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Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

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Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#221

Post by croisillon »

thiagoeh wrote: post #201
temp0826 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree (and I don't normally generalize like this, so I apologize). I've spent most of my time in Peru but noticed it in neighboring countries as well.

That also is my perception, from Brazil. There is even the concept of "cordial man", coined by sociologist Sergio Buarque d Holanda, that is connected to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordial_man

i remember >20 years ago going to the bus station somewhere between RJ and SP, and asking the best way to get to Iguaçu

  - it's difficult
  - ok fine but how
  - it's difficult
  - right i'll see that but how
  - it's difficult
then it dawned on me this meant get away you fool :D

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#222

Post by [deleted] »

HiPhish wrote: post #143
jfaulken wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was similar to my experience running a software team in India (I'm an American) a couple decades ago. I had to learn not to ask yes/no questions because the answer would always be yes.

It's a long-standing jodke that AI stands for "Actual Indians".

[deleted]

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#223

Post by utopcell »

pcrh wrote: post #172
ColinWright wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah: Content Not Available Content not available in your region. Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom

Alternate source for the comic: https://www.behance.net/gallery/102075221/The-Last-Question

This is not an alternative source for the comic, it's a whole different comic. Cool!

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#224

Post by in-silico »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #37

>INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER Boy, it sure would be nice if real LLMs were capable of giving an answer like that.

As measured by #_no_answer/(#_incorrect + #_no_answer) the top current models can do it 60-70% of the time (Grok 4.20 is the best with 83%): https://artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/omniscience

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#225

Post by BeetleB »

fwipsy wrote: post #202
BeetleB wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did I spoil? That you keep dying? They'll encounter that very early in the game. And if you look around, you'll see that quite a few quit the game because they didn't understand that dying is normal. The lack of knowledge about the other two items I mentioned are also reasons people stopped playing the game. If you don't know them, the game becomes an incredible drag . Even I would have quit if I didn't know abo…

You revealed the central conceit of the game. In my opinion, discovering that is an important part of the experience of playing the game, even if it's very early, and even though I did find it initially frustrating. The Steam page doesn't reveal that, and they have an incentive to make the Steam page fairly revealing in order to sell you on the game.

I'm literally one of those people who almost gave up on the game because I didn't understand that dying is normal.

The fact that the game would start all over each time made me think I hadn't progressed enough to save the game. And because the first time round, the timer doesn't really begin until you leave space, I thought I would have to do all the training (jetpack, etc) each time. I remember being very frustrated - I had spent well over an hour playing it and it didn't even save the game?

And felt the same thing the second time round.

Then I abandoned the game for about a year. The only reason I returned to it was because I couldn't understand why so many would like such a game. So I finally searched online on how to save the game and ... oh, that's why.

As I said, look on various forums, and you'll see plenty of people quitting the game early because they didn't understand this. There's a whole thread on the subreddit on frustrations of players who recommended the game to friends - a significant percentage quit the game before they got to any of the interesting parts.

I think revealing this is a decent compromise to ensure people will actually play the game.

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#226

Post by TuringTest »

bilsbie wrote: post #204
wat10000 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this fit with those of us who found one, then later on decided it was silly and gave up the whole idea?

Good question. Perhaps you found the wrong one? I mean there’s such a wide selection you can even believe in simulations these days. Or if that’s still too much there’s always the Pascal’s wager God. Still better than nothing.

I find Pascal's wager is of the same nature as Aquinas' Five Ways to prove God, or accelerationists about the inevitability of a Singularity: believing that your own rational argument can be the basis to prove a fact about reality merely because it feels internally consistent.

Needless to say, I don’t find them at all convincing. This 'nothing' is much better than catching unconvincing unneeded supernatural entities.

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#228

Post by wat10000 »

TuringTest wrote: post #226
bilsbie wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. Perhaps you found the wrong one? I mean there’s such a wide selection you can even believe in simulations these days. Or if that’s still too much there’s always the Pascal’s wager God. Still better than nothing.

I find Pascal's wager is of the same nature as Aquinas' Five Ways to prove God, or accelerationists about the inevitability of a Singularity: believing that your own rational argument can be the basis to prove a fact about reality merely because it feels internally consistent. Needless to say, I don’t find them at all convincing. This 'nothing' is much better than catching unconvincing unneeded supernatural entities.

The Wager doesn't attempt to prove God, it merely states that you might as well worship, because the cost is small and the potential payoff is huge.

It falls apart because, based on what's actually known, there's no reason to think worshipping might be the thing that condemns you to hell, and not doing so gets you into heaven, rather than the other way around.

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#229

Post by krapp »

BeetleB wrote: post #125
krapp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even Star Trek to be honest. I don't know why Star Wars always gets passed off as "science fantasy" when it's a more grounded universe than Trek by far - space wizards notwithstanding (which Trek has plenty of.) Even in a lot of hard SF, a lot of the science is wonky if it falls outside of the author's special interest or area of expertise. Relevant to Asimov, the only reason robots have "positronic" brains in his…

As a Trekkie, fair point. I think Star Trek does fall into the "speculative fiction" category, but Star Wars doesn't. It's just "space opera".

Space opera is still a subset of speculative fiction and science fiction, saying "just" dismisses its influence on the genre as a whole.

A lot of classic science fiction is basically "x with spaceships" where x is the Napoleonic Wars, or feudal Europe or the Wild West or what have you, and the "science" is little more than set dressing.

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#230

Post by elictronic »

parineum wrote: post #166
keybored wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renters are ecstatic as price of commodities are plummeting as house prices go up and up: “distracting myself has never been this cheap”, Anon. says. People think they can do one-sentence quips to describe how economies work.

Housing is supply constrained and not tied to labor costs in a significant way. It largely is tied to the price of land in it's location. It's not going to get noticeably cheaper with cheaper labor and materials. Although, I can tell you that the products that one uses in a home have gotten cheaper (fixtures, flooring, etc) with a few exceptions, copper wiring and pipes for instance. Housing doesn't really fit into t…

“housing is not tied to labor costs in a significant way”.

~30% of new construction is labor. ~50% of repair is labor.

Have you ever dealt with home repair or building or are you just regurgitating whatever the LLM told you.

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