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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Stature

Story Monday August 15, 2016

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4 hours ago, ijuin said:

The "fungus/microbes that tend to consume refined sulfur that isn't sterilized and hermetically sealed" version from D&D is probably the most plausible way of making gunpowder not work, which means that the adoption of explosives would get delayed until the discovery of nitroglycerin and methods of stabilizing it (dynamite or nitrocellulose/guncotton).

Yeah, I generalized too much. All praise to the memory of Gygax Dragonlord, Ascended Master of Gaming Geeks.

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46 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

The Moderator: This kind of remark is not appropriate for these forums. I do not care how it was intended, it comes across as insulting. One warning point.

Dumbas Has A Point is the name of a trope on tvtropes.org. I even provided a link. ARe or you referring to a different part of my statement? I ask because I Am honestly confused

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25 minutes ago, animalia said:

Dumbas Has A Point is the name of a trope on tvtropes.org. I even provided a link. ARe or you referring to a different part of my statement? I ask because I Am honestly confused

The Moderator: Coming as it did right on the heels of mlooney's post, it was hard to not see your post as aimed directly at him. The implication I took from it was that you called him a nutjob rather than a dumbass. Upon rereading it, I realised that you might have been referring to Pandora in the comic strip instead. If this is the case I am sorry for the misunderstanding and withdraw the warning.

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35 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

The Moderator: Coming as it did right on the heels of mlooney's post, it was hard to not see your post as aimed directly at him. The implication I took from it was that you called him a nutjob rather than a dumbass. Upon rereading it, I realised that you might have been referring to Pandora in the comic strip instead. If this is the case I am sorry for the misunderstanding and withdraw the warning.

Thanks sorry for my confusion. I WAS referring to pandora and I skimmed a lot of the earlier posts.

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3 hours ago, animalia said:

Thanks sorry for my confusion. I WAS referring to pandora and I skimmed a lot of the earlier posts.

The Moderator: My apologies, then. I'll see about getting that warning point taken off you. I may have to ask the admins to do that as these new forums seem a bit odd for some reason.

ETA: No, it was completely painless, and the warning point should be gone now. Please tell me if there are any issues.

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This is one of the things I love about this forum -- our moderators are reasonable people who aren't afraid to apologize when they make a mistake, and to do so just as publicly as the mistaken warning was made.  (I know usually we aren't supposed to comment publicly on Moderator actions, but in this case I felt like it was worth risking it ;-) )

Back on topic, I recall Jerry referring to parties where one or more Immortals named Zeus get into a fight...so it looks like Pandora really *is* an introvert!

Edited by CritterKeeper
added on-topic observation (typing blind)

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13 hours ago, ijuin said:

In a more dystopian situation, people or animals capable of generating enough energy to be useful but not enough to be powerful combatants may be enslaved as energy sources.

File off the serial numbers.  Then add sunglasses and a leather trench coat.

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14 hours ago, ijuin said:
On 08/15/2016 at 1:17 AM, hkmaly said:

In fact, physical laws of our universe seems to work on level of subatomic particles, with no "high-level" exceptions. I don't think anyone is able to predict how to change the basic universe constance to produce observable-by-naked-eye difference which doesn't kill everyone.

The "fungus/microbes that tend to consume refined sulfur that isn't sterilized and hermetically sealed" version from D&D is probably the most plausible way of making gunpowder not work, which means that the adoption of explosives would get delayed until the discovery of nitroglycerin and methods of stabilizing it (dynamite or nitrocellulose/guncotton).

Yes: its relatively plausible but it only delays the inevitable.

14 hours ago, ijuin said:

Anyway, as for magic being widely available, it does appear that magical energy is a limited resource. Living beings can generate internal energy to a point, but any "industrial" type uses would have to draw on environmental energy--and there may be minerals or something that contain a relative concentration of magical energy that could thus be consumed like coal. Universal use of magic thus seems likely to deplete the world's magical energy supply.

No, I don't see any sign of consumable magic minerals. It is possible all magic energy was actually created by living beings, which would point to them generating relatively high amounts ... or for a long time. Of course, it is likely industrial use of magic WILL deplete the supply, especially with how industry generally stops consuming something only when it notices the scarcity.

14 hours ago, ijuin said:

At best such a situation would lead to a limited availability of non-personal magical energy and a forced rollback of industrial usage.

It seems magic flows relatively slow, meaning the limited availability will be local. So, forced limit on industrial usage and depleted areas around the industries. Basically, something like hydroelectric power stations: no matter how well you build it, it can only consume the water which flow into it. Still useful.

14 hours ago, ijuin said:

In a more dystopian situation, people or animals capable of generating enough energy to be useful but not enough to be powerful combatants may be enslaved as energy sources

Yes, pooka should be freed. But note that enslaving is only good idea if you need to cut them to parts or force them to do something. If the best way how to get magic energy from person is something like letting him watch interesting movie (I'm thinking creating emotions), I don't think it would come to enslaving. Not worth it.

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
14 hours ago, ijuin said:

In a more dystopian situation, people or animals capable of generating enough energy to be useful but not enough to be powerful combatants may be enslaved as energy sources.

File off the serial numbers.  Then add sunglasses and a leather trench coat.

Case in point: even if humans in Matrix would somehow generate more energy than they consume (which is totally impossible without magic), the strategy machines used was flawed: it resulted in unnecessary fight. If they would instead make those cocoons little better looking, did few small modification in that world simulation and make some advertisement, people would be standing in queues to become energy sources ...

6 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Back on topic, I recall Jerry referring to parties where one or more Immortals named Zeus get into a fight...so it looks like Pandora really *is* an introvert!

No parties. It's true that most immortals PROBABLY meet someone else from time to time, but the "don't usually socialize" may still be true, we have no idea how often immortals normally meet each other. She probably is an introvert, but may not be that far from average.

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Simple power generation should be looked on as a last resort use or as a legal penalty for crimes committed.  Under most conditions such people would be expected to be a rare resource that you'd just think there'd have to be a better use for them than matrixing them.

If we can make the power extraction equipment portable and non-intrusive enough for the individual to operate normally, all sorts of interesting uses open up.

  • We could pop a usefully-generating individual in an Iron Man suit which could store the individual's output internally and engage in combat for a limited time. 
  • It would be harder to make a practical animal-exoskeleton.  Not impossible, but harder. 
  • Certainly bio-energy generation would solve the issue of how to power that(those) bionic limb(s). 
  • A usefully-generating individual could be something like a self-powered railgun-sniper,
  • On the civilian side, a energy-generator could make a great rescue worker (think: self-powered "jaws of life")
  • An energy-generating animal companion could keep portable life support equipment going for a important politician who can't afford to be bed-ridden (keep a tight hold on that leash.  Your life depends on it...).

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8 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:
  • We could pop a usefully-generating individual in an Iron Man suit which could store the individual's output internally and engage in combat for a limited time. 
  • It would be harder to make a practical animal-exoskeleton.  Not impossible, but harder. 
  • Certainly bio-energy generation would solve the issue of how to power that(those) bionic limb(s). 
  • A usefully-generating individual could be something like a self-powered railgun-sniper,
  • On the civilian side, a energy-generator could make a great rescue worker (think: self-powered "jaws of life")

I suspect most of those ideas would lead to awakening in few years. I was thinking more like harvesting energy from group of people who don't produce enough to be worth harvesting individually. To do that, you would basically only need to get them together ... which can be done in lot of ways, including mentioned movie or for example convention. Amusement parks would also likely result in rise in ambient magic.

Wait ... the ones most in danger from industrial use of magic will be the whales. If they normally consume ambient magic to keep it's level low ... which basically noone would like ...

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, pooka should be freed. But note that enslaving is only good idea if you need to cut them to parts or force them to do something. If the best way how to get magic energy from person is something like letting him watch interesting movie (I'm thinking creating emotions), I don't think it would come to enslaving. Not worth it.

Even harnessing the power is disgusted authors spinning in their graves wasn't as successful as hoped.

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Of course, it is likely industrial use of magic WILL deplete the supply, especially with how industry generally stops consuming something only when it notices the scarcity.

Actually, industry only stops consuming something when there is a more cost-effective substitute.

The cost of a unit of unobtainium is infinite, so ANY alternative (including simply doing without whatever we needed the unobtainium for) is more cost-effective.

Even when there is still a bit of a resource out there, as the cost of locating, extracting, and refining one more unit of it goes up, there are more and more uses where some alternative is more cost-effective... because of this, there are quite a lot of resources that we will NEVER run COMPLETELY out of, we'll just entirely stop using them because there is no use where they are the most cost-effective choice.

And... what happens as the magic runs out?

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15 hours ago, animalia said:

You've heard of Dumbass Has A Point, this is Nutjob Has A Point.

 

13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The Moderator: This kind of remark is not appropriate for these forums. I do not care how it was intended, it comes across as insulting. One warning point.

 

12 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The Moderator: Coming as it did right on the heels of mlooney's post, it was hard to not see your post as aimed directly at him. The implication I took from it was that you called him a nutjob rather than a dumbass. Upon rereading it, I realised that you might have been referring to Pandora in the comic strip instead. If this is the case I am sorry for the misunderstanding and withdraw the warning.

Just for the record I am a nutjob.  Getting paid by the US Govt. for being one.  I say so, with some what more words plus a mild threat about it, in my sig.  I understand rules are rules, and depending on context it might bother me, but 98 out of 100 time it's at worse meh.  Trust me I have FGMP-151 that I will use on the other 2 times.

Odds if that 2% happening in this place, TBH, is with in Epsilon of 0%

Book of Face ,Flickr, select email lists, or BofhNet,  yep, can, has, and will happen again.

1Fusion Gun Man Portable tech level 15.  Think a machine gun that fires chunks of the sun.  The ulimate flame thower.

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:
18 hours ago, ijuin said:

Anyway, as for magic being widely available, it does appear that magical energy is a limited resource. Living beings can generate internal energy to a point, but any "industrial" type uses would have to draw on environmental energy--and there may be minerals or something that contain a relative concentration of magical energy that could thus be consumed like coal. Universal use of magic thus seems likely to deplete the world's magical energy supply.

No, I don't see any sign of consumable magic minerals. It is possible all magic energy was actually created by living beings, which would point to them generating relatively high amounts ... or for a long time. Of course, it is likely industrial use of magic WILL deplete the supply, especially with how industry generally stops consuming something only when it notices the scarcity.

Considering that the energy clog has caused significant differentials in the ambient magic level on both sides, I doubt that all of the ambient magical energy is produced by living things. Maybe some of it, but I suspect that some other mechanism is responsible for the bulk of the ambient magical energy that flows between the worlds. Though no matter the mechanism for the ambient energy, I agree that unchecked industrialization would majorly reduce the supply. It's possible that someone with the hindsight of past industrialization and forethought for the future instead of the present could work to impose checks to prevent magical industrialization from causing wide-spread damage and problems, but I personally wouldn't hold my breath.

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:
18 hours ago, ijuin said:

In a more dystopian situation, people or animals capable of generating enough energy to be useful but not enough to be powerful combatants may be enslaved as energy sources

Yes, pooka should be freed. But note that enslaving is only good idea if you need to cut them to parts or force them to do something. If the best way how to get magic energy from person is something like letting him watch interesting movie (I'm thinking creating emotions), I don't think it would come to enslaving. Not worth it.

Considering animals will starve themselves to get rid of an unwanted enchantmentand energy recovery is greatest during sleep, which is when the body's tissues do the most healing as well, it is reasonable to conclude that personal energy levels are generated by biological processes. I'm not certain if we've seen an instance where emotions provide more energy, outside of dramatic instances. So if you want something to siphon energy from, the best candidate would be whatever has the greatest density of biological process. Or if different lifeforms produce magical energy at different rates, then the best choice would be to find the best food to magic ratio.

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Case in point: even if humans in Matrix would somehow generate more energy than they consume (which is totally impossible without magic), the strategy machines used was flawed: it resulted in unnecessary fight. If they would instead make those cocoons little better looking, did few small modification in that world simulation and make some advertisement, people would be standing in queues to become energy sources ...

If the Animatrix is to be taken as a valid source (which in-setting-wise it's presented by a machine so it might be a biased source), the humans attacked the machines first out of jealousy and fear. The machine's Matrix strategy was both an attempt to produce energy and to quell a hostile force. Though honestly I prefer the original reason for the humans in the pods, the machines were using them to compute things instead of as an energy source. But sadly the executives in charge of the movie thought the average viewer was too dumb to understand that plot thread.

14 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Fusion Gun Man Portable tech level 15.  Think a machine gun that fires chunks of the sun.  The ulimate flame thower.

Sounds fun, but I personally prefer a good ol' drum of chlorine trifluoride. Certainly won't have the same reach or rate of fire, but it'll burn just nicely.

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On 8/15/2016 at 5:53 AM, Zorua said:

Villain Has A Point?

The villain is missing the elephant in the room:

People can get VERY creative with magic. It breaks the rules of reality, and having it means people can be just as dangerous as a gun, bomb, or even nukes.

Autonomous summons that can burn anything they touch. A dragon that can destroy cars. Brainwashing an entire party of people to not only be willing slaves, but to also look like a specific person. Splitting a person into two, leaving both intact as viable and complete people, capable of living and spreading any "curse" that the person had for the second person. Turning to stone to extend your life. This is only the START of what can be done with magic, only what we've seen.

The only way for a transition to having more magic in the world be safe would be to create a universal change in magic that would drastically increase humanity's natural resistance to magic all at once, before or as the change happened.

I'm betting magic could make a savvy person immune to bullets too.

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Given how Pandora was describing that before the Rule Change, the whole invading army was depending on a particular type of magic (Pyromancy) to be their main weapon, I am thinking that the pre-change rules were more like the magic that we hear about in traditional stories. Particularly, what EGS currently calls "Wizards" were more common, with the ability to choose which spells to acquire through study and practice. When Magic changed the rules, It changed things so that most Mages now gained spells that reflect their subconscious selves rather than being chosen by the conscious mind.

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19 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Of course, it is likely industrial use of magic WILL deplete the supply, especially with how industry generally stops consuming something only when it notices the scarcity.

Actually, industry only stops consuming something when there is a more cost-effective substitute.

I should've said stop consuming something like it's infinite, suggesting they start rationing and searching for alternatives instead of stopping the use completely.

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Considering that the energy clog has caused significant differentials in the ambient magic level on both sides, I doubt that all of the ambient magical energy is produced by living things. Maybe some of it, but I suspect that some other mechanism is responsible for the bulk of the ambient magical energy that flows between the worlds.

It can flow in circles, like water in ocean. In fact, that was exactly the image I got from it.

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

It's possible that someone with the hindsight of past industrialization and forethought for the future instead of the present could work to impose checks to prevent magical industrialization from causing wide-spread damage and problems, but I personally wouldn't hold my breath.

Well, either Will of Magic or Pandora. Noone else would be able to force those checks.

Therefore, I hope they won't be needed because magic doesn't flow fast enough.

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Though honestly I prefer the original reason for the humans in the pods, the machines were using them to compute things instead of as an energy source.

Humans are very bad at computing things. Most of our computation capacity is hardwired to our senses and unusable for general computation. Also, it would affect the simulation. Still, I agree it's much better idea than the energy source one.

One thing which humans might actually be able to provide to machines is randomness. Machines are notoriously bad with being unpredictable. So, maybe using humans for seeding random generators?

19 hours ago, Hariman said:

People can get VERY creative with magic. It breaks the rules of reality, and having it means people can be just as dangerous as a gun, bomb, or even nukes.

People can get VERY creative with technology as well. But yes, there are at least SOME limits with technology. With magic, we only know about "no time travel".

19 hours ago, Hariman said:

Splitting a person into two, leaving both intact as viable and complete people

Banach-Tarski ? :)

19 hours ago, Hariman said:

The only way for a transition to having more magic in the world be safe would be to create a universal change in magic that would drastically increase humanity's natural resistance to magic all at once, before or as the change happened.

The idea was that humanity's natural resistance WILL go up ... and let's hope it will be fast enough.

16 hours ago, ijuin said:

Given how Pandora was describing that before the Rule Change, the whole invading army was depending on a particular type of magic (Pyromancy) to be their main weapon, I am thinking that the pre-change rules were more like the magic that we hear about in traditional stories. Particularly, what EGS currently calls "Wizards" were more common, with the ability to choose which spells to acquire through study and practice. When Magic changed the rules, It changed things so that most Mages now gained spells that reflect their subconscious selves rather than being chosen by the conscious mind.

Makes sense. Basically, before the change, everyone can cast any spell just after little study. After the change, most people had just limited set of spells they can cast. And even wizards might have it harder - it's possible they need to actually see the spell being performed and there is no way to learn it from books or anything.

 

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12 minutes ago, hkmaly said:
19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

It's possible that someone with the hindsight of past industrialization and forethought for the future instead of the present could work to impose checks to prevent magical industrialization from causing wide-spread damage and problems, but I personally wouldn't hold my breath.

Well, either Will of Magic or Pandora. Noone else would be able to force those checks.

Therefore, I hope they won't be needed because magic doesn't flow fast enough.

Not necessarily. Someone with the mind to prevent a repeat of history in industrialization and some political clout could get to ball rolling early on regulation and trade agreements that prevent excessive abuse, enforced through fines and trade sanctions where need be. Though like I said, while I might be an optimist most of the time, I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen before the damage is done.

 

16 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Humans are very bad at computing things. Most of our computation capacity is hardwired to our senses and unusable for general computation. Also, it would affect the simulation. Still, I agree it's much better idea than the energy source one.

The human brain is very good at processing sense data and so are Graphical Processing Units, in a way, and human brains are better at parallelization than most computer hardware and software. GPUs have recently been used to process non-graphical data, such as protein folding or cryptographic equations. The trick would be to intercept the flow of raw data from the various sensory organs, inject the desired raw data in its place, and then extract the processed data afterwards.

 

28 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

One thing which humans might actually be able to provide to machines is randomness. Machines are notoriously bad with being unpredictable. So, maybe using humans for seeding random generators?

There are much better ways of generating randomness than humans. Such as measuring the entropy of a laser or measuring the cosmic background radiation.

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26 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Not necessarily. Someone with the mind to prevent a repeat of history in industrialization and some political clout could get to ball rolling early on regulation and trade agreements that prevent excessive abuse, enforced through fines and trade sanctions where need be. Though like I said, while I might be an optimist most of the time, I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen before the damage is done.

... and you think it will work better than Kyoto Protocol? Definitely optimist.

26 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

GPUs have recently been used to process non-graphical data, such as protein folding or cryptographic equations.

Lot of work happened on those GPUs before they could've been used that way.

26 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

The trick would be to intercept the flow of raw data from the various sensory organs, inject the desired raw data in its place, and then extract the processed data afterwards.

The trick would be to transform the input data in way the processing would actually lead to result you want. GPUs are very general computers compared to brain. Also, in most situation, the fact that brain only works with approximations would be disadvantage (on the other hand, there probably are tasks where it would help ; like the tasks where you put actual image to sensors).

The major problem here is that if you would use the sensory processing, the person would then SEE your data and not the Matrix simulation. Also, the simulation would actually require more processing power than you get from the person you compute it for ...

26 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

There are much better ways of generating randomness than humans. Such as measuring the entropy of a laser or measuring the cosmic background radiation.

Cosmic background radiation is not random. You might get more random data by using bad equipment for it and measuring noise on image sensor ...

Hmmm ... ok, so not randomness either ...

 

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15 minutes ago, hkmaly said:
42 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

GPUs have recently been used to process non-graphical data, such as protein folding or cryptographic equations.

Lot of work happened on those GPUs before they could've been used that way.

General-Purpose computing is reliant on programmable shaders and floating point support on graphics processors, and early GPGPU work is based off of translating the data to be processed into graphical primitives. If they could figure out the computational primitives of the human brain, it's possible that machines could do something similar.

 

21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Also, in most situation, the fact that brain only works with approximations would be disadvantage (on the other hand, there probably are tasks where it would help ; like the tasks where you put actual image to sensors).

The brain's approximations are heuristic shortcuts meant to cut down on processing time. It sees something that appears to follow a pattern that it knows, so it uses the pattern to save time and potentially recognize the tiger that's about to tear you apart in time to get away safely, though not as helpful in less survival oriented situations. Though potentially the heuristic pathways could be tailored for processing specific sets of data quickly. For that to work well, the tailoring process would have to start when the human is young and neural connections are elastic.

 

27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The major problem here is that if you would use the sensory processing, the person would then SEE your data and not the Matrix simulation. Also, the simulation would actually require more processing power than you get from the person you compute it for ...

That's assuming that the Matrix isn't the data to be processed. There's a number of interesting things to be learned from humans living out their lives when you can poll data at any instant in those lives. Or the simulation could be set up as a way to translate data into easily processable primitives for the human brain. It would also explain why the humans are able to easily bend the rules of the simulation.

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21 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Though potentially the heuristic pathways could be tailored for processing specific sets of data quickly. For that to work well, the tailoring process would have to start when the human is young and neural connections are elastic.

If you actually want neural net which you train in way which makes it unable to function as human brain, why are you keeping the rest of human around? Important point in Matrix was that those people 1) are still people 2) lives in simulation resembling reality 3) can be rescued from that simulation.

24 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

There's a number of interesting things to be learned from humans living out their lives when you can poll data at any instant in those lives.

Learned, yes. Used for computing, no. The things you can learn this way are mostly sociology and similar stuff. For computers, only interesting out of curiosity.

 

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14 minutes ago, hkmaly said:
40 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Though potentially the heuristic pathways could be tailored for processing specific sets of data quickly. For that to work well, the tailoring process would have to start when the human is young and neural connections are elastic.

If you actually want neural net which you train in way which makes it unable to function as human brain, why are you keeping the rest of human around? Important point in Matrix was that those people 1) are still people 2) lives in simulation resembling reality 3) can be rescued from that simulation.

The rest of the human body is a support system for the brain irl. Why throw out working (barring genetic defects) systems only to replace them. Sure the machines could have cut off limbs and removed unneeded organs, but that could be seen as unnecessary work. Especially given that they don't seem to have problems with people escaping the simulation, as the machine just dumps Neo's pod into the drain where he can be picked up instead of ensuring that he's dead before dumping him. They just have a problem with other people trying to save other people from the simulation, presumably because such a group of rescuers could remove enough people to endanger the viability of the network. Or if the Animatrix isn't being biased, the machines don't want to just kill off humans, but are worried about humans banding together to make war.

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24 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Especially given that they don't seem to have problems with people escaping the simulation, as the machine just dumps Neo's pod into the drain where he can be picked up instead of ensuring that he's dead before dumping him.

Actually ... machines don't "make sure". Machines works as programmed. If the pill caused Neo being reported dead, it's plausible machines believed it without any doubt.

Sure, AI are supposed to be more flexible, but the programs didn't really shown so much flexibility - not counting Smith of course. In fact, WHY did they needed Neo to stop Smith? Because they can't think outside the box enough to terminate it from outside the Matrix. Neither can Neo, but he knows kung-fu :)

You didn't explained how are rescued people able to work/think as humans if their brain was messed with to create neural net with different parameters. Or why you would start to build the neural net with humans when you can grow neurons artificially in better shapes. Although ... obviously the flexibility argument can be used here: using humans the way the machines did was stupid, but also the best they could come up with.

 

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On den 17 augusti 2016 at 1:54 AM, Drasvin said:

The human brain is very good at processing sense data and so are Graphical Processing Units, in a way, and human brains are better at parallelization than most computer hardware and software. GPUs have recently been used to process non-graphical data, such as protein folding or cryptographic equations. The trick would be to intercept the flow of raw data from the various sensory organs, inject the desired raw data in its place, and then extract the processed data afterwards.

I've seen a clip about a man who was able to do advanced arithmetics in his head faster than most people are able to enter them into a calculator or computer. They did some experiments trying to learn how he was able to do this and found that his brain was wired a bit differently from most peoples. For instance, working on complex math activated a large part of the brain that in most people is used for hand eye coordination tasks such as catching or throwing a ball. Catching a ball is a surprisingly complex action that most of us doesn't have much problem with, yet we have to see the ball, determine the speed, angle, wind speed and how much it will drop so we can move to catch it. Get some spin on it and it's even harder. Unfortunately they didn't talk about how good his hand-eye coordination was so I have no idea if his ability to compute numbers and the way his brain is wired might make other tasks harder.
 

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Catching or hitting a ball is indeed a high-precision task. Consider the batter in baseball--assuming a pitch speed of 30 m/s (about 110 km/h, not too fast for a baseball), the ball is within the strike zone for literally less than 1/30 of a second--the length of ONE frame of a typical video--and we know that video frames pass by so quickly that our brain is unable to distinguish one frame from the next (sort of the point of animation, after all). So, the baseball is going past the batter in less time than a human can usually perceive, and yet at the professional level, a batter can hit the ball a good fraction of the time (typical professional batting averages are around .300 to .400, meaning that they strike out no more than about two-thirds of the time at most). I think that is pretty impressive.

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