Necessity is the mother...

 ... of invention. Right?

I've long thought of it as the mother of creativity. Sometimes, at least.

I'm all about creativity. To me there's no other point to life or to being human. But being creative doesn't mean that your imagination produces things out of nowhere. A mind does not just come up with random material. It thinks up things for reasons whether you can follow the causality or not.

Many times I know I need to add elements to a story but my mind is blank. What to add? Nothing occurs to me. But there's a very useful engine for creative imagining and its when there is a problem to solve.

I needed to work on a novel a decade or so ago and did not have a concept in the bag. I did have many short story ideas clamouring for attention though. So I picked three compelling ones; three simple premises I had previously come up with and listed them on the page. Three ideas. And then I said "How to bring these together into one novel?" I logically worked at the problem and what was born was probably my most excellent novel outline I have ever managed: The Transneptunians was the working title. That word, by the way, refers to any astronomical member of this star system which exists beyond the orbit of Neptune. 

I have never finished the first draft because it is still lacking a thing or two. It was about the lives and relationships of a father and daughter who never knew each other beyond the girl's toddlerhood. Every other chapter revealed the father's life from his own childhood until the defining life-changing event in his prime adulthood. And every other chapter revealed his life in reverse, from death, backwards in time, as learned by the daughter who researched his life by seeking those who knew him, as she was compelled to understand what appeared to be a tragic life after learning her biological father had died. At the end of the book the two timelines meet and the truth is revealed. The title comes from a cosmic idea concerning the process of his death, but also concerns the relationship; father and daughter whose lives revolve around each other without them meeting, like Pluto and Charon, once considered planet and moon, which revolve around each other without ever touching.

The first youth writing club I facilitated in my school volunteer days; they wanted to co-write a novel; the most ambitious option I presented to them. I had them each create their own character and their own simple story about their own character, so they could each be writing separately at home on their own early chapters of the book. My promise to them was that once we had each character on the move; their problems and pursuits rolling along, we would then figure out how to bring them all together; how to get every character into the same space in a situation; an event; that would bring about their defining moments; the climax of the novel.

Two problems: 1. They were not working fast enough as the school year swiftly ran dry. And 2. They didn't trust my promise that their seemingly unrelated stories could possible come together. And this eroded their enthusiasm without my knowledge. By the time I realized what was going on it was getting too late. I knew with certainty that we would have been able to bring it all together. And the seemingly unbridgeable distance we'd have needed to close; the apparent stretch of it, was exactly the reason I knew it could be done and be excellent. The great necessity would have been the mother of great creativity. It's too bad perhaps, that I was not more determined and didn't push harder, and didn't find a way to show them and convince them.

As I work daily on getting my new business to the launch state, I will be leaning heavily on the concept. Have I mentioned I'm going into the Dungeons & Dragons hosting business? There is a boom in D&D playing and a shortage of dungeon masters which has spawned a nascent industry: DMing for cash. I'm working on a whole new set of rulebooks; a best-practices formula which considers all previous versions of D&D resources and my own innovations; a very considerable collection of improvements. My goals are big and doable: the ultimate D&D experiences for my clients. Fun, challenging, compelling. Campaigns that are fully immersive; not glorified obstacle courses. Not a formula for player characters to fit into my story, but a fully prepared 360-degree world with possible adventures, resources, allies, opportunities and clues in every direction, where players determine their own objectives and are the prime movers in an evolving story which I discover at the same time they do. It demands a ton of preparation but I am very well-positioned for that. I've been collecting ideas and story concepts and creative elements for a long time. I have over 4000 names in my personal fantasy-themed name collection for instance.

Now, anyone could make the same claim by simply subscribing to an online resource. But it's not the same. Mine are all gold. Mine were all created or acquired within the context of my worlds. They all work. They all will resonate and not seem random. This is one example of a great many that are going to make my product fucking kick-ass.

And whatever gaps in my resources come to apparency through this evolving process: they will be created marvelously... out of necessity.

Back to work... 

Let's be brief

So much to talk about I suppose but still I'm in no hurry. Let's start at the bottom tier for today and then see what tomorrow brings:

The... League of Slither. Nope. The... Professional Schizoid Slither League. Yeah that's better. Here's a random profile of the day:

This is Bluebird Sausage. He's the newest member of the tour, finishing 30th of 31 entrants in his first pro competition; the prestigious Gotham City Tourney earlier this month. A very tough venue to start a career at, and this week, his second appearance, it gets no easier with another Grand Slam event, the Torneo Strangiato. After two rounds he sits in 18th spot. With just a little more improvement he could finish in the money. 

Speculation around Bluebird being a blood-relative of tour-favourite Earlybird Pancake (now sitting fourth at Strangiato) does not fly. They've never even met until this week.

Kiss Me You Tool and Mister Squishy are the surprise leaders at the mid-way break in Macedonia with a stunning 4K lead over the rest of the field! 

And that's it for all the sports news that matters. Everything else is baloney. Good luck in your two final rounds in Macedonia Blue!

Mindcrack

MINDCRACK: another term for Minecraft; a game addictive to the brain; the hyper-real lego game where the blocks come with their own reliable chemistry and physical properties so that you can combine them into new blocks. For instance, you mine stone and build a furnace. Mine coal and iron ore and produce iron ingots in the furnace. With iron and other materials you can build armor, weapons and tools... You can build practically anything. Someone built a working computer in Minecraft although in game scale it was probably the size of Belgium.

What makes the game work so well is that this basic model of Earth, equipped with minerals, plants and life forms is so logistically generous you can build large complex things in no time. Most flora grows from seed to maturity in a (ten-minute) day. You can move any object instantly and effortlessly and carry enormous miniaturized inventories, and most transformations (recipes) are instant just by adding the right components to your workbench (called a crafting table) or loom, anvil or other such facility.

Teens tend to play the game for the community factor. They can be a sentient adult, easily form a profitable business (or two or more) and start buying, selling and pursuing the largest bank account.

I play because it's a wonderland of creativity and in terms of community its an opportunity to more easily live out your dreams than in the (ultra-fake) real world!

Question M: If MARS were inhabitable would you accept a one-way ticket?

Quite possibly. It would depend on more criteria then we want to get into today.

Dr. Pi: parrot therapy

Jobvious

JOBVIOUS: This is where you need income but can't figure out what to do and then it turns out that your favourite hobby has become a marketable talent and people are trying to hire folks with your experience and having trouble finding available providers but somehow you don't know what you should do.

Case in point: I love to Dungeon Master D&D games and consider myself pretty advanced at it. Almost unbelievingly, it turns out that while the participation rates of D&D players is growing the number of willing DM's is not keeping up, and yes, people are paying well for DM service! And yet I feel reluctant to look into this as an income opportunity. Why not, you ask? I don't even know.

Question J: What JUNK food item could you eat every day?

Easy: a large Dairy Queen blizzard: the cookie dough variety with add-on Reeces PB cups. I've never ordered any other kind for twenty-five years and I remember being tickled to see Jack Nicholson's character order the exact same concoction in the quirky entertaining film About Schmidt, where one of his other special treats was getting to see Kathy Bates stark naked!

Benko

Benko: The Benko Cup is the trophy awarded annually to the playoffs champion of the Strat-o-matic Hockey League of which I was a member for about twelve years. I made it to the finals four times, was statistically the favorite to win every time and didn't finally win until the fourth time.

I miss my Strat-o buddies. I have kept in touch with them, showed up to hang out every now and then on league nights and participated muchly in their off-season board-gaming nights, which have been Covid-curtailed of course.

Benko is the surname of the man who originally introduce the league's founders to the strat-o-matic game back in their university days. I never met him.

Dungeons and Dragons is the "Strat-o-matic" of fantasy role-playing and I have added Benko to my DnD names database. This means that a non-player character might be assigned that name at some point in my campaign-building endeavors. At this time I am not building a campaign per se but I am building and collecting tools for such. I'm looking forward to playing again; possibly online.

Question B: Favourite BOOK ever read

I really want to say Siddhartha because I think it was the deepest most meaningful connection ever made but really, instinctively, it was the genesis of Dungeons and Dragons in my interpretation, both personally, and societally: The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) which thrills me the most. 

Covid19 Survival Guide: Page 11

For those times when you just can't bring yourself to be productive, or to engage in a creative project: Twenty links with excellent distraction power. Don't wait. Add them to your bookmarks at once! 

http://drawing.garden/

https://alwaysjudgeabookbyitscover.com/

http://www.omfgdogs.com/#

https://www.mapcrunch.com/

https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/#

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

http://whitetrash.nl

http://www.stuffonmycat.com

http://simonpanrucker.com

http://www.omglasergunspewpewpew.com/

https://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

https://neave.com/

http://www.patience-is-a-virtue.org/

Bad Lip Reading

https://www.boredpanda.com/

https://theoatmeal.com/

https://asoftmurmur.com/

http://theonion.com

https://www.ted.com/

and finally:

https://theuselessweb.com/

... for a random useless web site.

There, Here & Everywhere

Hey hey, it’s T-day, ready or not. I am tired and trippy and trapped on the night shift, to be followed by much sleep I pray, so there is no putting this off. I will type a tiny tumble of text and let you get on with your day!

Today’s topic is thrown to us by the tidy, talented, talkative, tasteful, tactful and tactical; the tireless, tenacious, trustworthy and true, and a tad tubby; the thorough-thinking Thoughtful Educator, and it is:

Turtles

With tin can in hand I attended Poetry Corner. Such a fine variety of creative projects were shared, and then my turn: I held the orange-striped tin before me.

“I am going to creatively eat this entire box of turtles,” I said. The crowd seemed nonplussed. My god I think they believe me.

“Just kidding.” I popped off the lid and revealed 192 colorful cards inside; no chocolate caramel pecan funny-business. I explained the game I had invented. Here There & Everywhere it’s called. And there is a card for every Beatles song on every Beatles studio album.

Some of the cards are special: hero, place or widget cards, which reflect the nature of those special song titles. The hero cards have unique special privileges: Mean Mr. Mustard, Lovely Rita, Eleanor Rigby and Polythene Pam for instance. The widget cards have special powers: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer for instance. And the place cards (how lucky that the numbers of total cards and of place cards worked out so perfect) randomly placed, form the diamond-shaped array on which all other cards are stacked, in essence forming the game board.

Its a bit like the game of Concentration where you are turning up cards looking for the ones you want, but you win by collecting all the cards (songs) which complete one of their albums.

There are a few interesting parameters but that’s the gist of it. I would just like to find a way to make the game conclude a bit faster without changing its nature too much. The group was actually useful in making a few suggestions which I have written down for later perusal. I just might Get By With a Little Help From My Friends…

On tour

Hey-O folks. I’m getting an early jump on “O” day finally, where my organized, orderly, observant, openhearted, owlish but not overly-owlish occasional writing buddy, the Outlier, has offered this for our consideration:

Opportunity

I earlier A-to-Z’ed (that’s a verb right?) on the subject of board games and my own creative endeavors and here I shall briefly outline another category which is… unexpected opportunities:

Of the board games entirely my own conception, two have accidentally become market-relevant. I originally had no intention to sell anything. I just wanted to add to the fun within the realms of my various board gaming circles. But these games I’m working on do seem to potentially fill a gap in the commercial gaming landscape out there. Their working titles are Prestige and World Tour. They are both - how shall I say - career macro games.

In the first you build a career as a fantasy adventurer of a chosen class. You contribute to the building of a map of the realm, you place campaign sites, claim (unique) campaigns (as you collect the needed qualifications), complete them and reap the rewards, and possibly take some losses in the endeavor. It is sort of a deck-building game with resource management. You collect treasures, magic, wealth, allies, (tax-paying) followers, and a stronghold which all act as assets to avail campaigns of higher demand, risk and reward. It is Dungeons and Dragons at the extreme macro level. You win by gaining the most prestige.

The second is a little bit like… all of Rock Band in a session: You acquire creative ideas, produce songs and albums and go on tour and the cycle repeats with the stakes increasing. Producing albums generates income and fans. Fans avail greater, more-lucrative venues. Touring produces income and “ideas” or “inspiration” which you later convert into songs. Money lets you invest in larger tours. You win by hitting a target fan count. An interesting component is the way that you pass the turn marker as you begin your turn and then carry on working independently until your turn is done and the marker returns to you. You share your results, announce your next intention and then pass the torch and carry on again. This way multiple players may be engaged in their turns at once.

I feel that the first one, Prestige most definitely belongs in the market place. I’ve told a few big-time gamers about it and they seemed quite intrigued.

We’ll see.

Get this Monopoly game over with!

Uh oh… running late. It’s four in the morning but I’m gonna call it Wednesday night!

The grounded, gracious, good-natured, green thumbed, friend of the biosphere; the Green Lady; Earth Writer has given us the good word and it is…

Games

I guess she wanted to go easy on me. I have a gargantuan heap of material on this subject. One of my premier hobbies is building board games. Many are variants of games already out there. Many are my own inventions. A couple are straight up rip-offs where it’s more affordable to produce my own version than to buy the product. That said, I do purchase games as often as I reasonably can. Their makers deserve their income but my personal game appetite far exceeds my budget.

My 30 or 40 creations tend to fall into a few different categories and I shall succinctly reveal one interesting category tonight and perhaps another later in A-to-Z month.

This category is the modernized version. There are old time board games out there which still have much to offer but bear badly outdated, undesired components by today’s high standards. The copyright holders have no impetus to replace their classic products and no one else has the legal permission to.

I however, don’t need to give a shit about the legal realm because I’m not selling anything. Some examples (the titles are working titles):

Masterpiece Pro

The old art auctioning game. The dynamics here are very flat and random and yet the game was popular and might still be?

In my version each player is both artist and collector and earns income buying and selling. You actually create little works of art which can be perfectly rudimentary and which are added to the game permanently so that the realm of possibilities grows the more times you play the game. There are specific game-bot collectors and galleries which come into the fold and affect the value of different pieces. The dynamics around value evolve from a combination of random factors and strategy.

Clue Millenium

Gone are the goofy rolls for movement. Each room is only one space away from its neighbours but the layout of the rooms and door placements makes every room slightly unique. There are nine suspects and nine weapons now. What? That will make the game too long! No, I don’t think so. The clue-gathering will happen much faster for a few reasons. I may include a strategy guide and advance “logic charts” which show the less experienced player how to more quickly isolate the secret cards.

Each character has their own unique combination of movement rate, number of starting clue cards and weapon status. Some players have to grab weapons on their way to their destination in order to call on it while others have the power to summon weapons to their current location. Thus there are three factors with each combination intended to sum up to equal overall advantage. So you choose your avatar based on the strategies you prefer.

Monopoly Village

No bartering or bargaining. No waiting forever to start building properties. This version will never be dragged out a long time.

There are villagers of various professions who gradually enter the game and are dragged about the board, sometimes helping, sometimes harming, the players who encounter them. There are many new dynamics. For instance, some hotel builds actually manifest institutions instead, which have their specific effects on those spaces. It’s a very different and fast-paced game.

Oh and when you are eliminated from the game: You may if you wish, return as a zombie! The zombies can not win the game but they can help to end it more quickly by killing off or converting the other players, so that you can more quickly move on to the next game at game night!

I’m looking forward to completing these “prototypes” and convincing pals to play-test them.

Bye for now!

False start: Day 1

Here’s a little suggestion for the few of you who still come peeking around here now and then: If you’re home from work now or otherwise diminished from the COVID19 business, keep a little isolation diary. It’s a healthy pursuit for different reasons, and a chance it will help you learn from the experience by facilitating reflection. Solitude is critical to real learning.

The virus has stormed into my life like Ganesh and bulldozed nearly everything in sight:

My security shifts
Circle meetings
Dismas gatherings
“Poetry Corner”
Write-Ins
Movie Club
Regular visits with Gramps and the Flaming Liberal
“Tigers” training camp
Scheduling and preparation of video shoots and Trivia Night fund-raisers
Sponsorship endeavors
Family gatherings
A paycheque...

Oddly my cell phone has been simultaneously knocked out of commission which prohibits still other activities!

It has not bulldozed:

Work on the kids easy-reader storybook.
Work on the Crazy Legs race horse novel
Blogs (I have another anonymous blog)
A ton of other writing and research projects
Work on Tigers web site, social media, articles, research etc.
Prep for April A-to-Z, Camp NaNo and Story-A-Day-In-May
Reading
A plethora of video pieces and board game projects
Bedroom restructuring
Sleep improvement project
Diet change
Exercise (no pools though)
Several other self-improvement endeavors…

Somehow it has forgotten to knock out Mindcrack and the youtubes. Day-one I did too much of these things. My only productivity was in correspondence and failed attempts to fix the cell-o-phone.

Perhaps it is up to me to manage the distractions and diversions and to make use of this golden opportunity to put some of my life back on the rails.

And I wonder… I dare to wonder… could solitary confinement be part of the answer that allows me to re-engage spiritually again; to value people again; to retreat from some of this contempt, back toward pity, back toward love. I know the wisdom of it. I have not forgotten.

Absence has made the heart grow fonder before.

C is for Combustion

LTC (Long Time Companion) does not cook much, and in his improved state of health he has been working very hard at renovations to his former rental house he intends to sell (or maybe rent out again?). The kitchen at his home-home has become more of a construction office. And it was there that he unloaded an armful of boxed light-fixtures onto the stove top.

Later he fed his dogs their meds encased in cheese and left the wrapper beside the stove top. It's a gas stove. Some of you may already see where this is going.

He left the house. One or both dogs would have immediately went for the cheese wrapper. Whether they succeeded or not they did succeed in knocking a stove dial into the on range.

The boxes would have gone up in flames immediately; kitchen cupboards soon following.

When it was done the house looked like something from a horror movie. I tried not to look in any direction I didn’t have to but I had to see where I was going. The flames had been contained to the first floor but the smoke was devastating at level two. Sadly the four-year-old dobie was terrified of the smoke alarm and had fled to that second floor. The younger dog was very clever; went to the only open window (cracked about 4 inches), stuck her nose through and survived. God knows what went through her mind.

LTC got a phone call and rushed home to find firemen working on the poor boy-dog, with oxygen mask and CPR. They couldn’t save him.

LTC is doing very well, all things considered. Some of his friends have reached out to me for updates and advice. I have suggested we try to keep him a little busy over the next six to eight months, while he lives at the rental with the surviving pup. Distraction is his best coping tool and it is too late in life I think, given his particular hurdles, to try to teach him other ways.

So a week after the fire we got together for a game night with some of his finest pals at the home of Uncensored Family where teens, mom, ex-boyfriend, grandma, LTC and myself had a good time with my Red Herring game - and not the family-friendly edition either. We aim to make a monthly habit of it.

Love you Halo.

Skyward

Nadajingen Tasm, known simply as “Nadji” by all associates, was raised by single mother Gardina Tasm in the port city of Memoch on planet Karadras of the Sol Cluster. This was formerly a town known primarily for the Federated Core Systems (FCS) military outpost it supported but in just a decade had burgeoned into a mining and prospecting city following reports of major Hecatyz presence in the surrounding region; prospects which have yet to fully live up to their billing.

Gardina and Nadajingen lived in the absence of a father or other relatives except for an Aunt Allie and Uncle Merc who lived “in the country”; a tiny village called Nightshade to which Nadji had never been. His absent father was “just some miner” he’d been told. Gardina refused to elaborate.

His aunt and uncle always made a great fuss over him on their visits which became less and less frequent with time. Aunt Allie always departed with a tear in her eye.

In early childhood Nadji made two friends he was fond of, both human but his mother was fast to reprimand him and insist that he only associate with other Hjalme. He was expected to be polite with all aliens but never to get involved with them.

When he tried to maintain their friendship in secret, Gardina found out about these transgressions immediately and he was severely disciplined on each occasion and before long these friendships were severed.

Nadji harboured two secret desires: to become an off-world explorer (and as such to join a prestigious local scouting academy affiliated with the military base) and secondly: to find out his father’s identity. He spoke of these desires only to his best friend, a Hjalme boy naturally, named Titov, but at once Gardina found out and firmly cautioned him against these ideas. Nadji was angry with Titov for revealing his secrets which Titov firmly denied doing. There was a spat and a cold period but their friendship recovered.

Nadji constantly researched other planets; especially the early exploration and development of new worlds. Where these pursuits turned up in school curricula he scored fantastic marks but he did poorly in most other academic areas which he found boring.

Gardina had almost no social life outside of the visits from Merc and Allie. She worked part time in a munitions factory and doted on Nadji with a love which seemed more severe and intentional than in typical highly-emotionalized Hjalme mother-child relations.

Nadji was shocked when he was invited to apply, and further, was accepted, at the local FCS Scouting Academy. He’d been certain he lacked the grades, and Gardina the money, for this to be possible, and that his race, despite its significant prevalence in Memoch and urban Karadras generally, might be a hurdle in the eyes of FCS officials. And yet he was accepted. There he befriended another human and insisted they keep quiet about their bond and at once Gardina found out and objected. To Nadji, her powers of information gathering were becoming almost alarming.

Nadji’s grades improved at the academy as his interests and knack for research widened in scope.

When the news reported the disappearance of radical Hjalme religious leader Alhoya Alcana, Nagji delved deep into the story, employing standard news sources as well as underground channels which he’d developed a knack for infiltrating. He learned a number of interesting things:

l The extreme nature of Alcana’s quasi-religion which was claimed by some to possess a partially secretive agenda proclaiming that only one intelligent race must exist in the universe; that race being Hjalme.

l Another Hjalme disappearance occurred on the same day: that of an underground militia leader known as “the Skuggharon.”  

l Claims that the Skuggharon’s real name was Mercerodat Alcana, that he and Alhoya were formerly married, and that they’d produced a son named Largo Alcana whose whereabouts has never been known.

l Claims that the Starlight Brigade, whose presence on Karadras had grown significantly in the last two years, were behind these two coordinated abductions.

Upon studying images of Alhoya Alcana, Nadji was haunted: She looked so much like his aunt Allie they could be the same person.

Nadji slipped away from the academy and returned home where Gardina cited contagious illness and would not leave her bedroom for two days, demanding she be left alone. Nadji, through the bedroom door, insisted he was worried about her and insisted they get help for her. “Let us call Aunt and Uncle,” he said, carefully playing his cards. “If you will not tell me how to reach them I will find out myself!”

She replied that Allie and Merc had only been friends and they’d lost touch, and that the titles “aunt” and “uncle” had merely been a show of respect.

Further investigative research revealed that Gardina was not employed at the munitions factory and that she and himself only existed in local records but neither of their identities existed at higher governmental levels. And as for Allie and Merc, there was no village in Karadras known officially or colloquially as Nightshade.

One week before graduation Nadji, armed with the skills they’d taught him, fled the academy and confronted the woman who raised him: “Am I Largo Alcana?” he said. “Son of Alhoya and Mercerodat?” She displayed incredulity; claimed this to be nonsense. “Then I will see you again one day, Mother, and I hope you will tell me the truth.”

Nadji packed his bags and went to work with Titov who had dropped out of the academy earlier and now performed scouting services by private contract. Their client, he soon learned, were a branch of Waller’s Pirates and Titov was an official member.

Nadji worked for Titov casually in a specialized form of piracy: the locating and acquisition of rare materials from remote environments, until the time came to confirm his own membership in the band, but there, armed with experience and a growing list of contacts, he broke out on his own, with the goal of becoming an elite independent provider of information and rare objects.

His most important contact was a dealer by the name of Cyril Ozzyter who brought him into the Black Market fold and eventually introduced him to Lionel Lomax, adviser to a prestigious underworld family, who hired Nadji on recommendation, was impressed with his work, and opened up to him a wider, more lucrative field of clients.

And there the adventure begins!

I've been charged to create a character for the "Skyward" RPG campaign my pal will soon be running. It takes place in the future obviously. Our "Dungeons & Dragons" group is expanding; my D&D "Minerva" campaign will run concurrently with this one. I will be the Dungeon Master for some sessions and a player for others. I look forward to this variety and to seeing one of my young gang engage in the art of game mastering! 

Red Herring!

So here is the game board for the game I’m just finishing up. It’s called Red Herring and it’s going to be awesome! Much fun I’m sure.

The images are from my collection of 700+ cartoons I drew over a two-year period playing Eat Poop U Cat online. They just provide colour basically and generally fit the theme. It should have occurred to me years ago to make use of these now-orphaned cartoons in some of the games I make. Given the weirdness of the cartoons, generally, I could easily put together a Dixit adaptation.

The board is simply a scoring track which the players (from 3 to 12) will move their tokens along. The large central-ish panel is just the right amount of space to hold the THING cards, the Red Herring cards, the LOLnuts and Fish Chips. In hindsight I should have left space between the scoring paths instead of just a thicker black line. It would have looked clearer that way. I continue to learn from mistakes.

Production came together quickly considering I had to brainstorm 200 question cards (such as “What’s locked in your basement?” or “What did you go back in time to capture?”) and 200 red herring cards (such as “Satan” or “My achy breaky heart” or “Cream of Sum Yung Guy”). Luckily I have a head flooded with trivial nonsense (and the odd nugget of brilliance!).

I’m eager to test it.

The game I mean; not the brilliance.

Mindcrack Diaries

Recreating the necessary equipmemt here at Fortress Mountain is too daunting. I have not enough obsidian to build a portal to the Nether; the Hell dimension to fetch the necessary blazing substance. Fetching the brewing stand and supplies for transport here would put the potentially-unique brewing stand at too much risk. I'm faced with the third option: return to Castle Minerva and prepare the potions and golden fruit there, and deliver them all here. That too runs huge risks. It is a valuable cargo to cart through the wilderness, but not as hard to replace as the brewing stand, and so this is what I must do. 

And so I depart soon, intending to follow the compass and mark the route with landmarks to such degree I can, and building hideaways and bunkies to revisit for nightly refuge during my return. And I must play it safe and  stay out of the dark and travel only by day. As for my newest treasures: Are these artifacts safer left here in the village or off shore in the Sea Hut?

Or on my person for the trek home? I've fenced the village off and lit it well. Logically they should be left here I think, though I have already packed them to go.

Mindcrack Diaries

I now have seven zombies trapped; imprisoned; all of the formerly-human variety (if human is the right word for the civilians who inhabit this earth-like planet). I have prepared a tiny village for them. There are no established villages nearby; neither to accommodate them nor to seed the city I envision: Hulk City. Perhaps the first city this planet will see?

I cannot cure them without the appropriate potions etcetera, which I am equipped to manufacturer at Castle Minerva; my home-in-progress which is so far away that I got lost trying to find it when returning from this region after my recent, inaugural visit, and lost again trying to find my way back here. Mind you on this occasion, I expect to retain my compass. It always guides me to Castle Minerva, or rather to Genustown specifically, which is just down the road from my ambitious castle project, via Toad's Corners, Sandtrap Pool and Steve's Lagoon.

I am deeply intrigued

Ninety minutes ago I scanned the Netflix menu and chose the documentary AlphaGo; an odd choice, because it didn’t immediately smack of a useful educational opportunity nor a good inspirational one. I chose it short-sightedly because it had something to do with board gaming apparently, which might be quite pleasurable, and having been very sick lately and thus, per my usual M-O, self-entitled, I felt I deserved a cheap entertainment.

Well.

I was in for a surprise.

It was a simple documentary put forth by the programmers of AlphaGo, an AI computer system designed to play the game Go which is ancient; the oldest continually-played board game on the planet and probably the most profound given the incredible simplicity of the dynamics versus the near-endlessness of the actual possibilities. The game, essentially impossible to master, is huge (as chess is to Russia) in places like China and Korea.

The AI team put their creation up against a human opponent who would later go on to win the European Go championship, and to the human professional’s tremendous shock, it defeated him five games to zero.

The machine team then arranged a battle against the reigning champion of the world, Lee Sedol of Korea. The match was massively publicized and densely covered by the press. It was seen as the most important test to date for the human mind to prove itself against the spectre of artificial intelligence. It should be mentioned that the common theory had been that AI was still about ten years away from becoming worthy of the best human opponents.

Sedol stated that he had played many games for himself and many for his country and now he felt that he was playing on behalf of humanity.

The results were interesting to say the least.

Sedol who assured all from the outset he would win five-zero, was immediately surprised by many of the computer’s moves, and the programmers, who gathered in a separate space watching many of the background computer processes on a myriad of monitors, were also often surprised. The program, after all, had been continuing to study and improve, daily, since the previous tournament. It becomes a new beast every day.

The machine won the first two games; a painful shock to all but the programmers. Sedol it seems, never once got into the groove of playing “his own game” but seemed always to be trying to crack the code of his digital opponent; to discover it’s weakness, and couldn’t.

In the pivotal match three of the five-match series (over the course of a week I’m guessing) Sedol became desperate and aggressive and lost worse than ever. The programmers, with victory assured, were happy for themselves and for the achievement, but seemed very sad at the same time, empathizing with their human opponent and his society, and perhaps with all humanity.

Game four: Now here’s where things get… sort of epic.

Having tournament defeat assured, Sedol became more relaxed. There was now less on the line. Meanwhile the computer perceived no concept of a tournament. Each match carried the same imperative: to win; simply… to win. And the game slowly turned against Lee Sedol yet again.  

Then AlphaGo played a tremendously “slack” move; a move that would appear “lazy” had a human played it. The experts, the commentators, the programmers, no one could figure out how the move could possibly be useful. The broadcasters literally doubled over in laughter. There was either a downright computer glitch or something was happening beyond the comprehension of the most qualified human intelligence present.

The tables turned and Sedol gained momentum. AlphaGo seemed not to be paying quite enough attention, allowing it’s winning margin to steadily shrink.

Sedol managed to win the game and to a joyous fanfare at the venue and in the streets, but he went on to lose the tournament four games to one.

There had been other somewhat slack moves by the machine and in the end what the programmers came to realize, was that the AI had a much different approach to winning then humans do in almost any sport or point-scoring competition: The AI gained no comfort from running up the score. It only needed to win by one point or more. It did not gauge it’s grasp on victory by how far ahead it got, but only by how much it felt assured of getting that one extra point by the end..

This is a fundamentally different dynamic. This is why people continually found it so hard to relate to the computer’s moves.

Here is where I get very intrigued:

The computer’s objective was only to survive and not to dominate.

This is profound.

Because humans, by my accounting, can never seem to grasp the difference. Academically, sure, but it doesn’t filter into our behavior. People don’t want to know how much a slave we are to survival instinct. It is not pleasant to contemplate. If I wanted to, I could study any number of people anywhere and postulate how in each and every case, every thing everyone is saying and doing is mapped to simple survival instinct and how their impressions of conscious control are illusions.

(If you know me in real life you must understand: I do not ever do this with my friends. I have no need or desire whatsoever to turn my friends inside out. I cherish them and they are pure to me.)

This is of critical relevance because survival instinct is not well named. Functionally it is domination instinct more than survival instinct because we have evolved no thermostat in essence, and as such, in the hands of humans, survival instinct ultimately works against survival. This is at the core of human duplicity. The ramifications are too immense to treat in this space. Domination instinct makes an opponent of all other life. And when we succeed at dominating all other life; the biosphere in essence, then we simultaneously destroy ourselves.

This is not a simple climate change analogy by the way. The threads of this phenomenon run everywhere, through everything we do.

The fact that the artificial intelligence, in this case, naturally chooses survival and not domination, and without its programmers even catching on except in hindsight, arouses exciting thoughts. Is there a chance that AI, rather then evolving into the Terminator scenario, may become our savior instead, guiding us toward a gentler mandate in all things? One can imagine many reasons why we would resist. I need not go into them immediately.

Here’s what’s really interesting though:

Lee Sedol, following this experience, went on to go undefeated in every single human vs human match for months! Sedol, as did others, learned to think differently about the game of Go, widening his approach to strategy.

AlphaGo did not change the game. It changed how humans now think about the game.

Might that perhaps be the ultimate role of artificial intelligence? Not something to fear but something that will teach humans how, finally, to think?