<story><title>I Really Blew It (2020)</title><url>http://www.erasmatazz.com/personal/self/i-really-blew-it.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yoz-y</author><text>Problem is that the author starts with a false premise. There are as many games having complex geopolitical models underneath as the market can support. Turns out the author either does not know them, or they don&amp;#x27;t explicitly mention his prior work. Games aren&amp;#x27;t scientific papers though, so they don&amp;#x27;t need citations.&lt;p&gt;But maybe some of the developers of complex strategy games mentioned him during GDC or other conferences?&lt;p&gt;Maybe one of the calculations that should be added to the model is that owners of computers in the 80&amp;#x27;s were a very different bunch from the people having computers today.</text></item><item><author>mathgladiator</author><text>I read this and the comments, and I can&amp;#x27;t help but feel... a loss for everyone.&lt;p&gt;I was a graduate student, and I met some fairly miserable professors toiling away. It&amp;#x27;s hard having ideas and then lacking the social skills to bring them forth. The social skills help with relevance, but also relating the internal ideas with external ideas and building real momentum.&lt;p&gt;There is a lesson here for anyone young.&lt;p&gt;The mistake here is to assume genius internally. Rather, it is better almost categorically to assume you are an idiot and then talk with others without the ego. &amp;quot;Hey, here is an idea&amp;quot; and many times others will not get it, and that&amp;#x27;s ok because communication is exceptionally hard.&lt;p&gt;However, if you want people to call you genius, then all you have to do is be around people and then help them with their ideas. &amp;quot;Have you tried X?&amp;quot; in an applicable way, and people will respond because you bridged the gap between their problems and your deep understanding.&lt;p&gt;As an example, I have a lot of dumb projects that excite me. One of them, which I refer to a large number of times, is my dumb programming language for board games ( &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adama-lang.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adama-lang.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; ). When people don&amp;#x27;t get it, is it their failing or mine? The truth is that it is a mix of both, but it is mostly mine because I have the burden to communicate effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Enginerrrd</author><text>Yeah that&amp;#x27;s my take.  He gives examples of his &amp;quot;genius&amp;quot; preceded by a cringey analogy to Neo seeing the matrix as code and then gives an example formula that&amp;#x27;s very trivial and the exposition is extremely shallow which suggests frankly that the author&amp;#x27;s thinking is also rather shallow.  There&amp;#x27;s no hint of analysis, understanding, or useful insights to the real complexities that arise when trying to glue a bunch of disparate models together into a complex interacting system.  Instead he gives us just a trivial application of very basic mathematics to design of a game.  Guess what, I&amp;#x27;d have done the exact same thing if I had been assigned to design a game and I&amp;#x27;d venture to guess that half the people on this site would take a similar approach.&lt;p&gt;The idea itself is hardly as exceptional as the author wants it to be.&lt;p&gt;This whole thing to me sounds a bit like a textbook case of the author having spent his life as the smartest person in the room, but only because he&amp;#x27;s been in the wrong room his whole life.  To use an analogy: I suspect he&amp;#x27;s not Mozart...  He&amp;#x27;s a very decent musician or composer that&amp;#x27;s spent his life in a community college orchestra and never ventured out into the world to interact with people that can eat him for lunch.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Really Blew It (2020)</title><url>http://www.erasmatazz.com/personal/self/i-really-blew-it.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yoz-y</author><text>Problem is that the author starts with a false premise. There are as many games having complex geopolitical models underneath as the market can support. Turns out the author either does not know them, or they don&amp;#x27;t explicitly mention his prior work. Games aren&amp;#x27;t scientific papers though, so they don&amp;#x27;t need citations.&lt;p&gt;But maybe some of the developers of complex strategy games mentioned him during GDC or other conferences?&lt;p&gt;Maybe one of the calculations that should be added to the model is that owners of computers in the 80&amp;#x27;s were a very different bunch from the people having computers today.</text></item><item><author>mathgladiator</author><text>I read this and the comments, and I can&amp;#x27;t help but feel... a loss for everyone.&lt;p&gt;I was a graduate student, and I met some fairly miserable professors toiling away. It&amp;#x27;s hard having ideas and then lacking the social skills to bring them forth. The social skills help with relevance, but also relating the internal ideas with external ideas and building real momentum.&lt;p&gt;There is a lesson here for anyone young.&lt;p&gt;The mistake here is to assume genius internally. Rather, it is better almost categorically to assume you are an idiot and then talk with others without the ego. &amp;quot;Hey, here is an idea&amp;quot; and many times others will not get it, and that&amp;#x27;s ok because communication is exceptionally hard.&lt;p&gt;However, if you want people to call you genius, then all you have to do is be around people and then help them with their ideas. &amp;quot;Have you tried X?&amp;quot; in an applicable way, and people will respond because you bridged the gap between their problems and your deep understanding.&lt;p&gt;As an example, I have a lot of dumb projects that excite me. One of them, which I refer to a large number of times, is my dumb programming language for board games ( &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adama-lang.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adama-lang.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; ). When people don&amp;#x27;t get it, is it their failing or mine? The truth is that it is a mix of both, but it is mostly mine because I have the burden to communicate effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Spooky23</author><text>&amp;gt; Maybe one of the calculations that should be added to the model is that owners of computers in the 80&amp;#x27;s were a very different bunch from the people having computers today.&lt;p&gt;This is probably the answer! I was a little kid then, but my uncle played them and I remember that game and some others like it... they were all offshoots of war game board games.&lt;p&gt;People have moved on since, or maybe better put the market has grown and the number of people interested in nerdy strategy games has not.</text></comment>