Re: Film Noir Simulation

[Kenneth Lu <kenlu@MIT.EDU>]

At 11:06 -0500 2/5/01, WFreitag@aol.com wrote:
>Ken, you could start that project today, if you wanted. To spare Chris from
>having to say so himself, what you describe is exactly what the Erasmatron
>was designed to help you create.

Yeah, I definitely want to take a look at it, though I think I have 
enough funky ideas of my own that I'd probably use Chris's work to 
learn from, but work on something on my own.

For instance, one thing I'm really fascinated by is Richard Dawkin's 
theory of memetic evolution, whereby we all have nuggets of 
information, just like genes, that make up our minds.. with 
meme-transfer happening when people learn from others..  In such a 
way, memes that are more "successful" (in such a way that others 
would learn those memes more, either because the carrier is rich or 
happy or a parent or whatnot) tend to propagate more.. and thus you 
have memetic evolution.

I think this would be a fascinating system with which to allow a 
society to develop and for social conventions to emerge.  The problem 
would be in tweaking the constants to get the results you want.. 
which is why I was thinking I'd juts call the NPCs "aliens" so they 
can develop different social structures from human beings..

>One suggestion: as a player, I'm really sick of being the detective.
>Detectives don't have any fun, they just clean up everybody else's mess. Can
>I please, just this once, be one of the mobsters trying to scheme, cheat, and
>murder my way to the top?

So the thing is, I originally had this idea for the alien world I 
just described... and the idea would be that you, being a detective 
(or perhaps xenoanthropologist?), would not actually know how their 
social system works.. Your job would be to figure out their system.. 
why they do things.   The alien world might be necessary for that, 
because typical detectives pretty much already know all the "whys" by 
heart..

That's why I was thinking of doing this from a detective's 
standpoint.. because you'd be TOTALLY lost as a player..  though 
maybe that'd be interesting in its own way.. you'd be trying to get 
ahead in a world where you don't know the social conventions and 
maybe don't even know what getting ahead means! :)

-ToastyKen

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| Kenneth Lu - kenlu@mit.edu - http://www.mit.edu/~kenlu/ |
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| "Life is far too important to be taken seriously."      |
|                                                         |
|                                          -- Oscar Wilde |
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