Rune Coding and Code Shamans

A common trope in fantasy literature is a magician finding a mysterious, ancient tome of spells. Essentially a big dusty book written in a language that is long forgotten, too complex for a human to understand, or otherwise unintelligble as such. However, the versed magician knows how to read the book out loud, and as they do that, magic happens! Portals open to other dimensions, food appears, fireballs appear and smite the magician’s enemies. Speaking the magic language alters reality and performs miracles. The magician doesn’t really understand how this happens, but they know that if they utter the words, it (typically) does.

A novice programmer is wondering, how to find how to sort a list of data into alphabetical order in Python. They find Python-incantations from StackExchange, which they copy and paste to their code editor, and miracles happen – the list is sorted. The programmer doesn’t understand what the code exactly does, but with the given test data they feed in, the sorting happens.

Both of these characters are gazing at something before them that look like strange magical runes that have power to make things happen. The magician is not completely aware, what exactly they have to avoid to mispronounce, in effort to summon a lemon to the dinner table instead of a demon – and what other hazards the spells in this ancient language may include. The novice programmer doesn’t know in which special cases this copied program code doesn’t work, and how it fails, when it fails.

The magician is a rune reading magician. The novice programmer is a Rune Coder – essentially a hazard for their own self and those around them, as much as the rune reading magician reading runes scribed with poor handwriting, or just not all completely familiar for them, in effort to conjure up exploding fireballs in the middle of a room.

The Rune Coder is a concept I have used for over a fifth of a century now. Now, a new breed has appeared on the field. People are asking ChatGPT to generate program code for them. Still, they don’t know what they are really receiving. Instead of a rune reading magician, we now have a shaman who is talking to the spirits of great power.

The public is fearing these shamans making the mistake of releasing a wish granting demon from a bottle to wreak havoc and doom among the humankind. What is in practise a more relevant problem today with rune and shaman coding is that they just still don’t know the full results of their spells and wishes, and what kind of problems arise from this particular magic. Once again: in which cases does the program code not work, and how exactly it fails, when it fails.

The Significance of Agency for Science

The pure Scientific Method demands experiments to first make predictions and then see if they hold. In practice, this requirement can’t always be followed, at least not to the fullest, as in the field of history, ancient events can’t be influenced and there is nothing to be predicted as everything has happened already. Also, in medicine and sociology there are significant limitations to what ethically can be tested. Not being fully familiar with those fields I can only assume that they apply such “patches” for this issue as making predictions based on a group of cases and then “testing” them on another group, which is fine, although it brings risks of the predictions being tainted by unrecognised past familiarity with the test group and accidental group selections being based on other factors than the intended one.

Onko RimWorld edelleen peli?

Peli-käsitteen määrittely on haaste, jota itse Wittgenstein käytti esimerkkinä siitä, miten käsitteiden määrittely ei loppujen lopuksi ole mahdollista, vaikka onkin pyrkimyksenä hyödyllistä, ellei jopa välttämätöntä. Tämä filosofinen työ oli periaatteessa jatkoa Sokrateen filosofialle.

Second Life -virtuaalimaailmassa (SL) seikkaillessani törmäsin kinasteluun siitä, miten yhdet ihmiset puhuivat siitä pelinä ja toiset olivat ärtyneitä tästä, osoittaen sitä ettei SL:ssä ole pelimekanismeja, ei pisteytystä, eikä etenkään voittotavoitetta. Itse asiassa SL:n sisällä on rakennettu pelattavia pelejä. Jos SL luokiteltaisiin peliksi, pitäisi myös Windows luokitella peliksi – ja periaatteessa koko universumi.

The threshold between moddability classes 2 and 3

In our book, Handbook on Interactive Storytelling[1], we identify a four level classification of moddability of games: The zeroeth class are the monolithic games that “cannot be modified”. The first class is for games that allow limited customisability, where predefined adjustments to the game play or its sensory stimulus can be made. Second class consists of properly moddable games, where the player community provides new functionalities and other alterations to the game through mods. The third class are things that are more like frameworks than games, relying heavily on the gamer community to something with the system in effort to really make it a game. We mention Unity and Unreal as such programming environments that heavily endorse game programming in their design. Even a better example would actually be STOS/AMOS “Game Creator” applications (1988), which were even by their name intended for nothing else but creating (new) games [2][3].

: The threshold between moddability classes 2 and 3

In this classification we place Tynan Sylvester’s RimWorld into class 2. However, restarting to play the game once again and reading Tynan’s recent tweet, I’ve started wondering about RimWorld being on its way to class 3, or perhaps something that would be class 2.5.

I have the ambition of making RimWorld something worth playing for at least a few people in the 22nd century.

@TynanSylvester

One could see an equivalent of this classification in the traditional western deck of 52 cards, or the pool billiards table: Both of these are essentially built-in with natural game play actions (hitting a ball onto another ball or in a pocket / shuffling and dealing out cards) but not with a fixed set of rules/mechanics to play them. On a pool table, probably the most well known game is the 8-ball pool, but 9-ball pool is quite well known too, and there’s my personal favorite, One Pocket Pool. In card games, the best known might be the wide spectrum of Poker-games, nowadays mostly Texas Hold’em. Both of these platforms have prevailed over the 100 years that Tynan is dreaming of.

Poker is seen as a nice game to play, as well as infamous tool of gambling away one’s life. RimWorld is facing the same challenges. Providing it out for people to use to build their own experiences yields a freedom that be wonderful as well as horrible. Australia recently banned the sale of the game for a while, due to the game play not clearly disapproving the use of drugs. (This is not really even the worst of the dark sides RimWorld has to offer.)

It is interesting to see, how much Tynan is going to be providing a “built-in game and story” within RimWorld. An interesting move would be to just make the core of RimWorld a class 3 moddable “game” and have the developer provided content all within optional DLCs, as well as community provided mods. I think even already now it would be relatively easy to make a mod that turns RimWorld into Sims. This still, however, requires the mod to disable built-in features, such as drugs and fighting. With this still being (most likely) doable, the game is at least class 2.5, if not yet class 3.

References

[1] Smed, Jouni, Tomi “bgt” Suovuo, Natasha Skult and Petter Skult. (2021) “Handbook on Interactive Storytelling” Wiley. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57182082-handbook-on-interactive-storytelling

[2] Payne, Chris. “STOS and AMOS game creators” http://www.triumphoverchallenges.com/stos-and-amos-game-creators/ (Cited on 5.5.2022)

[3] Wikipedia. “STOS BASIC” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOS_BASIC (Cited on 5.5.2022)

GEM Game Review: Factory Town

I am a big fan of base building games. My earliest crush on this field (after the physical Lego bricks) was Simcity and essentially also Civilization (the first one of the series). After Railroad Tycoon I have enjoyed hours of playing Transport Tycoon, where I am currently having difficulties on how the passenger production of buildings grows much faster than the game facilitates for transportation capacity. I do not like leaving hundreds of passengers unserved on stations.

Somevaikuttaja

Sosiaalinen media on tavallaan piilossa luonut tavallaan uuden ammattikunnan, josta käytetään yleisesti termiä “somevaikuttaja.” Merkittävää on ollut siirtymä pois Web 1.0:sta, jossa mallia otettiin perinteisistä medioista, joissa tuottajat ja yleisö ovat kaksi selkeästi eri roolia. Kun sosiaalisessa mediassa sisällön tuottajia ovat käyttäjät itse, ei erillistä sisällöntuottajaa ole.

Virtually There

(suomeksi)

The most natural way of communication between people is face-to-face. There both participants can fully utilise their natural speech production mechanisms, as well as other communication mechanisms. They also have a shared experience of the communication, including the immediate context it takes place in. A shared space for sharing, considering how Jens Allwood defines[1] communication essentially as the action of sharing.

Although the immediate context during face-to-face communication is shared, the preceding context easily is not (we are coming from different places from different activities) as well as the following context easily is not (our future plans and schedules differ).

Miten oikein skuuttailla

Kaupunkiemme maisemiin on ilmestynyt viime vuosina sähköisiä pikavuokraskuutteja. Scoottereita, skuuttereita, skuutteja – sähkömoottorilla varustettuja potkulautoja. Niitä on nykyisin esimerkiksi Turussa tarjolla kolmelta eri firmalta: Voi, Tier ja Lime.

Skuutit ovat näppäriä. Niitä on helppo löytää lähettyviltä, ottaa käyttöön, ajaa jonnekin ja jättää sinne seuraavalle käyttäjälle. Esimerkiksi Föli-kaupunkipyörän kanssa pitää matkansa suunnitella Föllari-asemalta toiselle. Jos olisin esimerkiksi matkalla Iso-Heikkilään, minun pitäisi käyttää aikaa sen selvittämiseen, minne sinne voin pyörän jättää ja jos kesken matkan päättäisinkin haluavani sittenkin Kakolan mäelle, olisi uusi selvitystyö ja nyt sitten vielä kännykällä kesken fillarimatkan. Vuokra-skuutterilla voi toimia paljon impulsiivisemmin, kunhan vain huolehtii jättävänsä skuutin toiminta-alueen sisäpuolella jonnekin.

GEM Game Review: Governor of Poker 3

As the title of the game suggests, Governor of Poker 3 (GOP3) is one game in a series of Texas Hold’em poker games. I have played one of the previous versions as well, and the concept of the game is basically the same. The player takes a role of a poker player in a game world, where at least as it appears to them, the whole world is all about Texas Hold’em. They travel from town to town, as the buy-ins and bets rise higher and higher. The goal is to become “a VIP poker star.

Tekoäly ja sen tekomotivaatiot ja muut tekotunteet

Ihmismieli jaetaan tyypillisesti kahteen osaan, tunteet ja järki. Yksi puoli on siis järki – rationaalinen ajattelu, logiikka, joskus jopa pelkistävästi “äly”, josta tunteet on karsittu pois. Toisena puolena ovat tunteet, joiden formalisointi ei ole yhtä rationaalisesti toteutettu kuin logiikan. Me ymmärrämme hyvin loogisen ajattelun, mutta me emme ymmärrä kovinkaan paljon tunteitamme. Logiikassa pystyn suurella itsevarmuudella kertomaan olkiukko-argumenttivirhelogiikasta – mikä se on ja miksi se on virhe, mutta jos minun pitäisi kertoa mitä on “ilo” olisin hyvin hataralla pohjalla. Meillä on olettamus, että ilo on yksi tunteista, mutta onko se ja mitä se on? Onko se sama asia kuin hauskuus, vai mikä niitä erottaa? Onko “nautinto” yksittäinen itsenäinen tunne? Liittyykö se jotenkin iloon ja jos, niin miten? Joskus tunteita kuvaillaan älyn vastakohtana.