Melita Magic Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Mad Gamer Skillz Help Science. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacki Silverfall Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 I just saw that on CNN. It's amazing what a bunch of people can do when they put thier heads together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knowl Paine Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 It's amazing how quickly solutions can be found when profit is not the primary motivation. Too many researchers are making Careers out of Jobs that need to be done today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 I saw that, too, Melita. One thing I thought was really interesting was a comment from one of the creators of the 'game' software (Foldit). He said, "People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at.". That kind of suprised me; I'd have thought a computer would be more adept at dealing with spatial concepts, given it can keep all the points involved stored for quick access. Isn't that why people use software like AutoCad? I grant you that it may not be reasoning but I'd have thought it would suffice. It would be nice if someone could explain that; I'm sure there are people on this forum who could. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 I think it's just one more sign that it's time for our society to start taking the concept of "game" a little more seriously. More here: http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/jul/27/visions-gamepocalypse/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madelaine McMasters Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Dillon Levenque wrote: I saw that, too, Melita. One thing I thought was really interesting was a comment from one of the creators of the 'game' software (Foldit). He said, "People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at.". That kind of suprised me; I'd have thought a computer would be more adept at dealing with spatial concepts, given it can keep all the points involved stored for quick access. Isn't that why people use software like AutoCad? I grant you that it may not be reasoning but I'd have thought it would suffice. It would be nice if someone could explain that; I'm sure there are people on this forum who could. Dillon, the unfolding done by those gamers is not unlike trying to untangle an extension cord. We have an exquisite ability to think spatially, as that's necessary for our survival. We can see that you can't pull the cord this way or that because another bit of the cord blocks the way. A computer must tediously follow an algorithm we've designed to try to replicate what our brains do (and we don't really know what our brains do, so we guess at it), searching down long trees of numbers looking for collisions and trying to figure out which way to pull to avoid them. We just "do it". Chess is another example of a spatial problem that's been difficult to "teach" to computers, though we've done it. Given the simple rules of chess (the complexity comes from the depth of the moves), I wonder if winning against Kasparov wasnt' easier than trying to untangle an extension cord ;-) For some years now, researchers (and perhaps now companies) have been co-opting people online to solve thorny problems like this. There have been games where people compete to name all the objects contained in photographs. The result is a library of images with very good keywords attached to them. Computers are currently only able to recognize the most basic objects in photos. By making such "jobs" pleasant for people to solve online, we can leverage the intelligence of everyday people to solve problems that are currently well beyond the fastest computers running the best algorithms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Thanks. Makes sense. Never mind Kasparov; almost anything is easier than trying to untangle an extension cord. Or a collection of cables. I hate wire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eloise Baily Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 And yet, I can patiently sit and untangle a kite or a necklace for hours, but give me a chess board and I want to smash you in the face with it. This story actually made me feel really warm. It's total win/win and you don't see many of those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melita Magic Posted September 20, 2011 Author Share Posted September 20, 2011 Yes. Makes ya exhale doesn't it? Eloise Baily wrote: This story actually made me feel really warm. It's total win/win and you don't see many of those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eloise Baily Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Yep. In a good way. The way I see it is that we've become so consumed with betterment that we forget that essentially, playing is how we learn. I love that I can picture the gamers, lurched forward, staring intently, tongue poking out of the corners of their mouths, having a whale of a time. I can also picture the team of doctors at the moment they realise that OMG that's it! On top of that, all the people with illnesses attached to that protein will benefit too. So actually...it's win/win/epic win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Void Singer Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 computers are good at holding all the numbers, but they're very inefficient at mapping spaces, especially non-intersecting volumes, and exceptionally poor at matching partial surfaces of arbitrarily rotated objects (partially because it's not a task we tend to program them for).... a computer would go through most if not all permutations of rotation and position looking for a potential match (and all attempts are computationally expensive), whereas a human learns to discard large chunks of that out of hand, by training naturally understand shape, and only tend to bother with fine tuning at the very end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishtara Rothschild Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Knowl Paine wrote: It's amazing how quickly solutions can be found when profit is not the primary motivation. Too many researchers are making Careers out of Jobs that need to be done today. That. And it's also amazing what a large number of human brains can do when put to when they voluntarily work on the same task. That's why all human minds on this planet need the very best of educations in as many fields as possible. We should all spend our lives learning and researching, at least everyone who is so inclined. At the same time, all mundane jobs and all routine work need to be replaced by industrial automation. It's utter madness that we view the "loss" of such repetitive jobs as something bad. Humans are capable of so much more than plucking coffee beans, mopping up floors, or hauling garbage bins around. No human being should ever have to do this kind of work, it's such a waste of brain power and potential ingenuity. The only thing that stands in the way of a world full of highly educated humans that are free to work on anything that interests them is money. Imagine how quickly we could find a cure for cancer if millions of minds worked on the problem and freely exchanged their research data without any financial interest. And now imagine the same scenario with trillions of educated minds. Of course that is impossible as long as we limit ourselves to this one single planet. Earth has long become too small for us. Societies in densely populated Western countries already show negative birth rates, which is the human equivalent of lemmings jumping over a cliff in a desperate attempt to leave their overpopulated territory. Like lemmings, we always need more room to expand into, new territories to colonize, and there is nothing left for us down here. This is also an issue that lots of educated minds need to work on, so that we can follow our biological program and create even more minds, which will in turn create exponential progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterCanessa Oh Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Nice one. Thanks for highlighting it. @ Dillon, et al. Computers are great at details, lousy at seeing 'the big picture'. One advantage we humans have is literally being able to look at (certain) situations and see the answer. "Is point X inside or outside this polygon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_in_polygon) is a classic example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishtara Rothschild Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Nice one. Thanks for highlighting it. @ Dillon, et al. Computers are great at details, lousy at seeing 'the big picture'. One advantage we humans have is literally being able to look at (certain) situations and see the answer. "Is point X inside or outside this polygon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_in_polygon) is a classic example. Facial recognition is another example. While computers can be "taught" to compare certain key elements of human faces to existing photographs, they can't "look at" the front end of a creature they've never seen before, immediately recognize it as a face, and deduce "oh my, that beast must be dangerous because it has lots of sharp teeth". Of course this kind of advanced pattern recognition comes with a trade-off, such as seeing elephants in the clouds or the face of long-dead prophets on a slice of toasted bread :smileyvery-happy: Or making up wild conspiracy theories about coincidental chains of events. That's also a side effect of pattern recognition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterCanessa Oh Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Much, much, better than my too-geek-focussed example Ishy. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishtara Rothschild Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Oh, I didn't mean to give a better example, only yet another example Pattern recognition happens to be a pet peeve of mine, because it tends to trick people into thinking that everything is somehow connected and happens for a reason. We are all low-grade schizophrenics and have to work very hard to develop the skill of rational thought and the awareness that most things are coincidences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Void Singer Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 both much better than my techno-explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Much, much, better than my too-geek-focussed example Ishy. Thanks. I thought all the answers informative and I appreciated getting them. I was pretty sure there would be explanations available from this group. On the other hand, I sort of deflected the thread from the OP so to make up here are a couple of links. The BBC article goes into a bit more detail and has some actual images from the game: BBC Foldit Article If you read that, you'll see that anyone with an Internet connection can download the game and participate: Foldit is here; the site as you might guess is running a bit slow right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celestiall Nightfire Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 Thanks Melita. I'm sending links to that articles to several people. Ender Wiggins...aside...Dr. Jane McGonigal asks..."What exactly are gamers getting good at?" Toward the end of the video, Jane asks, "So what happens next?" I think the gamers producing an accurate model of the monomeric protease enzyme, is an example of "what happens next?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 Celestiall Nightfire wrote: Thanks Melita. I'm sending links to that articles to several people. Ender Wiggins...aside...Dr. Jane McGonigal asks..."What exactly are gamers getting good at?" Toward the end of the video, Jane asks, "So what happens next?" I think the gamers producing an accurate model of the monomeric protease enzyme, is an example of "what happens next?" :-). So there are two people who can convince me to take the time to watch a TED episode. Not surprisingly you're both brainy. I just stick to the basics: the enemy's base is always down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Void Singer Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 TED has some wonderful gems of thinking (and occasionally some that people can apply immediately to their lives)...I've spent hours and hours on some of their talks. PS if you haven't read the book, you should.... at least the first one. OSC is an impressive author, and one of the best redeeming qualities of Utah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dilbert Dilweg Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 That's pretty amazing Fantastic feat:matte-motes-big-grin-wink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madelaine McMasters Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 Void Singer wrote: TED has some wonderful gems of thinking (and occasionally some that people can apply immediately to their lives)...I've spent hours and hours on some of their talks. PS if you haven't read the book, you should.... at least the first one. OSC is an impressive author, and one of the best redeeming qualities of Utah I'm a TED fan too. I love to sit at the corner of Technology and Art, watching traffic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 Void Singer wrote: if you haven't read the book, you should.... at least the first one. OSC is an impressive author, and one of the best redeeming qualities of Utah I haven't read everything he's written but I have read everything that has shown up at the library and a few more that I've purchased, including all of the Ender ones (so far), I think all the Alvin ones, and a bunch more. There's no chance I'll see his name on something on the New Fiction shelves and walk past it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterCanessa Oh Posted September 21, 2011 Share Posted September 21, 2011 TED? OSC? No idea what you're talking about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now