No such thing as free will? (online anyway)

[DaddyHoggy]

I don't play WoW, so I can't say whether such things are inevitable within the structure of the game.

http://www.gizmag.com/online-gamers-act ... ted/18923/

Could we do the same in Oolite?

[Disembodied]

Just data mining, is all. Just because we all (within error bars, I assume) make the same choices, given the same or similar range of options, doesn't mean we don't have free will. If Oolite developed the same mass of players, and the same second-by-second monitoring, as WoW, we'd probably be able to do something similar, given enough crunching. Credit card companies, can, it has been claimed, predict a divorce with around 98% accuracy up to 2 years in advance, by following changes in spending patterns.

Given enough data, and computing resources, we're all similar enough to be inherently predictable within a normal range of circumstances. That's why I like to randomise my life with dice-rolls. Earthworms banana!

[Cody]

That's why I like to randomise my life with dice-rolls.

Ahh... 'The Dice Man', eh! That's an interesting tale.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Hey Disembodied, is Gary Gygax a friend of yours?

Perhaps the apparent ability to predict what people will do is more based on thier personality. The game gives people certains goals and objectives so why be surprised when certain groups of goals and objectives go together. The difference is the personality at play.

"A good game stands on its own," said Dr. David L. Roberts, an assistant professor of computer science at NCSU. "If you want to improve it, you have to make sure players will like any changes you make. This research can help researchers get it right, because if you have a good idea of what players like, you can make informed decisions about the kind of storylines and mechanics those players would like in the future."

This guy comes off to me as some sort of "yes" man. Can you imagine applying this to oolite? Bad idea. Oolite is NOT a game of conformity, it's fundamental success would be the opposite, to let people do what they want to. There is a framework to the game but it's very loose in that people CAN do what they want to within the context of space combat/trading. Oxps can make whatever the INDIVIDUAL wants to do happen within that context. I don't want conformists coming in here by the millions(future) telling me what I CAN do and hard coding what I CAN do. If oolite goes this direction it's finished.

Join the foundation to keep oolite FREE!

[Disembodied]

I don't think there's any risk of Oolite following this path. You need squillions of players and constant, hovering monitoring systems, vast and cool and unsympathetic, watching their every move, gorging on the numbers and reporting back to Illuminati HQ (Gary who? Steve Jackson, maybe ... ).

Plus, WoW is – as I understand it – pretty much a "click here for your character to do something while you dust nachos crumbs from your overhanging abdomen"-style game (I may be unfairly characterising WoW players here, but I don't care – I live up three flights of stairs, how will they ever reach me?). I don't think Oolite, with its raw adrenaline-soaked gameplay and lean, muscular players is suited to the same sort of number-crunching.

Of course, somewhere out there is a computer that predicted I would say that.

[Smivs]

(I may be unfairly characterising WoW players here, but I don't care – I live up three flights of stairs, how will they ever reach me?)

They used to think that about Daleks

[Commander McLane]

(I may be unfairly characterising WoW players here, but I don't care – I live up three flights of stairs, how will they ever reach me?)

[Makandal]

Thanks, Disembodied, this is very well explained. Data mining is an incredibly powerful tool when facing a very large number of sample. I used it a bit with Oolite vessels but it can be applied to many things to get a synthetic vision of a situation, create a proxy (translate "simpler") model and make prediction. Nothing magic in it. Just go to Google Correlate and you will have the ultimate data mining tool for Internet.
http://correlate.googlelabs.com/
This is, in USA, what correlate the best with the search for Oolite:
pumpkin juice
enya
download worms armageddon
elephants dream
blender
peter and the starcatchers
foam pad
space trader
wormux
nasa picture of the day
Apart from the nasa picture of the day, space trader, PLEASE EXPLAIN me why elephants dream and pumpkin juice (what an abomination...). And why such a high number in Kansas and Utah ??? Is there a thargoid community there ? Data mining is offering a lot for correlation but you still have to build hypothesis for the causation model.

Have fun !

[JensAyton]

Apart from the nasa picture of the day, space trader, PLEASE EXPLAIN me why elephants dream

Elephants Dream is an “open-source” 3D-rendered movie made in Blender. Oolite is an open-source 3D game, and there’s been some discussion of modelling with Blender on the forum. A bit tenuous, but I guess there’s not that big an Oolite-related corpus to go by.

[Smivs]

and pumpkin juice (what an abomination...).

Agreed!

[CommonSenseOTB]

Perhaps they have large oolite deposits in Kansas and Utah. I guess it's a mineral or a rock.

[Smivs]

Perhaps they have large oolite deposits in Kansas and Utah. I guess it's a mineral or a rock.

Good guess! It is. It used to get 1st result in google when you typed "oolite". It doesn't any more

[drew]

Come on Daddyhoggy, we haven't had freewill for years... we're married!

Not to each other, I hasten to stress.

Cheers,

Drew.

[SandJ]

Come on Daddyhoggy, we haven't had freewill for years... we're married!

Pah! I wear the trousers in my marriage.



And I have my wife's permission to say so.

[Makandal]

Perhaps they have large oolite deposits in Kansas and Utah. I guess it's a mineral or a rock.

Stupid of me ! And I am geologist. Oolitic limestone are chemically origin limestone with small spheres made in turbulent seawater (mainly shallow warm seas). There is an original grain of (usually) sand and the limestone deposited on the side, the grain is rolled on the sea bottom by the wave and it will make a perfect sphere with time.