Studying Negative Computer Models (Humans)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, August 03, 2011, 04:47 (4660 days ago) @ xeno6696

With my math, I can create worlds in which magic works, orcs exists, and dogs talk, that does not make it real. Fun, sure, but not real. The math itself is not changed, only the context in which it is applied. I apply mine with the explicit intention of creating something that does not exist in reality. Scientific models do so with the explicit intention of modeling reality, changing which ever variables they wish to test. The same constraints that apply to my math apply to theirs, which in the game design world is known as imperfect knowledge. i.e. No player knows every variable and thus is unable to 'solve' the game. Even with perfect knowledge, such as we have in chess, it is extremely difficult to solve the game, even with computers. How much more complicated is the real world than a chessboard? How many more variables and relative probabilities are there to try and solve? The models may be a valuable tool, but in the end they are a flawed tool, made by flawed creatures, created from a system of which we have imperfect knowledge(math), and are about a system which we have imperfect knowledge.