• 38 Posts
  • 407 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Its not so much social media that ruined it, as capitalism and centralization.

    Forums themselves are a form of social media, and they’re (mostly) great. For Reddit and Lemmy, debatably the best part is the social elements, like the comments sections. The problem isn’t the interaction or the “social” nature of it. Its that these platforms have turned into psudo-monopolies intent on controlling people and/or wringing them for every penny.

    Thats not to say toxicity and capitalistic exploitation didn’t exist before either. The term “flame war” is older than a lot of adults today. Unlike today though, platforms were both more decentralized meaning they were easier to manage and users could switch platform, and were less alorithmic meaning that users could more easily avoid large, bad-faith actors. You’ll notice the Fediverse have both these qualities, which is part of why its done so well.

    IMO, the best fix to this, would be twofold. A) break up the big monopolies and possibly the psudo-monopolies. Monopolies bad, simple enough. B) Much more difficult, but I believe that what content a site promotes, including algorithmically, should be regulated. Thats not to say sorting algorithms should be banned, but I think we need to regulate how they’re used and implemented. For example, regulations could include things like requiring alternative algorithms be offered to users, banning “black box” algorithms, requiring the algorithns be publicly published, and/or banning algorithms that change based on an individual’s engagement. Ideally, this would give the user more agency over their experience and would reduce the odds of ignorant users being pushed into cult-like rabbit-holes.






  • I went down this rabbit hole about a year ago, and didn’t have much luck. In the end, the best results I was able to get were from Steam’s Big Picture Mode on a Windows device, mostly launching Firefox (might have been Chrome?) with different launch arguments to immitate a smart TV.

    Most available software either doesn’t support Linux well, doesn’t support streaming services and outside software, or doesn’t support non-kb&m input methods. You can get two, but never all three. You could try SteamOS, now that its out, but unfortunately my hopes wouldn’t be high for it to have all the apps you needs functioning.



  • You seem to be missing what I’m saying. Maybe a biological comparison would help:

    An octopus is extrmely smart, moreso than even most mammels. It can solve basic logic puzzles, learn and navigate complex spaces, and plan and execute different and adaptive stratgies to humt prey. In spite of this, it can’t talk or write. No matter what you do, training it, trying to teach it, or even trying to develop an octopus specific language, it will not be able to understand language. This isn’t because the octopus isn’t smart, its because its evolved for the purpose of hunting food and hiding from predators. Its brain has developed to understand how physics works and how to recognize patterns, but it just doesn’t have the ability to understand how to socialize, and nothing can change that short of rewiring its brain. Hand it a letter and it’ll try and catch fish with it rather than even considering trying to read it.

    AI is almost the reverse of this. An LLM has “evolved” (been trained) to write stuff that sounds good, but has little emphasis on understanding what it writes. The “understanding” is more about patterns in writting rather than underlying logic. This means that if the LLM encounters something that isn’t standard language, it will “flail” and start trying to apply what it knows, regardless of how well it applies. In the chess example, this might be, for example, just trying to respond with the most common move, regardless of if it can be played. Ultimately, no matter what you input into it, an LLM is trying to find and replicate patterns in language, not underlying logic.


  • The LLM doesn’t have to imagine a board, if you feed it the rules of chess and the dimensions of the board it should be able to “play in its head”.

    That assumes it knows how to play chess. It doesn’t. It know how to have a passable conversation. Asking it to play chess is like putting bread into a blender and being confused when it doesn’t toast.

    But human working memory is shit compared to virtually every other animal. This and processing speed is supposed to be AI’s main draw.

    Processing speed and memory in the context of writing. Give it a bunch of chess boards or chess notation and it has no idea which it needs to remember, nonetheless where/how to move. If you want an AI to play chess, you train it on chess gameplay, not books and Reddit comments. AI isn’t a general use tool.






  • Using your clones example, the Slay the Spire “clones” that give roguelike deckbuilders a bad name aren’t Inscryption or Monster Train or Balatro. Its things like Across the Obelisk and Wildfrost, that are good, but fail to capture what makes others great, and the numerous low-effort copies you’ve likely never heard of that viewed it as an easy way to make a good game without understanding it. Its not that Roguelike Deckbuilders are bad, obviously, its that lazy, or thoughtless use of the mechanics that is. A game isn’t one mechanic, and trying to treat it as such just results in a messy or bad game.


  • Its a crutch because its expected to hold the game up, rather than the game supporting its own weight. In your bullet hell example, dodging isn’t a crutch, it’s the foundational mechanic. A better example would be a slot machine system (something that is near-inherently engaging) being added to a bullet hell game, not because it fits but because its fun independently and helps distract from the fact that they haven’t put any effort into the core gameplay. The mechanic isn’t a crutch, its inclusion as a tacked-on addition is.


  • The mechanic itself isn’t the issue, but how it is implemented.

    It depends on how (and where) its implemented is his point. It needs to be woven into the comvat system as it is in FromSoft, Batman, Ultrakill, or Cuphead, not tacked on because its easy or popular. Each of those uses parrying in a different way to enhance its combat. On the other hand, if you take these mechanics without the greater context or understanding of why it works, then it’ll tends to stand out as bad, or remain unused. Doom Eternal is an example that immediately comes to mind. The whole game is about fast paced combat, with a plethora of new mobility mechanics, that is, until you encounter one of the enemies you need to parry. Then, the game comes to a grinding halt while you wait for the enemy to take action, so you are able to react, completely opposite the rage-fueled persona and the mobility focus of every other mechanic. Compare that to Ultrakill, where parrying isn’t just a reactive way to mitigate damage, its a situational attack that allows you to keep moving and keep up your carnage.

    Game mechanics work best when they’re cohesive. Parrying, due to its simplicity can be tacked on easily, breaking this cohesiveness if not given the same weight as the rest of the mechanics.