Journals: 2000(3)

by Ric Carter

Journal: More Game Notes, Etc.

What's In A Game?

Now it's Saturday morning, 12 August 2000.

Maureen's leaving for a conference in Las Vegas tomorrow, and Jacob and I are going up to the North Coast, to relax and study and the like, for a few days. I'll probably be thinking a lot about Games for the next few days. And so let's start discoursing about Game Theory.

What is a game? I'm looking at one dictionary that it as: an amusement, diversion, sport, fun, scheme, project, a line of work, a profession, a contest, animals hunted for food or sport. That's 'game' as a noun. Also as a verb: to play for a stake, to gamble (as in 'gaming'). We get down to game theory: the analysis of a situation involving conflicting interests, as in business, in terms of gains and losses among opposing players.

A game may also be: a simulation, a practice, an exercise, an interpersonal relationship, or rather an expression of interpersonal relationships.

Looking in another dictionary here, 'game', noun: sport of any kind, athletic sports, contests for recreation; the stake of a game; the manner of playing a game; the form in playing; the requisite number of points ot be gained to win a game; a jest, sport, trick; any object of pursuit; wild animals hunted by sportsmen. As an adjective, 'game' is: plucky, courageous, having the spirit of a fighting-cock. As a verb, it's: to gamble... Hmm, here we have: a round, a game, a game as at cards where the number of players is not fixed.

I'll be looking at Transactional Analysis in Eric Berne's GAMES PEOPLE PLAY - the jacket notes say:

"People tend to live their lives by consistently playing out certain games in their interpersonal relationships. They play these games for a variety of reasons: to avoid confronting reality; to conceal ulterior motives; to rationalize their activities; or to avoid actual participation. These games, if they are not destructive, are both desirable and necessary."
And the book also contains:
"...a fascinating analysis of 36 games, broken down into 7 major categories: Life Games, which transcend a specific mode of response in a given situation and pervade one's every action; Marital Games, which two people may utilize to sustain a frustrating or unrewarding life; Sexual Games, in which someone provokes sexual reactions in another person; Party Games, which by definition are highly social, and move from the perpetual gossip to the chronic complainer; Underworld Games, such as Cops And Robbers, which are often played for material gain but can also be played for psychological gain; Consulting Room Games, which can be played by a patient with a doctor to avoid getting cured."
And another book on Transactional Analysis, SCRIPTS PEOPLE LIVE:
"Scripts come from decisions you made early in your childhood, the patterns of action that keep you from living a full and free life." OK, so we'll have to consider the difference between scripted and unscripted Games, and consider how to convert one to the other, just as we look at szero-sum and non-zero-sum Games and explore how to convert one to another.
Mathematical games and puzzles; etcetera. Of course an important characteristic in a game is the number of players, and I propose that it can be zero to infinite -- a zero-player game would be an entertainment -- Conway's THE GAME OF LIFE, which is a simulation, a very abstract simulation of population dynamics, when the game is played, say, on a computer, there are actually two 'players', the environment and the programmer, but if the game is executing on a computer screen and the user, who has set it up, all they've done is plugged-in the initial conditions, and then set it running, and then set back to watch it, there is no actual 'player' involved, so we have a zero-player game.

A one-player game would be anyone challenging themselves, or attempting to work on a mathematical puzzle, or logical puzzle, or anything of the like. Two-player games, we're familiar with. And three-player games, and on up... I seem to recall, in readings of game theory, that in games with more than three players, that are zero-sum games, can be mathematically reduced to the equivalent of 3-player games.

Oh, another zero-player game would be something like the Survivor television show, which is totally scripted, there's no actual competition, there's an enactment of competition, but nothing's really going on, except attracting audiences to sell to advertisers. But that's another area to explore...

Oops, gotta distinguish between PASSIVE entertainments, in which one's an observor, and ACTIVE entertainments, in which one is a participant. ENTERTAINMENT, of course, means to structure and occupy one's time, when not doing something productive.

There are references on the Web in Star Wars sites, to Customizable Card Games, collectable cards -- I'll have to explore those further. If fact, they'd be a subset of Games, that are related to collecting, accumulating, whether in competition, or what? What would be the difference between a collectable card game and a customizable card game? From a press release for Jedi Knights Trading Card Game: "based on situations, characters and settings from the classic Star Wars trilogy! ...Great new gameplay, collectable cards, bold colorful card images, all images computer-generated using 3D technology and special effects created by an award-winning team of [mumbled]..." Need close consideration of role-playing games.

I surmise that the heart of Game activity is composed of RULES. The rules DEFINE the Game. Is then, any endeavour, any activity constrained by rules, to be considered to be a Game? If so, then physics, evolution, EVERYTHING, are Games, since everything is bound by certain rules, which we may call Laws of Nature.

But to be a bit more specific, especially when dealing with humans, we'd have to say that Human Games are those that are constrained by rules devised by humans, rather than by physical and chemical realities. One has no choice but to abide by those realities, whereas one can buy-into a Game, can decide to Play a Game, and accept the Rules that constrain [and define] that Game. Of course there are Games one may be thrust into involuntarily, in which you can't really affect the Rules or select the Rules. So, consider distinguishing the characteristics of voluntary and involuntary Human Games.

August 2000, North Coast - click here 






More Late Summer Notes



Trenton California, 23rd August 2000



Evolution is chaos with feedback. -Charles Pellegrino...


Some quotes embedded in DUST by Charles Pellegrino:


What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?
 -Shakespeare...

Never look back; something might be gaining on you.
 -Satchel Paige...

Ignorance is itself a map. -George Zebrowski...

To recognize knowledge as ignorance is noble,
 but to regard ignorance as knowledge is evil. -Buddha...

Everything in the universe is hitched to everything else
 in the universe. -anonymous...




All philosophy ultimately dovetails with religion, which is ultimately reducable to history. All history is ultimately reducable to biology. Biology is ultimately reducable to chemistry. Chemistry is ultimately reducable to physics. Physics is ultimately reducable to mathematics. And mathematics is ultimately reducable to philosophy. -Ed Bishop's and Ed Sinclair's First Law



God is in the details. -Freeman Dysan

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. -TS Elliott...

So I walk on uplands unbounded, and know that there is hope,
 For that which thou didst mold out of dust, to consort
 with things eternal.  -Betsy Scrolls (?)

(And, that's all of'em.)






    
:QUEUEING GAMES:

  • If standing queued-up in line is a game, what are the rules?

  • Is there a specific etiquette for standing in queues? Does the etiquette change from culture to culture? Should the etiquette be breached?

  • Should, can, WILL the individual engage in strategic or tactical moves to advance or, not decline, advance or fall-back in lines?

  • Can line-standing be made into an entertaining game?

  • Should one just stand in line passively, shuffling forward with the mob?

  • What do we do in cultures that don't have lines, queues, where's there's just a cluster-fock and whoever gets there first is there?

  • Would you rather be queued-up in a car, or out?

  • Would you rather be queued-up in your clothes, or out?

  • Are all queues made equal?

  • Does queueing theory offer any relief, or any strategies, for the individual standing in line at, say, a department of motor vehicles, or a supermarket, or stuck in single lanes of traffic on a jammed-up roadway? What are the possibilities? ?Quien sabe?

  • Can queueing theory be applied to general game situations? Can game theory be applied to queueing situations? What other analyses of both queueing and games can be applied to both or either profitably, entertainingly, randomly?

  • How do the rules, the etiquettes, the mores of being queued-up, of riding an elevator, of being stuck in a trafic jam, of dieting, inter-relate? Are these all just examples of different types of fluid dynamics, or communications theory?

  • Can fractal analysis be applied to all these areas, for any benefit?

  • Can the rules, strategies, mores, etiquettes, of these fields be embedded in cellular automata, or spreadsheets?

  • Can such multi-dimensional models be used to calculate the best strategies to employ in each of these areas?







Tuesday August 29th 2000, in Forestville.


Hmmm.  I should write a program that reads thru my SkeptiNews entries, extracts my comments, my questions, and saves all those into a file that'll end up being mostly couplets, use those as lyric material for songs, opera, whatever. They do look like poetry, don't they?  Use them as source material to feed into an automatic melody / harmony / rhythm generator, self-orchestrating music.  Something I've been thinking about for some years but never got around to (mumble). And that's the end.







 31 August 2000, Forest Hills, Forestville CA



Walking along past Fort Jones, a Civil War-style stockade with manned guard tower (all built to hide a vast trashpile) and reading about behaviourism, I get some strange ideas. Or are they so strange?







:WAR/GAME/NOTES:



If war is a game, what are the rules?  Basically, there ARE no rules.  There are goals and resources, there are strategies and tactics.  The strategies and tactics will depend on the resources and goals.  It may be useful to devise rules; it may be useful to abide by rules, at times.  But such rules are really a strategic element of the conflict.  This assumes that conflict is a two-or-more-player game, zero-sum, and the strategies employed by any one player would have the goal of winning, as it were, or converting the game to a non-zero-sum game, wherein all players can win or lose.


One strategy might be one favored by the Civil War general: "Get there the fustest with the mostest".  But such a move may only be appropriate in certain limited contexts.  At other times it may be desireable to get there the lastest with the leastest, depending on whether one's goal at the time is to prevail and win the conflict; to win or lose for various reasons; to out-maneuver or be out-maneuvered; to arouse psychological states in either the troops or the populations involved; or just to act randomly, unpredictably, to confuse the opposition.


But we COULD look at any conflict as a behaviour modification exercise, where any one player is attempting to modify the behaviour of other players for that first player's benefit. Thus the strategies in a conflict would involve reinforcements, rewards and punishments, applied to the other players, to induce them to relinquish whatever is the goal of your conflict.  Those reinforcements may be material and/or moral.  Operating on a moral / psychological / sociological plane, is most likely MUCH less expensive than operating on a physical plane.  I would suggest tat operation on a physical plane shows a lack of intelligence on the part of the player.  But if the player has invested in a large body of physical assets, they'll tend to use them -- if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  If you have a lot of troops, every conflict situation looks like something in which to send troops.


(Refer here to Byzantine strategies of conflict resolution -- see below.)


Now, physical resolution of a conflict may most likely be prompted if the goals are sufficient -- if the goals are NOT sufficient for physical violence, then the conflict is more likely to be carried out strictly on a verbal / psychological / social plane.  And here it's most advantageous to employ behavioural modification strategies.


Let's say that the conflict is political, between two factions.  One faction takes some action that generates a lot of criticism from other factions.  Looking at it from a behaviour mod standpoint, any response to those criticisms only reinforces the critics -- you're giving them a reward by paying attention to them.  So your best strategy is to ignore all criticism. One can take a multi-tiered approach here, where the topmost level, the leader, the candidate of the faction, may or may not do some criticizing him- or her-self, but NEVER responds to criticism.  Instead, flunkies and flacks, a couple layers down, emit all the responses, and in fact, emit the strongest criticism themselves.


If the goal of the political fight is to win popular acceptance and support, then it's useful to see what factors, what qualities, are most likely to gain that support, to have the highest level engage in strategies that maximize those qualities, and have lower levels engage in strategies that minimize the perception of those qualities in the opposition.  Ideally, you should try to provoke responses from your opposition, provoke behaviors, that minimize their appeal themselves.





BEHAVIOUR MOD

 My bad behaviour is REINFORCED 
 Everything I do is REINFORCED
 Love me or hate me, I'm REINFORCED
 Punishment, reward, it's all reinforcement
 Reinforced  Reinforced Reinforced
 DA-DA-da-da, DA-DA-da-da


The complete song is here.


A basic precept of behaviourism is that people, a person can be treated as a black box. You do not need to know what is happening inside that black box.  You merely need to know what inputs to provide to evice the desired outputs.  The thoughts, feelings, emotions, fantasies, dreams, whatever of the person, are irrelevant.  The 'meanings' of those interior processes are irrelevant.  The question then arises:  Can ANY Game system be similarly treated as a black box? Can any society?  Any network?  Any entity of animal behaviour be treated as a black box?




FOOTNOTE: Byzantine conflict-resolution strategies



ENGAGE OTHERS TO FIGHT ON YOUR BEHALF. This is traditionally the most effective means of misdirection. You have several methods for letting others do your difficult, dangerous, dirty work for you: 


    

  • Hire others: mercenaries are always available. 

  • Bribe others: a variant of the above - you may be able to reward officers of other entities for marshaling their own resources against your enemy. 

  • Intimidate others: another variant - you may be able to threaten others to force them to launch their own attacks against your enemy. 

  • Provoke others: this is the most subtle variant. Convince other entities that their interests will be served by taking action against your enemy, either because your enemy threatens them and they must act preemptively, or because they have much to gain in an attack. 



From: How to Wage War on the U.S.






Sunday 10th September 2000, Roseville California.  


Ending this tape on a very sad note.  Maureen's father died a few hours ago.  It's now 12:43, he died at 7:35 this morning.  He apparently fell yesterday and fractured his skull, never really regained consciousness, uh, died painlessly, a lot better than suffering under endless cancer treatments and the usual medical rigamarole he's been undergoing these last 14 years.  We're waiting at the hospital now for Maureen's sister Sharon and Fred to fly in, their plane should have landed just a few minutes ago, should be here at any time.  They don't know yet that he's dead, so Sharon will undoubtedly be gloriously ballistic for the first few minutes, I'm glad that Maureen will get to talk to her and deal with her, rather than I. (But *I* had to break the news!)  Um.  Well shit, gotta go.  Somehow I don't feel like composing any requium songs.





Volcano CA - 10 Sept 2000


After a death, what is reality? Continuance, respiration, justice? Too much anaesthetic? It's not like someone was shot. It's not like they were violently violated, languidly traumatized, devoured by alligators. A quick, clean death; a quick, clean wake, with fried prawns and house chablis and kid-jokes about frogs. We gather quickly, we mourn quickly, we make the expedient arrangements. It's family reunion time, maybe with some property disbursments (if appropriate), maybe with emotional disbursments, maybe with talk of our own problems. Maybe the death was expected, but not the circumstance; maybe the circumstance happens every day. Maybe the remembrance is fuelled with grease & protein & high-octane punch. Maybe the remembrance never stops. Maybe the continuation never stops either.





MidEast Peace Plan


How to solve the dilemma of Jerusalem, who controls Jerusalem:

    

  1. Kill all the Jews. Or,

  2. Kill all the Arabs, or at least all the Palestinians. Or,

  3. Nuke Jerusalem; then nobody can have it.  Or,

  4. Occupy Jerusalem with an international force and don't allow any Jews or Arabs, or Christians, inside.  Or,

  5. Forget about it and let'em fight it out.  Or,

  6. Kill'em all and let some deity sort'em out.








Things To Do



Forestville: 16? Oct 2000


Note what building materials would suitable for building instruments.  So, make a list* of materials to buy. Actually, right now I could start looking for bamboo.  Cleanup the office. Move the broken chairs downstairs up to the upper verandah, so I can build the computer downstairs.  Dig thru the piles of papers in the drawers downstairs, look for my old music notebooks, see if there's more songs from decades past that I can enter on the computer.  Dig up all of the song fragments that I have, both in my files and on this recorder, and work on those fragments. Start thinking up melodies for songs that don't have'em and record the songs so that I'll have demos...


Tune the cumbuses, practice on cumbus; dig out the music theory books, no not music theory, the guitar instruction books, and spend time every day, learning something new about guitar, learning, studying the jazz techniques and fingerpicking techniques and the like.


Work on song-cycles.  ASTROLOGY FOR SPASTICS; KAMA SUTRA: The Musical; VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES & MUMIES OH MY!  The Rules Of Living.  Seasonal and monthly song-cycle.  Songs of work & sex & politics & all the fun things of modern life. From my notebook: Politics, anarchy, S&M, Olympic/animal sex, nukes, cukes. Freedom from: want, fear; of speech, religion. Senses: hearing, touch, taste, sight, smell. Earth, air, fire, water. Scissors, rock, paper. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Spiders, snakes, birds, bees, flowers, trees.  Chess, checkers, pinball, other games. Vatican / Kremlin / Pentagon porn.


DESIRES: portastudio; handheld PC; comm scanner; bike radios; digital voice recorder*; navigator watch; any DSL; MP3 player*; PC surround sound; PC digital sound (optical PCMCIA). Effects.


Oh yeah, and a song-cycle, one I've been planning for years, based on melodies from WHO'S NEXT; in fact, maybe even other popular albums of my youth.  Steal/adapt the melodies and throw in my own words.  Rewrite SERGEANT PEPPER?  Nah.  Well, why not? WHY THE HELL NOT?!?!?


For guitar with zither, dulcimer, fretboards: pine molding, solid pine molding, a bit less than a dollar a foot at HomeBase for solid pine; primed pine is half that, but I don't like the paint; pieced-together pine is not very good; so, just the solid pine.  And angled molding will work on bass dulcimers etc.





23 October 2000, Forestville California


from Cecil Adams' THE STRAIGHT DOPE:


 "Please list in order the most preferred ways to kill a vampire...

To kill a vampire it is first necessary to determine its ethnic origin.  I regret that I cannot offer much useful information on how this might be accomplished, but I am sure you will think of something.  Next, locate the vampire's daytime whereabouts, e.e., its grave.  My vampire manual recommends placing 'a young lad who is innocent of girls,' such as Richard Simmons, atop a black virgin stallion, and leading the two through a likely graveyard.  If the horse refuses to pass a certain grave, you've hit paydirt, so to speak.  The telltale signs of a vampirous corpse are fluidity of the blood, lack of putrefecation, and flexibility of the limbs (we're talking about *corpses* now, mind you).  Finally, administer treatment as prescribed below:



Species      Country    Approved Method of Disposal
-------      -------    ---------------------------
Sampiro      Albania    Stake through heart
Nachtsehrer  Bavaria    Place coin in mouth, decapitate with ax
Ogoljen      Bohemia    Bury at crossroads
Krvoijac     Bulgaria   Chain to grave with wild roses
Kathakano    Crete      Boil head in vinegar
Brukulaco    Greece     Cut off and burn head
Vampir       Hungary    Stake through heart, nail through temples
Dearg-dul    Ireland    Pile stones on grave
Vryolakas    Macedonia  Pour boiling oil on, drive nail through navel
Upier        Poland     Bury face downwards
Gierach      Prussia    Put poppy seeds in grave
Strigoiul    Rumania    Remove heart, cut in two; garlic in mouth,
                         nail in head
Vlkoslak     Serbia     Cut off toes, drive nail through neck
Neuntoter    Saxony     Lemon in mouth
Vampiro      Spain      No known remedy



I realize the above will not be much use in the case of a Third World vampire, but you cannot have everything.  Incidentally, we will have none of this 'preferred way' business.  There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  Take some pride in your work."


 - - - - - - - - - - 


Write a song about all the various names for vampires in different cultures and how those cultures think they can kill'em.  LET'S KILL THE VAMPIRE -- I guess that'll go along with LET'S STOMP THE WEREWOLF.  Make lists of paranormal creatures, look thru the Encyclopedia of the Occult and other sources, and write songs about'em.  Write about minor deities, too.  Look thru THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, find minor gods & goddesses & spirits, use their names in songs.


(See my Paranormal Entities pages.)


Look in Zee Budapest's & Starhawk's books on The Goddess, look at their chants and prayers to The Goddess, and rewrite those as songs.  Look at astrology columnists, take 2 irrelevant/irreverant astrology columnists' writings for the same week and merge their texts for each sign, and write a song or 3] for each sign.  Research Wicca and... hold that thought...





25 October 2000, Fulton California


Research specific saints & demons & angels and do song's about them.  Do songs about the holy calendar.  Do songs about holy sites, holy geography, a  holy real estate guide.  Do song-cycles on all these.  Song-cycles about dream themes -- check a list of Jungian archetypes and Reichian psychic themes and do songs about each one...


Stuff for men: www.stuffmagazine.com -- current issue: BUILD YOUR OWN SEX BOMB! Turn Any Good Girl Bad In 13 1/2 Minutes... GEAR OF THE YEAR: The Best Gadgets, Gizmos And Other Electronic DooDads...  THE HUMAN HEAD TRANSPLANT: It's Closer Than You Think, Much Closer...  SLEEP WITH HER SISTER And 15 Other Ways To Get Over Your Ex... et cetera...  (note: lame, ad-ridden site)







Sebastopol, 25 October 2000



[from my notebook - DESIGN IDEAS:

AUDIO APPLIANCE:
- Bluetooth/wireless PC link (and/or FireWire) (as just
  another drive) (local storage can contain any file format) 
- digital/optical I/O
- record/playback any standard audio format - configurable
- (auto-level) mic/line in - line/ear out
- built-in binaural mics (on extensible booms?)
- record overdubs/mixdowns (with linked portamixer module?)
- record off-the-air from linked radio appliance module
- (multi)track join/split/loop/copy/overlay/undo edits
- DSP: effects, modeling, complet manipulation - Vtracks
- programmable tuner; metronome; bass/drum/harmony generators

RADIO APPLIANCE:
- Bluetooth/wireless PC link (and/or FireWire) (as just
  another drive) (local storage can contain any file format) -
  digital/optical I/O
- AM/FM/SSB/CW/TV, all-mode, wide-band reception
- multistandard cellphone - CB/FRS/etc walky-talky & modem
- local record/squirt/crypto transception


Addendum to design ideas on portable audio device - it should have a mixer of course, and digital signal processing for effects, modeling, complete digital manipulation of the recorded signal, and multiple virtual tracks for storing material for mixdowns, just like the Zoom palmtop studio I read about, yup...


[See my AUDIO APPLIANCE DESIGN NOTES for an expansion of these ideas.]


(some notes/songs lost when DLINK DMP-100 spontaneously reformatted - shit shit shit)


Check the web for biofeedback monitors, see if anyone's selling one inexpensively, and if there are any ratings.  See if the American Psychological Association, and especially its journal, have websites - check those websites [mumble] for 'behavior modification', 'operant conditioning', B.F. Skinner, see what pops up, see what the current state of the art in such conditioning is, see if there's still active research, see what the current consensus of the psychological establishment is.







7 December 2000 - Pearl Harbor Day, but who notices?


WHAT WOULD YOU DO?   What would Jesus do? What would Buddha do? What would Kali do? What would Dracula do? What would Cleopatra do? [cite link to sex text] What would Madonna do? What would the Unabomber do?


Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was known for his violent hatred of modern social systems, commercial systems,  technical civilization. In these straightened and confusing times, we can use him as a moral guidepost.


Q: Dear Ted, I'm having trouble with my significant other. What would the Unabomber do?

A: Blow'em up.

Q: Dear Ted, I'm having difficulties with my job. What would the Unabomber do?

A: Blow'em up.

Q: Dear Ted, I'm having trouble reconciling the conflicting demands of my family, and my friends, and my religious leaders. What would the Unabomber do?

A: Blow'em up.

Q: Dear Ted, my girlfriend and her boyfriend want me to join them in an erotic triangle. Is this right? What would the Unabomber do?

A: Blow'em up.

Q: Dear Ted, I have a particularly nasty infestation of crablice and headlice. What would the Unabomber do?

A: Heh-heh-heh. Blow'em up.



What would Buddha do? Meditate on the seven-fold path and strive for calm and perfection.

What would Cleopatra do? Fellate'em. (Link that question to the item in WIDE WORLD OF SEX about Cleo as 'The Gaper'.)

What would Dracula do? Suck'em dry.

What would Frankenstein do? Experiment on'em.

What would Atilla do? Devastate the countryside.


OK, structure that as a webpage, call it WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO (click here, include sections on the Unabomber, Dracula etc, and links to stories on Cleopatra and Madonna et al.


What would Nixon do? What would Dubya do?  And for those, take collections of quotes from the fellas, has those as responses to questions. Could even expand that to 'What would Clinton do?' and 'What would Reagan do?'


For 'What would Dracula do?' have bits of dialogue from the Dracula plays and movie.
What would Groucho do? Look for Groucho Marx quotes.


Look for copies of scripts online or in books from Dracula, Frankenstein, Conan, Wolfman, etcetera. What would [the] Terminator do? What would Lassie do? What would Scoobie Doo?





















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