NOTE: Apologies if this is duplicated. Got a note back that I used the wrong email addy on my last attempt, but it's Gmail, so it shows my response in the chain anyway...
For an instance that may be somewhat akin to what's being discussed here, I'd refer back to an even from two years ago in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. A "plague" that was designed by the game programmers and intended to be restricted to a particular server actually made its way onto other servers. The plague spread rapidly, producing a fascinating -- to me, anyway -- array of reactions. More on the issue is here: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11330 . In response to the question "how would the avatars know when they were infected?", this was actually part of the game: health of the character decreased incrementally. The plague could be spread, treated but not cured, cured, etc. What I found most compelling was that the WoW community responded in many of the same ways as you'd think people would in the face of a real disaster. Whole neighborhoods banned entrance from unknown players, some altruistic people went around giving out healing/resurrection spells (things that have to be bought with money that is earned through time playing the game, so not entirely without value), while still others thought it amusing to spread the virus as far as possible. There were even debates in various fora about retaining or eliminating the potential for such an outbreak; that it got out of the hands of the designers enhanced the realism to some, made the gameplay worse to others. In the wake of the virus in WoW, I sent the people at Blizzard Entertainment inquiries about getting anonymized data on various things they track, but got a polite "You must be joking, right?" While we often can't run experiments on humans, with the growth of involvement in games like WoW, Second Life, Eve, etc, would it be impossible to consider experimenting in these realms? The big mean bad guys in MMORPGS are rather like agents, so there's already some precedent for mixing the two. There's a growing study of gameworld macroeconomics, the value of time people expend in increasing their online holdings (to the point of "gold farming" being a big job for kids in urban China and South Korea), and so on. -Ian On 4/4/07, Marcus G. Daniels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Phil Henshaw wrote: > how do you represent the systems of nature that are out of control and > making up altogether new rules??? At some point that kind effort is less of an empirical science and more of a mathematical investigation into worlds as they could be. That's not to say it is bad, it's just a different goal. One way to proceed with that kind of investigation is with genetic programming. Create an imaginary world that has certain forces acting on the things in it, and then evolve computer programs that can survive in that imaginary world. After the agents survive very well, take apart those computer programs to try figure out how they work, or study how different computer programs interact in that world and possibly even change it. Classic example: http://www.archive.org/details/sims_evolved_virtual_creatures_1994 With an avatar/gaming world, it's not hard to imagine automated agents learning how to fight or cooperate with human players. Then one could probe those agents to watch how they make decisions. To be more systematic and learn about learning one could have timestamps on each node/branch to compare the recent innovations from enduring logic. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
-- ___________________________________ Ian P. Cook m: 703.405.0279 h: 703.578.0798 jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Y!/MSN: ian_palmer_cook AIM: ianpalmercook ___________________________________
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
