Dogged by Error

An interesting talk, both from the hard science perspective and the softer one of difference being illusion.

Whoever perceived a need for an algorithm that adds dogs to a situation was clearly not seeing straight though.

+1 Blade of Universe Slaying

Had an interesting offline debate about adding weapons and armour to Cthulhu Dark. So, continuing my intermittent thoughts and hacks of the system, I thought I’d share a little in case it proved helpful for explaining to players used to equipment bonuses why there aren’t any.

Advertising’s a Dirty Business

The postman delivered an Amazon parcel. As I was out at the time, they left it in a secure location. Using the wonders of GIMP and a couple of minutes of my time, I’ve replicated the most important parts of the sight that met my eyes when I went to recover it. What are your first thoughts about the box?

Bat(ttered)man

I’ve recently started playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. Overall, it’s a great fun game but there’s one niggle: saved games – or rather the lack thereof.

Obstacles Diminish Enthusiasm

I’m a firm believer in being better than you need to be just because you can. However, sometimes others go out of their way to make it less smooth than it needs to be.

Psychometric Trigger Locks

As Colleen Hoover writes trigger warnings can be a complex topic. How does one balance protecting people from traumatic reminders without spoiling books for others? Perhaps the answer, and other similar advantages, lie in expanding existing book-site technology.

He Knows… But He’s Got Problems

DiVinci-esque savants aside, humans tend not to be great at the total of all tasks. Which makes being good or bad at something a poor indicator of whether a person is competent as a whole.

A Very Dim Mirror

In one of my favourite scenes from Inspector Morse, Morse tells Lewis a little about his adolescence and how he promised himself that he’d never forget what it felt like; and then he delivered the kicker, that of course he did, that everyone does. There are many reasons I accepted the fallibility of memory, but that scene was probably my earliest introduction to it; and I carried the inevitability of that separation of present and past selves with me into later life. I still believe we lose touch with the experience of adolescence, but one thing exists that can remind us how it felt: the Windows 10 upgrade cycle.

One Copy For Each Hand

Why don’t online retailers offer an “already bought” filter on searches?

Peering Down The Road Untaken

Having worked on various business improvement projects over the years, this video on requirements gathering made me chuckle and wince at the same time. However, it isn’t just large-scale projects that suffer from the issue: even the most apparently simple aims can suffer from a strong bias to repeat what works.

As the almost fanatical resistance displayed by adherents of disproved theories shows, once the human mind has a solution to an issue it will hold onto it even when presented with almost overwhelming evidence it isn’t the best solution. And this tendency to accept the status quo is even stronger when there isn’t an external challenge.

So, as happened in the video, people can become fixated on the method rather than the outcome; rebuilding the existing world rather than taking the opportunity to build a more functional one.

Obviously, this favouring of an existing approach over a bespoke one saves time, so is helpful for non-critical tasks (such as the route to work on an ordinary day or where to buy more socks), but for the things that will have a large impact it’s worth taking the time to challenge our assumptions at least a little.