K 3 3 G

The Girl’s Guide to Gamers (1/?)

Posted on February 14th, 2007 by ephemere.
Categories: opinions, games, ideas.

Valentine’s day special!

Heh, not really. This piece has been on my mind for quite a while now, especially since (a) I’m both a girl and a gamer; and (b) I’m involved with a gamer. Truth be told, if one were to trust gamer lore, gamer girl + gamer guy = ideal combination, but we all know that’s just wishful thinking.

Thus, this series (? hopefully I manage to follow through with it!). I’m starting it in a very informal way, but may turn it into an article or something more readable someday. Bear in mind that a lot of things here apply to geeks in general, not just gamers, and can be generalized to… well, just about anyone, whether you’re a gamer or a girl or just something starting with g. Just pick and choose whatever you feel applies.

(more…)

2 comments.

The nonconformist’s plaything

Posted on December 1st, 2006 by ephemere.
Categories: science/math, ideas.

Hello, sorry for the silence! I’ve been semi-away from the ‘net these past few days, since I had to do a thesis-related presentation last Wednesday and spent the days before that with my nose buried in papers. Slacker though I am, I wouldn’t have needed to cram quite as much as I have if not for the fact that I decided to change thesis topics just last week.

Yes. I’m not the most reasonable of people.

It was worth it, though; from a thesis problem that (to me) wouldn’t go very far, I’m now studying a very interesting combination of statistical mechanics and game theory. My thesis problem is concerned with something known as the minority game. Just to clarify, game theory does not have anything to do with MMORPGs or RTSs or things that go boom. It deals with the patterns and strategies involved in certain situations where your reward depends on not only your choice but also everyone else’s decisions.

The minority game is the mathematical formulation of the El Farol bar problem, which deals with the dilemma of anti-social people who want to drink alone… No, just kidding. This is how it goes. Let’s pretend that there’s a certain bar that you, along with a lot of other people, go to exclusively (meaning you don’t go to any other bars). Every night, you have the choice between going to the bar (action +1) or staying at home (-1).

However, you, being a strange type of person who goes to a bar to drink and not to pick up hot bois or chikzorz, don’t want to go to the bar if it’s too crowded. If given the choice between going to a crowded bar and staying at home, you’d rather stay at home. In other words, you want to be in the minority: if few people go to the bar you want to be one of them (since the bar won’t be crowded), and if few people stay at home you’d rather stay at home as well as to avoid the pack of sheep crowding the bar. This is why the game is called the minority game — the minority wins.

Also, let’s assume that everyone else thinks like you (what? no really, let’s pretend… stay with me here). Nobody wants to go to a crowded bar, but nobody has any idea how many people are going to the bar on a certain night anyway. So how can you decide what decision-making strategy to follow? Also, what does the bar attendance for each night look like? Are there winners and losers, or does everyone more or less make as many bad decisions as good ones?

And that’s where statistical mechanics methods come in. My thesis problem involves the solution of a set of rather intimidating equations that I don’t quite understand as of the moment, but anyway…

Minority games, though they’re a class of very simple models, have a lot of applications. You can use them to analyze traffic (should I take the shortcut route or the normal route?), lines (like at the grocery or bank or — gasp — the horrifying enrollment queues at my university), and financial markets (buy or sell?). Also, you can modify minority games to add a lot of other choices, as long as you stick to the rule that the minority always wins. They’re very useful in disciplines like economics and social science.

…Though, of course, if I were given a choice on something to do during a Friday night I’d pick something like stargazing or going to an amusement park or playing my current game obsession. My professor actually kept interrupting me while I was presenting this–

“Why don’t you like crowded bars, anyway?” he said. “Who goes to bars to drink? You go to bars to pick up people, right? Hmm, or… you can just bring your date home. That’d probably be just as fun, if you live alone.”

Really now. You should’ve heard what he had to say about the prisoner’s dilemma.

4 comments.

Blood, bonds, and bartered sisters

Posted on November 24th, 2006 by Zarathustra.
Categories: philosophy, opinions, art & music, ideas.

Where to begin?

I’ve never fancied myself a very good writer - maybe a halfway-decent one at most. Yet I can’t figure out why I get so livid when given advice on how to write (usually by those who are far more experienced than I am at writing).
“Just write down whatever pops in your head first.”
“Think about the interesting things that happened during the day.”
“Write about what you feel most passionate about.”

As much as the above helps a writer, I can’t help but believe that it represses the need of every writer to first struggle with him/herself. I’ve always thought the path to good writing, whether it be intended to sell books, to establish a solid career, or even to revolutionize a genre is always a path that cannot, should not be seen in its entirety right away - or even at all. Writing is an art, yes, and at times it can be a business… but it it also a way of seeing the world, of looking at it and applying our unique understanding into all its aspects. This is not to say that a writer must be an intellectual, but that a writer must have an intelligible grasp of how words, ideas, concepts, and language can effectively change the world.

Some of my philosophy teachers would probably wring my neck if they read this, but I cannot see how there can be “purity” in knowing with a knower that is defined, redefined, and created in some way every single second by the world around. Existence and experience are inherently linked, and however we understand either of these terms depends on how either of these terms affect our understanding - a true circle, but one we cannot go beyond.

In theory it seems sound.
But it fails to take into account one aspect of human living - and there have been so many discussions of this kind before - that I don’t think falls into the existence we believe to be all-encompassing: imagination. Imagination is what allows us to “transcend” our own existence. Imagination is what allows us to dream of impossibilities. Imagination is what brings forth that indefinable aspect of the human being that pushes and nudges and breaks free of all accepted truths. If Magellan had no imagination, would he have gone on that remarkable journey to the “edge of the world”? If scientists had no imagination, would they really accomplish anything more than what is already established? And in the context of this blog, would we be free to write down whatever we wanted, whatever “pops in our head first” or whatever “interesting thing happened during the day” or whatever we “feel most passionate about”?

NO. And in that emphatic negative is a strength that is built upon this conviction: writing is a struggle against, to. Whether you write to struggle against yourself, an institution, and idea, or struggle to be heard, to go beyond norms, to feel good, to inform… the essence of writing is this effort to unleash your imagination upon all creation. Writing is a will to struggle internally and to the external.
So the next time some one sees me spending three agonizing hours to simply write the first sentence of a story/essay/case/file/article, realize that I’m going through the best part of writing and do not wished to be interrupted. Life is not life without its joyful agonies.

And that is where I will begin. Man, that took some effort to type out, coherent or not. Such a chore, such a chore…
Random thoughts (hence the title): Admittedly I was only convinced to blog by my sister (yes, she is up for bartering if anyone’s interested) who believes that by giving me an outlet to vent my thoughts, she is saving herself the trouble of having to listen to my strangeness day by day. Unfortunately for her there is more than enough “junk” in this “trunk” to satisfy the younger sibling’s daily urge to pester, irritate, annoy, and exasperate the elder. No bond is stronger than that which has been built upon a lifetime of suffering. Glad to see you’re still around after 20 sis, here’s to hoping you never decide to apply for a gun license. I don’t know who you’d shoot first: you or me.

EDIT1: Agh forgot the stupid tags.

9 comments.