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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
51–60 of 304 posts
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#52There is an excellent example of this type of fiddly detail in Liz England's 2014 blog post about the problems of doors in video games [0]. She identifies about 20 questions you can ask about as a door (as a game designer) and then about 30 different roles (from sound designers [1] to monetization director[2]) who might be involved. Her post works really well because the example is so mundane but the questions are ve…
> Network Programmer: “Do all the players need to see the door open at the same time?” Brings me the question on wheter the "reality" is the same for everybody.
In as much as information to our knowledge propagates no faster than speed of light in a vacuum, in one sense reality can not be the same for anyone.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#53>Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive?
The author mentioned bicycles and inadvertently missed an opportunity to show another "unknown reality" that beautifully illustrates his point.
Consider typical adults (not physicists) with 20+ years of bicycle riding. If you ask them, "how does a bicycle turn?", they'd respond that "you just lean into the direction of the turn and it turns."
But that's not the complete picture of what actually happens.[1] If you were to capture the bicyclists with a high-speed camera, you'd notice that there's always a micro movement of countersteering to make the bike momentarily lose its balance and "fall into" the turn. Then there's an immediate correction of the steering to match the turn. This all happens in the span of milliseconds.
Even though the human body "discovered" the countersteering by way of kinesthetic feedback, the bicyclists' brains don't explicitly communicate this intermediate step to others. (Tacit knowledge.[2])
It's not always the case that we "simplify" reality for innocent purposes of pedagogy. (E.g. we tell "lies" to children about "numbers", "functions", etc and as they get older, we successively remove the layers of lies as they get into high school and college math.) Instead, we often don't even know the reality (e.g. bicycle countersteering) to consciously omit it.
That extra reality may not even be important. If one human is teaching another human, you can leave the "countersteering" detail out and it won't matter. The 200 years of people learning how to ride bicycles is evidence of that. However, if you're a robotics scientist and want to build a self-driven motorcycle, the reality of countersteering becomes a crucial detail.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#54This article points out exactly why even though I like to tinker with a lot of stuff my main hobby is always programming. Because programming is more akin to writing down maths than building a staircase. Algorithms don't warp because of humidity, algorithms don't have leakage current. Sure computers have their quirks (overflows, floating point issues, UB etc...) but it's still a finite amount of knowledge unlike the infinite amount of details of reality.
An other pleasant part of software development is that all you need is a computer and a compiler/interpreter to get started. No need to buy dedicated tools or supplies. And if you realize halfway into a project that you did something wrong (that your "staircase" is not cut right) then you can easily undo and redo anything without any mess or waste. No cleanup needed either. The only limits are your skills and imagination.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#55I've always thought the whole idea of virtual reality is strange. Why would I want to experience the world through VR when I can experience reality instead? I suppose there are exceptions where it makes sense. Maybe if someone is physically incapable of having an experience, or the risk is too high, but for the most part I derive more joy from actually going outside and doing stuff than playing a video game equivalent.
To each their own, as they say.
By the way: great post.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#56I've always thought the whole idea of virtual reality is strange. Why would I want to experience the world through VR when I can experience reality instead? I suppose there are exceptions where it makes sense. Maybe if someone is physically incapable of having an experience, or the risk is too high, but for the most part I derive more joy from actually going outside and doing stuff than playing a video game equivalen…
On top of that, the video games I play and enjoy are decidedly unreal and often intentionally simple or stylized.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#57Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…
Well. People still don't know, but now they have enough information to seem as-if they do. Understanding is not a matter of a google. It's a decade of relevant experience. You might beat the PhD to the factoid phrase, but when you come to employ the fact in the relevant problem you won't even know where to begin or even what it really meant. People aren't exercising their ability to distinguish parroting from underst…
In the same spirit there is the cheapening of the concept of "research". Often the statement "I did some research" means that some googling has occurred.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#58I've always thought the whole idea of virtual reality is strange. Why would I want to experience the world through VR when I can experience reality instead? I suppose there are exceptions where it makes sense. Maybe if someone is physically incapable of having an experience, or the risk is too high, but for the most part I derive more joy from actually going outside and doing stuff than playing a video game equivalen…
> Why would I want to experience the world through VR when I can experience reality instead?
VR can let you experience neat things that are impossible or difficult to experience in reality. Visiting Paris means an eight hour flight and thousands of dollars; visiting Mars is currently impossible; fighting aliens may never be possible.
"Why would you want to use VR for that" is a great criticism of "Using the Toilet Simulator 2019", sure, but it's a bit of a strawman.
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#59>Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive? The author mentioned bicycles and inadvertently missed an opportunity to show another "unknown reality" that beautifully illustrates his point. Consider typical adults (not physicists) with 20+ years of bicycle riding. If you ask them, "how does a bicycle turn?" , they'd respond that "you just lean into the direction of the turn and…
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0 YouTube channel Smarter Every Day tries to ride a bike that has been hacked to reverse which way the wheel goes when the handlebars are turned, which also reveals how much bike riding skill is implicit.
(I also experience the "clicking" he refers to around 6:10 when I switch between QWERTY and Dvorak layouts. It takes about 15-30 seconds to switch, even after all the years I've been doing this, and I can "feel" it slide into place. This despite the fact that I use Swype (or whatever it is spelled as) on my phone all the time, which means I stay very familiar with the QWERTY layout every day... but somehow that qualifies as a different "thing", because I always get that instantly.)
Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)
#60Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…
Why would I jump into a thread, on any site, just to say I don't know? There are thousands of threads just on HN that I just let scroll by without participating because I don't know enough to add to the discussion. Explicitly calling out my lack of knowledge on every thread would serve no purpose to anybody. Online written communications will never follow the same patterns as direct communication, and that is a good…
It is absurd how people actually do this all the time in Amazon product questions. Will it work with my Samsung phone? "I don't know." Does it come with batteries? "I think it did."