Thursday, November 4, 2010

CONtroll

 What's my fascination with video games?
I'm not sure.
But if I was a god and had to create a whole new Universe, these games are where I'd start.
If these games were tied together by the Internet and each gamer could create his own characters (Based on models determined by the original programmer (me).) - how infinite would the variation of characters be?
Based on various cultures, what values or traits would each character have?
After the program got started - how much control would I have as the initial programmer?
Other than being able to pull the plug or make chances to an others code - how active would I be in the most minute details of these new beings?
 While fish in an aquarium may be more 'real' than the characters in video games - do they really have any more control over their environment?
I suppose that one could continuously buy newer and bigger aquariums to accommodate the ever increasing size and population of fish - but what role would the fish play in determining the type of new world they would inhabit?
While the fish in the aquarium are real - are they even aware of the consequences of their behaviors beyond reproduction and eating?
As a kid, I would always create Ant Farms in jars.
I may have been labeled a Sadist by those today because I would always introduce a rival faction of ants to an established ant colony.
We had large black ants and large red ants throughout our area - each was a good choice for a kid's farm.
Those little sugar ants didn't last a minute when placed in contact with either of the larger species.
But things changed when the more aggressive Fire Ants started taking over.
These little hellions would wipe out either larger species with gangland-type efficiency.
Regardless of species, each colony seems to show signs of community, of possessing a hierarchy, of building a culture.

So, back to my fascination with video games.
The character of these games seem to be able to do things which we can only imagine.
If characters in video games were taught to act in their own best interests, would there be any more need for us?
This is my problem with those who believe in "The Man".
If we cannot even manage to control of group of lowly insects - how can a group of shadow figures expect to control us?
If we stay informed of the desires of these men - are not our reactions to their desired conditions actionable?

3 comments:

  1. What's my fascination with video games?
    I'm not sure.
    But if I was a god and had to create a whole new Universe, these games are where I'd start.


    lol,

    Could be where "God" started too.

    Our existence could be coded in a finite bandwidth, like a live ultra-high-definition 3-D video. And the third dimension we know and love could be no more than a holographic projection of a 2-D surface.

    A scientist’s $1 million experiment, now under construction in Illinois, will attempt to test these ideas by the end of next year using what will be two of the world’s most precise clocks.

    Skeptics of a positive result abound, but their caution comes with good reason: The smallest pieces of space, time, mass and other properties of the universe, called Planck units, are so tiny that verifying them by experiment may be impossible. The Planck unit of length, for example, is 10 billion billion times smaller than the width of a proton.

    Craig Hogan, a particle astrophysicist at Fermilab in Illinois, isn’t letting this seemingly insurmountable barrier stop him from trying.

    Hogan is following through on a radical idea to confirm Planck units with two of the most precise clocks in the world. Deemed holometers, each L-shaped laser interferometer will have two perpendicular, 131-foot-long arms to scan for pixelation in the very fabric of space and time. If it’s there, two laser beams (split from a single source) that run through the arms won’t hit a detector at the same time.

    “What we’re looking for is when the lasers lose step with each other. We’re trying to detect the smallest unit in the universe,” Hogan said. “This is really great fun, a sort of old-fashioned physics experiment where you don’t know what the result will be.”

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  2. reason why I told some slow-movin cats not too long ago that religious ritual/praxis should be thought of as analogous to the way we think about acquiring the sequence or tricks required to overcome obstacles in one level of a game in order to proceed to play at the next level.

    there is FAR more to that analogy than meets the eye..,

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  3. Yeah...
    Which is why I asked (earlier) about IQ being limited like the levels in a game, or our 3-D universe being a hologram for a 4-D version.
    Games seem almost intuitive in the way they are made.
    From Pong to Sould Calibur IV - games have had to keep up with our abilities to manipulate 1's and 0's.

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