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To be fair, most code with lots of moving parts can be described as indecipherable by a majority of the public. If it doesn't have good documentation, it's probably indecipherable to most people who didn't actively write it. That's nothing unique to AI. That's just a function of extremely...

Computer scientists like to use terms like "black box" and "hidden layers" as technical jargon. Personally, I think it would be more accurate to use terminology from chaos theory: every sufficiently complex computer program is a chaotic system. Roughly speaking, a chaotic system is one whose end...

I agree with much of your argument, but I disagree with the conclusion drawn in the quoted statement. The fact that an AI assigns weights to training data has no bearing on how easy or how hard it is to create a human-readable explanation for the AI's output. It is neither impossible nor...

double post

When talking about the internal logic of an AI, I wouldn't say "the code is only half the equation." I would say the code is the internal logic of the AI. Full stop. The fact that there are millions of weights being automatically adjusted doesn't make the logic any more or less complex than the...

I worked for three years as a professional AI trainer at a tech start-up (using non-pirated data sets), and I have to largely disagree with your assertion. Software engineers who program AI professionally absolutely do know the logic their AI uses to produce results, to the same extent they...

I'm not a lawyer... but wow, some of the statements made in this thread by a current EGG contractor sound like the exact kind of evidence a lawyer would want to gather to establish a pattern of workplace hostility. There's no way I'll feel good about myself if I don't document those posts before...

That's all true in the rules as they are currently written. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine house rules that say certain environmental effects deal HD damage (for lack of a better term) instead of dealing hp damage or causing levels of exhaustion. With that one small change, HD...

Edit: I had a paraphrased "Green Eggs and Ham" quote about 4e here, but I quickly realized readers who aren't familiar with "Green Eggs and Ham" might assume I was edition warring, so I thought better of it.

It seems a poster has already forked some spell-related conversation from the last few pages of this thread into a new thread about bothersome casters/spells. That sounds like a logical place to talk about curated spell lists and other house rules to help curtail the overuse of bothersome...

Would anyone like to start a new thread for talking about curated spell lists and other spellcaster mods? Future me might have trouble finding that conversation if it's buried on page thirty-something in a thread about exploration.

I doubt the rules changes in 1D&D will invalidate existing 3pp material or otherwise disrupt the 3pp ecosystem. Importing 3pp material into a game powered by a 5e clone plus house rules is usually pretty easy, and 1D&D is essentially just a 5e clone plus house rules. On a smaller scale, I will...

I would contend that both narrative scenarios and mini-games should play a role in exploration. Narrative scenarios based on DM adjudication are great ways for PCs to explore discrete parts of the world they can interact with over short time scales. Traps and hazards can be resolved in terms of...

Regarding spells and exploration: I found spells that mitigated exploration-related risks more fun before spontaneous casting became the default method of casting spells. In systems where you have to memorize or prepare your spells in advance, exploration actually forces spellcasters to make...

You monster! A TPK? Okay, it happens. But this. No, sir. No.

Among other things, Bahamut, a.k.a. Paladine, a.k.a. Fizban, is the creator of the first dragonborn species mentioned in any D&D product; the fictional author of "Fizban's Treasury of Dragons;" and the twin brother of Tiamat. He's also one of the most prominent gods of Krynn, and he temporarily...

Nebelun is a gnomish lesser god from the setting-agnostic sourcebook, "Monster Mythology," a feminine aspect of whom is mentioned in "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes." Gond is Nebelun's stand-in the Forgotten Realms setting.

Does the Raven Queen count as iconic these days? I do think she's one of the more interesting D&D death deities (alliteration for the win!), although she probably loses out to Orcus if we're counting him as a deity.

I did a quick internet search for adventures featuring Maglubiyet and didn't find any. I did, however, discover that Maglubiyet is the Turkish word for "defeat" (as in, "failure to win"). As a result, I have changed my stance: Maglubiyet is one of the best names for any deity in D&D. Also, the...

I mostly agree. Maglubiyet has a terrible name, probably tied for second worst name of any D&D deity (behind Blibdoolpoolp). And he's definitely second-tier to Gruumsh. But isn't Kurtulmak equally a step-down in prominence from Garl Glittergold? Kurtulmak's only role in D&D mythology is getting...