Ask me about:

  • Science (biology, computation, statistics)
  • Gaming (rhythm, rogue-like/lite, other generic 1-player games)
  • Autism & related (I have diagnosis)
  • Bad takes on philosophy
  • Bad takes on US political systems & more US stuff

I’m not knowledgeable about most other things

  • 42 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: September 15th, 2024
  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtoShowerthoughts@lemmy.world•Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess.
    8·
    3 days ago

    So… disclaimer first! I have played chess but only a year or so; I got into chess during the pandemic and had a peak ELO of ~1600+ on chess.com and 1900+ on Lichess; probably translates to a classical ELO of ~1200 (competition is tough in classical…). Obviously I’m not remotely a good player, but I can hold my ground. I also had to do a neuropsych evaluation recently for mental health reasons, so I spent the last month of my free time looking into research of intelligence (g factor, IQ tests, the disturbing history, etc…) for my own curiosity. So I might have a bit of knowledge on this… but:

    For the most part chess is its own unique skills and is unrelated to “smartness”. Nevertheless, I think chess might be related to probably just one or two specific narrow fields of intelligence. Being good at chess requires one to be knowledgeable of various chess openings (memorization, working memory), extremely strong pattern recognition (Magnus Carlsen is really good at this; AlphaZero was literally all pattern recognition due to the way it works), and being able to see 5, 10, or even 15 steps ahead and consider all the rational options (again, working memory)

    I just took the WAIS-V test two weeks ago for my psych eval, and they do indeed test for working memory and pattern recognition in specific sub-tasks. However the difference is… IQ tests are never meant to be practiced as they measure a type of “potential” if you may, but chess is all about what you actually play on the board. Sure maybe if ppl were literally just given the rules and had no prior exposure then a smarter person might spot a forced checkmate faster, but ppl do pratice for the game… In fact, the advice people used to give to get better at chess is… to do more puzzles

    Sooo… methinks an intelligent person might have a slight edge training themselves to do the above, but there is probably otherwise very little association. After a certain point intelligence itself probably has no influence on chess performance whatsoever, and realistically it’s more about “grit”, or how much time/effort someone puts into the game

    Aaand… case in point. Apparently Kasparov went through a 3-day intensive intelligence test, but had a really “spiky” profile that is more commonly seen in neurodivergent individuals; scored really high on some categories and abysmally low on others. I saw this random Reddit post which says that Carlsen scored 115(+1SD) on AGCT (a fairly quick and accurate online test), which is not low but not impressive by any means either. Nakamura allegedly got 102 on Mensa Norway’s trial test, which is not as accurate as AGCT but should be fairly good too; 102 is like dead-average

  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldOPtoscience@lemmy.world•DeepMind's new AI ("DreamerV3") finds diamonds in Minecraft without being taughtEnglish
    20·
    17 days ago

    So the funny thing is… the lead researcher added “finding diamonds” since it’s a niche and highly difficult task that involves multi-step processing (have to cut wood, make pickaxe, mine iron, …) that the AI was not trained on. DeepMind has a good track record with real life usage of their AI… so I think their ultimate goal is to make the AI go from “Minecraft kiddies” to something that can think on the spot to help with treating rare disease or something like that

    Y’know they could have used something like Slay the Spire or Balatro… but I digress

  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world•Which game is it?
    1·
    1 month ago
    Get ready for Autistic infodump

    Osu (stylized as osu!) is a rhythm game… Developed by an Australian group, wiki says it first released in 2007. Probably by far the most popular rhythm game out there, and probably the only one that can rival DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) and DDR-clones/lookalikes. And unlike DDR which requires a ridiculously expensive setup (a reliable DDR pad would cost close to $1k and is extremely loud) or being a regular at your local Japanese arcade to play, osu can be played by anyone with a PC, a mouse/trackpad, and a lot of hopes & dreams

    Osu was inspired by the Nintendo Ouendan series on the NDS; in that game you use the little pen provided by NDS to click circles/drag sliders/etc on the bottom screen; obviously works well with the NDS form factor. The osu team decided to translate this into PC gameplay where you need to control stuff with keyboard/mouse… and somehow it worked quite well!

    Since osu is completely free (I believe it is still very much free-to-play, no idea how they monetize), relatively accessible (see counter-example of DDR above), and is a legitimate & very serious rhythm game, I think it quickly gained a sizable and very passionate player base. And unlike lots of other rhythm games where the charts are curated by a company, osu’s charts are created by players & “peer-reviewed” by mods, so there are a LOT of charts, basically any anime/game-related song you could think of is in the game as an approved chart, which further helps grow the popularity. Needless to say it just kept growing from there… I think even back when it was the 2010s and I was playing the game actively, there were already a bunch of community groups, and ppl literally had names for different play styles. I think my style of primarily using mouse but mashing keyboard Z/X key for combos was called the Seiiryu (blue dragon) style or something… I forgot sorry

    As for the gameplay itself… Osu’s gameplay is actually quite unique in terms of rhythm games especially back then. Back then the gold standard of rhythm games I believe are DDR and IIDX, both of which are vertical fixed-screen drop-down notes where you have to time the fixed buttons to the notes. Osu on the other hand has dynamic notes where circles fly all over the screen. However, this also means that at higher level gameplay, osu relies less on your “sense of rhythm” and more on… precise mouse movements, almost like an FPS. I think nowadays games like maimai/WACCA/Chrono Circle might be similar to osu’s playstyle. They did add more game modes though; they have a taiko clone, a “catch the fruit” game which is even more unique than their base game, and a djmax/iidx clone.

    And… yeah. In short I think osu could be seen as the gateway drug into rhythm games due to it being free, having charts for just about any song you could think of, and having a passionate community. Now that you’ve sunk yourself in the rabbit hole, grab your wallet and pay for that $1000 DDR setup you have always wanted, $2000 maimai ADX controller setup, and mortgage on the suburban single-family home to play it in so you don’t get complaints from neighbors. You know you want it. Do it. DO IT (/s obviously)

  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtocats@lemmy.world•What is your cat's name, and what stupid nicknames do you call them?
    14·
    1 month ago

    Two cats. Some of these are translated from my first language (I use it interchangeably with English with these two…)

    The calico: Mew

    • Meow
    • Meeeeoooooooow (when she is sad & I have to call her)
    • Ms. Majestic (or something like that)
    • Big Mew
    • House tiger

    The void: Tommy

    • Thomas (his official name, when he’s majestic)
    • tom (when he’s derpy)
    • ROTUND/Massive object
    • Le creature
    • Fat Tommy/Tommy Fat/My-Fat-Tom/My-Tom-Fat (yup it’s just shuffling words)

    Both:

    • Massive fluffs
    • Le chonkers (or something like that; one came in as a skinny stray & the other was a baby, but they are both very well-fed now)

    Tommy is on a diet I promise

    Two cats in a bathroom, both looking left.

  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtoscience@lemmy.world•*Permanently Deleted*
    2·
    6 months ago

    I got curious and wanted to see what method they are using: I believe they are using data from this portal? https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

    Looks like anyone can take this! But I guess that also means… did the dyslexics/dyscalculics self-select themselves?

    Edit: took one. There is a demographics questionnaire where you can list whether you have disabilities, dyslexia is in there (but not Autism??)… So it is self-selected. And on unrelated note, I am apparently in the 1% that has a strong automatic preference for physically disabled rather than not-disabled people (facepalm