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Mario Meets Pareto

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Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#171

Post by CM30 »

Jepacor wrote: post #16
reconnecting wrote: post #9

Thanks! Very useful information. I will never play for Bowser again.

Once at a Mario Kart 8 tournament I was helping run there was a kid who had picked Bowser and max speed and he was struggling to make every turn. I switched him to the meta build and suddenly boom, he went from like 10th to 2nd against the AIs. It's kinda weird that you can shoot yourself in the foot so much when picking your kart in this game.

To some degree it's because certain options work better in other game modes and settings. For example, there are characters and karts in Mario Kart Wii which are only viable on a handful of tracks, but can dominate those tracks in time trials. A very basic opening cup track with only gentle turns might get dominated by a high speed character and kart combo with middling stats everywhere else.

That's why certain tracks were played with the Torpedo/Spear in that game. It's very fast, but has the turning radius of a bus on ice. Great on something like Mario Circuit, probably a complete catastrophe on something like Bowser's Castle or Rainbow Road.

There's also battle mode, but I have no idea which karts are preferred there.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#172

Post by voidhorse »

ksclk wrote: post #163
voidhorse wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the difference between coding (writing software) and engineering (making informed trade offs about system design) is effectively bound up in analyses like those supported by concepts like pareto efficiency. One should keep in mind though that not all problems have a neat solution. Many spaces have multiple efficient points that still need to be chosen from, and many pareto optimization problems actually become N…

Say someone wanted to transition from coding to engineering. What path would you have them take? What should they learn?

I would say start with software architecture books for large or highly distributed systems. This will get you thinking beyond code level to system component level with subject matter that's familiar.

From there I would round things out with general systems theory books and even dabble in some non-software engineering texts just to get a sense of how people reason about designing systems and evaluating trade-offs. That's just my two cents on it.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#174

Post by Shocka1 »

cortesoft wrote: post #117

There are a few things that are assumed to be true when talking about the Pareto frontier here, but aren’t always true. One, that more of something is always better, e.g. it is always better to have more speed. Maybe, but what if having too much speed causes you to run off the track and perform worse? It could be that there is actually a peak in the utility of speed that declines as it increases. There could also be…

I agree that many assumptions are made, but the concept was presented well in combination with something most people can relate to. They mention in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the post that assumptions are made, but not sure if they added it after your post or not. When something goes viral on HN authors tends to add things...

I think to truly do a deep dive into the best overall character in Mario Kart would be a fairly complex task. We'd need data from years of real games and players to even get started. As an ML engineer/software engineer who played a lot of Mario Kart back in the day, this post was a very enjoyable read for me.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#175

Post by adrianN »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #165
adrianN wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does talk about putting weights on the dimensions to account for different dimensions having different importance.

For one we need to start talking about taking off the weights from security dimension, because it's becoming ridiculously overemphasized for things where it frankly doesn't matter much for. All at the cost of "usability", which is a fancy word for saying people's time and effort , which is literally the only truly non-renewable, priceless resource we have.

My experience has been that security is mostly treated as some contractual obligation that has little benefit and just costs money so the minimum amount of effort that prevents charges of gross negligence is put in. But I’m glad to hear that apparently there are places that take it more seriously.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#176

Post by Shocka1 »

Agentlien wrote: post #70

On a tangent, I was a bit confused by the everyday examples given in this article. "We're often faced with similar trade-offs. You want a meal that's both cheap and delicious? A job that's both well-paid, easy, and fulfilling?" I really don't feel like "easy" is a dimension I wish to optimize for in a job. It almost feels opposite to what I've actually optimized for - since for me a fulfilling job usually means full…

I think the author didn't want to go too in depth for the sake of simplicity, very similar to the blog post itself, which just hit the surface. That being said, many more dimensions can be made out of easy - when I think of easy, I think of technically easy, management easy, drama levels, west coast nice vs east coast nice easy, etc... Depending on the individual they could probably split the word easy alone into 5 to 15 dimensions.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#177

Post by TeMPOraL »

adrianN wrote: post #175
TeMPOraL wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one we need to start talking about taking off the weights from security dimension, because it's becoming ridiculously overemphasized for things where it frankly doesn't matter much for. All at the cost of "usability", which is a fancy word for saying people's time and effort , which is literally the only truly non-renewable, priceless resource we have.

My experience has been that security is mostly treated as some contractual obligation that has little benefit and just costs money so the minimum amount of effort that prevents charges of gross negligence is put in. But I’m glad to hear that apparently there are places that take it more seriously.

Passkeys, 2FA being deployed the more intensely the more trivial and non-critical for users a site is, mobile platforms getting absurdly locked down, naive takes on "lethal trifecta" sucking out whatever little air in AI discussions that was left by IP apologists". In the real world, everyone in this industry seems to be showing off pointing out potential vulnerabilities and security considerations in any new idea or concept that appears - as if that were something to be proud of, instead of a solemn duty that more than likely will just prevent a nice thing from existing in the first place.

From where I stand, the industry is obsessed with security, way past the point of rational thought.

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