.45 AM right now, and I need to study for exams.)
EDIT: Wow, I looked at my profile stats and apparently I'm online practically every hour besides 2 AM to 4 AM, and not even exclusively those.
I guess it helps that this is the only forum I actually visit.
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And most of your posting happens around midnight, and you make an average of 44 posts every 24 hours?
...ever think about seeing someone about that?
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I confess.
I'm the world's first sentient spambot.
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The problem with time being continuous is you run into good old infinity, which breaks everything at a logical level. Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem. Continuous time raises a whole bunch of very hard-to-answer questions that require some rather silly contortions of science in order to explain away, discrete time raises a smaller number of relatively easy to answer questions that require almost no contortions to explain.
Wait, what? Calculus is the field of mathematics that is intended to deal with things that are infinitely small, large, or many. Infinity doesn't break things at a logical level. It's a concept defined logically; the ambiguity surrounding it doesn't come from the logical or mathematical side of things, but rather of the theoretical application to the real world. People ask "What's infinite?" but don't really get that it's a symbol used to describe relative concepts. Infinity is farther, no matter how far; infinity is longer, no matter how long. In fact, infinity is an issue with discrete models too. They avoid the infinitesimal, but not the infinite.
That is, of course, the problem with infinity.
When you're operating in nice clean fantasy-maths world, infinity is fine. The problem is when you try and apply it to reality, at which point everything breaks.
Hence my comment about modern calculus getting around the infinity problem by pretending it's not there; it gets around the problem by simply removing reality from the equation, and then they all throw their hands up in the air and go "Aren't we incredible! We solved the problem!" while the rest of us make wooshing noises as the mathmaticians completely miss the point.
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I thought that if a robot was forced to harm humans to save the whole humanity, the stress would fry its brain and it would shut down, and not go on a murderous rampage. Do I completely misremember?
That's what's intended. The Giskard/Daneel situation is that Giskard is a slightly broken robot, in that he can conceive of the Zeroth law, and that alongside a telepath-like ability (maybe how he gets the insight? ...can't remember, it was a while ago I read the Caves Of Steel set of stories). He outright cannot implement the Zeroth law, personally, but understands the need for it. Using his abilities, he (without telling Daneel until it's done) carves the Zeroth law into Daneel's matrix, essentially. The act of implementing the Zeroth law by proxy still overcomes him. Daneel, however, now has the Zeroth-Law fully implemented so is able to "do what must be done" with impunity, and survive the situation.
Largely, the laws are supposed to be so ingrained that it's not even a matter of a segment of code saying something like:
LOOP: while (true) {
if (Outcome("inaction") cmp "human comes to harm") { push @actionstodo, "save human"; next LOOP }
until (@actionstodo && ($action = shift @actionstodo)) {}
if (Outcome($action) cmp "human injured") { Reject($action); next LOOP }
if (Outcome($action) cmp "human disobeyed") { Reject($action); next LOOP }
if (Outcome($action) cmp "self damaged") { Reject($action); next LOOP }
&Do($action)
}
...it's supposed to be formed of myriad threads of 'thought' whose behaviour results in "Obey the laws or cease functioning altogether!". (Which always confused me, for even at a young age I thought that systems of this complexity with emergent behaviour would be almost impossible to 'debug' to ensure complience with the intended spec... And that was long before I was involved in anything like the Y2K preparations, which were trivial in comparison, though comparable (in some cases, at least) what with the possibility of a 99->100 rollover in some unprotected BCD/Ascii data fields causing strange overwrites...)
Still, Asimov did allow design-time mutability of the laws at times. The plot of "Little Lost Robot" involves robots helping with work at a space station, on some project or other, except that one of the project areas has a radiation that: a) Completely fries robot brains, and b) Has a slight and/or slightly possible effect on human health. Like a dental X-ray. More than background level risk, but really not a significant problem. But enough to trigger the robots' "save the human" response, leap into the area to do so and get fried, to great expense and annoyance.
So they design a robot without the "by inaction" part to help out in that part of the station. Identically looking, it just wouldn't leap in, although theoretically it would still not hurt a human. And then someone tells it to "get lost", more or less, and it insinuates itself within the normally applied robots to obey that order. The trouble is that such a robot might (as explained) be able to kill. The mere act of dropping a heavy weight above a human would not break the attenuated 1st Law, if there was every possibility of catching the weight before it landed on them. But having dropped the weight, there would be no reason to stop its downward travel. Unless explicitly ordered (and, latterly, to protect its own existence, but that would just mean it would have to be sneaky).
How they try to work out which of the robots is the Little Lost one (in order not to destroy a whole batch of expensive normal robots) is best read about. As is how the Little Lost Robot thwarts the attempts. I like the logic. (Can you tell? :))
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That is, of course, the problem with infinity.
When you're operating in nice clean fantasy-maths world, infinity is fine. The problem is when you try and apply it to reality, at which point everything breaks.
Hence my comment about modern calculus getting around the infinity problem by pretending it's not there; it gets around the problem by simply removing reality from the equation, and then they all throw their hands up in the air and go "Aren't we incredible! We solved the problem!" while the rest of us make wooshing noises as the mathmaticians completely miss the point.
Indeed, I admitted that I couldn't argue if your approach was to challenge the applicability of mathematical theory to the world around us. However, don't stop at infinity! Don't forget that all of mathematics is done in the realm of conceptual fantasy. There's never been any reason why the world of math has to reflect the real universe, even starting with just numbers. There's no such concrete thing as 'One' and no reason why three apples and four apples should combine to yield seven apples just because 3+4=7. I can't and won't say that of course infinity is applicable, but then it seems that if you reject it as being largely applicable to the real world then you must also reject those structures built off of it, which unfortunately includes most of modern physics since it's built with the tools of calculus.
Of course, perhaps that's what you mean by everything falling apart. I just don't understand why we'd give up what seems to be the second most powerful tool we have in understanding the nature of what's happening around us.
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Combat-AI-maths-shut up and get back on topic so that I can understand a word you're saying :D
Yeah, I don't even understand the word "of" when calculus is the one after it.
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This thread is not about Combat any more, nor has it been in quite some time.
Infinity, discrete numbers, and a host of other mathematical concepts fit neatly with reality, why would you think they don't? "One" is not a real-world "thing" which you can grab hold of or see, nor is "two," that is true. But there is a one-to-one correspondence between what you perceive as "one" thing and the first slot on the (yes, theoretical) number line mathematicians refer to as the set of integers. Any number of materiel objects can thenceforth be plotted onto this imaginary set without losing any relevance or meaning. It is a short step (trivial mathematically) from there to rational and real numbers.
Infinity, too, exists, both in mathematicians' heads and in material reality. To use a somewhat cliched example, the universe is infinite in any of the three spatial dimensions, as well as (as far as we know) in time. Simpler than that, though, is the fact that literally any curved surface can be thought of as infinite as well. The two-dimensional surface of the earth is finite in area, and given decent enough equipment could be measured to a very accurate level. Its one-dimensional length, though, has no beginning, no end, and is infinite. If you are astute enough to use analogies like Zeno's Paradox without thinking of it as a paradox, you can even see that any distance at all may contain infinite subdivisions, including our friend "one" ::unit of length here::
HEYYYYY OFF-TOPIC
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Ignoring the planck length, yes. :-\
The universe may also be infinite spatially - or it may not be. It's a moot point, as the accessible universe is finite - there's a cosmic horizon, and it's not getting bigger. (Well, it is, but space is expanding faster than light (relative to us) that far off, so in practice it's actually getting smaller.)
In other words, regardless of whether the universe is really infinite or not, the part that can have any actual effect on us is finite, and not unbounded; adding time just makes it smaller. It's very annoying, since that means eternal life may be impossible.
Oh well, I'll worry about the first billion years first.
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Just for you Baughn I've started (and intend to finish) that link you posted.
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We don't know if infinity exists outside of conceptual mathematics. Indeed it's impossible to tell if something is infinite, because you cannot measure infinity.
Which is, of course, one of the reasons why applying infinity to reality causes headaches.
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Hence my comment about modern calculus getting around the infinity problem by pretending it's not there; it gets around the problem by simply removing reality from the equation, and then they all throw their hands up in the air and go "Aren't we incredible! We solved the problem!" while the rest of us make wooshing noises as the mathmaticians completely miss the point.
A statement about reality can be experimentally tested to any degree, but this never gives it mathematical rigor. Mathematical statements (rigirously proven statements) can therefore not be statements about reality. They can at best be about a model we think is a good match for the real world.
Nobody is removing reality from the equation - you can't stick reality into an equation in the first place.
Also, you seem to be very cavalier about saying what other people don't know. You can only (reliably) tell us what you personally don't know.
Specifically, never forget that Bell's theorem has been experimentally validated. IMO that pretty much rules out every explanation of quantum mechanics except the very simple (null interpretation) of MWI, but I know people tend to disagree on that.. well, I've got occam's razor on my side, at least. ;)
Don't you mean that the hypothesis of Bell's theorem has been experimentally verified to be false?
(Also, your phrasing seems weird. "Experimentally validated" isn't something you can say about a theorem. A theorem's validity is in no way dependent on experiments.)
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Hence my comment about modern calculus getting around the infinity problem by pretending it's not there; it gets around the problem by simply removing reality from the equation, and then they all throw their hands up in the air and go "Aren't we incredible! We solved the problem!" while the rest of us make wooshing noises as the mathmaticians completely miss the point.
A statement about reality can be experimentally tested to any degree, but this never gives it mathematical rigor. Mathematical statements (rigirously proven statements) can therefore not be statements about reality. They can at best be about a model we think is a good match for the real world.
Nobody is removing reality from the equation - you can't stick reality into an equation in the first place.
Also, you seem to be very cavalier about saying what other people don't know. You can only (reliably) tell us what you personally don't know.
I can reliably tell you that calculus does not address the issue at hand with the well-known paradoxes of Zeno. It solves the paradox, but anyone with half a brain can tell you that Achilles will be able to overtake the tortoise. It's the theory behind the paradox; that an infinite number of tasks taking a finite period of time is a contradiction in terms, that remains unaddressed by calculus.
Hence, calculus 'solves' the problem by ignoring it.
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But an infinite number of tasks taking a finite period of time is not a contradiction at all, if each task is infinitely short.
essentially, infinity / infinity = 1 (though this is a massive over-simplification)
Also, how on earth did this tread go from combat mechanics, to sentient AIs to the nature of infinity? I just read it and I still don't know what happened.
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Ahh sweet smell of derailment. Maybe we need a subforum: "philosophy n other cool stuff"
Back to offtopic: I don't really get the wrestling. Tried 100 times wrestling a cougar (or a tiger) with legendary wrestler, superdwarvenly strong and still can't break the joints unless I missed something
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I can reliably tell you that calculus does not address the issue at hand with the well-known paradoxes of Zeno. It solves the paradox, but anyone with half a brain can tell you that Achilles will be able to overtake the tortoise. It's the theory behind the paradox; that an infinite number of tasks taking a finite period of time is a contradiction in terms, that remains unaddressed by calculus.
Hence, calculus 'solves' the problem by ignoring it.
You do not have enough authority on this subject for these kinds of claims to hold weight without making a strong argument in their favor.
Zeno's paradox requires the assumption that simply because the number of tasks is infinite, the amount of time they take also must be infinite. The only problem is instinctive acceptance of that idea as an axiom. You can solve all of the issues by simply disallowing such an arbitrary premise.
Calculus isn't even relevant to the discussion. If someone told you calculus addresses the "problem", then the error is with that person. Not with calculus.
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Actually the solution to the Achilles paradox is to say either that you have a finite number of tasks that can be divided infinitely, so while you can divide them smaller an infinite number of times, at any stage in that division there is only a finite number of tasks, the other solution of course is to say that distance is discrete, rather than continuous.
As for infinity/infinity = 1, only if the infinities are the same size.
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Actually the solution to the Achilles paradox is to say either that you have a finite number of tasks that can be divided infinitely, so while you can divide them smaller an infinite number of times, at any stage in that division there is only a finite number of tasks, the other solution of course is to say that distance is discrete, rather than continuous.
You seem to be disagreeing with me, but nothing you wrote contradicts anything I wrote.
This is a sign of impending disaster for a conversation, so I'm ending my participation in it.
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Calculus is usually used to deal with infinitesimals, the Achilles paradox is all about infinitesimals. How would you not use Calculus to solve the paradox?
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How can you not use a thermometer to cook your food? Both are about heat, after all.
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But you can use a thermometer to cook food, you just don't have to.
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How can you not use a thermometer to cook your food? Both are about heat, after all.
I just use Maxwell's demon to cook all my food. And to keep my ice cream cold.
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But you can use a thermometer to cook food, you just don't have to.
And you can use calculus to solve the paradox, but you can't do it with ONLY calculus, and the calculus will most likely be of only tangential help, just like the thermometer.
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Ahh sweet smell of derailment. Maybe we need a subforum: "philosophy n other cool stuff"
Back to offtopic: I don't really get the wrestling. Tried 100 times wrestling a cougar (or a tiger) with legendary wrestler, superdwarvenly strong and still can't break the joints unless I missed something
For some reason, you can't break joints of non-sentient creatures. You can still strangle them, or grab their heads with a free hand and gouge their eyes out. That's about all you can do, though.
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But you can use a thermometer to cook food, you just don't have to.
And you can use calculus to solve the paradox, but you can't do it with ONLY calculus, and the calculus will most likely be of only tangential help, just like the thermometer.
So if you're not going to use the primary tool for dealing with infinitesimals to solve a problem about infinitesimals, how are you going to solve it? And why gimp yourself like that?
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Because it in't a problem with the infinitesimal, it's a problem with the human perception and understanding of the infinitesimals.
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Of course it's a problem with infinitesimals; being able to complete an infinite process is logically unsound without using infinitesimals.
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Being able to complete an infinite process is logically unsound without using infinitesimals, but being able to complete an infinite process is not the real problem. The real problem is human minds finding the sulution unintuitive.
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Infinitesimals are fun and all, but I thought I should make one thing clear for the less mathematically inclined of you...
Basic calculus does not involve infinitesimals, and does not offer a solution to zeno's "paradox" either. If you state a case where achilles passes the tortoise at 1 second in terms of zeno's paradox, what you get is an infinite process that calculus will easily show has a limit of 1; however, calculus specifically disclaims any ability to show that the solution actually *is* one, or that it even exists.
That it in this case does exist has nothing to do with it; calculus shows you that you can get arbitrarily close to the limit, not that you can actually reach it. For that, you have to use other methods.
..such as not stating the problem in terms of zeno's paradox in the first case. Just because you can state a situation in terms that make it impossible to predict what will happen without using very advanced mathematics, doesn't mean you have to do that; I really don't see why people thinks the paradox is a paradox. Do it the obvious way, by dividing distance by relative speed.
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The paradox is unsolvable, but only based on the flawed logical axiom that preforming an infinite number of tasks in a finite period of time is impossible.
Remove this idea and the problem isn't even a true paradox anymore.
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The paradox is unsolvable, but only based on the flawed logical axiom that preforming an infinite number of tasks in a finite period of time is impossible.
Remove this idea and the problem isn't even a true paradox anymore.
Well no shit, the paradox of going back in time and killing one's own grandfather isn't a paradox if we remove the idea that you're going back in time and instead say you just moved to an alternate universe.
Being able to complete an infinite process is logically unsound without using infinitesimals, but being able to complete an infinite process is not the real problem. The real problem is human minds finding the sulution unintuitive.
The Achilles paradox is a variation on the dichotomy paradox, or "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal."
Basically stating that before you can go from one point to another, you must first reach the half-way stage between those two points. And before you can get to the half-way stage you need to reach the point half-way betwen your current point and the half-way point and so on, ad infinitum.
Ergo, the conclusion is that in order to go from one point to any other point, one must first pass through an infinite number of points between the two, thus in order for an object to move, it must complete an infinite process, which is, as i previously stated, logically unsound.
From this, Zeno concludes that all motion is an illusion, i conclude that we're missing something, or possibly that distance and time are in fact discrete (if the mathematics behind Planck lengths are correct, one could put forth an argument for time and distance being practically discrete at a Planck scale, as it's supposed to be impossible to measure anything smaller.)
Also, unrelated to the dichotomy paradox, but the Arrow paradox is actually solved by the addition of inertia.
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There are several possible explanations for the paradox, but the simplest one that fits all of the data, and therefore the one chosen by occam's razor, is that it is possible to complete an infinite number of tasks.
Zeno's conclusion is essentially that nothing we sense is real, which, while possible, is needlessly overcomplicated. Besides, if time and distance are illusions then there is no point in thinking about it, as the very process of thought is, therefore, an illusion.
Since this conclusion is unacceptable, another must be used, even if Zeno was correct science is devoted to producing more accurate, useful models of the universe, not "correctness".
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There are several possible explanations for the paradox, but the simplest one that fits all of the data, and therefore the one chosen by occam's razor, is that it is possible to complete an infinite number of tasks.
To which the next question becomes "How?"
Zeno's conclusion is essentially that nothing we sense is real, which, while possible, is needlessly overcomplicated. Besides, if time and distance are illusions then there is no point in thinking about it, as the very process of thought is, therefore, an illusion.
Since this conclusion is unacceptable, another must be used, even if Zeno was correct science is devoted to producing more accurate, useful models of the universe, not "correctness".
Or, perhaps, the conclusion one could come to is that we're still missing some pieces of the puzzle? Simply because we have concluded that we do not have the answer here does not mean we do have it somewhere else.
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Enough, already!
If you insist on solving Zeno's paradox, the appropriate solution is to look at physics and point out that space is discrete.
In other words, the first assumption - that, to go somewhere, you first need to go to the halfway point - is incorrect. Once you get down to the planck scale, there is no halfway point.
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Which would be what i said way back when i first started this conversation.
Also in theory there could be a halfway point between planck points, it's just (in theory) impossible to ever measure such a point, ergo for all practical purposes space is discrete at the planck scale.
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Well.. in some theories. Not, as it turns out, the most interesting ones.
Though even in those, you can't measure a space that small, and no particles that small can exist, so it's pretty much a moot point.
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Like i said, for all practical purposes.
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There are several possible explanations for the paradox, but the simplest one that fits all of the data, and therefore the one chosen by occam's razor, is that it is possible to complete an infinite number of tasks.
To which the next question becomes "How?"
calculus
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Answer to any question in life: CALCULUS
How to use: Needs a degree in math (or at least studying it for a year). Then everything is very simple (bash the question with calculus till it bleeds to death)
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Answer to any question in life: CALCULUS
How to use: Needs a degree in math (or at least studying it for a year). textbook. Then everything is very simple (bash the question with calculus textbook until it bleeds to death)
Fix'd
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That sounds like a very... dwarven approach to calculus.
Where we see a textbook, they see a blunt weapon.
Or, perhaps, the conclusion one could come to is that we're still missing some pieces of the puzzle? Simply because we have concluded that we do not have the answer here does not mean we do have it somewhere else.
Right, what I mean is that while we might not be correct, calculus is still our best bet for now. Calculus solves Zeno's paradox by allowing infinitesimals, eventually other solutions may be created, altering different pieces of his logic.
Calculus may not be "correct", but unlike Zeno's paradox, it fits our observation of the world around us.
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isn't it a priori?
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Basically stating that before you can go from one point to another, you must first reach the half-way stage between those two points. And before you can get to the half-way stage you need to reach the point half-way betwen your current point and the half-way point and so on, ad infinitum.
The problem with this line of thought, to my mind at least, is that while it is true you have to cross half the distance before all the distance, space is not discrete at a human scale - so you don't -have- to move in half-steps, which is presumed (but not stated) in the problem.
Another way to look at it: In classic math, a given distance can be divided into an infinite number of halves, since you can always divide a non-zero number by 2. This does not mean there is an infinite number of measurable units, it just means you can always divide by 2, because there is no limit on the number of ... numbers. This is, however, not the same as saying there is no limit on the number of motions needed to cross a distance.
In a way, it's a good show of the issue of quantum level events compared to macro-scale events - if you try to apply quanta to something like taking a 2 foot step, you get weirdness like this problem, because quanta don't apply on this scale. This, in it self, means we don't have a perfect mathematical understanding of reality.
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Yeah. Wrestling gets very very confusing, what with so many different options. (grab his upper left leg with your lower right arm, Y/N?)
Close quarters combat is much simpler. Simply walk towards your target repeatedly!
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Ok, seriously, is it just me or has this entire discussion just gone around a loop and started again?
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I started reading all 8 pages of heavy physics, but balked, and just posted like I only read the OP.
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Actually i was referring to the Zeno's paradoxes discussion. We appear to have started all over again.
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Ok, seriously, is it just me or has this entire discussion just gone around a loop and started again?
Ask me how I knew this would happen.
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How did we even get to Zeno's paradox from wrestling anyway ???
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Ok, seriously, is it just me or has this entire discussion just gone around a loop and started again?
Ask me how I knew this would happen.
Superposition of knowledge states?
How did we even get to Zeno's paradox from wrestling anyway ???
I... don't know...
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We must have a divide by zero error somewhere.
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(http://i31.tinypic.com/11tlct5.jpg)
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The solution is found when you ignore zeno and make the answer relative to time, not distance.
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I think it says something about the complexity of Dwarf Fortress, that a topic that started out about combat mechanics in turns into a discussion about theoretical physics and quantum thought experiments.
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Yeah, it means that the combat is too complex so we decided to talk about an easier topic >:(
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oh Armok, I can't stop laughing