Games and Hyper-Reality

This lecture by CMU Prof Jesse Schell should be retitled "How Our Worst Cognitive Weaknesses Are Exploited For Money By Video Game Makers". Using games as incentives to get people to do things isn't a new idea but he boils a lot of it down to psychology in a very clear way. This brings up lots of points.

There are lots of people who don't ever play video games; unless you count this version of Missile Command, I'm one of them. It's not that we're Amish or something, but many of us just don't see the point of spending time learning skills (i.e. the necessary information and maneuvering in a game) that are not transferable out of the game, and which result only in points in the game. Here are some points that are much more worthwhile spending time on: going up 50 points on your credit score! going down 30 seconds on your mile time! Going down 20 points on your cholesterol! That last one gives you literal life points.

The problem is that I (and many other people) wish we were better at paying attention to those kinds of points. Life already is a kind of game anyway (especially if you think we live in a simulation) but the problem is reinforcement. If saving money and eating well and investing and doing speed work-outs (which I hate) had some kind of immediate positive feedback, either from beating your friends or seeing automatically how you've improved over time, lots of people would do them more and better. Schell talks about this at the end of the lecture. If somehow my efforts in Halo or Mafia Wars (those are games, right?) could help me organize my finances, then I would play those SOBs every damn day.

Schell also makes a few comments on the commodification of experience, echoing comments that Umberto Eco and others have made about modern capitalism, and how this has changed life specifically for American consumers. The experiences which are created and sold to us are quite brighter, more clearly-defined, more real than the things they're imitating – and they become "hyper-real". (Ever have a cherry pie without coloring and extra flavors, and realize you didn't like it as much?) This wasn't key to Schell's talk but it's interesting to see this theme's convergence with the technology world.

My own eureka moment on this came during a visit to the California Adventure section of Disneyland, which features various California gold-rush-history-themed rides set among transplanted ponderosa pines and ersatz Sierra granite. As I stood looking over the simulated whitewater of one of the rides, it occurred to me that I could be in the real actual Sierras, with wild ponderosas and genuine granite and whitewater, in about four hours. With no lines, and no screaming kids (or not screaming for long anyway, until the mountain lions do us a favor). But I had still paid to be at this fake one. The commodification of "wilderness" experience is my particular high horse, but then again I'm just fine with going to Taco Bell for "Mexican food", so I guess we all have to pick our compromises.

Disney vs. actual Sierra Foothills.
Notice though that the question of hyper-reality applies to things we purchase mostly for their sensory content: music, food, experiences like Disneyland. Why? Some of the hyper-reality has to do with the brute sensory input of colors and flavor and meeting preconceptions, but some of it has to do with the ideas and beliefs you experience while you're consuming the product. So far it seems to be mostly food products that have exploited this avenue; i.e. you're thinking about how thoughtful of a person you are for buying fair-trade coffee and local organic produce, and what kind of wonderful people from a distant land you've interacted with indirectly. But not all products are as amenable to this as food. I don't know that people are concerned with whether their external A/C unit is "authentic".

"Creed is Good"

I think that phrase is even darker and more nihilistic than Gordon Gecko would have uttered, but this Slate article makes that dubious claim.

True confession, not only did I actually not mind Creed but I performed covers (singing Scott Stapp's part) with current Cast Iron Crow bassist Joseph Evans on guitar. (Next show, September 17th at the Englander in San Leandro.)

I just realized I'm the Ron McGovney of Cast Iron Crow.

Michael Moore Introduces Satanists in a Jacuzzi

The Words of a Great Man

Grand Magus, Black Sails (Hammer of the North, 2010)

Grand Magus was recommended to me by Tom of Crysknife.

Like Entombed Grand Magus has some very American-hard-rock-sounding elements, although moreso than Entombed they come across at times like a NWOSDM-infused version of Skid Row (the good elements of Skid Row). Mountains Be My Throne is another good one.

How The World Looks When It Rotates

To paraphrase an anecdote told by Paul Churchland in Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Russell said to Wittgenstein that people had a hard time grasping that the world was round, and that the world rotated rather than the sky, because that's just not how it looks.

Wittgenstein retorted, "Then how would it look, if the world did look like it was round and rotated?"

It was meant as a smart-ass rhetorical question to prove Wittgenstein's point that the world already looks like it's round and rotates, if your thinking is good and you knew what to look for. But I disagree. Because if the world looked like it's round and rotates, here's what it would look like.

A Timelapse Journey with Nature: 2009-2011 from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.

The dramatic impact on our perception made by just changing the time scale is sublime.

A Crowd-sourced Reverse Image Search

[Added later: the best guess seems to be that it's a Japanese door-curtain, i.e., the Japanese answer to a bead-curtain. If you think you can verify this or can definitely identify it as something else don't hesitate to comment.]

Here. H/T Dan. Google is trying to automate it but it didn't work well for this image (below). Would've been nice when I was trying to figure out what the flowers outside my front door were. Answer: Callistemon. I found it only because a nice gentleman in Georgia posted pictures happened to use the same descriptor I do, "toilet-brush flowers".

Here's what I'm trying to figure out what it is dammit. My own guess is it's a blanket or something for an office floor. It's hanging partly on a door here, it's flat fabric and about the thickness of a thin blanket, and it's the right size to drape over your legs. It has a tag on it that says "Oswal".

So what is this?

Tom and Jerry, the Mouse from H.U.N.G.E.R. Theme (1967)

Honestly, I still walk around humming this theme. I wish the composers would've written a whole album of spy theme music.



And while you're in a high-energy mod mid-60s action theme kind of mood, here's The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Peter Gunn and Hawaii Five-O. (I'm so sorry they Miami Viced the Hawaii Five-O theme for the re-boot. Only having Hottest Cylon Award Winner(tm) Grace Park kicking ass keeps me from condemning the show outright.)

Vernor Vinge, On How the Future Surprised Him

San Diego's own Vernor Vinge speaks to Reason Magazine:



One of the many things I liked about Deepness in the Sky was his subtle treatment of libertarian themes as they run into the messy realities of human life and struggles. Being able to non-clumsily incorporate Big Ideas into fiction is a sign of real skill.

More on his book Rainbow's End here.

Karnivool, Roquefort (Themata, 2006)

Here are some zany kids from Perth, West Oz, who I'm sure are gonna go far.

A More Formal Approach Detracting from the Simulation Argument

Brian Weatherson's approach has implications for the self-indication assumption mode of argumentation in general; specifically, he addresses claims on why and whether certain properties (like being human) can be exempted.

Roberto Venosa

Drugs. Drugs now. Venosa's website here.

Angela Bassett, Waiting to Exhale

This is the hottest scene from any movie ever. And now I have shared it with you.

You're welcome.

Balochi Music

Balochi are an ethnic minority in NW Pakistan and are the targets of a fairly ruthless internal war waged by Pakistan's always-ethical, non-lying, not-playing-one-side-of-the-other-and-incompetently-at-that military. I haven't yet thought about it in music theory terms but a lot of these pieces sound 2/3 Indian, 1/3 Celtic to me, and the style (as well as elements of the Balochi language) traces clearly to pre-Islamic Persian times.

Biological Material in Impact Ejecta

This article calculates the odds for Earth ejecta seeding Europa (actually, just Jupiter, but some would hit Europa).

A frequent topic here is the ability of comets and wet asteroids to serve as vectors for replicators, given that a) they have liquid water, b) organic compounds like amino acids and nucleobases, and c) small gravity wells that are easily escaped. Some comets are hyperbolic, which means they escape the solar system. (See here for calculation of spread rates between solar systems based on hyperbolic comets.) Whether this is the seedign of proto-biological materials, or a "lifecloud", or von Neumann probes is really up to your ability to gauge the intentions of probe designers, their ability to prevent function-destroying but fertility-enhancing mutations, and your own cut-off for a definition of primitive life (self-replicating RNA? Viruses? Floridians?)

Lyzanxia, Silencecode (Mindcrimes, 2003)

Somehow a lot of the bands that Carcass has strongly influenced are in France, like these excellent fellows. Carcariass is another great one although is maybe a little more Stockholm-sounding; although I imagine both bands might object if I say they were "influenced" since they started very early on and could be argued to be contemporaries.

Lyzanxia's Mindcrimes is one of the best metal albums of the last decade. I couldn't embed the first track on this album (Time Dealer) from anywhere but it's my favorite and has an off-tempo bridge section which is just brilliant.

Bonus: Carcariass, Watery Grave (The Killing Process, 2002). Both Lyzanxia and Carcariass are outstanding and should be much better-known than they are.

The Fermi Paradox From An Economist's Standpoint

As a dismal scientist, Karl Smith is probably onto something when he asks Where Is Everybody.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

Give it until about 1m20s.

In Ictu Oculi, Greta Alfaro.

If that's not enough for you, this might be. You might also try the late great Wesley Willis.

A Use for Quadrotor UAV's

Finally. Matternet is developing models for delivery of critical high-value supplies (like medicine) in parts of the world that lack roads and security infrastructure. Not surprisingly, the company's in-box is currently at Singularity University in Silicon Valley.

Below is a test flight of a quadrotor (not Matternet's model) at Stanford.

The Physics of Throat Singing

We have two sets of vocal folds in our larynx; one is "false" or vestigial, and doesn't normally serve to help us make sounds. Little kids often discover this independently, although it has actually been elevated to cultural art form - previous post with Tuvan throat singers here. Here's PhD thesis in acoustics by Leonardo Fuks about the physical properties of both woodwind and false vocal fold phonation (main section here, ToC here). I wonder who learned it first, Tuvans or alligators?

As an aside, China got UNESCO to recognize throat-singing as their own cultural contribution, which is outrageous B.S.


Alash River, Tuva, by Konstantin Mikhailov.