April ’25 Links

Gwern on Rock Paper Scissors as a game mechanism and “Why 3 choices is optimal.”

Ex Facebook employees remember a game of Catan where everybody let Zuck win.

Dave Barry — The Looming Lizard Crisis¹

Pretty much any article from the recent Works In Progress is interesting, but just to pick one: A discussion of violence of early hunter-gatherers and pre-history agricultural societies — The Prehistoric Psychopath.

Saturn just got 128 new moons, so maybe pick out a different present for it’s next birthday.

James Cameron knows how to get the most out of his on-screen maggots.

The Rise of the Samurai Lawyers.

Using AI to generate new Quake II maps and gameplay on the fly.

AstralCodexTen’s prediction for AI for the next five-ten years. Counterpoint — AI will be like Subservience, minus the murder.

Advances in non-transitive dice.

“Trade you a Bulbasaur for a card of that old guy in our village who used to be the fire chief?” The “Middle Aged Local Men Trading Card Game.” (Japan, naturally).

If you are playing with a 51 card deck, are you more or less likely to get two pair when dealt five cards, or are the chances the same? (Answer — The Same). Futility Closet Link, original paper from the Journal of Recreational Mathematics.

Argument list-bait trap is set — 100 Best Sci-Fi movies. Honestly quite reasonable.

Larry Levy is doing his own HoF over at Opinionated Gamers. First Article.

A list of the big questions (or “Gaps”) in science (“Most brain circuitry is still invisible,” “Our immune system contains a detailed history of exposures, but we can’t read it,” “Inability to image materials atom by atom,”). Still, progress is happening. The Gap Map.

The tree that thrives via … being struck by lightning (video, paper). Apparently the “I don’t have to handle it well, just better than all my neighbors” is not just for runners and bears. (“On average, the older trees of this species have been struck by lightning ~five times.”)

I’ve been reading a lot about “friction” in systems, and several researches have pointed out that bots often reduce friction be being able to automate previously un-automatable jobs. Which also means that scams that were not worth persuing (because the return was too low for the investment) now … are worth persuing, such as enrolling bots in community college courses (and doing the work!) for college aid. (“The California Community College system estimates 25% of all it’s applicants are bots”).

The Wikipedia Rabbit Hole Beckons with — Category: Monologues. (And yes, Bladerunner’s “Tears in the Rain” monologue has a page).

1. Which features anoles, which in turn reminds me of a quote from the cover of Tales of the Floating Vagabond: “Life is like an anole. Sometimes it’s green and sometimes it’s brown; but it is always a small Caribbean lizard.” ︎