Randomness thread, part two.

[wufwugy]

Hillary will also be a far better President. The lessons learned from the first 8 years of a Clinton presidency will be huge, and she won't take any shit. If her opponents give her shit, they'll look bad because she's a woman. Call it blowback of sexism i.e. sexist views of women are that they're weak, but if they're attacked by men, it looks like those men are chauvinists

[wufwugy]

I'm hot on Chris Christie these days and I can see myself picking him with a doe-eyed 'wait and see' attitude as I had and still have with Obama.

When a man is a driven to solve a problem, he'll find a way to reapply himself again and again in different ways before he cracks through. I think Obama is just such a man, so I'm not too low on him today.

Yeah there's a strong chance Christie gets the nomination. The establishment and big money will back him hard, and he will probably edge by after Cruz, Paul, and maybe some others divvy up the base vote

However, he still loses to Hillary. Even though everybody says he has blue state appeal, he doesn't. What he has is Jersey appeal, and Jersey is not like many blue states. The uninhibited, temperamental asshat plays very well in Jersey, but will play horribly in the Midwest and Southwest. New Hampshire will go for Hillary because they love women, Iowa will go for Hillary because they dislike asshats, and Colorado will go for Hillary because its recent migration patterns are Mexican Americans and Californians, both of which love Hillary. Additionally, Hillary pulls Florida because Miami-dade is the sixth borough of New York. She also contends heavily in Ohio for aforementioned asshat reasons, and may pull Virginia for similar reasons. Virginia's migration of Asian Americans, tech industry, and college students is turning it into northern California

It is unlikely I will vote for Christie because unless he rejects the base, he will be beholden to them and will do a bunch of things in office to try to appease them. Even if Christie held the most sensible positions on everything else, this would be enough to make him a bad choice. Besides, the areas where Christie is strong won't be too much different than ones where Hillary is strong. The Dems are trying to be more conducive to the smart conservative business friendly issues, while the GOP still isn't trying to change their position on social safety net issues

[jackvance]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2...ant-closed-off

Really interesting look at the shortfalls of Obama's inter-personal skills in Washington.

Great article, I was wondering what could really have made him piss off the republicans so much, and that Syrian threat mishap. Just the way that whole thing was phrased is not how you normally hear it, Obama as the president, a lone man asking the people to approve of his plan.

[a500lbgorilla]

hey jerkvance, did you ever reply to my post addressing you ITT?

[jackvance]

Eh sorry what post, I haven't checked the commune in a while...

[a500lbgorilla]

CUZ I DON'T SEE IT

jack,

Have you ever heard of this guy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD-Gammon

If so, what did ya hear?

[ChipEaterMan]

I like aubrey because she's kind of witchy

[a500lbgorilla]

I like aubrey so much that I don't post about it.

[wufwugy]

.

[ChipEaterMan]

.

[d0zer]

advantage: wuggy

[jackvance]

CUZ I DON'T SEE IT

Haven't heard of him. But using neural nets at that time is pretty cool. All that backgammon makes me recall is that it was an example of a game that had been solved even though it has chance in it. The search tree was adequately small.

But seeing them use equations for game solving just reminded me of something. I have a vague but enthousiastic plan of doing a doctorate, and a russian friend of mine (who actually won prizes with his doctorate and further papers on HVAC systems) suggested I should use poker as my domain of practical application because I know so much of it. So while browsing popular scientific papers of poker I came across an interesting one. The name was already cool, in my world at least: An evolutionary game-theoretic analysis of poker strategies. And one of the authors I actually know! I played go for about 3 months in college, when a friend dragged me into it. But after I reached the same level as artificial intelligence can muster in this short time, I lost interest. Or more honestly, I beat this one fellow student that played for many years that I just wanted to beat really badly, and after that I quit. But at the time I played I joined this go club and this guy was there. And when lateron I went on to do an AI assignment to optimize go search trees by pruning, lo and behold it was under this guy. And now he's investigating poker apparently. If I can get something worked out in the machine learning aspect of poker I'll definitely have to contact him again.

You can't just find this normally but I think it's ok to link it, the epitome of boringness, a scientific paper on poker:

http://ofideasandmen.com/FTR/j.entcom.2009.09.00.pdf

No poker in the commune, but hardcore poker math like this is pretty random though right?

Here they datamined a whole bunch of online poker games (they don't specify what stake though sadly) and then plugged it into their equations and came up with some interesting stuff. Most interesting:

- Poker players don't play rationally.
- Poker players are better modeled by a combination of playing rationally and playing exploratory. It's still not quite there yet but it's already a step forward from assuming pure rational play.
- They divided strategies into 4 categories (shark VPIP<25 AF>1, rock VPIP<25 AF<1, fish VPIP>25 AF<1 and gambler VPIP>25 AF>1) and found that as expected the shark strategy is the winning strategy, except for when you're playing with only sharks, fishes and gamblers at the table. No rocks. Then a gambler strategy is markedly superior. And when we correct for the fact that our opponents aren't expected to play rationally, the gambler strategy is the one that gains the most in importance.
- aggressive play postflop >>> passive play postflop. No surprise but now science provedz it!

[ChipEaterMan]

.

[ChipEaterMan]

Hey dozer! Give me some points man!

[d0zer]

I do like that chick sidekickin' that guy. he was all like wuahwuahwaoh

[ChipEaterMan]

[wufwugy]

[d0zer]

everybody wins!

[ChipEaterMan]

everybody wins!

Nice. Let's share the trophy

[a500lbgorilla]

Haven't heard of him. But using neural nets at that time is pretty cool. All that backgammon makes me recall is that it was an example of a game that had been solved even though it has chance in it. The search tree was adequately small.

But seeing them use equations for game solving just reminded me of something. I have a vague but enthousiastic plan of doing a doctorate, and a russian friend of mine (who actually won prizes with his doctorate and further papers on HVAC systems) suggested I should use poker as my domain of practical application because I know so much of it. So while browsing popular scientific papers of poker I came across an interesting one. The name was already cool, in my world at least: An evolutionary game-theoretic analysis of poker strategies. And one of the authors I actually know! I played go for about 3 months in college, when a friend dragged me into it. But after I reached the same level as artificial intelligence can muster in this short time, I lost interest. Or more honestly, I beat this one fellow student that played for many years that I just wanted to beat really badly, and after that I quit. But at the time I played I joined this go club and this guy was there. And when lateron I went on to do an AI assignment to optimize go search trees by pruning, lo and behold it was under this guy. And now he's investigating poker apparently. If I can get something worked out in the machine learning aspect of poker I'll definitely have to contact him again.

You can't just find this normally but I think it's ok to link it, the epitome of boringness, a scientific paper on poker:

http://ofideasandmen.com/FTR/j.entcom.2009.09.00.pdf

No poker in the commune, but hardcore poker math like this is pretty random though right?

Here they datamined a whole bunch of online poker games (they don't specify what stake though sadly) and then plugged it into their equations and came up with some interesting stuff. Most interesting:

- Poker players don't play rationally.
- Poker players are better modeled by a combination of playing rationally and playing exploratory. It's still not quite there yet but it's already a step forward from assuming pure rational play.
- They divided strategies into 4 categories (shark VPIP<25 AF>1, rock VPIP<25 AF<1, fish VPIP>25 AF<1 and gambler VPIP>25 AF>1) and found that as expected the shark strategy is the winning strategy, except for when you're playing with only sharks, fishes and gamblers at the table. No rocks. Then a gambler strategy is markedly superior. And when we correct for the fact that our opponents aren't expected to play rationally, the gambler strategy is the one that gains the most in importance.
- aggressive play postflop >>> passive play postflop. No surprise but now science provedz it!

Berry interesting. Though the results are less interesting than the method they seem to use. I see pretty pictures, a bit of algorithmic math and english symbols that appear to be sentences, but nothing is coming through.

[ChipEaterMan]

I like aubrey so much that I don't post about it.

You Just Couldn’t Stop Yourself From Saying you liked aubrey

[d0zer]

You Just Couldn’t Stop Yourself From Saying you liked aubrey

Dude. south america. known for having above average gorgeous women. why the stalking of the tiny ftr-chick population? u know this is the internets, rite?

[Savy]

Can FTR not issue a restraining order so CEM can't post within 50 posts of Aubrey or Chelle?

[d0zer]

You Just Couldn’t Stop Yourself From Saying you liked aubrey

followup question: why the caps until "you liked aubrey"?

[wufwugy]

Hey Aubrey,

I like you. Do you like me?

[ ] Yes
[ ] No

Sincerely, CoochEaterMan

.

[Jack Sawyer]

Dude. south america. known for having above average gorgeous women.

I can vouch for that

[ChipEaterMan]

I don't know. I think I've been interested in female poker players lately.

btw why does a general gaming site like gosugamers have a better picture collection of sexy poker women than FTR?

http://www.gosugamers.net/forums/top...irls-of-poker/

[ChipEaterMan]

haha nice one wufwugy

I'm only trying to make friends

[bikes]

i hate what this thread has become/is becoming.

[jyms]

Somebody tell CEM that neither Chelle or Aubrey is a female poker player.

[Lukie]

@jackvance, I didn't read what was in the link but that synopsis reminds me a lot of what Sklansky used to write in his books and on 2p2 regarding the differences between game theory optimal style and the best/most profitable style. For example game theory optimal play in mediumish stacked NLHE is pretty damn nitty but against bad players you can splash around more, especially in small pots, making small errors from a game theory optimal standpoint but which are profitable if they take advantage of or trigger big mistakes by live ones.

[jackvance]

Berry interesting. Though the results are less interesting than the method they seem to use. I see pretty pictures, a bit of algorithmic math and english symbols that appear to be sentences, but nothing is coming through.

Yeah that's scientific papers for you. I'm used to this kind of material but that's exactly how I felt when working through electronics papers to help my friend write his thesis (dissertation) and now when trying to read my brother's papers (he's doctoring in kinesitherapy so they're all about muscle stuff). They can be hell to understand.

@jackvance, I didn't read what was in the link but that synopsis reminds me a lot of what Sklansky used to write in his books and on 2p2 regarding the differences between game theory optimal style and the best/most profitable style. For example game theory optimal play in mediumish stacked NLHE is pretty damn nitty but against bad players you can splash around more, especially in small pots, making small errors from a game theory optimal standpoint but which are profitable if they take advantage of or trigger big mistakes by live ones.

Yup. I don't think they mined higher than midstakes for this paper and they're pretty big on how from their findings and earlier ones poker is all about playing the player!

Also, a glimpse of what the future will be like:

http://tech.uk.msn.com/news/articles...ntid=258282574

[Chelle]

Somebody tell CEM that neither Chelle or Aubrey is a female poker player.

I'm not even a female.

[a500lbgorilla]

Jack, I was looking for a bit of help in understanding what they were up to. Can you digest their work a bit and give it to me in a more opposite-of-clandestine package? Failing that, could you at least describe the schools of thought that they're borrowing from to support their conclusions?

I just want to appreciate better what they were doing when they were preparing for this paper.

[d0zer]

I'm not even a female.

You're not even real! "Chelle" is just spoonitnow's long troll*


*source: sweetlemon

[jackvance]

Jack, I was looking for a bit of help in understanding what they were up to. Can you digest their work a bit and give it to me in a more opposite-of-clandestine package? Failing that, could you at least describe the schools of thought that they're borrowing from to support their conclusions?

I just want to appreciate better what they were doing when they were preparing for this paper.

They are using Replicator Dynamics. RD models are about learning strategies, they describe how strategies will evolve over time, from one generation to the next. Using some heuristics they made a payoff table from datamined poker games, plugged this into the equations and then looked at what came out. To get an idea what this actually means, I've linked a video below.

And because poker players don't just work rationally (greedy) but also exploratory, additionally they recalculate everything with mutations added to the mix.

To note, the game of poker also had to be simplified to be able to work with these equations. One heuristic is where they looked at VPIP and AF and divided them into 4 types of strategies.

They don't go into all of the heuristics they use but it's linked in a reference which I haven't read. But to give an example, from Artificial Intelligence research (and game theory) I know that if you model the game of poker while leaving the river play out, you get structurally the same game or at least something similar enough to the real game where there is a river. However if you also leave outturn play (so poker is played only to the flop betting and then ends) the inherent structure of the game changes way too drastically so we can't use this heuristic.

This is a good clip that explains the discrete variant of RD, in the paper they use continuous equations but it's the same concept.

[aubreymcfate]

I don't know. I think I've been interested in female poker players lately.

btw why does a general gaming site like gosugamers have a better picture collection of sexy poker women than FTR?

http://www.gosugamers.net/forums/top...irls-of-poker/

sorry to burst your bubble babe, but i don't play poker

[bikes]

imagine dragons might have the best album of the year. no joke. so complete and it's all great.

[ChipEaterMan]

sorry to burst your bubble babe, but i don't play poker

she called me babe

lol

[a500lbgorilla]

Chip, I am sorely tempted to edit your posts for shitiness. Don't make me moderate around here now. Neither of us wants to see that.

[oskar]

So I'm going to murder my father with a shovel before I have to drive with him again. How the fuck do you un-learn to drive a vehicle? I know he was a good driver. He recently developed the habit of doing everything incrementally. He doesn't break once, he breaks a dozen times in 2 second intervals until he comes to a stop. When he takes a turn he turns sharp, straightens out, turns sharp again and ends up wherever the wheels take him and then he jerkes it around until he's on the right side of the road again.
He'll break inside a corner that he could do at twice the speed. He'll randomly turn sharp left and right on a perfectly straight road. At one point he had me gasp for air and brace for impact and he acts like he doesn't have a clue what I'm on about. He's not even 60 yet. What happened?

[Chelle]

You're not even real! "Chelle" is just spoonitnow's long troll*


*source: sweetlemon

I'm a figment of everyone on FTR's imagination. These posts aren't even here, everyone just makes them up in their head. This is far past a spoon troll.

[rong]

Watching Ender's Game reminds me of seeing Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher.

[jackvance]

I'm a figment of everyone on FTR's imagination.

I think you're Sweetie 2.0

[d0zer]

[OngBonga]

sorry to burst your bubble babe, but i don't play poker

How about tennis?

[Chelle]

kidney stones are dickholes.

[Lukie]

kidney stones create dickholes.

.

[Jack Sawyer]

[eugmac]

Watching Ender's Game reminds me of seeing Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher.

So yeah, I pulled up some interesting reads that kind of explain why I felt uncomfortable with the Ender series as I read them way back when. I don't necessarily agree with his point of view, but definitely brings up the points that rubbed me the wrong way (even though I found the books exhilarating).
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

[wufwugy]

wearing a mask

[ChipEaterMan]

wearing a mask

[Chelle]

.

apparently sometimes with dudes they go into the penis and get the stone out. they numb the pp, and go in and get it, and even with the numbing it still hurts. boyfran and i were informed about this via our realtor. sounds terrifying and i dont even have a penis.

i've been drinking so much fucking water, ugh.

in other news - i'm doing a red riding hood shoot on thursday, yay.

[rong]

Great gif chippy.

[eugmac]

So this Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty that I had only vaguely heard of up to now (along with many others I believe) seems like a pretty ugly deal that governments have done their best to stay quiet about:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/13/5...d-draft-of-tpp

[wufwugy]

I'm not sure how something like that could affect individual consumers. Probably has more to do with getting China to stop state piracy. Regardless, I don't fear any international deals on the issue of piracy. International policymakers have no actual policymaking powers. US will do only what the US government wants, Germany will do only what the German government wants, etc

[wufwugy]

It's kinda like how people tend to view the United Nations as a governing body with power. It's not. It's a place where different states get together to try to see if there's anything they agree on. Like when people said the US should seek UN approval for Syria actions. Um, no. The UN gets most of its power from the US. Why would the US need approval from an organization that exists because the US wants it to? There is no international governing body and will not be for an extremely long time.

Likewise, any international agreement on issues like piracy only have as much power as each individual state carries on the issue in the first place

[eugmac]

It also seeks to give for example pharmaceutical companies the right to keep products patented for longer, which seems like something that indeed would impact individuals directly.

[wufwugy]

I don't really see how any international agreement will do anything more than what the state already does

[jackvance]

I don't really see how any international agreement will do anything more than what the state already does

I think you badly underestimate what is going on here. EU influences in each country in europe are very noticeable. These sort of trade agreements set the tone that all the governments WILL adhere to.

[wufwugy]

Well this particular case doesn't appear to involve Europe, which lends its hand towards it being about the issue of China's government disregarding intellectual property laws. But you're right, the EU is a little different because its movement is towards federalism. If I was Spain, I would be worried about everything the EU does having some sort of authority over me, but if I was US, I would not

[jackvance]

But it's the US pushing very anti-consumer measures on the rest of the world:

http://keionline.org/node/1825

[wufwugy]

It is, but it's also an issue of what each state does with its laws. If Peru did anti-consumer things on this issue, it would be because the state does them. US doesn't have any legal authority in Peru, but it definitely will try to persuade Peru.

International agreements are more about a direction than any establishment of legal authority. International agreements can be whatever they want, but they don't have any power unless the sovereign states establish the law domestically. Even if the US Congress passes a law that says they can influence other countries on any property issues, it doesn't establish the laws of those countries

[bikes]

cards against humanity may be the best game ever invented.

[d0zer]

cards against humanity may be the best game ever invented.

Really? I don't really know how it works but it seems to me that it's just people giggling over "shocking" phrases that I've been long desensitized to.

[bikes]

Really? I don't really know how it works but it seems to me that it's just people giggling over "shocking" phrases that I've been long desensitized to.

its a game of me laughing at how desensitized i am compared to everyone else. whats not to love?

[supa]

I just realized that I've gotten used to the commune being at the top of the forum. I wonder when that happened.

[boost]

its a game of me laughing at how desensitized i am compared to everyone else. whats not to love?

That's how I imagine it would be for me to play with my non-internet-warrior friends. The game kinda sets up these twisted thoughts, similar to the depths of the internet. I think I'd take pleasure in seeing my friends who occasionally (always) look at me with a disapproving sideways glance when I make a joke.

If I played it with you guys, I'm sure the laughs would be minimal and it would just be approving squint-nods with the occasional, "respect."

I just realized that I've gotten used to the commune being at the top of the forum. I wonder when that happened.

I realized this months.. possibly a year ago, and I wondered the same thing.

[Chelle]

i feel that pms doesn't make a woman a bitch - she's just more apt to say what she actually feels.
ofc this is being said when i'm like 2 days away from starting, and i just watched a video of a mini-pig and almost cried.

[Pascal]

Really? I don't really know how it works but it seems to me that it's just people giggling over "shocking" phrases that I've been long desensitized to.

agree w/ d0zer, played it a few times and never found it that much fun

[a500lbgorilla]

I have loads of fun with cards against humanity, though it is an 'easier' version of apples to apples. Both make me laugh pretty hard, but cards against humanity does a lot of the leg work for you.

[bikes]

Not all starlight is the same age, some of it is millions or even billions of years apart even though it hits your eye at the same time. So the night sky isn't a single moment in the universe but rather a patchwork of time billions of years in breadth.


Thanks /r/showerthoughts

[rong]

|When did you become a hippy?

[a500lbgorilla]

Even cooler, if you look out across the ocean at the beach, you see about 3 miles to the horizon - meaning a ship 3 miles away and moving further will dip below the horizon. But look straight up and you can see the moon (very roughly) 100kx further. And look at bit beyond that at them twinklin' stars. Shit is so tight.

[eugmac]

I just learned about a photographer named Vivian Maier. She took photos all her life but basically never shared her work with anybody. Pressures of life meant that huge hoards of undeveloped film started accumulating in cardboard boxes. She worked as a nanny, or was otherwise unemployed, all her life. Made sure that whereever she was living, the landlords would let her install a secure lock for her room so that her art would remain a secret. She died in 2009. Fairly recently somebody came across a big cardboard box full of her undeveloped film when he won it in an auction (she had auctioned off everything she had becuase she was broke), and decided to publicise them. She's being hailed now posthumously as one of the best street photographers ever.

http://www.vivianmaier.com