It’s ridiculous to think that video games influence children. After all, if Pac-Man had affected children born in the eighties, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, eating strange pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music.
We can reformulate Tetris as follows: challenges keep appearing (at a fixed rate), and must be solved at the same rate; we cannot let too many unsolved challenges pile up, or we will be overwhelmed and lose the game.
But the challenge rate is not fixed. It increases at higher levels. So the lesson seems rather hollow: At some point, if you are successful at solving challenges, the rate at which new ones appear becomes too high for you.
...thus becoming useful object lessons to the rest of the species, and reducing our average susceptibility to reward systems with low variability. Not quite seeing the problem here.
Actually, it strikes me that this particular example shouldn’t be classified as GFE. “Errors pile up and accomplishments disappear” is a consequence of the way that the game logic works: in a sense, you could say that it’s a theorem implied by the axioms of the game. While it’s valid to say that Tetris is a flawed piece of proceduralrhetoric in that its axioms do not correctly describe the real world, if you called it fictional evidence you would also be forced to call math fictional evidence, which probably isn’t what you’d want.
-Unknown
-- Paraphrase of joke by Marcus Brigstocke
To be fair there are quite a few people who nowadays listen to electronic music, take drugs that are pills and who spend a lot of time in dark rooms.
That’s the joke.
It’s funny, but you really shouldn’t be learning life lessons from Tetris.
If Tetris has taught me anything, it’s the history of the Soviet Union.
We can reformulate Tetris as follows: challenges keep appearing (at a fixed rate), and must be solved at the same rate; we cannot let too many unsolved challenges pile up, or we will be overwhelmed and lose the game.
So Tetris is really an anti-procrastination learning tool? Hmmm, wonder why that doesn’t sound right….
But the challenge rate is not fixed. It increases at higher levels. So the lesson seems rather hollow: At some point, if you are successful at solving challenges, the rate at which new ones appear becomes too high for you.
Just like life. The reward for succeeding at a challenge is always a new, bigger challenge.
At which point you die, for lack of intelligence.
Actually a fairly good metaphor for x-risk, surprisingly.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to make a Tetris-optimizer than a Friendly AI...
I thought Tetris had been proven to always eventually produce an unclearable block sequence.
Only if there is a possibility of a sufficiently large run of S and Z pieces. In many implementations there is not.
It was either that or risk some people playing without stop until their bodies died in the real world.
...thus becoming useful object lessons to the rest of the species, and reducing our average susceptibility to reward systems with low variability. Not quite seeing the problem here.
And todays challenges can be used to remedy yesterdays failures.
How is that a rationality quote?
LF:GFE
I’m afraid I don’t know what that stands for.
Logical Fallacy: Generalization from Fictional Evidence
Actually, it strikes me that this particular example shouldn’t be classified as GFE. “Errors pile up and accomplishments disappear” is a consequence of the way that the game logic works: in a sense, you could say that it’s a theorem implied by the axioms of the game. While it’s valid to say that Tetris is a flawed piece of procedural rhetoric in that its axioms do not correctly describe the real world, if you called it fictional evidence you would also be forced to call math fictional evidence, which probably isn’t what you’d want.
What?
Eh?
Ah, thank you.