Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
I would postulate that, especially in the last 200 years, communication has been a significant or, possibly, most significant agent of change in terms of violence. Even in the prestate societies (whatever that means), some if not most people would not see a violent death or the results - 500 per 100,000 means you would have had a 0.5% chance, all things being equal. As people collected together into larger communities and, eventually, states/countries, the all things being equal would change - even if you didn't see the violent death you heard about it. In the last 200 years, there has been a significant change in communication. Knowledge of violent death has become increasingly accessible. Early telegraphs and newspapers of the early 19th Century showed violent deaths to more people than had ever previously seen it or heard about it through oral communication. Henry Crabb Robinson, for example, contributed war news from Napoleons Spanish and German campaigns to The Times of London. With the advent of wired telegraphy, violent death literally came home to people. William Howard Russell was able to send his dispatches to The Times from the Crimean War via submarine cable to Varna, Bulgaria, and from there through French circuits to Austria in weeks after battles. People at home in England were exposed to violent death in the war zone in a relatively short time and in more detail. The addition of photography made violent death during the US War Between the States more real to the folks back on the farm - real pictures of real death along with written accounts were delivered within days of occurrence. The trend has only continued, with movies (who remembers the newsreels at the cinema?), radio, television, and now Internet videos bringing violent death to viewers in near real-time. I postulate that the effect of seeing and hearing of violence more often and in greater and greater detail has led to the reluctance of committing violence. Presumably, prestate societies had on the order of 1000 or so people involved with the 500 per 100,000 violent deaths. As more people saw or heard about violent deaths in graphic detail (rather than a sterile announcement), that number of people has increased. Nowadays, I would expect the number of people who have seen the details of violent death to be on the order of 10,000 out of that 100,000, even though the number of such deaths has decreased. In my personal experience, people who have seen (or, especially, caused) violent death are reluctant to cause it again. Thus, my hypothesis that exposure to violent death through improved communications is a major factor in the reduction in the rate of violent death. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.govmailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.govmailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.govmailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov (send NIPR reminder) On Jul 6, 2015, at 7:09 PM, Curt McNamara wrote: http://m.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-decline-of-violence/ Curt FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
Another example of something that is unambiguously a game, due to the competitive and puzzle-like nature it has, and is also (perhaps unrelatedly) useful, due to the research potential of it, is Foldit http://fold.it. -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
A pilot might either fly a physical airplane as part of an exercise or they may fly a simulator. Either way, their actions are translated to a scorekeeping mechanism that is automated. At some point won't these behaviors too be mastered by machine learning? Obviously, I'm not just taking on gaming here, I'm taking on the idea that people ought to master narrow skill sets at all.Ok, so a gamer can track 7 objects instead of 3. Machines could track hundreds or thousands. Better to design the machine, no? Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
You are venturing into the world of serious games. Humans have always played games to sharpen intellect, gain skills, refine tactics, understand the ramifications of strategy, and entertain themselves. I'm currently helping to author a paper about the security requirements of serious games, so this subject is fresh in my mind. As hunter-gatherers, humans allowed their children to play hide and seek, use child-sized weapons, and hunt small game. These were practice games for adulthood. This concept of transforming necessary military skills and learning them by games, either as children or later as adults, has continued throughout human history. In the 1800s, the Prussians added to the physical games with tabletop (or sandtable top) intellectual games that abstracted military units and allowed future officers to play without having to use real people, animals, and supplies. That game was called Kriegspiel and has continued to evolve to this day. Chess is sometimes considered the original Kriegspiel. Most historians agree it is derived from Chaturanga, invented in the Gupta Empire somewhere between 280 and 550 CE. Modern chess was formalized from the derivative of shatranj (Muslim version from the original) in about 900-1000 CE in southern Europe. As a game, chess trains the player to think ahead, understand the consequences of their actions, and generally improves the mind. In the age of Industrial Warfare new weapons, new logistics, new transportation, new communication methods, and the sheer size of armies required games to understand the bitter lessons learned in wars. These games were physical games to learn how all of these factors interact in the physical world before they could be abstracted to the tabletop as Kriegspiel. As late as the buildup to the US entry into WWII, the Army held huge maneuver exercises in the South to practice and understand how war was already being fought in Europe. Those large, physical games still take place, but as computers have become more and more important parts of the military, the games have added computers. These computers have themselves effectively created a fifth domain for military conflict (after Land, Sea, Air, and Space) which most authorities call Cyberspace. The interesting aspect of this is that, increasingly, the other domains are being abstracted into Cyberspace. A pilot might either fly a physical airplane as part of an exercise or they may fly a simulator. Either way, their actions are translated to a scorekeeping mechanism that is automated. There is an interesting trend within the videogame community where players create modifications of the game they love playing. I get Amazon Local emails because of my Prime membership, and one offer I have seen a lot, recently, is a course to teach a child how to create mods for Minecraft. Modding Minecraft involves learning Java, understanding the data storage scheme of the game, and understanding the physics engine of Minecraft. This all translates to skills useful in programming and software systems engineering. Mods for other games are similiar in nature. The bottom line here is that games have been one of mankind's way of learning and researching for a very long time. Some games are more valuable for learning specific things while others are more entertaining. Just as not everybody needs and wants to do productive work, not everybody needs and wants to play strictly serious games like agent-based simulation (yes, I am saying that many of the folks on this list are playing games in their work and research). There is a spectrum of entertainment that describes games - some games are strictly business and some games are a little business with lots of entertainment. Entertainment can be necessary to entice players to the game to learn. Sometimes, the entertainment becomes the primary goal of the players and any learning is purely happenstance. Personally, I like games because they help me hone my bad guy skills. In a very few cases, I learn new real-world attacks from the game content, usually from seeing other people try things that I assumed would not work. More often, I figure out how to use the game functions to win more easily - something that equates directly to using a system with computers to attack itself. Occasionally, I learn how to break the computer program behind the game in a way that works for non-game computer programs. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.govmailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.govmailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.govmailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov (send NIPR reminder) On Jul 5, 2015, at 9:44 PM, cody dooderson wrote: This is a very interesting subject. I often wonder if Im doing anything useful for society and/or the universe. I think the answer
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
It’s such a shame that we still “can’t all just get along”, and instead keep developing more and more advanced ways of subjugating each other, killing and terrorizing. The liberal vs. conservative noise in the USA got me thinking a lot about this. When I moved to EC, the previous 8 years of BushCo had moved my politics pretty far left, to the point that I was quite happy with Correa’s victory. Now, after seeing the extent to which the past corruption has been merely legitimized (pushed upward), I’m not so sure where I stand. It seems to me that a lot of human history is some variation of the theme of you have more than I have, that’s not fair, so I’m going to take some (all in some cases) from you.” There’s a lot to be said for that. If we didn’t have such strong strucutres in place (governments, social norms), we would each have just about what we could defend against our neighbors. The problem is that governments, especially in conjunction with philosophies and religions, can legitimize quite a range of behaviors, and our war games (real and otherwise) just enforce this. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Parks, Raymond rcpa...@sandia.gov wrote: You are venturing into the world of serious games. Humans have always played games to sharpen intellect, gain skills, refine tactics, understand the ramifications of strategy, and entertain themselves. I'm currently helping to author a paper about the security requirements of serious games, so this subject is fresh in my mind. As hunter-gatherers, humans allowed their children to play hide and seek, use child-sized weapons, and hunt small game. These were practice games for adulthood. This concept of transforming necessary military skills and learning them by games, either as children or later as adults, has continued throughout human history. In the 1800s, the Prussians added to the physical games with tabletop (or sandtable top) intellectual games that abstracted military units and allowed future officers to play without having to use real people, animals, and supplies. That game was called Kriegspiel and has continued to evolve to this day. Chess is sometimes considered the original Kriegspiel. Most historians agree it is derived from Chaturanga, invented in the Gupta Empire somewhere between 280 and 550 CE. Modern chess was formalized from the derivative of shatranj (Muslim version from the original) in about 900-1000 CE in southern Europe. As a game, chess trains the player to think ahead, understand the consequences of their actions, and generally improves the mind. In the age of Industrial Warfare new weapons, new logistics, new transportation, new communication methods, and the sheer size of armies required games to understand the bitter lessons learned in wars. These games were physical games to learn how all of these factors interact in the physical world before they could be abstracted to the tabletop as Kriegspiel. As late as the buildup to the US entry into WWII, the Army held huge maneuver exercises in the South to practice and understand how war was already being fought in Europe. Those large, physical games still take place, but as computers have become more and more important parts of the military, the games have added computers. These computers have themselves effectively created a fifth domain for military conflict (after Land, Sea, Air, and Space) which most authorities call Cyberspace. The interesting aspect of this is that, increasingly, the other domains are being abstracted into Cyberspace. A pilot might either fly a physical airplane as part of an exercise or they may fly a simulator. Either way, their actions are translated to a scorekeeping mechanism that is automated. There is an interesting trend within the videogame community where players create modifications of the game they love playing. I get Amazon Local emails because of my Prime membership, and one offer I have seen a lot, recently, is a course to teach a child how to create mods for Minecraft. Modding Minecraft involves learning Java, understanding the data storage scheme of the game, and understanding the physics engine of Minecraft. This all translates to skills useful in programming and software systems engineering. Mods for other games are similiar in nature. The bottom line here is that games have been one of mankind's way of learning and researching for a very long time. Some games are more valuable for learning specific things while others are more entertaining. Just as not everybody needs and wants to do productive work, not everybody needs and wants to play strictly serious games like agent-based simulation (yes, I am saying that many of the folks on this list are playing games in their work and research). There is a spectrum of entertainment that describes games - some games are strictly business and some games are a little business with lots of entertainment. Entertainment can be
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
Human behaviour is human behaviour and it has not changed in 50,000+ years. Humans act in their own self-interest at many levels - see Maslow's Hierarch of Needs. The purpose of civilization is to allow humans to behave the way they will behave with as little destructive collateral effects as possible. Sometimes, the structures of a society and government are enough to control the behaviour - sometimes more force is necessary. The key is to apply as little force as is necessary and to be perceived as applying the force fairly (not necessarily equally). Unfortunately, society and government are made up of humans and they will find ways to use what power is allotted to them by other humans in ways that are advantageous to themselves. History shows that no matter how idealistic and utopian the original goal of a society or government it will be changed by the humans in charge to give themselves advantage. The purpose of the US constitution is to pit these humans against each other so that their pursuit of self-interest will be in conflict with others in government. The intent of the writers was that each group would prevent the others from gaining enough power to be destructive - thus the separation of powers into three branches of government. Humans also tend to form groups and place the survival of the group as more important than the survival of other groups. When the group rises to the status of a nation-state or boundary-crossing movement (usually religious), the groups can get into conflict. This is a fact of the human condition. The best prepared group will survive these conflicts. War games are one of the methods of preparing. I understand your plea and I sympathize - but history proves that we can't all just get along. Ray Parks On Jul 6, 2015, at 1:31 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: It’s such a shame that we still “can’t all just get along”, and instead keep developing more and more advanced ways of subjugating each other, killing and terrorizing. The liberal vs. conservative noise in the USA got me thinking a lot about this. When I moved to EC, the previous 8 years of BushCo had moved my politics pretty far left, to the point that I was quite happy with Correa’s victory. Now, after seeing the extent to which the past corruption has been merely legitimized (pushed upward), I’m not so sure where I stand. It seems to me that a lot of human history is some variation of the theme of you have more than I have, that’s not fair, so I’m going to take some (all in some cases) from you.” There’s a lot to be said for that. If we didn’t have such strong strucutres in place (governments, social norms), we would each have just about what we could defend against our neighbors. The problem is that governments, especially in conjunction with philosophies and religions, can legitimize quite a range of behaviors, and our war games (real and otherwise) just enforce this. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Parks, Raymond rcpa...@sandia.govmailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov wrote: You are venturing into the world of serious games. Humans have always played games to sharpen intellect, gain skills, refine tactics, understand the ramifications of strategy, and entertain themselves. I'm currently helping to author a paper about the security requirements of serious games, so this subject is fresh in my mind. As hunter-gatherers, humans allowed their children to play hide and seek, use child-sized weapons, and hunt small game. These were practice games for adulthood. This concept of transforming necessary military skills and learning them by games, either as children or later as adults, has continued throughout human history. In the 1800s, the Prussians added to the physical games with tabletop (or sandtable top) intellectual games that abstracted military units and allowed future officers to play without having to use real people, animals, and supplies. That game was called Kriegspiel and has continued to evolve to this day. Chess is sometimes considered the original Kriegspiel. Most historians agree it is derived from Chaturanga, invented in the Gupta Empire somewhere between 280 and 550 CE. Modern chess was formalized from the derivative of shatranj (Muslim version from the original) in about 900-1000 CE in southern Europe. As a game, chess trains the player to think ahead, understand the consequences of their actions, and generally improves the mind. In the age of Industrial Warfare new weapons, new logistics, new transportation, new communication methods, and the sheer size of armies required games to understand the bitter lessons learned in wars. These games were physical games to learn how all of these factors interact in the physical world before they could be abstracted to the tabletop as Kriegspiel. As late as the buildup to the US entry into WWII, the Army held huge maneuver exercises in the South to practice and understand how war was already being fought in Europe.
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: DOH!
http://m.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-decline-of-violence/ Curt On Jul 6, 2015 6:02 PM, Parks, Raymond rcpa...@sandia.gov wrote: Human behaviour is human behaviour and it has not changed in 50,000+ years. Humans act in their own self-interest at many levels - see Maslow's Hierarch of Needs. The purpose of civilization is to allow humans to behave the way they will behave with as little destructive collateral effects as possible. Sometimes, the structures of a society and government are enough to control the behaviour - sometimes more force is necessary. The key is to apply as little force as is necessary and to be perceived as applying the force fairly (not necessarily equally). Unfortunately, society and government are made up of humans and they will find ways to use what power is allotted to them by other humans in ways that are advantageous to themselves. History shows that no matter how idealistic and utopian the original goal of a society or government it will be changed by the humans in charge to give themselves advantage. The purpose of the US constitution is to pit these humans against each other so that their pursuit of self-interest will be in conflict with others in government. The intent of the writers was that each group would prevent the others from gaining enough power to be destructive - thus the separation of powers into three branches of government. Humans also tend to form groups and place the survival of the group as more important than the survival of other groups. When the group rises to the status of a nation-state or boundary-crossing movement (usually religious), the groups can get into conflict. This is a fact of the human condition. The best prepared group will survive these conflicts. War games are one of the methods of preparing. I understand your plea and I sympathize - but history proves that we can't all just get along. Ray Parks On Jul 6, 2015, at 1:31 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: It’s such a shame that we still “can’t all just get along”, and instead keep developing more and more advanced ways of subjugating each other, killing and terrorizing. The liberal vs. conservative noise in the USA got me thinking a lot about this. When I moved to EC, the previous 8 years of BushCo had moved my politics pretty far left, to the point that I was quite happy with Correa’s victory. Now, after seeing the extent to which the past corruption has been merely legitimized (pushed upward), I’m not so sure where I stand. It seems to me that a lot of human history is some variation of the theme of you have more than I have, that’s not fair, so I’m going to take some (all in some cases) from you.” There’s a lot to be said for that. If we didn’t have such strong strucutres in place (governments, social norms), we would each have just about what we could defend against our neighbors. The problem is that governments, especially in conjunction with philosophies and religions, can legitimize quite a range of behaviors, and our war games (real and otherwise) just enforce this. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Parks, Raymond rcpa...@sandia.gov wrote: You are venturing into the world of serious games. Humans have always played games to sharpen intellect, gain skills, refine tactics, understand the ramifications of strategy, and entertain themselves. I'm currently helping to author a paper about the security requirements of serious games, so this subject is fresh in my mind. As hunter-gatherers, humans allowed their children to play hide and seek, use child-sized weapons, and hunt small game. These were practice games for adulthood. This concept of transforming necessary military skills and learning them by games, either as children or later as adults, has continued throughout human history. In the 1800s, the Prussians added to the physical games with tabletop (or sandtable top) intellectual games that abstracted military units and allowed future officers to play without having to use real people, animals, and supplies. That game was called Kriegspiel and has continued to evolve to this day. Chess is sometimes considered the original Kriegspiel. Most historians agree it is derived from Chaturanga, invented in the Gupta Empire somewhere between 280 and 550 CE. Modern chess was formalized from the derivative of shatranj (Muslim version from the original) in about 900-1000 CE in southern Europe. As a game, chess trains the player to think ahead, understand the consequences of their actions, and generally improves the mind. In the age of Industrial Warfare new weapons, new logistics, new transportation, new communication methods, and the sheer size of armies required games to understand the bitter lessons learned in wars. These games were physical games to learn how all of these factors
