brainstorming bout simulated life and world

Couldn't go to sleep with food still churning in my stomach.

Just had a thought. What does it mean for an author to bring his characters to life? What does it take to make the reader feel like he had immersed into this fictional world that the author is bringing him into?

The character obviously does not exist in our world, it exists in the fictional space of the story whether it is in the book all acted out in the game. The game is trying to take it one more step than reading, that is it is hoping that seeing and hearing and interacting with the character, we would move one more step towards enjoying this make believe.

The gamer knows the voice acting isn't the character's but decides to associate the voice to the character anyway. The graphics of the character is nearing life-like status and it is a matter of time that finally we cannot distinguish a computer graphics actor and a real one. The movement of the character too is also very good nowadays. So visual wise there is no loop-hole whether it is real or not.

It is when one tries to interact with the character that one is reminded that you are not interacting with a real person. What I am getting at is what does one desire from an artificial agent when it comes to intellect. Ever so often I wished artificial agents had thoughts and mental states, anything at all. It just sucks when guards see cell door of a notorious pirate opened and doesn't investigate into it for days and days. The least he can do is to have a purpose. A purpose more than just showing he is there. I wished whatever he said and do was based on world observation, thoughts, purpose and intention.

I am not sure whether these made sense because simple world state change and action is easily scriptable and perhaps that is surely enough. I however wished to ultimately build a world simulation, perhaps a much more simplified version of the world or even an alien world that we could not imagine existing. Then, comes the agents in the world, it'll be fine that i start with creatures with primitive brains but at least they should have them and behave in a more complex and unpredictable based on learning, genetics and internal states. I have no idea how an arbitrary world with artificial life might be interesting as a game, but I am a big fan of simulations.

It might be that complexity and unpredictability makes it easier to believe something is not artificial or dead. After all if an android with AI trying to pass the turing test, the first subtest he has to pass is sophistication. You begin by testing how sophisticated is his thought patterns and behaviors. You ask him about details of his life and ask that he make associations between data in his memory to make a coherent account of his understanding of what he remembers about himself. Unpredictability might be a fog grenade when it tries to fool a human of its true identity but there is something about kinds of unpredictability that makes the difference between fooling or giving away.

There is something about artificial agents in games nowadays that im still unsatisfied with. That is the feeling of meaningful relationship is not there, i am often reminded that their actions are scripted because their mental states that govern their conversation script are so simple. yea i guess thats it, that was what i was trying to get at this whole time. I think it is unavoidable that at the end of a conversation, there must be a cue for you to stop talking to that same person because there is nothing meaningful for you to get out of him. in a story where the objectives are to go on with the story perhaps but in a story where you really want to get to know a person that is really a let down. I have absolutely no idea how to simulate a simple mental model that churns out satisfying small talk to satisfy this urge to interact.

Perhaps even to show that the agents perceive or tries to guess what I have in mind. That is another part of the challenge. What kind of interaction would you need to have the agents try to read into your mind and appreciate your actions as mental model. Perhaps try to second guess your sincerity when you help them, it would make the instances when the character trust your integrity and character even more precious than the current case that the character believes in anything you do or say. This is the kind of unpredictability that makes your desired outcome more worthwhile although no garanteed. It of course brings us back to the question what are the minor give away that you can show that will make them doubt you.

Perfectionist like myself might be disappointed then because it is so hard to get the perfect impression to stay on the artificial character that we would not bother to load and play again to get the perfect response.

I think in narrative games there is really not much of the play in trade offs. There is always not much consequences in your action. To give an example games such as witcher and risen which gives you a choice to choose side does thread you down to slightly different path of the story but the world is still disappointingly unchanged. I don't really perceive the reactions of the people in the story on their thoughts of event changing battles that I took part in. I guess we would like to feel that we made a difference in the world.

I think it should not just flip us to different pages but I think there should be some event chain logic behind the scene that makes little changes to the world through the causal effects. how small action snowball into big changes is an interesting problem. For example how does choosing to help a certain passerby or not could change someone else's life that indirectly benefit you in someway and perhaps hurt you in another. These kind of intricate details does bring the world into life somehow.

I don't believe in the cpu cycle limit consideration when it comes to simulation because the limit is constantly getting increased. Overly simplistic worlds are still not believeable because the details arent taken care of well enough by conventional scripting. I think a general self contained logic of how the world works should be in place. A powerful one that is so that sophisticated behavior can be emergent and not scripted. I think the only way I can try to get away from not killing the computer with too much load is to move away from graphics and do a console based system first or at least no animation. That could be my first attempt at this

On man's tendencies without God

I was reading an interesting article when I was searching for the most interesting question when it comes to the believers and non-believers divide - can man be good without god?

Of course that is the question that everyone of the two camps had contemplated at one point or another and they arrived on an answer that ultimately divided them into these two respective camps. Yes that is basically my claim for this article.

I think this is the one true question that atheist and the religious ought to debate about and not God's existence since what matters is whether you had been a good person when you're alive and not your afterlife (if you're a christian you would have been judged by then anyway)


Here's the article stating the christian's point of view 
http://www.apologeticsguy.com/2011/02/are-you-good-without-god/
From their point of view, we are lost sheeps without a common god. We've seen self righteous evil men claiming that their moral values are acceptable and doing atrocities and they believe these are the works of deviation from god's teaching. 


There is another idea that is even more important that the previous. That is the freedom to debate about what is right or wrong gives the possibility for such a mad man to come to his own conclusion about which moral ruler to use. Therefore their idea is to have only god to decide what is right or wrong as it should since he is the wisest. 


Lets for discussion's sake suppose that he exists but could not communicate with us directly just like people generally say is the case. He cannot throw down a big book of rules for every situation but only a few general guidelines on how to act in different category of situations. We are then left to interpret which are the perfect ways to handle a problem. 


So what happens when two person disagrees? they should consult the wisest few who understood the guidelines best but which to pick if the wisest two disagree and both of them claims that their reasoning is better the the other? They debate of course, the wisest choice if I might be allowed to add. Of course, disagreement among the wisest does not happen very often but we are all human and we are all still not as perfect as god so they do happen and when it does they could maybe seek out for signs from god for answers (i have no idea how that works) but i think it would be a better bet that they figure it out for themselves.


my point for this discussion is that we ultimately have to decide for ourselves what does the bible or the scriptures of authority your religion teaches. even the wisest around does not have full grasp of the text, (if they did, they would have known how to convince the other that his way is the true way). 


So the lack of faith in humanities' ability to discern the good from the evil is a problematic one. On one hand we believe that the followers would have the wisdom to follow the teaching of god on the other we refuse to believe that we can be decent people (decently wise in the matters of moral) without the teaching of god.


You might have guessed i am no christian and perhaps i got the part where christians believe we have the wisdom to follow the teaching of god and therefore be good wrong because surely one can only stand on one side, either man have or does not have the wisdom it takes to be a good person at least at the level acceptable to god. By acceptable I mean decently good relative to the rest of our race. This does raise another issue about how good is enough but I'll leave that for later.


Now I shall point out the atheist's view. It is a suspicion but I have a fairly good reasoning behind it. God was conjured as a symbol of goodness and an authority to be feared at one point in time possibly by someone who has no faith in human nature and wisdom for the reasons I mentioned above. And the fear of letting go of god is nothing but our lack of faith in our own race to do good things. Whether the true god exists and observed this event is irrelevant since he did not stop that person, he might have very well approved of his doings but that is not the point. 


The point is I am faced with two possibilities. The first, god actually presented himself to some very wise chap hoping that he can comprehend what he has to say about morality and hope that he will pass on the wisdom to others. What the wisdom might be is a point of interest as well. It could be that the wisdom is that we as a race is still to dumb and unenlightened to comprehend what he has to teach, therefore we should just follow simple commandments he gave and improvise when it seems hard to apply them. The followup lessons on how to be good will be imparted to you in your afterlife (ok im not sure about this one but it perhaps serve no purpose at all to be good in your afterlife as I see it) OR the wisdom might be the actual wisdom to be good which has an implication of our ability to attain wisdom.


Second possibility is what I mentioned before. Irregardless of whether god exists or not, some person decided not to trust humanities' judgement on what is right or wrong. Corrections, it should be not to trust most people except him and perhaps a group of self righteous elites. It's definitely the simpler explanation which is the only one that needs no supernatural reasoning which makes it so much more believable. You can't blame some atheist for coming to this conclusion. The rationale for fabricating a god is valid and visible enough to be a big possibility.  


All these needless argument about whether the bible is indeed god's teaching. It doesn't matter. What matters is whether each of us turn out to be a good person. I believe it is possible each and every one of us to be good without a god irregardless of whether he exists to watch us turn good or evil. Why is there a need to wage wars in the name of religion when what matters is not whether the teaching of the religion is straight from god's mouth or written by men. why is there a need to condemn those who do not believe in your religion and threaten them with  hellfire when all you want is for them to be good and arrive at a good moral standard? 


The answer to the question i pose in the very beginning is an important one. Can men be good without god? If yes as I hoped, there is no need for religion, god would be please as human's attain the wisdom to be a good person with enough collaborative efforts. If no as some of the christians believe then there will be no end to the conflict between different religion and evil is definitely here to stay because there will be no trust, no faith in man's ability to attain a good moral standard to live by. Such pessimism.