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Author Topic: Random Stuff Part II  (Read 1217752 times)

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sudgy

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2100 on: November 26, 2014, 09:27:22 pm »
+4

Next time someone goes off on a tangent about eigenvectors,

But what about if someone goes off on a sine or cosine?

Sorry about this co-tangent...
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scott_pilgrim

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2101 on: November 27, 2014, 01:57:25 am »
+1


I think I agree that EC seemed to have at least put a really optimistic spin on what seem to be more design flaws than anything else.  But I do see where they're coming from.  (Disclaimer: I know approximately zero things about Dark Souls II.)  I think I agree with basically everything they say at the beginning, talking about why letting the player choose an explicit difficulty level is bad, why offering help can be bad (I always get offended in the newer Nintendo platformers when they offer help after you die a certain number of times), and why giving you an option to switch difficulty in the middle of a game is bad (I think they even understate this point; I feel like much of the point of playing a really difficult game is to be able to say you did it, but if I'm constantly switching difficulty throughout the game, there's no record of my having done the hard parts (though I guess some games fix this by keeping track of which levels you did on which difficulties or level-specific collectibles/achievements, etc.)).

So, I guess what their point is is that DS2 avoids all of these issues by making a much more implicit "difficulty setting" system.  You don't go choose "easy mode" or "hard mode", you play with weapons or whatever that make it easier or harder.  And I can understand why this is better than an explicit difficulty setting, but I do agree that EC seems to overstate it.  I imagine it's somewhat similar to maining a low-tier character in Smash Bros.  In theory if your goal is to win, you should really just play MetaKnight (or Pikachu or whoever's top tier in Melee or Smash 4).  But there's a certain satisfaction you get from being able to say, yeah I play Yoshi even though he sucks, I play him because he's an adorable green dino and how can you not love that.  And I think EC is saying it's that same sort of feeling when you play with a "bad" weapon in DS2, you feel like, yeah I know weapon X is bad, but I just like it because it's fun.  And then they're saying, most people will find themselves more attached to suboptimal weapons, but if they need the game to be easier, they can just switch to the "better" weapons, and they don't feel like they're cheating or doing anything they're not supposed to.

So I do see their perspective, but I have trouble agreeing with it.  No one says it's a good thing in Smash Bros. that there are bad characters and good characters just because it gives you that sense of satisfaction when you win with a bad character.  Everyone would surely rather have it be as balanced as possible.  And same goes for FE, EC complains about lack of balance in FE (I think, I don't really remember that episode), rather than praising it for giving you an implicit "easy" or "hard" mode.  However, I think there are good reasons to say that a game like DS2 is very different from Smash Bros. or FE in a way that makes EC's perspective on this more plausible.  First, DS2 is (I think?) a single-player game (or at least non-competitive).  So unlike Smash Bros., you don't feel like you're disadvantaging yourself by playing a bad character.  You just feel like you're setting yourself up to try something new, and maybe more challenging.  And second, I think (again I'm talking about a game I know nothing about) DS2 is a more action-based game, in contrast with something like FE.  In FE, the game is all about making the decisions that maximize your chances of winning, so if you give players options that are better than other options, well, they should just pick the better options.  If they didn't do that, they wouldn't really be playing the game, since the whole point of the game is to pick the right options.  Whereas in an action-based game, the choices like that are presumably not really the main point, they're there to give you diversity, both in playstyle and in difficulty level.

Anyway, I really like Extra Credits normally so I probably have an irrational instinct to defend them.  I think at the very least they really overstate the "genius" of Dark Souls II in this regard though.  But there is probably something to be learned from it; I think it's good for game designers to be thinking about alternate ways to go about difficulty options, and the way DS2 does it is probably better than most games, just not by as much as EC is stating it in this episode.
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soulnet

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2102 on: November 27, 2014, 09:10:39 am »
+2

Ok, you really pushed my buttons with this Math vs Science thing.

Education:

I kind-of agree with Kirian on the teaching training, although I am not sure there is enough time for people being fully trained and updated on a specific discipline to also go through that. I went to some educator classes and have a mother and best friends educators, so I am constantly researching those (primarily because of interest, not because there is any incentive from the university to do it), but that is far from being a full-training. In any case, at this point I think the main problem is that (most) academics don't even care about classes, because their science is just SO important [sarcastic mark]. Just making them care about enough to put some thinking into classes will likely improve things a lot. After that, we can think of specific training. It would be pointless now.

Math vs? Science:

I think math IS a science. Of course, if in some culture the accepted categorization is to separate math, I am fine with that, but I think there are no "scientific method not being applied" reasons for it. You can very much apply the scientific method to abstract objects. The experiments are just your peers believing your proofs. Given that in modern mathematics most proofs are non-decidable and use higher-order logics, their correctness (i.e., the "truth" notion in math) is based on consensus. So, math is really closer to political science than to physics in this sense.

Mathematicians are usually smug, so, please be a mathematician, but don't believe that bullshit about purity or math being the only "legit" thing. It is not true that more general is always better: sometimes, generalizing too much makes the proofs lose focus on the meaning and just become manipulation of symbols. That is not the good math. Good math uses proofs to assign meaning / purpose to its definitions. For that to happen, the proofs need to resonate with something within your head that is not quantifiable. They need to be "natural". They need to "feel ok".

Mathematicians usually claim that their findings are "more true" because they are not based on inaccurate experiments (or a similar reason), but they don't even care about logic enough to know what "true" means. They usually have no idea what logic power is used in their reasonings and why that is important. Ironically, CS people usually DO care about that when doing theoretical proofs.

I did not know the complex numbers were disregarded as useless at first, but that happens in every discipline. The periodic table was disregarded as useless. And it was the mathematicians who laughed at Gödel. That's the level of their smugness.

BTW, this attitude was what got me in CS. CS is the place in which you can do mathematics without having to deal with those self-involved mathematicians. However, when I applied for full-time researcher job at our national science council, they put me in math :(.
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silverspawn

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2103 on: November 27, 2014, 09:48:33 am »
0

I am the math that cries.

someone want to explain this joke?

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2104 on: November 27, 2014, 10:09:18 am »
0

I am the math that cries.

someone want to explain this joke?
You know, there is a separate thread for that.
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2105 on: November 27, 2014, 10:12:19 am »
0

the world will end if you explain it here.

Donald X.

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2106 on: November 27, 2014, 10:58:44 am »
0

I am the math that cries.

someone want to explain this joke?
It's not a joke. It's uh. An insight? A way of looking at things. Contrasting different ends of the spectrum.
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Witherweaver

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2107 on: November 27, 2014, 11:09:24 am »
+1

Next time someone goes off on a tangent about eigenvectors, just stand up, grab his papers from him, scream "Those are MY vectors!", and storm off. Or violently erase what he wrote from the blackboard if he's not writing it on something grabbable.

So the joke here is that "eigen" means own in German.. so.. like.. they are your vectors...

...
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pacovf

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2108 on: November 27, 2014, 11:50:54 am »
0

Ok, you really pushed my buttons with this Math vs Science thing.

Education:

I kind-of agree with Kirian on the teaching training, although I am not sure there is enough time for people being fully trained and updated on a specific discipline to also go through that. I went to some educator classes and have a mother and best friends educators, so I am constantly researching those (primarily because of interest, not because there is any incentive from the university to do it), but that is far from being a full-training. In any case, at this point I think the main problem is that (most) academics don't even care about classes, because their science is just SO important [sarcastic mark]. Just making them care about enough to put some thinking into classes will likely improve things a lot. After that, we can think of specific training. It would be pointless now.

Math vs? Science:

I think math IS a science. Of course, if in some culture the accepted categorization is to separate math, I am fine with that, but I think there are no "scientific method not being applied" reasons for it. You can very much apply the scientific method to abstract objects. The experiments are just your peers believing your proofs. Given that in modern mathematics most proofs are non-decidable and use higher-order logics, their correctness (i.e., the "truth" notion in math) is based on consensus. So, math is really closer to political science than to physics in this sense.

Mathematicians are usually smug, so, please be a mathematician, but don't believe that bullshit about purity or math being the only "legit" thing. It is not true that more general is always better: sometimes, generalizing too much makes the proofs lose focus on the meaning and just become manipulation of symbols. That is not the good math. Good math uses proofs to assign meaning / purpose to its definitions. For that to happen, the proofs need to resonate with something within your head that is not quantifiable. They need to be "natural". They need to "feel ok".

Mathematicians usually claim that their findings are "more true" because they are not based on inaccurate experiments (or a similar reason), but they don't even care about logic enough to know what "true" means. They usually have no idea what logic power is used in their reasonings and why that is important. Ironically, CS people usually DO care about that when doing theoretical proofs.

I did not know the complex numbers were disregarded as useless at first, but that happens in every discipline. The periodic table was disregarded as useless. And it was the mathematicians who laughed at Gödel. That's the level of their smugness.

BTW, this attitude was what got me in CS. CS is the place in which you can do mathematics without having to deal with those self-involved mathematicians. However, when I applied for full-time researcher job at our national science council, they put me in math :(.

Then again, the guy from CS saying that CS is better than maths is not particularly surprising :P

I am currently working with a group that is analysing results from an experiment in huh particle physics. They don't say very nice things about theoretical physicists.



Next time someone goes off on a tangent about eigenvectors, just stand up, grab his papers from him, scream "Those are MY vectors!", and storm off. Or violently erase what he wrote from the blackboard if he's not writing it on something grabbable.

So the joke here is that "eigen" means own in German.. so.. like.. they are your vectors...

...

Looks like you should go back to jokes about all things not being the best things, this is too high level for us. I thought you were asking us to be assholes, which was kinda funny but came out of nowhere.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2014, 11:54:17 am by pacovf »
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Witherweaver

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2109 on: November 27, 2014, 12:34:28 pm »
+5

Next time someone goes off on a tangent about eigenvectors, just stand up, grab his papers from him, scream "Those are MY vectors!", and storm off. Or violently erase what he wrote from the blackboard if he's not writing it on something grabbable.

So the joke here is that "eigen" means own in German.. so.. like.. they are your vectors...

...

Looks like you should go back to jokes about all things not being the best things, this is too high level for us. I thought you were asking us to be assholes, which was kinda funny but came out of nowhere.

They can't all be the best eigenvector joke ever :(
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eHalcyon

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2110 on: November 27, 2014, 01:04:15 pm »
+3

Next time someone goes off on a tangent about eigenvectors, just stand up, grab his papers from him, scream "Those are MY vectors!", and storm off. Or violently erase what he wrote from the blackboard if he's not writing it on something grabbable.

So the joke here is that "eigen" means own in German.. so.. like.. they are your vectors...

...

Looks like you should go back to jokes about all things not being the best things, this is too high level for us. I thought you were asking us to be assholes, which was kinda funny but came out of nowhere.

They can't all be the best eigenvector joke ever :(

Eigenvector? I hardly knew her!
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florrat

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2111 on: November 27, 2014, 02:11:04 pm »
+3

I agree with your general sentiment that math is a science.  You might not be experimenting which things are true, but you are experimenting with which things are most useful, natural and general. However, I disagree on some points you make

Given that in modern mathematics most proofs are non-decidable and use higher-order logics, their correctness (i.e., the "truth" notion in math) is based on consensus.
Wait, that's not a given. I think no mathematician works in logical frameworks where proof checking is undecidable (except for some logicians working in exotic logics, if you want to call them mathematicians (which I typically do)). Given a potential formal proof, there is a total algorithm checking that it is a correct proof. Of course, that it different from saying that provability is decidable: in most logics it is indeed the case that given a statement, it is undecidable to check whether the statement is provable.

It is not true that more general is always better: sometimes, generalizing too much makes the proofs lose focus on the meaning and just become manipulation of symbols. That is not the good math. Good math uses proofs to assign meaning / purpose to its definitions. For that to happen, the proofs need to resonate with something within your head that is not quantifiable. They need to be "natural". They need to "feel ok".
I think if you generalized some topic so far that you can prove deep results just by manipulating symbols, you're doing something really well. I'm now mainly thinking about category theory, which is awesomely general. And the fact that it is so general, leads to new interesting discoveries. The "symbol manipulation" proof in category can be the essence of different proofs in different fields, and because you work in the general theory of categories, you see the connection between these different proofs or techniques in different fields, which itself is a useful insight.

I see your point that proofs "need to resonate with something within your head" and I agree with that. But when you're getting more and more used to a new general theory, I think that also happens in the general theory. If you're just learning it, you should just look what the things you're proving mean in examples.
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2112 on: November 27, 2014, 05:33:19 pm »
+1

Quote from: John Horton Conway
It‘s a thing that nonmathematicians don‘t realize. Mathematics is actually an aesthetic subject almost entirely.

I view mathematics as an art.
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2113 on: November 27, 2014, 07:15:10 pm »
0

Quote from: John Horton Conway
It‘s a thing that nonmathematicians don‘t realize. Mathematics is actually an aesthetic subject almost entirely.

I view mathematics as an art.

Most things that require skill are. But I wouldn't consider mathematics to BE art.
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2114 on: November 27, 2014, 07:28:41 pm »
0

Quote from: John Horton Conway
It‘s a thing that nonmathematicians don‘t realize. Mathematics is actually an aesthetic subject almost entirely.

I view mathematics as an art.

Most things that require skill are. But I wouldn't consider mathematics to BE art.

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2115 on: November 27, 2014, 07:32:30 pm »
0

Quote from: John Horton Conway
It‘s a thing that nonmathematicians don‘t realize. Mathematics is actually an aesthetic subject almost entirely.

I view mathematics as an art.

Most things that require skill are. But I wouldn't consider mathematics to BE art.

Up for Dominion?

I'm actually leaving soon but will be back around 9ish. Dominion then.
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soulnet

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2116 on: November 27, 2014, 07:58:32 pm »
+2

Wait, that's not a given. I think no mathematician works in logical frameworks where proof checking is undecidable (except for some logicians working in exotic logics, if you want to call them mathematicians (which I typically do)). Given a potential formal proof, there is a total algorithm checking that it is a correct proof. Of course, that it different from saying that provability is decidable: in most logics it is indeed the case that given a statement, it is undecidable to check whether the statement is provable.

Mathematicians rarely prove things in a logic where proof-checking is decidable. They prove things in some form of intuitionisitic logic, usually with higher-order functions. SOME (possibly most, but I don't know) of those proofs COULD be translated into a proof in a logical system with computable proof-checking available, but (almost) nobody does it. And few people care enough to even have a sentence that says "this proof can *clearly* be made using this amount of logical power, so, we are cool".


I think if you generalized some topic so far that you can prove deep results just by manipulating symbols, you're doing something really well. I'm now mainly thinking about category theory, which is awesomely general. And the fact that it is so general, leads to new interesting discoveries. The "symbol manipulation" proof in category can be the essence of different proofs in different fields, and because you work in the general theory of categories, you see the connection between these different proofs or techniques in different fields, which itself is a useful insight.

I see your point that proofs "need to resonate with something within your head" and I agree with that. But when you're getting more and more used to a new general theory, I think that also happens in the general theory. If you're just learning it, you should just look what the things you're proving mean in examples.

There is some value in the generalization, of course, which is mostly connecting things that were seemingly disconnected. My point is that there is also a loss in value because the proof done directly on the subject at hand is much more illustrating on the phenomena the person reading the theorem is interested in. So, my point is not that category theory is useless (although I think category theory is a drug at this point, kind of like string theory for mathematicians), but that it is over-praised as the ultimate tool and even the only thing that is worthy (or legit...).

So, to come back to my original post, more general is not always better. I agree with you that it is sometimes better and I would add that it is usually incomparable.

Caveat + example: My very first paper on my PhD topic is a simple combinatorial proof of a fact that was already known, but required to combine more general results from three different papers. Doing that lead to the ability to produce results for similar scenarios which an author of one of those papers was unable to get despite working in the question for some time.

Stupid remark: Chrome seems to think "combinatorial" is not a word. What kind of programmers is Google hiring?
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blueblimp

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2117 on: November 27, 2014, 09:32:00 pm »
0

And few people care enough to even have a sentence that says "this proof can *clearly* be made using this amount of logical power, so, we are cool".
I'd argue that, for most purposes, restricting the logical power available to you is like travelling cross country on a bicycle instead of a car: more effort to get to the same destination slower. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're into, but most people would prefer to drive.

(By the way, I'm sure that most mathematicians do not restrict themselves to intuitionistic logic, which as I understand it means the same thing as constructive logic. Proof by contradiction is handy!)
« Last Edit: November 27, 2014, 09:35:21 pm by blueblimp »
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2118 on: November 27, 2014, 10:45:42 pm »
+1

I'm sorry for opening so many cans of worms.  While we're at it, anybody want to go fishing?

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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2119 on: November 28, 2014, 01:41:53 am »
0

Science > Math
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2120 on: November 28, 2014, 01:45:30 am »
0

Quote from: John Horton Conway
It‘s a thing that nonmathematicians don‘t realize. Mathematics is actually an aesthetic subject almost entirely.

I view mathematics as an art.

Most All things that require skill are.

Etymology:

art (n.)
early 13c., "skill as a result of learning or practice," from Old French art (10c.), from Latin artem (nominative ars) "work of art; practical skill; a business, craft,"

The more you know!
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2121 on: November 28, 2014, 02:13:48 am »
+2

Science > Math

But how can Science be better than itself?
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2122 on: November 28, 2014, 10:41:29 am »
+1

This website about the worst things for sale is the best... hum... thing... for... free?

Currently in my top10 websites (together with XKCD, SMBC, various newspapers and f.DS). So, to summarize, I hate you.
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2123 on: November 28, 2014, 11:45:14 am »
0

Math is language, science is discourse.
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Re: Random Stuff Part II
« Reply #2124 on: November 28, 2014, 12:33:06 pm »
+3

"Math" and "Arts" both have 4 letters, hence Math and Arts are the same.

Science is obviously different.  It has 7 letters.

(Using the obvious equivalence relation a~b iff a and b have the same number of characters).
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