1 Soul Bound
1.1 Finding her Feet
1.1.7 An Extreme Response
1.1.7.6 MythOS
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Public (read only)
Subject: No Admittance Except On Party Business
Reply: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 11:30 UTC
From: Bulgaria
To: Everybody not in Clan Beresford
Shoo, young wombles. What are you doing here? These are our bedrooms.
A womble should be able to have a little privacy, y’know?
If you want a chat, come to my Study. Nobody except me and my assistant can see what you write there, and if you address a post in the Study to Clan Beresford, I’ll make sure it gets put where only the intended people can see it.
If you want to say something publically to us, well, anywhere is fine, but the Lobby is probably the best place.
Happy Wombling,
Great Uncle Bulgaria
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 1
Responding to: 3, Flavio’s Intelligence
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 11:35 UTC
From: Wellington
To: Clan Beresford
I have finished analysing my experiments with the INT stat. The game’s system compares your base level of certain directly measurable quantities, such as size of working memory and the convolution of the supramarginal gyrus, and compares the resulting expected IQ with the buff-adjusted INT from your stats.
If you’re smarter than it thinks you ought to be, it slows your brain down a little. If you’re not as smart as it thinks you ought to be, it actually manages to boost your effective IQ by acting as a prosthetic extension to your working memory. The way it scales, doubling your adjusted stat adds about 20% to the size of your working memory.
Note: this effect only applies while actually logged into the game. There is no carry over to arlife.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 2
Responding to: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 14:21 UTC
From: Wellington
To: Wellington
After some very careful testing, and having my work double checked by some experts in this area, I have implemented my own version of this effect for people logged into The Burrow.
Let me know if you observe anything.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 3
Responding to: 2
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 15:47 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Wellington
Thank you for investigating. I did wonder. Vessel-Kafana told me about the experiment she helped you with. Was that an arlife maths problem you were trying to solve?
Now you’ve implemented this, I wonder what the implications will be. Humanity’s track record shows that whenever a new technology is implemented, three questions are always asked:
“How can I use this to look at the bodies of naked women?”
“How can I use this to kill my neighbour and take his stuff?”
“How can I blame this for everything I think is wrong with the younger generation?”
You can bet that, when the wheel was invented, the first customer’s father tried hiding behind it while peeking through the hole in the center, then tried rolling it over somebody, and finally blamed it for his son’s lack of table manners.
As the sage said, what we really need is not super-human intelligence, which will just let us invent weapons more quickly. What our species needs is to develop super-human empathy, that will guide us into understanding our fellows rather than using weapons upon them.
Perhaps there should be an option, when reading posts in the forum, to experience a shadow of the author’s emotions while writing it? Give people the ability to train their own thread display expert system that decides which chains of replies to give prominence to, then let people who want empathy to treat posts offering the option as effectively having higher karma.
The medium is the message. Just by picking the option, a Womble is sending the message “I want to get to know you, not just your opinions”
Forum: Kitchen
Subject: Troll Meat Challenge
Reply: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 11:00 UTC
From: ChocolateTrain
To: All
Clan Fra Gamal have more troll meat than they can use. So at tomorrow’s event, I’m going to hold a competition. Cook me a snack using the troll meat I give you, plus any ingredients you want to supply. At the end of the event I’ll give a prize for the one granting the best buff, the one that I like the taste of most, and one for creative brilliance.
Forum: Kitchen
Subject: Troll Meat Challenge
Reply: 63
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 15:54 UTC
From: Kafana
To: ChocolateTrain
How spicy do you like it?
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: The Hunt
Reply: 17
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 15:55 UTC
From: Bungo
To: All
We caught FancyAnts. The fool was sitting out in the open, playing cards. Beltrame’s bouncers were not happy when nearly 30 adventurers jumped him and sent him back to respawn, in the middle of Beltrame’s coffee house (which, by the way, isn’t anything like the seedy den I was imagining).
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Easter Eggs
Reply: 17
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 09:00 UTC
From: Gunnison
To: All
I do like the cosmology in the game, and the way it ties into the mythology.
For example, the days of the week.
Monday = Moon Day = Lunday (Lun’s rune is a moon, and Luna is their moon)
Tuesday = Tyr’s Day = Covday (Tyr and Cov are both deities of justice)
Thursday = Thor’s Day = Krevday (Thor and Krev are both strong and warlike)
Friday = Freya’s Day = Droday (both female fertility goddesses)
Saturday = Saturn’s Day = Racday (both remote shadowy figures)
Sunday = Sun Day = Zerday (Zer is light, Zerius is the name of the planet’s sun)
Does this let us make predictions? For example, Wednesday = Wodin’s Day
Is there a parallel we are meant to be drawing between Mor and Wodin, that isn’t yet obvious?
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Attunements
Reply: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 13:00 UTC
From: Okavango
To: All
: attunement tests
Here’s a link to a database of people trying the same spell before and after transfer to Covob from Morob, giving the strength of the result, their region, day the spell was cast, and their attunements.
Anyone want to have a go at working out the game’s formulae?
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Attunements
Reply: 2
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 13:05 UTC
From: Padstow
To: Okavango
: Ultra's tests
Same thing, but different tests and data structure.
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Attunements
Reply: 3
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 13:05 UTC
From: 221bBakerStreet
To: All
We Wombles should be helpful, and set up as a clearing house to which clans can VOLUNTARILY contribute their data. To help with compatibility, I’ve taken the liberty of writing up a codification system which any clan is free to use, to ensure their data compatibility with others contributing to our clearing house, and an expert system that can convert to and from this common format.
: geographical feature coding
: magic type coding
: library of replicable spell effects
: attunement mark-up
: schema translation system
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Attunements
Reply: 4
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 13:15 UTC
From: Sunnydale
To: 221bBakerStreet
Wellington has given me access to part of The Burrow’s codebase. I like your idea, BakerStreet, so I’ve implemented it. When he gets around to checking and committing it, the feature will come online. I’ve taken the liberty of adding a standardised data usage permission slip, which will need to be signed with a Clan’s authentication key, so we will be able to prove we are not making unauthorised use of a clan’s data.
: permission slip
Padstow, Okavango - can you get the slip signed, or remove your links?
In the meantime, anyone volunteer to send the slip and BakerStreet’s data standards to the big clans?
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Attunements
Reply: 5
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 13:20 UTC
From: Sunnydale
To: All
Just been notified that my code’s been merged in and passed the tests.
The clearing house for clans to share their data is now live:
: services/clearing/mage_data
Forum: Workshop
Subject: Attunements
Reply: 6
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 13:30 UTC
From: Deschutes
To: Sunnydale
Sure, I can do that. And I’ll do a spot about it on my live-stream.
Forum: Workshop
Subject: The Great Library
Reply: 1
Responding to: 5, Attunements
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 14:17 UTC
From: Ashgabat
To: Sunnydale
I’ve used your interface to set up
: services/clearing/books/soul_bound
and shared all the books I’ve managed to borrow from my in-game crafting Master (mostly about metal alloys and casting techniques).
It occurs to me: could a room be set up as a library, where we can walk, smell the books, turn the pages, sit at tables to study, etc? I’ve included as a data field things like an image of the book’s cover, weight, etc. Taking BakerStreet’s lead, here’s a codification
: standardised extensible book description format
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
which I cribbed from a format used for non-game books, and added game-specific fields to.
Kafana added a load of Karma to Ashgabat’s post, and forwarded it to Wellington and Bulgaria. This was precisely the sort of thing they ought to be encouraging. She took the time to write a response.
Subject: The Great Library
Reply: 7
Responding to: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:20 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Ashgabat
With a way to share book annotations, book reviews, an expert system librarian who helps you find what you’re looking for, then fetches you a stack of books and, as an undocumented feature, fetches them faster for you if you’re nice to her and feed her sweets you cooked in the Kitchen?
I can see it now, with Orinoco at a table in the corner, fast asleep in a ray of sun coming through a tall arched window, little specks of dust dancing in the light.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: The Hunt
Reply: 18
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:25 UTC
From: Tomsk
To: Bungo
Good work!
I have some great footage of Vessel-Kafana confronting FancyAnts at the Sanctum. He thought she was Spirit-Kafana because she came over so confident and knowledgeable. She played on that, persuading him that Kullervo had also been caught, and had betrayed FancyAnts to us and handed over The Bone Sword, in return for merciful sentencing and being allowed to keep his level and skills.
Lelio and Isabella backed her play, and as a result FancyAnts has turned state’s evidence, handing over his gemstone artifact and spilling a lot of information, far more than VamaKali’s Vessel was able to provide from her dream recollections of VamaKali’s activities.
I’m starting a new layer on the hunt map. We need to get players down into the sewers and tunnels beneath Alto. Apparently they connect to a system of caves inside the mountain.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Bosnian Drones
Reply: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 15:30 UTC
From: Alderney
To: Kafana
I got permission from the regulars of your kafana. As soon as I’ve finished turning the observation data from them into a standardised consumer targeting model, I’ll upload it together with the data about local Bosnian legends to our public forums and get the project started.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Bosnian Drones
Reply: 2
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 15:32 UTC
From: Wellington
To: Alderney
Go big or go home.
If you just do this for Bosnia, you confirm that one of us lives there, and it will be trivial for an op-force to find out where the drones have been deployed then check the nearby singers. Either do it for multiple locations around the world, or don’t do it on our public forums.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Bosnian Drones
Reply: 3
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 15:37 UTC
From: Alderney
To: Wellington
Fair point. Go big it is.
Forum: Mayhem
Subject: MythOS
Reply: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:00 UTC
From: Alderney
To: All
Kafana has set us a challenge, and it’s a big one.
Too many drones and robots are bad for humans. It isn’t just that people end up out of work. People lose self-respect too. They feel useless, like there’s nothing they can contribute. It leaves us humans feeling inferior, afraid and resentful, like it is a competition and we’re losing.
So how about we make some bots that help humans frame the way they relate to them in a different fashion?
Many cultures already have a blueprint in their mythology, for beings that can be helpful, but which also have flaws and limitations. Beings with personality, which it takes skill and knowledge to get along with. Beings that can be helpful, but not too helpful, which are not resented for that because people relate to them as individuals, like NPCs in the game, who have lives and interests of their own. They’re not slaves, but neither are they alien superior charitable beings - they’re relatable.
So how about it? Anyone got ideas? Good at organising big projects? Knowledgeable about their local mythology? Able to supply standard format psychological models from the same area as the mythology that we can use to fine tune our designs and presentation?
Let’s set up a Clan for this project, Reply here if you want to join.
Forum: Mayhem
Subject: MythOS
Reply: 2
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:07 UTC
From: Namib
To: Alderney
The Susubey tribe will subscribe to this endeavour initiated by the tribe of Wombles.
I will upload our myths and a demographically balanced set of models.
But I think this will require much thinking. If it takes skill to bargain well with these relatable bots, we do not wish the creation of a class of experts, such as the tierkei who do masked dances to appease Harake Diko. Nor do we wish offering of food and drink being wasted upon bots that can not consume them. What would a mechanical Brownie do with milk or bannock?
Forum: Mayhem
Subject: MythOS
Reply: 3
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:14 UTC
From: Bungo
To: Namib
What if the Brownie was helping the humans in a particular house as a quest, in the same way that players in games chop wood for NPC villagers? That would give the humans the status of being the quest givers, handing out a reputation reward. Spread the reputation you have to offer between too many quests, and the questers won’t visit you as much. Spin a good tale as to why you want the brave heroic bots to clear away the landmines left by a past war, or feed the cow, and you regain their interest.
Forum: Mahem
Subject: MythOS
Reply: 4
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:22 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Bungo
Kafana’s Law states
“When designing a bot, making it too useful is as bad as making it useless.”
All that achieves is displacing humans doing stuff that makes them feel useful, or that they get paid for.
What’s needed are bots that do only the things that don’t get done. A cleaning bot that won’t touch wide open floors, because it dislikes bright light and is only comfortable cleaning out the dust that gathers in nice dark cramped places, such as behind the furniture.
The limitation must stem from the bot’s personality and identity, rather than seem unhelpfully arbitrary. Bots should be relatable to as individual people, because it isn’t healthy to the human mind to become accustomed to begging from deities or to ordering around slaves.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: The Hunt
Reply: 19
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:35 UTC
From: Mary-Lynn
To: All
There is only one person (in 8th place) on the event leader board who doesn’t use The Burrow. Word is spreading, and the number of new user accounts here is rocketing.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 4
Responding to: 3
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:38 UTC
From: Wellington
To: Kafana
Implemented.
By the way, I contacted your Minion and he has used the name “Queen Kafana” to file an application for an arlife patent upon it, on your behalf. Why that name?
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 5
Responding to: 4
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:40 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Wellington
That dirty rat! He’s joined the “Let’s Railroad Kafana” conspiracy, I tell you.
By the way, how do you write code that fast? It was less than an hour between the request and you finishing implementing it. Are you triplets or something?
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 6
Responding to: 5
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:45 UTC
From: Wellington
To: Kafana
Software development, at this level, is more like conducting an orchestra than playing a violin. My job is to understand the problem, have a vision of what I want the solution to do and (as important) not do, and define it clearly. I then have multiple expert systems with different approaches suggest and weigh specific solutions against the criteria I’ve defined. I sometimes have to use my aesthetic judgement to overrule which solution is picked where my definition has been too approximate for my coding team to anticipate my preference. Often that’s because I want it to work well together with future components that exist as yet only in my mind. Done right, the creation is a mutual discovery process, that changes you and your own ideas as you go along. The very discipline of putting the ideas into a form whereby they can be communicated to another intelligence is a vital part of turning a cloud of mental associations and fragments into a cohesive crystalised whole with its own identity.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 7
Responding to: 6
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 16:54 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Wellington
Conductors convey not just abstract intellectual ideas, but also emotions. Indeed, some conductors deliberately break eye contact and reduce the amount of timing info they provide in order to force their players to learn to cooperate with each other.
It seems to me that you could create a Gestalt, a basic group intelligence, by allowing your team members to cooperate directly with each other as well as just compete via seeking to win favourable judgement from you.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: The Vessels - a request: don’t log in until 19:00 UTC
Reply: 1
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:00 UTC
From: Tomsk
To: All
After the media event at the orphanage, I helped make space in the schedule for Vessel-Kafana to take a nap in one of their rooms. But whatever message Spirit-Kafana sent to her via Wellington, she’s really fired up now. She’s asked us all to trust our Vessels. They want to try something, and they want to do it by themselves to prove to themselves that they can manage it unaided.
I don’t know if this is an advanced stage companion quest, but I think we ought to grant their request. They’ve let Mary-Lynn come along and we can meet in the private viewing room to watch them, starting at 18:00 UTC.
Forum: Dojo
Subject: Quid Pro Quo
Reply: 2
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 00:45 UTC
From: Tomsk
To: Sentosa
If a user is playing through one of your scenarios, we have no way to detect whether a third party at the user’s end is watching the user play without the user’s knowledge. Theoretically such a third party could use an expert system to reverse engineer the stats and abilities of the creature involved from their observations of the combat.
I can ask Wellington to give people submitting scenarios to the Dojo a setting which will forbid direct downloading of the underlying data, and which will disconnect someone it detects as playing the scenario with the intent to steal the design. Would that be sufficient?
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 8
Responding to: 4
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:10 UTC
From: Tomsk
To: Wellington
Can you make the amount of brain boost something that can be varied as a setting by scenarios within the Dojo? Knowing martial artists, some will be offended at the thought of artificial aids.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 9
Responding to: 8
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:12 UTC
From: Bungo
To: Tomsk
How about we set up a separate Mental Dojo, for competitive puzzle solving? Or maybe call it a Gestalt Workshop, where groups can learn better processes for working together and solving problems as a group?
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 10
Responding to: 9
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:15 UTC
From: Tomsk
To: Bungo
You mean like deBono’s thinking hats? Put on a yellow hat and you become more optimistic. Put on a green hat and Wellington’s system boosts the parts of your brain most closely linked with creativity. People train against pre-set lateral thinking situations or against other teams, to come up with better and faster solutions.
Might have some applications, but I don’t think it will catch on. It never did in industry, anyway.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 11
Responding to: 10
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:20 UTC
From: Alderney
To: Tomsk
Hats by themselves are not cute enough. Disney had the right idea, when it reified Pinocchio’s conscience as a cute talking cricket. If you want people to alter how they think long term, don’t directly alter their brain. Give them an external voice that guides them to be more optimistic, creative, logical, or whatever they’re lacking. But make it smaller than them and give it a bit of personality, to use Kafana’s phrase.
Think about it. Abu wears a hat. Timothy Q. Mouse wears a hat. Mary Poppins and Caractus Potts both wore hats. And even the ones who didn’t would look cute in hats: consider Tinkerbell or Pascal. Even Archimedes would look good in a teacher’s mortar board.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 12
Responding to: 11
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:25 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Alderney
You really want to be followed around The Burrow by a chameleon wearing a black hat that keeps warning you to slow down and be cautious?
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: The Vessels - a request: don’t log in until 19:00 UTC
Reply: 2
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:30 UTC
From: Bulgaria
To: Tomsk
My play has just finished. I think it went rather well.
My Vessel is now hurrying over to CoThEx, accompanied by Rudolfo and his team. Goodness, that smith is large. Vessel-Kafana is wearing priestly robes (which is unusual for her) and she’s got a really determined look upon her face. She’s cast a speed buff on them and I’m not sure if people are scattering because of Rudolfo or because of her.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 13
Responding to: 3
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:35 UTC
From: Wellington
To: Kafana
Progress report:
O I’ve implemented your idea about allowing post writers to have The Burrow attach to their post an experience of what they were feeling/intending while writing it, that readers may choose to pick up on per post, or by setting a default using an empathy slider in settings.
O I’ve found an expert willing to craft for us a resilient trust metric that can be transformed per user in a distributed privacy-conscious fashion.
O I’ve roughed out software support for a library people can walk around, but it will be more efficient to finish that once Alderney has done the look and feel, and the requirements are a bit more settled.
O The mental dojo, or brain exploratorium, or whatever it ends up being called sounds interesting, but it is not yet well defined enough to start work upon. For example, do you want it to be an area where clan leaders can hold peace conferences with mindsets shaded towards finding constructive solutions? What about free traders? Currency exchanges, but for karma points from different schemes? When in doubt, pick something fundamental and useful, and make it do that one thing superlatively well. Include other functions only if they cannot be outsourced efficiently, and they don’t detract from the prime function.
O The data clearing house service is seeing a lot of use, and several guilds have opened their data to us, including CraftySquId and Screw Reality. Add in the data we’re getting from analysing public feeds, and we’re getting some interesting results. In particular, my systems have picked up on some useful information about how the CHA stat works.
Forum: Clan/Beresford/Private
Subject: Intelligence
Reply: 14
Responding to: 13
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 17:40 UTC
From: Kafana
To: Wellington
You’ve done amazingly. Time to take a break. We’re all here, I think. Leave the forums and your coding. Come join us in the private viewing room and let’s all cheer our vessels on together.
I’ll bring some virtual cookies from my Kitchen.
Kafana out, see you there!