chinese room 2
So there’s this guy, right? He sits in a room by himself, with a computer and a keyboard full of Chinese characters. He doesn’t know Chinese, though, in fact he doesn’t even realise that Chinese is a language. He just thinks it’s a bunch of odd symbols. Anyway, the computer prints out a paragraph of Chinese, and he thinks, whoa, cool shapes. And then a message is displayed on the computer monitor: which character comes next?
This guy has no idea how the hell he’s meant to know that, so he just presses a random character on the keyboard. And then the computer goes BZZZT, wrong! The correct character was THIS one, and it flashes a character on the screen. And the guy thinks, augh, dammit! I hope I get it right next time. And sure enough, computer prints out another paragraph of Chinese, and then it asks the guy, what comes next?
He guesses again, and he gets it wrong again, and he goes augh again, and this carries on for a while. But eventually, he presses the button and it goes DING! You got it right this time! And he is so happy, you have no idea. This is the best day of his life. He is going to do everything in his power to make that machine go DING again. So he starts paying attention. He looks at the paragraph of Chinese printed out by the machine, and cross-compares it against all the other paragraphs he’s gotten. And, recall, this guy doesn’t even know that this is a language, it’s just a sequence of weird symbols to him. But it’s a sequence that forms patterns. He notices that if a particular symbol is displayed, then the next symbol is more likely to be this one. He notices some symbols are more common in general. Bit by bit, he starts to draw statistical inferences about the symbols, he analyses the printouts every way he can, he writes extensive notes to himself on how to recognise the patterns.
Over time, his guesses begin to get more and more accurate. He hears those lovely DING sounds that indicate his prediction was correct more and more often, and he manages to use that to condition his instincts better and better, picking up on cues consciously and subconsciously to get better and better at pressing the right button on the keyboard. Eventually, his accuracy is like 70% or something -- pretty damn good for a guy who doesn’t even know Chinese is a language.
* * *
One day, something odd happens.
He gets a printout, the machine asks what character comes next, and he presses a button on the keyboard and-- silence. No sound at all. Instead, the machine prints out the exact same sequence again, but with one small change. The character he input on the keyboard has been added to the end of the sequence.
Which character comes next?
This weirds the guy out, but he thinks, well. This is clearly a test of my prediction abilities. So I’m not going to treat this printout any differently to any other printout made by the machine -- shit, I’ll pretend that last printout I got? Never even happened. I’m just going to keep acting like this is a normal day on the job, and I’m going to predict the next symbol in this sequence as if it was one of the thousands of printouts I’ve seen before. And that’s what he does! He presses what symbol comes next, and then another printout comes out with that symbol added to the end, and then he presses what he thinks will be the next symbol in that sequence. And then, eventually, he thinks, “hm. I don’t think there’s any symbol after this one. I think this is the end of the sequence.” And so he presses the “END” button on his keyboard, and sits back, satisfied.
Unbeknownst to him, the sequence of characters he input wasn’t just some meaningless string of symbols. See, the printouts he was getting, they were all always grammatically correct Chinese. And that first printout he’d gotten that day in particular? It was a question: “How do I open a door.” The string of characters he had just input, what he had determined to be the most likely string of symbols to come next, formed a comprehensible response that read, “You turn the handle and push”.
* * *
One day you decide to visit this guy’s office. You’ve heard he’s learning Chinese, and for whatever reason you decide to test his progress. So you ask him, “Hey, which character means dog?”
He looks at you like you’ve got two heads. You may as well have asked him which of his shoes means “dog”, or which of the hairs on the back of his arm. There’s no connection in his mind at all between language and his little symbol prediction game, indeed, he thinks of it as an advanced form of mathematics rather than anything to do with linguistics. He hadn’t even conceived of the idea that what he was doing could be considered a kind of communication any more than algebra is. He says to you, “Buddy, they’re just funny symbols. No need to get all philosophical about it.”
Suddenly, another printout comes out of the machine. He stares at it, puzzles over it, but you can tell he doesn’t know what it says. You do, though. You’re fluent in the language. You can see that it says the words, “Do you actually speak Chinese, or are you just a guy in a room doing statistics and shit?”
The guy leans over to you, and says confidently, “I know it looks like a jumble of completely random characters. But it’s actually a very sophisticated mathematical sequence,” and then he presses a button on the keyboard. And another, and another, and another, and slowly but surely he composes a sequence of characters that, unbeknownst to him, reads “Yes, I know Chinese fluently! If I didn’t I would not be able to speak with you.”
That is how ChatGPT works.
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I don’t know how often Brennan brings up this analogy, since despite the amount of Lee Mulligan content I feel I’ve consumed, I’ve only recently dived into Dimension 20, but in Episode 4 of Adventuring Party for A Crown of Candy at 01:04:12, Brennan mentions a thing he learned about chess recently and related it to DMing and I was like, “Wait, I’ve heard him say this, and recently.” It’s the exact analogy he threw out as a taunt in the most recent Fireside Chat for Episode 22 of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One on the Worlds Beyond Number Patreon, about how so much of his “planning” as a DM is just developing enough material to move aspects of the narrative into the good positions to be used later-
These two talkbacks are nearly four years apart in their release date, and I coincidentally listened to them less than four days apart from each other. It just goes to show, I think, how deeply Brennan thinks about DMing and his philosophy towards the art form and practice of it. He pulled the same reference out of his brain years after he learned it, and expressed it in a totally different tone and context. He really is so good at this game.
The understatement of the century, I know, but I just think it’s neat.
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Since I can never get anything out on time whoops 😅
Here’s my thoughts about—
What Makes A Perfect Gift? 🎁❤️ (Part 1)
—————————————————
(Thomas may have said this was just a fun Easter egg but imma ignore that bc I believe) Janus knew the order the gifts were being opened because he matched each colour gift wrap of Patton’s gift to which side was getting a gift next 👀👀 AND his beautiful cursive was in GOLD font 🥹
In case you forgot, they are EVERYTHING to me 😭💙❤️
Also Logan asking for Roman’s help with his creativity is the Christmas miracle I didn’t know I needed but here it is and I’m going to go melt into a puddle 😭🫠💙❤️
Logan with his Santa hat on his head with his glasses on
Matching his sweater that has a Santa hat on a brain with glasses on-
😄 I see what he did there 👀👀💙💙🧠
Logan thinking he got a gift he didn’t want because he thinks they don’t listen to him-
Remus: 🧡👀
Janus reminding us all that snakes unhinge their jaws to eat their prey by swallowing them whole
Oh
Oh no 😅
Mr Fuzzy reminds me of the Yorp aliens from Commander Keen for some reason lmao ewww
More in part 2!
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god i feel u so much on the not being able to use fancy detail brushes thing, i also use a textured brush (idk abt you but it stops me from obsessing over the lines being 100% Absolutely Perfectly Neat & Even) and i cry every time i see a cool brush that would just look totally out of place in comparison lmao. i keep telling myself someday ill make a whole bunch of custom ones that match my main brush... someday.....
I REALLY THINK THAT'S JUST WHAT WE GOTTA DO.... i do feel like by slowly playing w other ppl's custom brushes (i have to really recommend @robogart, @inspiderwiht and @pharanbrush as artists who create custom brush packs that i REALLY love!), i'm starting to understand very gradually what all the different settings and tweaks and adjustments do, which helps a lot + does make me feel like eventually i can work my way up to tackling my own...!
when i first started out the brush settings panel was SO overwhelming, so it felt like any time i downloaded a brush it was like. either i like it or i don't, and one tiny gripe abt it could ruin my experience w a brush that could otherwise be super useful and fun for me!! bc i didn't really feel capable of really getting into the guts of it and fucking around (also esp when u are on deadlines and stuff it's like. bro i cannot afford to Find Out rn and also i simply do not have time to spend an hour trying to figure out if i can make the pressure curve on this thing play nice w me). BUT giving myself a little bit of time whenever i'm doing personal doodling or warmups or w/e to experiment and mess around has been really really good for making me feel like i can take more control over the tools :D
I GUESS i am rambling majorly and a lot of this has nothing to do w the actual point of ur ask (esp the kind of. stamp brushes or fully drawn stuff like clothing trim/buttons/etc where it really IS like okay either it can blend w ur art style or it can't) BUT my point is just. grips ur arm in solidarity. by fucking around a tiny bit each day. one day we will understand digital brush composition + function enough to make our own. and then it's over for all of you bitches
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