I didn't feel much at all. It's simply a rhetorical question which sets up the explicit claim being made in the title of the article. The structure is quite clear if you account for the entire text which I'm sure the author intended. Do you mean to assert that reasoning through the Socratic tradition is something to loathe and push against? In other words, you are leaning on a lot of ancillary personal concerns which I don't believe the author earned.
It isn't very meaningful to assert your arbitrary threshold for "life-changing" as a criteria to measure one's life. It is quite distracting as a closer to an otherwise thoughtful reply.
People who talk about Outer Wilds describe it that way. For instance just two comments up in the thread is "Outer Wilds, and imperatively its DLC, are transcendent gaming experiences." And this is the normal type of comment you see when this game comes up.
If this were objectively true that the game is simply transcendent (assuming we can agree on what this would mean), then it would make sense to power through an otherwise unexpectedly arduous game that you thought was going to be more akin to a puzzle game, because of the experience you would be able to take with you and ponder afterwards. The destination would make the rough journey worth it.
Having bought and played through much of the game based on the evangelism for it online, I simply want to make clear that it should not be considered a unanimous opinion that the game is transcendent and that a rough journey would therefore be worth it.
Saying too much about the game itself would spoil it for people who would enjoy it, but those who might be leery of it deserve to know that it's still a game, can still be unenjoyable if it's not your thing, and that you won't necessarily miss an irreplacable life-changing positive experience if you don't knock it off of your Bucket List.
I apologize for going against the orthodoxy with regard to this game, but people deserve to know they're not alone if they didn't find it the experience it was advertised to be.
Especially on the topic of value! We are all intuitively aware that value is highly contextual, but get in a knot trying to rationalize value long past genuine engagement!
> But I'm out of the loop: in order to maintain popularity, are computers banned?
Firsrly, yes, you will be banned for playing at an AI level consecutively on most platforms. Secondly, its not very relevant to the concept of gaming. Sure it can make it logistically hard to facilitate, but this has plagued gaming through cheats/hacks since antiquity, and AI can actually help here too. Its simply a cat and mouse game and gamers covet the competitive spirit too much to give in.
Note that "AI" was not and has not been necessary for strong computer chess engines. Though clearly, they have contributed to peak strength and some NN methods are used by the most popular engine, stockfish.
Oh, I'm conflating the modern era use of the term with the classic definition of AI to include classic chess engines done with tree-pruning, backtracking, and heuristics :)
> I know pre-AI cheats have ruined some online games, so I'm not sure it's an encouraging thought...
Will you be even more discouraged if I share that "table flipping" and "sleight of hand" have ruined many tabletop games? Are you pressed to find a competitive match in your game-of-choice currently? I can recommend online mahjong! Here is a game that emphasizes art in permutations just as chess does, but every act you make is an exercise in approximating probability so the deterministic wizards are less invasive! In any-case, I'm not so concerned for the well-being of competition.
> Are you saying AI can help detect AI cheats in games? In real time for some games? Maybe! That'd be useful.
I know a few years back valve was testing a NN backed anti-cheat watch system called VACnet, but I didn't follow whether it was useful. There is no reason to assume this won't be improved on!
I'm honestly not following your argument here. I'm also not convinced by comparisons between AI and things that aren't AI or even automated.
> Will you be even more discouraged if I share that "table flipping" and "sleight of hand" have ruined many tabletop games?
What does this have to do with AI or online games? You cannot do either of those in online games. You also cannot shove the other person aside, punch them in the face, etc. Let's focus strictly on automated cheating in online gaming, otherwise they conversation will shift to absurd tangents.
(As an aside, a quick perusal of r/boardgames or BGG will answer your question: yes, antisocial and cheating behavior HAVE ruined tabletop gaming for some people. But that's neither here nor there because that's not what we're discussing here.)
> Are you pressed to find a competitive match in your game-of-choice currently? I can recommend online mahjong!
What are you even trying to say here?
I'm not complaining, nor do I play games online (not because of AI; I just don't find online gaming appealing. The last multiplayer game I enjoyed was Left 4 Dead, with close friends, not cheating strangers). I just find the topic interesting, and I wonder how current AI trends can affect online games, that's all. I'm very skeptical of claims that they don't have a large impact, but I'm open to arguments to the contrary.
I think some of this boils down to whether one believes AI is just like past phenomena, or whether it's significantly different. It's probably too early to tell.
We are likely on different footing as I quite enjoy games of all form. Here is my attempt to formalize my argument:
Claim 1: Cheating is endemic to competition across all formats (physical or digital)
Claim 2: Despite this, games survive and thrive because people value the competitive spirit itself
Claim 3: The appreciation of play isn't destroyed by the existence of cheaters (even "cheaters" who simply surpass human reasoning)
The mahjong suggestion isn't a non-sequitur (while still an earnest suggestion), it was to exemplify my personal engagement with the spirit of competition and how it completely side-steps the issue you are wary is existential.
> I think some of this boils down to whether one believes AI is just like past phenomenons, or whether it's significantly different. It's probably too early to tell.
I suppose I am not clear on your concern. Online gaming is demonstrably still growing and I think the chess example is a touching story of humanism prevailing. "AI" has been mucking with online gaming for decades now, can you qualify why this is so different now?
I really appreciate your clarifications! I think I actually agree with you, and I lost track of my own argument in all of this.
I'm absolutely not contesting that online play is hugely popular.
I guess I'm trying to understand how widespread and serious the problem of cheaters using AI/computer cheats actually is [1]. Maybe the answer is "not worse than before"; I'm skeptical about this but I admit I have no data to back my skepticism.
[1] I know Counter Strike back in the day was sort of ruined because of cheaters. I know one person who worked on a major anticheat (well-known at the time, not sure today), which I think he tried to sell to Valve but they didn't go with his solution. Also amusingly, he was remote-friends with a Russian hacker who wrote many of the cheats, and they had a friendly rivalry. This is just an ancedote, I'm not sure that it has anything to do with the rest of my comment :D
> I guess I'm trying to understand how widespread and serious the problem of cheaters using AI/computer cheats actually is.
It is undoubtedly more widespread.
> I know Counter Strike back in the day was sort of ruined because of cheaters.
There is truth in this, but this only affected more casual ladder play. Since early CSGO (maybe before as well? I am not of source age) there has been FACEiT and other leagues which asserts strict kernel-level anti-cheat and other heuristics on the players. I do agree this cat and mouse game is on the side of the cat and the best competition is curated in tightly controlled (often gate-kept) spaces.
It is interesting that "better" cheating is often done through mimicking humans closer though, which does have an interesting silver lining. We still very much value a "smart" or "strategic" AI in match-based solitary genres, why not carry this over to FPS or the like. Little Timmy gets to train against an AI expressing "competitive player" without needing to break through the extreme barriers to actually play against someone of this caliber. Quite exciting when put this way.
If better cheats are being forced to actually play the game, I'm not sure the threat is very existential to gaming itself. This is much less abrasive than getting no-scoped in spawn at round start in a CS match.
Richard Carrier takes an extremely similar position in total (ie: both in position towards "is ought" and biological grounding). It engages with Hume by providing a way to side step the problem.
I'm not sure, but it sounds like something biocentrism adjacent. My reference to Hume is the fact you are jumping from what is to what ought without justifying why. _A Treatise of Human Nature_ is a good place to start.
They mean to distinguish intuition, which draws on experience and can only be reflected on, from experience, which deals in actionable heuristics. Any appeal to intuition you make will fall on experiential advice when pressed. Intuition _works_ here, but if you mean to share your wisdom, you must translate it through experience, which is the actual concept we communicate through.
Essentially yes, thanks. I was focused on the difference between “I used my intuition (which you cannot be taught because I cannot explain it)” and “I can explain how you can develop a skill”.
Not possible, you're likely using the wrong words here. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition which does mention the modern misuse to mean intuition and reasoning combined. Anything that uses conscious reasoning (and thus can be taught or acquired as a skill) is not intuition.
Hipster used to mean that but meaning changed to being someone who “doesn’t fit in” but only for performative reasons, not really “for real” but just to project an image of how cool they are
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