A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

[Shasarak]

I said "medicine". Alternative medicine isn't.

Alternative medicine is pretty strong words for homeopathy but you never know who you are talking to.

 

[Maxperson]

You could say "They got lucky" to dismiss any correct scientific prediction. But fortunately, we can use math to quantify luck. We can calculate the probability that a correct prediction would have occurred under the null hypothesis; the lower this "p-value", the higher the "statistical significance" of the result. (You may have seen these terms before. In this thread, if nowhere else.)

So... just how "lucky" was Nate Silver, correctly calling 99 of 100 state races over two consecutive elections?

24 out of 25 over two consecutive elections. That's how many swing states there were. The rest weren't in doubt and he didn't need to do calculations. This guy got a lot right, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus

 

[Ovinomancer]

What happens if there is a scientific definition of "Good" and we (humans) dont agree with it?

Philosophy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You could say "They got lucky" to dismiss any correct scientific prediction. But fortunately, we can use math to quantify luck. We can calculate the probability that a correct prediction would have occurred under the null hypothesis; the lower this "p-value", the higher the "statistical significance" of the result. (You may have seen these terms before. In this thread, if nowhere else.)

No, no, no! P-values give a confudence level of the model of parameters and test you've chosen, which are assumptions. They don't prove your assumptions. Reliance on p-values is reification.

So... just how "lucky" was Nate Silver, correctly calling 99 of 100 state races over two consecutive elections?


It's not just the information that's important; it's the model a scientist builds with that information. Everybody in the 17th Century had the same information about planetary motion, but only this one guy named Kepler built a model of the Solar System that included elliptical orbits allowing him to make much more accurate predictions (and postdictions) of the motion.


Saying of any field that "it's science except for the predictive part" is like saying of a person that "they're a doctor except for the medical-professional part". Predictions, and the commitment to assessing their accuracy, are what separate science from mere pontification.

Take this insight and apply it to meteorology, or political science. The presence of variation makes repeatable, accurate prediction much more difficult. It does not make it impossible, or make the attempt not science.

Statistical modelling isn't science, though, it's horoscopes with math.

 

[Kobold Boots]

There are rather more than 2000 words which are unattested before Shakespeare; some were already likely in current use, but the vast majority were first employed by him – there are consistent formation patterns. He drew on loan words, back-formed hundreds of words with previously uncombined prepositions, verbalized nouns and invented words from whole cloth. In his writing, he combined words in ways more complex and nuanced, expressive and poetic, than previously imagined.

I’m interested in what you think it takes to “improve” a language, or whether such improvement is even possible. For example, Joseph Tito ordered a consistent spelling, alphabet and phraseology in Serbo-Croatian; did he “improve” the language?

Improving a language would require the language to use less words to accomplish higher levels of understanding. Similar to how technology generally gets smaller and smaller, and generally less expensive over a very long period of time; languages that are efficient without losing depth are generally considered improved. It's a hard balance to strike.

Adding words and phrases to a language, that can be misunderstood without appropriate context is not improvement. I'm sure others may have a different opinion, but since you asked I'm sharing. Specific to Shakespeare. Fantastic amount of work, good stuff to read.. horrible example to use for improving a language.

I've no opinion on Tito. Depending on what he did, his work could either improve or damage the language. I've seen similar attempts in Italy to streamline the main language out of regional dialect and all it did was isolate the folks that weren't in the urban orbit.

 

[Kobold Boots]

No, no, no! P-values give a confudence level of the model of parameters and test you've chosen, which are assumptions. They don't prove your assumptions. Reliance on p-values is reification.


Statistical modelling isn't science, though, it's horoscopes with math.

I'm starting to hope that this conversation is an expression of the differences in knowledge between a research Ph.D and grad students with some background in research, or I'm going to have a real concern for what some are stating in this thread. For the record, my concern is not with Ovinomancer. For whatever reason, he reads more in line with my own education.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Statistical modelling isn't science, though, it's horoscopes with math.

But with all I've said previously, this is where I think perhaps you've gone a bit far afield from the middle.

There are two things you can do with statistics.
- Use for discovery
- Use for support

The problem with using statistics for support is bias. You can make numbers look like they mean anything if you try hard enough. What population did you use? What do your error bars look like? How did your power analysis work out with such a small population? Oh, you didn't think about that? Wow.

Nonetheless, statistical modeling gives us the ability to optimize workflow, aim at deployments, and generally predict high liklihood outcomes. The value you get out of the numbers has a lot to do with the person doing the work and the effort put in to getting a clean data set. It could be argued that the reason why tenure exists is to allow folks to have the structured time to get clean data and look at outcomes with little bias.

So horoscopes with math is possible. So is enablement by math.

Be well
KB

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Improving a language would require the language to use less words to accomplish higher levels of understanding.

Conciseness is certainly a dimension which can be improved in a language, but this fails to account for aesthetic considerations; given that a common use for language is to purposely evoke feelings (theater, literature etc.), this would seem to me an important component in how we judge "improvement". And nuance is hard to achieve without adding more words; as the field of human experience grows (and our record of previous experience becomes more-and-more comprehensive), we add more-and-more words to describe the phenomena which we encounter.

The more I think about it, the more I'm skeptical of the notion that [the English] language can be improved beyond a simple phonetic rationalization; it is best suited to the time and context in which it is used: it evolves to best reflect its own milieu.

But this is silly:

Cough Enough Through Thorough Chough Plough Slough Ought

And there has to be room for improvement here. Thru and plow are a good start, but I rather think they were modified for brevity, rather than any kind of phonetic clarity.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Conciseness is certainly a dimension which can be improved in a language, but this fails to account for aesthetic considerations; given that a common use for language is to purposely evoke feelings (theater, literature etc.), this would seem to me an important component in how we judge "improvement". And nuance is hard to achieve without adding more words; as the field of human experience grows (and our record of previous experience becomes more-and-more comprehensive), we add more-and-more words to describe the phenomena which we encounter.

The more I think about it, the more I'm skeptical of the notion that [the English] language can be improved beyond a simple phonetic rationalization; it is best suited to the time and context in which it is used: it evolves to best reflect its own milieu.

But this is silly:

Cough Enough Through Thorough Chough Plough Slough Ought

And there has to be room for improvement here.

There is. Here's what I think I think

1. Nuance isn't about the word used as much as the context and tone of the word when used. Emotion can be conveyed to an audience even when using the wrong words for the situation. Comedy is a good example of this, much of the content has no business being laughed at, but in context and with the right delivery; we laugh.

2. Adding new words happens during social integration as a bridge to making the language more accessible to a foreign speaker and is not necessarily a good thing for the language aside from expanding its use to new speakers thus broadening its base. The stronger social group in a region will force a new dialect over time.

So there's the social aspect of language that some would consider improvement. There's also the hard points you've made about cough, and enough. That's where a good pass with linguistic brillo would do us all some benefit.

In this particular discussion though, I think you and I are generally on the same page.

Be well
KB

 

[TheCosmicKid]

No, no, no! P-values give a confudence level of the model of parameters and test you've chosen, which are assumptions. They don't prove your assumptions.

Did I say they did?

Reliance on p-values is reification.

You keep using that word.

Statistical modelling isn't science, though, it's horoscopes with math.

Again: dismissive. You're using terms of abuse and avoiding addressing the key question: does it work? And perhaps some corollary questions, like: if it doesn't work, how should we approach research on massive and/or chaotic systems like human health, the weather, and politics? Do we just throw up our hands and say, "Not science, we can't learn anything about this"?