Unintentionally Creating Value
I post lots of stuff on the Internet. I am awful at predicting what people will like and what people won’t, so I just throw everything at the wall.
I’m usually not too bad at predicting what people will like, but I’m pretty bad at predicting why they’ll like it.
This is actually true of the D&D.Sci project in general. I started it thinking people would overfit, detect too much from too little data, and lower their confidence appropriately when the results come out the following week. But all the players turned out to be (for the most part) really well-calibrated.
(Well, actually it’s worse than that. On the rare occasions when a player confidently states something false about a scenario they’re playing, in the time between the intro and the wrap-up being posted, there’s one pretty consistent characteristic they display.
Which is that they’re usually me.)
My puzzles are embedded in fiction. If readers overfit then I just change the story to make them right. Truth is retconned. I vividly remember one story where a commenter told me (the author and narrator) that I had misstated why my character did something and the reader was right.
I think it’s interesting how your experience is backwards from how I interact with readers solving my puzzles.
You write math puzzles. You have a predetermined answer and whoever can get closest to that answer wins.
In both situations, the challenge is writing stories that are interesting enough people will latch onto them. The puzzle is just part of the story. But the puzzle needs to be integrated with the character and world. Different characters are suited for different puzzles.
When things work well there is lots of emergent humor. That’s how I know I’m doing it right.
I’ve noticed that. When I make a scenario which pares down a real problem and puts it in a fantastical context, humor just kind of happens. I’m usually surprised by how funny I apparently am!
To be honest, when I read your D&D.Sci I skip over all the math and just read those parts.
Simultaneously flattered and irritated. (I know this is probably where they generate most of their utilons if I’m being honest.)
But yeah, even among people who play them the benefit tends mostly not to be whatever point I was trying to make, but just the opportunity to practice skills in a simplified but reality-rooted world.
One of my favorite responses to a .sci was seeing someone use it to figure out he needed to make the ranges on his plots more consistent. I had a completely unrelated conceit I was trying to hammer home, and would never have dreamed that would be someone’s key takeaway, but I’m glad I could help!
This happens all the time with my dialogues. The person totally understands the point I’m trying to make, and is then surprised by something I assumed they already understood.
There’s an interesting analogy between this sort of thing (vs most tests/pedagogy) and free-weights (vs using gym machines).
(I would have said “a productive analogy” but I’m pretty sure the only thing it would produce is people saying “hm yes abstractapplic is right”.)
You’ll never guess what my takeaway from that analogy is.
Hit me.
I skipped going to the gym last night and should do so in the couple hours between finishing this dialogue with you and attending an ACX meetup at 5 pm.
Well I’m glad I unintentionally created value of a completely unexpected kind, again.
First link is broken.
Fixed. Thanks.
Reminds me of Expecting Short Inferential Distances.