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1

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: October 01, 2023, 01:43:54 pm »

Everyone who talks about the brain in relation to digital AI seems to have one of two positions

- Obviously if the brain does X, then AI needs to do something very similar to X or it can't work
- Obviously it doesn't matter what the brain does lol stack more layers

With the first one usually from neuroscientists and the second from AI people. Both of these are really stupid! And actually the first seems more stupid on first glance since there are clear counter-examples, like airplanes, where we ignored what biology did and solved the problem differently.

It is true that AI requires a ridiculous amount of data to do anything and humans don't, but it's not at all clear that this limitation is fatal.

The amount of data in human genes is ridiculous.

2

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: September 25, 2023, 04:37:23 pm »

It really is all about prestige and status. Even in fields that are ostensibly about something else like math, that something just matters because it's tied to status. If you prove P =/= NP and no one believes you, you have nothing. And although this counterfactual isn't really possible, if you had a false proof that everyone believed, you'd get all the fame.

I feel like I need to chime in on this. There is some truth here, but it is very hyperbolic (no pun intended) to put it like this.

First of all, probably the major proof of the 21st century so far, the proof of the Poincaré conjecture, came from Perelman, a relative outsider in mathematics. This was still acknowledged widely. There are also multple mathematical results by hobbyists that have been accepted, e.g. in plane tiling or even knot theory.

Also by anonymous 4chan posters in combinatorics.

3

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: September 22, 2023, 08:05:01 pm »

I saw that same article! There are some good ideas; but the brief descriptions of each one makes me pretty sure it was written by AI.

The font and the color scheme make me pretty sure it was written by AI.

4

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: September 21, 2023, 05:51:23 pm »

88

Sick dogwhistle.

5

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: September 12, 2023, 01:30:21 pm »

There is a strong correlation between being on MasN Hub and being in the #1 ranked Generals.io 2v2 team.

6

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: September 07, 2023, 06:19:00 pm »

Is it better to have an insane person in power or a competent person with terrible political views?

A competent person with terrible political views is predictable, an insane person is a gamble (and probably what you'll actually get is the political views of whoever is close to the insane person and manipulative enough). It depends on the specifics which one is better though.

7

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: September 07, 2023, 06:29:37 am »

Is David Pakman the only popular political commentator who is reasonably smart? I feel like I've asked this before but I still don't know any other one.

I'd actually like to get more into political stuff right now just because it's arousing and I need more arousing stuff in my life right now after a week of depression.

MasN Hub is arousing.

8

General Discussion / Re: Song of the day

« on: September 05, 2023, 09:49:36 pm »

9

Rules Questions / Re: Renaissance: Scholar with Flag

« on: August 29, 2023, 02:03:06 pm »

@GendoIkari
Correct, that's also how we play it, but I wanted to clearly point out that my opponent already had the flag before she started her turn.

@segura
The confusion is because of the Dutch wording in the rules book. It's saying the following for 'Flag', which is 'Vaandel' in the Dutch version:
"als je de Vaandeldrager pakt of vernietigt, neem je het Vaandel. Het Vaandel zorgt ervoor dat je bij het trekken van een nieuwe hand in de opschoonfase 1 extra kaart mag trekken. Dat geldt ook als je hand om een of andere reden uit minder dan 5 kaarten bestaat."
In Google translate it is:
"if you take or destroy the Banner Bearer, you take the Banner. The Banner allows you to draw 1 extra card when drawing a new hand in the clean-up phase. This also applies if for some reason your hand consists of less than 5 cards."
In the English version of Renaissance it is much more obvious:
"The Flag causes you to draw an extra card when drawing your hand in Clean-up. This is true even if your hand would normally be some amount other than 5 cards - for example if you played Outpost (from Seaside), instead of drawing 3 cards for your Outpost turn, you would draw 4."

So my opponent states that it not only activates when you're in the clean-up phase, but that it also applies when you have less than 5 cards (before you activated scholar).

The only time you draw your hand is during the clean-up phase. Drawing cards from Scholar is not drawing your hand.

10

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 21, 2023, 12:45:22 pm »

youtube embedding #%^#&$^#&*

The embedding works on my machine.

11

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: August 17, 2023, 02:27:20 pm »

Lowerling
$6 Action - Duration - Attack
At the start of each of your turns for the rest of the game: each other player puts their –1 Card token on their deck.

12

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 17, 2023, 12:12:12 pm »

Now that I am aware what it's supposed to look like when the illusion is working, the change happens pretty quickly even, like every 3-10 seconds or so.

13

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 17, 2023, 12:10:42 pm »

Yeah the thing that always sits in the back of my head worrying me is that some people apparently simply don't see the effects you're supposed to see. That sort of makes them less persuasive.

For me, it's just strong enough that I'm confident it's not a placebo. But there have been other cases where I don't see the intended effect. I tend to assume the effects tend to be stronger for most other people, but idk if that's actually true.

This feels extremely weird to look at because I sometimes see it, and sometimes I don't, and I don't think I can control which way I see it, it just randomly changes. I also tried looking at it with just one eye and it was the same between both eyes (I've sometimes found with the spinning silhouette gif that one of my eyes prefers to see the spin in a different direction than the other but with stereo vision, it just spins in whichever direction I want, but there's nothing like that going on here).

14

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 17, 2023, 05:35:02 am »

And now I am. Huh, that's weird.

15

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 17, 2023, 05:33:58 am »

Check this out:



The key point here is that the right ring has a perceived brightness difference left vs. right, but the left ring does not -- even though the only difference between them is the two tiny vertical lines separating them. That's one of the best visual illusions I've seen so far imo, for the purposes of demonstrating the supposed "filling in" properties of human color vision (where color spreads outward but can't cross boundaries). Stuff like this makes all the annoying parts of the book worth it.

I'm not perceiving the difference.

16

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 15, 2023, 09:16:50 pm »

It would actually be easier with a separate document contianing just the figures

I review documents like these. I save a second copy and put that on my other monitor.

Wow, is that so? Thanks for sharing!

17

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: August 14, 2023, 12:45:53 pm »

I had a rather amusing turn vs. the AI app a few days ago. (August 9, 2023 Daily Dominion).
Kingdom:
Pawn
Secluded Shrine
Swindler
Abundance
"Shy" Secret Passage
Courtier
Duke
Minion
Pendant
Torturer

Scrounge

The AI got quite a bit ahead of me in Province count, but I was able to strike back later with some nice Abundance/Scrounge combos to nab 6 Duchies and 6 Dukes, which brought me a nice victory.

The particular useful card interaction:
I even had a truly silly turn toward the end where had a Secluded Shrine, 3$, and 2 buys thanks to a Pawn, and the trash had no estates. I bought a copper, which allowed me to trash an Estate from my hand with the Secluded Shrine, and immediately got it back alongside the final Duchy with Scrounge.

This thread is intended for strategy advice. There's a section for game reports called Game Reports where you can share epic moments from your games.

18

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 10, 2023, 06:33:32 pm »

damn the smartest person in the world just said they liked sth I've written so much that they wanted me to repeat it in a public voice chat. Is this what it feels like to meet your celebrity crush?

Who are you referring to, and what was the thing you wrote?

19

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: August 08, 2023, 08:06:38 pm »

Souk/Gamble is pretty neat. If you have no cards in hand/deck/discard and at least $7, you can gain the entire Souk pile in one turn, and then the Souks are generally at least Golds for your Gamble deck and better if you get any Treasures or disappearing Actions in your hand.

Similarly with Souk/Rush. Though in this case, you don't even need your deck/discard to be empty in order to autopile the Souks, you just need $7 and no cards in hand. Or even if you do have cards in hand but a bit more $, you can use the first Souks you gain to trash the cards in your hand, ensuring that the rest of them all make $7.

Throw in any cost reduction, and you'll actually end up with more coins than you started with, too!

You also end up with more pieces in the card interaction than you started with.

20

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 07, 2023, 07:42:02 pm »

having fun exercising

Why don't you like having fun?

21

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: August 06, 2023, 09:09:10 am »

But I don't think I'm gonna put more than one hour per day in because, like, that's just not worth it. Even if you live five years longer, if that costs you a tenth of your waking hours, the tradeoff is questionable.

It's not that questionable since you don't actually lose the hours you spend exercising, you spend them having fun exercising and there are the extra benefits of being able to do more things and feeling better all the time.

22

Rules Questions / Re: Royal Galley and actions

« on: July 31, 2023, 07:25:23 pm »

i.e., does the Patrol inherit the action free status of the King's Court given by Royal Galley?

This is not really a technically accurate description of what's going on there even though the end result is the same. Everything that tells you to play something always gives the "action free status" to the thing it's playing; so in this case, King's Court gets it from Royal Galley, and completely unrelatedly, Patrol gets it from King's Court (and you do end up with an action left as explained by AJD).

23

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: July 29, 2023, 09:25:29 am »

Have you tried telling it to be less elaborate and fancy?

24

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: July 28, 2023, 04:27:35 pm »

Toothpaste with salty taste sounds like torture

It's not that bad actually, and the upside for the user is that you can immediately eat something and it's not going to hugely clash with the toothpaste. It does also feel like it's working in terms of reducing gum bleeding, but also it's a bit difficult to tell if that's actually true because both the color and the taste of blood would be very well concealed by the toothpaste even if it wasn't.

25

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: July 27, 2023, 10:22:04 pm »

I bought this toothpaste that's supposed to (among other things) reduce gum bleeding, and it turns out the toothpaste itself has a rosebud color and a salty taste, which is extremely sus.