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How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

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Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#11

Post by buzzkillington »

dnautics wrote: post #3
GuiA wrote: post #2

The human brain loves finding patterns, meaning, and explanations ( "the platonic rises to the top" , per Taleb), so you'll be able to do something like this for pretty much any configuration of objects (all numbers are interesting after all! [0]). One could write a similarly convincing post about how the Terrans, Zergs, and Protoss embody the 3 core pillars of humanity, complete with esoteric looking diagrams. Read…

While I agree in the general, it's pretty clear that magic the gathering draws considerable inspiration from human literature and culture, and was exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades so if even if these arrangements aren't intentional, they certainly aren't accidental.

> was exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades

Have you seen the number of banned cards?

Or the fact that it's accidentally Turing complete?

This is a card game, nothing more nothing less.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#13

Post by dnautics »

buzzkillington wrote: post #11
dnautics wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree in the general, it's pretty clear that magic the gathering draws considerable inspiration from human literature and culture, and was exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades so if even if these arrangements aren't intentional, they certainly aren't accidental.

> was exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades Have you seen the number of banned cards? Or the fact that it's accidentally Turing complete? This is a card game, nothing more nothing less.

I was more referring to the cultural content (names, flavor text, art) than the game mechanics. Besides which, Turing completeness, accidental or not, is a silly metric that doesn't say anything about a game.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#14

Post by gpderetta »

Kednicma wrote: post #8

It is fun to see how much of this overlaps with the official guidelines for colors [0]. I think that the five colors are better explained in terms of deck strategies and win conditions. Crucially, by design, no color is best, nor is any combination of colors best. White represents not dying, both by preventing damage and by healing damage. White wins by having more health than their opponents, and outlasting them in…

> Crucially, by design, no color is best

Except for blue of course.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#16

Post by buzzkillington »

dnautics wrote: post #13
buzzkillington wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades Have you seen the number of banned cards? Or the fact that it's accidentally Turing complete? This is a card game, nothing more nothing less.

I was more referring to the cultural content (names, flavor text, art) than the game mechanics. Besides which, Turing completeness, accidental or not, is a silly metric that doesn't say anything about a game.

>Turing completeness, accidental or not, is a silly metric that doesn't say anything about a game.

You can literally crash the game so you never know if you've won or lost.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#17

Post by manfredo »

tcgthrowaway wrote: post #12

On a side note: If you were successful in MtG and other 'deep' games, would you list it on your CV? Or does it still have the image of a children's card game?

In tech circles it's pretty highly regarded. When learning programming, understand the stack comes very easily to MtG players since card players are resolved in a stack. Most highly competitive MtG players also come from math or other quantitative reasoning backgrounds.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#18

Post by vsareto »

tcgthrowaway wrote: post #12

On a side note: If you were successful in MtG and other 'deep' games, would you list it on your CV? Or does it still have the image of a children's card game?

These things have been around long enough that there are people now making decisions at a high enough level who also played these. So it's probably not as bad as it was 10-20 years ago?

So this can happen: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/dl3o2p/billionai...

If you're applying to stuffy places where the people aren't known to be into deep/complicated games, you might get rejected if you don't have something else. It depends if you want to apply to stuffy places because you need any job ASAP.

If you're doing okay and want to select businesses that like hobbies on resumes, go for it.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#19

Post by k__ »

tcgthrowaway wrote: post #12

On a side note: If you were successful in MtG and other 'deep' games, would you list it on your CV? Or does it still have the image of a children's card game?

I learned much with MtG.

Problem with such games is that they are "winner takes it all" and in "real life" a win with "one life point" usually isn't worth it.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#20

Post by pmiller2 »

tcgthrowaway wrote: post #12

On a side note: If you were successful in MtG and other 'deep' games, would you list it on your CV? Or does it still have the image of a children's card game?

I would say winning a major tournament or title would rank up there with certain competitive math or programming achievements.
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