Ah, yes, I was talking about the deleted post. Sandwich's was graphic, but (barely) within reason. The other post was both 1) too graphic, and 2) not an answer.
@Sandwich So, for my part, I would advise that you not conclude which single aspect of your post was the one that resonates with everyone. I don't appreciate it for the gruesome detail, in fact I find that level of detail repulsive enough I get a physical reaction from it. But, in your first two paragraphs you aptly get straight to the point and answer the question in a no-nonsense fashion, and I appreciate that.
Other, different aspects of it are going to be the reason why other people voted.
(some votes are going to be "oh hey it's that sandwich dude, he usually knows what he's talking about and this one looks ok" for instance)
@Althis App for what? If it's for PC, I'm not sure about knowing how long it's been in the list, but I use Rainmeter. It keeps both a list of tasks and calendars and will let you know when something is due and how long it's been overdue if you don't do it.
I'd link, but the site seems to be down right now. :I
It is just that I have all these things that I want to start doing, and I don't want to be too rigid with my time. Since my work is mostly freelance, rigid stuff never works out.
So I wanted something that I could just put stuff I want to do, and it would choose for me what I would do depending on the priority and the time I have available.
I know our IT team built a web app task-list recently that tells you if a task is overdue, and designed it to be compatible with mobiles. It shouldn't be to hard to build yourself if you knew what you wanted?
A computer won't be able to do that for you if you take some planning time and realise "wait, I need to act on this one today, because my support contact for it is going on vacation at mid next week"
It is not about making the decision easier, it's that you need to devote some time to just thinking about what you are going to do, what's along the way, and so on. Have you studied project management before?
@doppelgreener I have, but my problem is much more personal. I have absolutely no problem in dealing with deadlines, but my projects don't have any. They are just things that I WANT to do, and I want to devote time to doing. They usually don't involve anyone else but me, but I also do not like giving any of them much more time than the other.
It is a very simple data-structure that I forgot the name of now.
It is that list that gives tasks more priority the longer they've been in the list.
@Althis Well yeah, but you don't need to benefit much more than any other person. You just need to benefit from it. And people who I know do it benefit from it quite a bit.
So I don't know why you're saying you won't benefit more than any other person, since that's like... "oh, well, I won't benefit from going to the gym much more than any other person."
Indecision is also something I deal with, so is procrastination, so is problems with organisation. So I sit down when I have a sufficiently un-disrupted personal day, work out what I want to do, make that list, and do those things. That also gives me time to think about e.g. shopping and laundry and cooking and when I can do those things so as to keep my time relatively free. Then the things are done.
I've always got two or three things I want to get done, and if they're all equal, there's no wrong answers and I can pick any and have made a good choice. But if there are differences, having allocated planning time in which I do nothing but think about what I'll do, gives me the peace and quiet to just consider whether there are reasons to prefer one over the others.
For instance, I want to do a website for a friend, and a webservice for fate gameplay, and a video game, and some writing, and some drawing. I'm prioritising the website for a friend because it's quick, has reason to be done soon (because it's for something that people currently use), and gets me back into some technologies I'll use in my professional life and will ease me into the fate gameplay thing because it'll use the same technology.
I'm leaving the video game off my list entirely because it's way more involved and the other things are more immediately important and fulfilling. Right now it's sort of a pipe dream.
To oversimplify, Weizenbaum (he's the guy who wrote ELIZA, the first natural-language computer interface) thinks a lot of people don't understand what computers are and what they do, and so we give computers tasks for which they aren't fit.
Specifically, the difference between "deciding" and "choosing."
@Althis I'm not suggesting you give up on using any software to make your life easier. However right now while there isn't any available, you may want to use one of the solutions already available, which is planning time. Coincidentally, you can also use software in the process, like whatever activity app you like, while you do your planning, but software won't do the planning for you right now.
Choice is the product of judgement rather than calculation, and computers are not tools capable of true judgement--thus giving them choice tasks is a mistake.
(incidentally I use a mix of trello, google calendar, wunderlist todo, physical journals, and post-its depending on what exactly I'm planning and trying to do.)
@Althis All good things for different tasks. Trello's for my personal project work, Calendar's for events, Wunderlist's for reminders about mishmash of arbitrary tasks I need to do at arbitrary times or whenever, journals are my day-to-day, post-its are anything I need to keep present in the meantime (but I've tended toward journals for that).
Joseph Weizenbaum's influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976; ISBN 0-7167-0463-3) displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to...
His ideas aren't specifically about computers, but he filters it through that lens because he's a programmer and because computers are an extreme example.
It's equally about the way society changed in response to the adoption of precise clocks, or any other technology that doesn't have a direct human correlation.
@BESW or in this case it sounds applicable as "computers can't actually perform good judgement for the purposes of working out what you'd like to do with your time and making sure you're content with everything." Taking the time to sit back and plan one's own time would create that, but it's not a task computers are yet suitable for.
@doppelgreener Training in neural networks could expand them to be able to do just that. Know your tastes and adapt to you. That is what I mean when I say it is outdated.
I work at college under a professor developing "Believable Agents", that is, A.I. that looks indistinguishable from human.
Certainly I don't believe what the wiki summary says - that AI will never have judgement. Humans are computers, so computers are perfectly capable of developing judgement.
@BESW People make a lot of fuss about Turings tests and qualia, but in the end, we don't even understand what makes us thick yet. We just have this lingering certainty that whatever a machine will have, will not be it.
But, I'm getting qualifications brought up saying I'm wrong, and I'm an IT person who's studied AI as well, what do I know. I tried to make a suggestion in lieu of no software, I'm tired of that and stopping now.
[shrug] I can't contribute usefully to this topic getting into an entire book's worth of philosophy and social sciences, and this conversation is clearly more interested in solely technological specifications. Weizenbaum's ideas aren't rooted solely in mechanical capacity; they're rooted in human nature.
@Althis That's part of the subject, yes. But "dependency" is a result of one implementation of the idea, not the idea itself.
It's about examining the relationship between humanity and technology, our psychology surrounding it, and how use of technology changes our patterns of behaviour and thought.
It's centred on the often-accurate but misguided generalisation that technology is an extension of our own capabilities, and suggests that the clock and the computer are unusual in that they are tools with inhuman capabilities.
This makes them very powerful, but our ingrained predilection to treat tools as extensions of ourselves leads us to assume computers are good tools for things they aren't actually suited for.
@Althis it seemed like it was, that AI could feasibly do this therefore that book is wrong based on its wiki summary therefore and planning time has no value.
But it dawned that no I was just reading that wrong and being annoyed.
(And, suddenly becoming unpleasant company by extension)
@BESW Yeah, I think I understand that. But I still disagree. I am one of the people that things technology progressively blurs that division, and that at some point in time, the points he proposes will be moot.
At its most general the book is a call for careful choice born of understanding and reflection before we implement technologies, because it will inevitably change ourselves and our surroundings.
He's not (as the blurb says) ambivalent about using computers.
And he's not just spinning tall tales; Computer Power and Human Reason was written in direct rebuttal to some very ill-advised ideas about how ELIZA should be used.
@Althis Thanks for this comment. I've got a couple of patterns I sometimes fall into which I don't see reflect well on me and I just went into one of them then. I'm not sure how to overcome them just yet.
Help person -> help gets totally ignored -> get frustrated and give up, maybe make a biting remark as I do. Not a good and wholesome pattern that improves anything for anyone, and I'm trying to eliminate it.
Seeing that both computer science professionals and laypeople were so eager to use ELIZA in ways which a basic understanding of programming should show to be ridiculous if not dangerous, Weizenbaum took two years off to talk to psychologists, historians, engineers, and experts in many other fields.
He came out of it with an understanding of the progressive role of technology in society and humanity's relationship to it, and he saw that computers do not fit the traditional progression but we treat them as if we do.
Computer Power and Human Reason is an exploration of that gap, the problems which rise from ignoring it, and an exhortation to change our relationship with computers to be more informed about them.
@doppelgreener Are you still here because your help didn't really get ignored or because you want to be? Because if it is the former, you still need to work on that, if the latter, you already are.
@Adeptus For my college project, we completely gave up on natural language processing. At least for now.
It is too hard to break the uncanny valley.
We are working more on creating an agent that can simulate real emotions.
Yeah. I'm breaking from it, but it takes a few iterations to break out of a pattern properly and it's not like it occurs often. I handle it fine other times, or something.
Basically, we get a bunch of people to do tests, and test their emotional responses to each of them. Then we use the data from the test and try to get a model for their responses using layered utility based decision making. Then we implement the model in a bunch of agents and test them to see if they reach the same manner.
The agents also learn, so we can run a new test on them and run a new test on other real people and see if there is relation the other way around.
It is a lot of boring work, but it is cool.
It is really weird though, when we end up making agents are are just a bunch of jackasses.
Because it is awesome and annoying and the same time.
Some agents for example will just refuse to interact with us.
When we put them on a group, some will often be really nasty to one another.
@BESW The thing is that we don't really understand much of how the mind works currently.
So instead of poking our noses into neuroscience, it just seems easier to create something that is undistinguishable from the real thing using psychology.
People have actually been doing a similar thing in games for ages.
Well, if it does arise, I sense the probability of class-action lawsuits in various jurisdictions for violation of privacy (hosting public profiles for private individuals without consent) and for emotional distress inflicted upon the subjects of feedback.
@doppelgreener I poked through the ones I can get to a few days ago. I wasn't looking for this at the time, but I don't recall seeing anything useful, sadly.
@SPArchaeologist my arts and crafts level is still only in the single digits, not at level 50 yet, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. One day!!
@Pixie aw, drat
Hmmm.... I might this month try to finally get the right face paint for the spirit of jazz and finally try that one out before I need to lose the suit from my wardrobe.
I have everything I need already to be a lazy-but-still-fun-Shuu, excepting the vest and the tie. [strokes chin] This and this look to be the closest possibilities.
@doppelgreener So that's his secret. I am not so well-equipped, though. The only pigeon I have is Nageki my mourning dove plush, and Satin's not getting it. :P
Alas, Satin's one flaw: a lack of autonomy in getting what it wants.
Also I'll clarify I'm gymming up for other reasons, but one advantage of having a totally rockin' bod is that you get to look good wearing whatever you want.
And the advantage of genderswap cosplay is artistic license! \o/
I'd have to ask my DM. I was banking on it for a decent ranged racial ability, but then read it later on lol. I'm sure he'd be fine with it. I think it should be either or, not both though
Wanted to try something that wasn't obvious, like elf ranger or something
@TomSterkenburg I'd allow it, personally, because it's such a crap ability anyway. On the other hand, " I was banking on it for a decent ranged racial ability" - don't. It sucks.