"Engineering Infinity" anthology summary/review.

I picked up this anthology of hard sci-fi (published 28 Dec 2010) from the library to see if it would inspire me to branch out to some new authors. Despite it's compact size it's taken me more than a couple months to nibble my way through at bed times, though I'm, not sure a compelling single span novel would have been consumed any quicker.

I've written a brief review of each story, marking the ones I found most notable with a *.  Those by Karl Schroeder, Hannu Rajaniemi, Charles Stross, John C. Wright and Gwyneth Jones (each for different reasons).

p13 "Malak" by Peter Watts:
From the perspective of an unmanned killer drone, "Azrael", that acquires a prosthetic conscious in the form of a collateral damage calculator. It only brings grief though, as it's aborts are always overruled by remote command. Pretty competently written, but unsurprising (with it's inevitably trite resolution); reminded me a lot of Stealth (2005), obviously. Formulaic.

p31 "Watching the Music Dance" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:
A near future tragedy, when a family that loose everything after a mother becomes obsessed with molding her daughter into a musical prodigy. The (limited) genetic engineering, "enhancements" and "apps" (for the girl's Neuromancer style, behind-ear chip) come at great cost to the financially crippled family. Creatively constructed, from the perspective of the autistic sounding girl and the father (in the 1st and 3rd person respectively). Dealing more heavily with the personal and emotional context is a good way to avoid being too specific about future technology.

* p47 "Laika's Ghost" by Karl Schroeder:
I could have believed this was a Charles Stross near future thriller. A world-worn, free lance, nuclear decommissioning inspector, come minder, returns to his home land (Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan - part of the setting for Stross's "Rule 34") with a young American under his wing, who's on the run from the CIA, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Online (based in Seattle) and Google. The world-wind adventure brandishes guns and hydroponics en-route to a slightly impractical conclusion that's nonetheless satisfactory, for such a short story.

What maketh the 'game'?; problems with 'difficulty'.

This piece was instigated by Shivoa's take on this article for ARS technica (and Wired). As usual, I've tried to deconstruct the concepts involved (for the sake of: "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself" - John Searle).

So, does a 'game' (as in, a computer game), by definition, require a level of 'difficulty'?: Obstacles to overcome...

I think successful games are those that manage to mirror the configuration of a player's mind: An artefact image refracted through the prism of human senses and perceptions. On the finest (most literal) scale this means presenting concepts that arouse the individual's attention (i.e. interesting memes). But also, from an overarching structural viewpoint, the form of the thing (this 'game') should sync with a player's reward response. Biology...

Human physiology (like most mammals) evolved to provide a stimulus reward for achieving tasks that benefit the organism (well, more accurately the transmission of their genes, but gloss over that). A similar, smaller squirt of dopamine is also released during failure, when the goal is nearly reached (so I've read). This is why many persist at gambling, and slightly unbalanced brains can become addicted. It's also why gamers so often enjoy 'difficulty'.

DOA; addictive while it lasted, Trials 2 quickly got too hard for me!

However, frustration wins out (during failure) when the end-goal appears unattainably far. Depression probably dampens down dopamine release/transmission, thus making all goals more distant, thus a depressed individual will struggle to engage in previously fun things, and struggle to persist in general.

Adaptive difficulty attempts to milk this near miss response (re-calibrating it's obstacles to make players keep reaching, just so). The such systems risk more than distracting the player, if they notice: If the pretense of the game's scenario is lost, it's like watching a badly shot fiction movie where you keep seeing accidental glimpses of the production team and their equipment. Without that invisible 4th wall, an individual will struggle not to perceive events quite literally: moving patterns on a screen, empty of meaning and/or relevance.

So, a 'game' requires:

Worst thing about "Man of Steel": perpetuates misunderstanding of depression.

Depression Comix (015)

Just from looking through a couple sites like Depression Comix (via io9) and Hyperbole and a Half (also via iO9) it should be painfully obvious that depression (like most/all mental illness) produces impediments to mental functioning that simply can NOT be willed away.

Also, personal experience has really highlighted how arbitrary mental state can be; uncorrelated to outside events that might be reasoned to induce happiness/sadness. But when I take a little tyrosine, I clearly feel the (positive) effects of dopamine and adrenaline, hours or days down the line. This supplement leads to motivation but also agitation and anxiety if not balanced with tryptophan, the essential amino acid for human synthesis of serotonin and melatonin (happy and calming modulators).

Sure, I'm only one particular case, in that I seem to be naturally short of all (essential) amino acids (probably due to maldigestion). But these same effects are widely known (1, 2, etc). This leads me to feel strongly that diet and digestive (not to mention metabolic) health interventions almost certainly have more scope to cure 'mental' maladies than the minimal prescribed doses of talking and/or mono-drug therapies...

So anyway, I watched a couple of films the other nights, while otherwise useless due to a food related fatigue reaction. I opted for entertainment to match my impaired cognition, so had low expectations. I'm not going to pick at "After Earth" (that continues Will Smith's downward trajectory in sci-fi, with a script so lazily cliché that it would insult a pre-teen demographic); I couldn't watch more than 20 minutes anyway.

Meanwhile, "The Wolverine" has almost as many gaping plot holes as the protagonist, but is only partially guilty of the sin I'm lamenting here: Doing something that's clearly supposed to be impossible, (according to the premises set up in the movie itself) just by sheer force of certitude and gritting one's teeth extra hard! (Logan does eventually hit his limitations.)

Screen Captures from Man of Steel.

To be fair, "Man of Steel" avoided dwelling too much on this, compared to the previous Superman reboot, which concluded with him lifting a mountain of kryptonite out of the sea and throwing it into space... At best this is an horrendously boring and meaningless type of plot resolution mechanism. But I'd say it's almost a little evil in it's implication that one can do anything if one simply tries hard enough, is motivated enough and has enough heart...

Adventures in Depression Part 2

Which is flat wrong. Especially when the foundation of the problem is an inability to try hard, itself. I guess this misconception lines up nicely with the beloved fallacy of 'The American Dream' (in the land of ever falling social mobility).