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Player of Games

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Re: Player of Games

#171

Post by hesperiidae »

bduerst wrote: post #160
chrisweekly wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA: The "Culture" novels by Iain M Banks are fantastic and can be read in any order. "Player of Games" was the 1st one I read and still probably my favorite.

Player of Games is the second book, and the one I recommend people start The Culture series with. The first book Consider Phlebas isn't bad, but it isn't as well developed as the rest of the series IMO.

It's a great starting point, since not only is the story both fun and interesting, but it also shows what the Culture's values and methods are in a very satisfying way by juxtaposing them against the Empire through the tournaments of the latter's own game.

Re: Player of Games

#172

Post by User23 »

arethuza wrote: post #126
sidibe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use of Weapons and Consider Phlebas are the worst of the series IMO. I powered through Consider Phloebus just because I knew people loved the series, but there's really no reason to start there

Personally, I think Use of Weapons is by far the best of the Culture series - although I admit it took a few readings for me to get to that view...

He does a really good job exploring the theme "what is a weapon?"

Re: Player of Games

#173

Post by hesperiidae »

DylanSp wrote: post #118
vermilingua wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but IMO it's probably worth reading The Player of Games or Use of Weapons before it anyway. With the exception of perhaps Surface Detail, none of the Culture books rely on any others. Consider Phlebas gives a good view of The Culture from "outside" (the perspective of the Idrians) but is quite slow.

I mean, Player of Games has a pretty slow start too. I love that book, but the initial pacing is IMO its biggest flaw. I know Use of Weapons doesn't depend on any of the other books for its plot, but is it a decent intro to the setting? If it is, that's where I'd recommend starting.

Yeah, it does take its time to build up, but in my opinion that just lays a stronger foundation for the latter half(-ish) of the book.

Use of Weapons is more than a decent intro, but I'd still personally recommend The Player of Games since it isn't as deep and heavy in comparison, and the narrative structure is simpler.

Of course, YMMV, but I started with TPoG, and reading UoW right after it was absolutely fantastic. I guess my biggest concern with recommending UoW as the starter would be that it might diminish TPoG, which I'm fond of, but I don't know if it actually would, since they're connected pretty much only bound by the setting.

Re: Player of Games

#174

Post by tsbinz »

ShamelessC wrote: post #143
tsbinz wrote: post #82

Comparing against Stockfish 8 in a paper released today and labeling it as "Stockfish" is bordering on being dishonest. The current stockfish version (14) would make AlphaZero look bad, so they don't include it ...

The first mention says "Stockfish 8, level 20" in the paper. This isn't a blog post that you can skim, you need to read the whole thing before critiquing.

I obviously read it, otherwise I wouldn't have known which version they are using. They are banking on others, that do just skim the figures and tables, not noticing their usage of outdated baselines.

Re: Player of Games

#175

Post by hesperiidae »

User23 wrote: post #172
arethuza wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think Use of Weapons is by far the best of the Culture series - although I admit it took a few readings for me to get to that view...

He does a really good job exploring the theme "what is a weapon?"

Yes! And also, "why is a weapon?", "how is a weapon?" and "what isn't a weapon?"

Really, Culture is a great setting for discussing a lot of interesting philosophical questions and topics.

Re: Player of Games

#176

Post by hesperiidae »

apetersonBFI wrote: post #98
arvinsim wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started with Consider Phlebas but stopped because it seems too slow for me. Does it get better in the later chapters?

Consider Pheblas wasn't the best in my opinion. Player of Games is my favorite, but some of the other later ones are good. I enjoy the settings and the concept of the Culture more than the plotlines.

The Player of Games is my favourite exactly for the same reason: it explores the Culture in contrast to the Empire, and even the drama is just an expression of the clash between the two structures.

Re: Player of Games

#177

Post by hesperiidae »

marvin wrote: post #76
robbie-c wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the user you are replying to was also joking, given that many of Banks' ship names reference the g-word Edit: if not that's even more amusing

I'll make a minor contribution to the discussion by mentioning the Culture ship normally referred to as the Mistake Not..., which is shorthand for "Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath". Unsure if this name is also a sarcastic stab that the lack of gravit…

Yeah, it's making fun of the human desire for gravitas when it comes to ship names, since it's just exponentially more and more over the top.

Re: Player of Games

#178

Post by ska »

karpierz wrote: post #149
ShamelessC wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first mention says "Stockfish 8, level 20" in the paper. This isn't a blog post that you can skim, you need to read the whole thing before critiquing.

That's actually the second mention, the first is when they introduce the games in section 4: > Today, computer- playing programs remain consistently super-human, and one of the strongest and most widely-used programs is Stockfish. They also go back to referring to it as Stockfish for the rest of the paper. An analogous situation in my mind would be if AMD released a new CPU and benchmarked it against an Intel CPU, on…

> An analogous situation

It really isn't though. Technical papers have conventions, and they following them reasonably. You expect the methods description to be specific, the abstract not to be hyperbolic, and conclusions to be balanced. The general discussion parts are just that, general.

In the methods area they discuss the exact versions and parameters used, and how they compared them.

In the conclusions:

  In the perfect information games of chess and Go,PoG performs at the level of human experts or professionals, but can be significantly weaker than specialized algorithms for this class of games, like AlphaZero, when given the same resources.
It would have perhaps been interesting to include a more recent stockfish, but it wouldn't really impact the paper.

Re: Player of Games

#179

Post by remram »

ShamelessC wrote: post #146
remram wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could still be honest that it's Stockfish 8, not the Stockfish everyone has. Your product having genuine value does not excuse lying about that value.

They were? They say they use Stockfish 8 the very first time they mention it.

First time they mention it is page 10:

> one of the strongest and most widely-used programs is Stockfish [81].

Here's the citation, note the date:

> [81] The Stockfish Development Team. Stockfish: Open source chess engine, 2021. https://stockfishchess.org/.

They mention the version number only once, further down, and don't point out that it's out of date since February 2018. All other 11 mentions of it don't have the version number, like in that sentence:

> In Chess, PoG(60000,10) is stronger than Stockfish using 4 threads and one second of search time.

Re: Player of Games

#180

Post by hesperiidae »

arlort wrote: post #152
hoseja wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Near the end of the competition, as he is deep in his analysis, the light craft AI gives up on helping him since it gets overwhelmed. Granted it's not a full Culture Mind (kinda hazy, been a while) but still a point for the meatbag.

I always interpreted the end reveal as showing that control was highly confident of both the outcome of the game and of how Gurgeh got to that outcome. It's been a while but I am pretty sure that the ship lied when saying that it got overwhelmed and did so only because it was confident he was on the right path but needed to get there in a specific way which wouldn't have worked quite the same if the ship intervened

Yeah, he wouldn't have reached such a good solution with help, and that was also originally taken into account by the Culture when they sent him out in the first place, since they knew him that thoroughly.
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