How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

I just tried this and it didn't get rid of the signup wall.

It is one of my favorite stimuli in psychometrics and the philosophy of science. I already sent it to quite a few people, as a long-read remark on the applicability of models.

Of course, as long as you read it at the meta-level, comparing with other tools (scientific, pseudo-scientific), for example: Four Temperaments, MBTI, Big Five, Western Zodiac, Chinese Zodiac, etc.

While many predictions are bogus (e.g. month of birth and relationship comparability, vide https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/howyourraceaff...) they capture various traits of character people consider important.

The difference between science and pseudo-science is much more smooth than most scientists would like to admit. While MBTI is not up to academics standards, it is highly correlated with Big Five, trait by trait (still, AFAIR there is reason to use it in the place of Big Five). Plus, there is too much Jungian interpretation for MBTI, which is not up to current scientific standards. Still, I defended MBTI (in a dating context, e.g. as a self-identification) more times than I care to admit (for some insights, this https://www.16personalities.com/ is decent).

There is also a corollary that psychology is still in its infancy, much like biology before the discovery of bacteria, viri, or DNA.

...

In mathematics, there is a concept of a basis - more or less, directions, or orientation. We can express the same thing is a few different ways. Some bases are better (unit length, dimensions are orthogonal (uncorrelated)), but otherwise there is a lot of room here.

In this case, Colors of Mana are one basis. Just because it is an impromptu psychological explanation, does not mean it does not work. Yet:

- Some explanations or interpolations may not be valid.

- It is likely that we can find a more refined way.

All in all, I would love to make people2vec, where we embed various psychological trains as vectors, as see which other parameters (scientific or not) we can reproduce. All in all, even IQ can be considered a personality trait (as it is correlated with other traits of personality, it is not a separate entity) http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2014/04/...

Many autoimmune disorders react to food, for example the infamous Celiac disease is an autoimmune reaction to gluten, that is present in many cereals (not only wheat).

So why beef only wouldn't work?

I have autoimmune diseases myself and have a very meat heavy diet, to me is what works, as soon I move to a more typical diet my health declines quickly.

> https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/20325/will-in...

See https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Ending_the_game:

> 104.4b If a game that’s not using the limited range of influence option (including a two-player game) somehow enters a “loop” of mandatory actions, repeating a sequence of events with no way to stop, the game is a draw. Loops that contain an optional action don’t result in a draw.

One (very contrived) example is the "three Oblivion Ring[0]" loop. Start with no non-land permanents on the battlefield, then cast an Oblivion Ring. There are no valid targets for the "ETB" (enters the battlefield) trigger, so nothing happens. Then cast a second Oblivion Ring; the only valid target is the first Oblivion Ring, so it's exiled until the second one leaves the battlefield. Finally, cast a third Oblivion Ring; the only valid target is the first Oblivion Ring, which is then exiled, causing the first one to come back. The only valid target for the first one is the third one, so that one is exiled and the second one comes back. The only valid target for the second one is the first one, so that one is exiled and the third comes back. This goes on infinitely, assuming no player has any cards that can respond to the ETB triggers by either countering it, removing the Oblivion Ring currently on the battlefield in some way, or putting another valid target for an Oblivion Ring on the battlefield. This isn't likely to ever happen in a game, but with the current rules, it's technically possible.

[0]: https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

That rule is exactly where the the construction used becomes interesting: it's built in such a way so that if the turing machine halts, the player who set it up wins the game. If it doesn't, by the rule above, it's a draw. So it's fundamentally impossible to tell the result of an arbitrary setup (and in practice you could set it up such that it halts iff some unknown conjecture is true).

Regarding the oblivion ring loop, there's an example of it being used on MTGO, which doesn't end well (basically seems to crash the server and/or client): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGXG5rNe_tI

And here's the paper on the latest turing machine construction in mtg: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828