English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

01:40

@RegDwigнt Well, we're waiting for something GOOD AND CATCHY from you. When may we expect it?

@Cerberus I find that offensive.

The wishbone formation, also known simply as the bone, is an offensive formation in American football. The style of attack to which it gives rise is known as the wishbone offense. Like the spread offense in the 2000s, the wishbone was considered to be the most productive and innovative offensive scheme in college football during the 1970s and 1980s. == History == While the record books commonly refer to Emory Bellard developing the wishbone formation in 1968 as offensive coordinator at Texas, the wishbone's roots can be traced back to the 1950s. According to Barry Switzer, it was Charles “Spud...

Cerberus

Quare?

Robusto

> The style of attack to which it gives rise is known as the wishbone offense.

QED

Cerberus

And it is like a hammer or something?

Robusto

Beats me. (haha)

Cerberus

Not a sports fan?

Robusto

01:43

Only to a certain point. I certainly don't learn all the football formations.

Cerberus

I watch "e-sports" sometimes, which is odd, because I find regular sports utterly boring to watch.

Currently studying the matches Google's Deep Mind played against Starcraft II professional players (and won).

They have made much progress on artificial intelligence.

Robusto

@Cerberus Yeah. The singularity is near.

What's even more interesting is how Deep Mind defeats the strongest chess software in the world, quite handily.

It taught itself how to play in four hours of machine time, has no opening book and no endgame hashtables, it just ... thinks.

Google Deep Mind AI Alpha Zero Devours Stockfish

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BTW, he misstates the strength of Stockfish: he means 3200, not 2200. 3200 is higher than the highest human has ever achieved by about 300 points.

Cerberus

02:21

I suppose chess is relatively easy, because the number of possibilities is manageable: the computer can try them all up to a point in the far future, right?

It has complete information.

Starcraft is very different.

Robusto

@Cerberus Incorrect.

The number of possible positions in chess is 10 ^ 120+

That's more than the number of electrons in the universe.

Cerberus

It has complete information as to the state of the game.

Robusto

Also true for Starcraft.

If it didn't, it couldn't play at all.

Cerberus

No, in Starcraft, there are many aspects to the state of the game that one cannot see.

Robusto

You mean Fog of War type stuff?

Robusto

02:35

Anyway, I believe chess to be orders of magnitude harder to play than Starcraft.

I mean, especially to beat humans. The Starcraft AI, which is nothing approaching Deep Mind, can beat most human players.

Tonepoet

@Cerberus Basically, but it is somewhat more complicated than that. It procedurally generates a thought process, and might not play the same way every time. I think this functions similarly in principle:

MarI/O - Machine Learning for Video Games

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Cerberus

02:54

@Robusto Yes, so the number and type of units and buildings the other player has, their positions, the number of resources, upgrades and technologies, cloaked units, etc.

Robusto

@Cerberus Which is also true for human players playing each other.

Cerberus

@Robusto Well, it took Deep Mind a lot longer to defeat a Starcraft pro, they have said so themselves; and even now they only manage to do so because of superior clicking speed and accuracy, and screen-moving speed, minimap watching, and a few other factors that are not yet level.

@Robusto Yes. It makes the game fundamentally different from chess.

Robusto

@Cerberus That's because twitch gaming does not involve as much thought.

Cerberus

Indeed.

Robusto

In fact, thought is not as important as speed.

Cerberus

02:57

In micro-managing units, speed is indeed paramount. And no human could win in that regard.

Robusto

I used to be able to beat my son at the original Starcraft when he was like 10 years old. Then he was suddenly able to crush me absolutely because he could move and react waaaaaay faster than I could, and implement a strategy in real time without thinking much about it.

Kind of like walking: if you have to think about picking up each foot and putting it down, you are not going to walk very well.

Cerberus

Even so, Deep Mind did discover a fundamental bit of strategy that can be called intelligent and which human professionals had not discovered.

That's cute.

So it is indeed.

I've only played the original Starcraft myself.

Robusto

Same with playing an instrument. The skills all reside in the ganglia, and you just implement them as needed.

Cerberus

But I have a new computer now, and Starcarft II is now free, so I should probably play it!

Robusto

I've played it. It's ... fun, but I prefer to play it doing teamwork with a friend.

Cerberus

03:01

Two against two?

Robusto

Yes.

Cerberus

I would start by playing the campaign. That should be fun.

Robusto

I play Protoss and she plays Terran. My strategy is to build quickly until I can start cranking out void rays. She handles the quick assaults and defense until I have enough of an armada assembled to take out anything.

Cerberus

I've watched some 2v2 matches, but they looked very confusing!

Robusto

@Cerberus Yeah, but it's only fun once. Or twice, maybe.

Cerberus

03:02

How very Protoss of you.

Robusto

Yup.

Cerberus

Yes. But I may have lost interest before that point anyway.

Robusto

True.

Cerberus

And the last time I have played a competitive game was...Tyrant?

Before that, only Kongai.

Never any big game.

Robusto

I really don't play that much anymore.

I realized that I'm waaay down in the mix when it comes to twitch games.

I prefer strategy games, and I don't like to be rushed.

To give you an example, my son likes to play bullet chess (1:00/1:00, 2-second bonus per move). I have a hard time even playing blitz (5:00/5:00, no bonus usually).

I can't even think about a move inside of ten seconds most of the time. So I get like 6 or 7 moves in and my flag falls.

Cerberus

03:08

Yeah I don't like Twitch games very much either, never have.

Robusto

It's interesting to watch him play, though. His focus widens so that he's taking in many things at once, but shallowly. He has programmed himself (or been programmed, much like @Tonepoet's video) to react to stimuli and to make very quick responses. When he is defeated he tries new responses until he achieves success, then incorporates those into his repertoire.

Cerberus

03:29

I can imagine.

RegDwigнt

09:32

@Robusto sorry, but the deadline was April 12, 2012, so I've not been allowed to post anything GOOD AND CATCHY ever since.

You need to open your own MuseScore group. With blackjack and hookers. Then I still won't post anything GOOD AND CATCHY, but at least there'll be hookers.

@tchrist yeah I was wondering which verb to use but, uh, spot, really? Nah that can't be right. That makes it sound like they go out into the world and seek out and discover new content to be included on Facebook. When in reality they are doing the exact polar opposite.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in title, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad keyword in body (196): Suggest a company that deals in muscle car restomod? by muscle car on english.SE

RegDwigнt

Really the word is review, of course. Or look through. But those are boring. Anyone can use those.

Screen, inspect. Those all sound horrible.

But spot just sounds wrong. Like drive or eat.

Færd

09:49

@KannE Yeap. Funny how sounds construct meanings.

While those companies want to capitalize on the idea, we can de-capitalize the word and use skwooshi however we want. And if enough people find it rolls off their tongues easy, then viola, it's a word in their language.

@Cerberus It keeps the shape; not elastic.

But I feel a pressure on the eardrum when I push the plug to completely shut the orifice.

(don't worry I'm using it in the right orifice)

Matt E. Эллен

13:34

So

Lunch time at my new job :D

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен Woo hoo!

Mahlzeit!

Matt E. Эллен