“I am educated and this is my guess.”

Yep my sentiment entirely.

I had actually written a couple more paragraphs using weather models as an analogy akin to your quartz crystal example but deleted them to shorten my wall of text…

We have built up models which can predict what might happen to particular weather patterns over the next few days to a fair degree of accuracy. However, to get a 100% conclusive model we’d have to have information about every molecule in the atmosphere, which is just not practical when we have a good enough models to have an idea what is going on.

The same is true for any system of sufficient complexity.

This article, along with others covering the topic, seem to foster an air of mystery about machine learning which I find quite offputting.

Known as generalization, this is one of the most fundamental ideas in machine learning—and its greatest puzzle. Models learn to do a task—spot faces, translate sentences, avoid pedestrians—by training with a specific set of examples. Yet they can generalize, learning to do that task with examples they have not seen before.

Sounds a lot like Category Theory to me which is all about abstracting rules as far as possible to form associations between concepts. This would explain other phenomena discussed in the article.

Like, why can they learn language? I think this is very mysterious.

Potentially because language structures can be encoded as categories. Any possible concept including the whole of mathematics can be encoded as relationships between objects in Category Theory. For more info see this excellent video.

He thinks there could be a hidden mathematical pattern in language that large language models somehow come to exploit: “Pure speculation but why not?”

Sound familiar?

models could seemingly fail to learn a task and then all of a sudden just get it, as if a lightbulb had switched on.

Maybe there is a threshold probability of a positied association being correct and after enough iterations, the model flipped it to “true”.

I’d prefer articles to discuss the underlying workings, even if speculative like the above, rather than perpetuating the “It’s magic, no one knows.” narrative. Too many people (especially here on Lemmy it has to be said) pick that up and run with it rather than thinking critically about the topic and formulating their own hypotheses.

It’s just a bit of a pointless distinction. No atheist could claim they know for sure.

I don’t think it is possible to prove a deity exists, but I’m fully open to the prospect of being wrong.

Sounds like straight up atheism to me…

As an atheist who would fully accept the existence of a deity if any form of rigorous proof was provided, these boxes are dumb.

How does one “lean” agnostic?

It’s not a strawman argument, I’ll let you pick any imaginary creature you please.

Mind if I take some of your income to fund my unicorn sanctuary instead of improving tangible public services?

Now that you mention it, I’m not entirely convinced it is a fully coherent belief in its own right, more of a lack of wanting to enter the debate or a subcategory of atheism.

Shall we try it with unicorns? Unicorn believer says they saw a unicorn.

Atheist viewpoint would say something along the lines of “To persuade me they exist I’d need to see one in the flesh or at the very least a full anatomical breakdown of how their magical properties work with corroboration from other unicorn enthusiasts.”

The agnostic standpoint is what exactly? “We can’t know whether unicorns exist or not so there’s no point discussing it.”?

No they don’t and agnosticism isn’t an upgrade, it’s just sitting on the fence.

Most athiests are agnostic to some degree and vice versa.

The burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim.

Logic and reasoning preferably with scientific evidence.

Slay the Spire for improving risk analysis skills.

David, is that you?!

I expected it to be difficult with a possibility of not enjoying it but seemed pretty popular so thought I’d give it a go.

Will give your suggestions a shot but I find everything about it obtuse to be honest. To me good game design lowers you gently into mastering the controls and ramping up difficulty, not just chucking you in at the deep end with confusing menus so it’s on the player to look everything up.

Weirdly I like Guitar Hero, but think that’s mainly down to enjoying the songs and playing with friends. Scraping through Cliffs of Dover on expert was enough Eden Ring for me lol.

Yeah think you’re right, I like fast-paced games where I can enter flow state quicker and I never was one for grinding up a skill tree in order to progress unless the grinding itself is fun/fluid.

I prefer actively attacking enemies with a bit of running away and dodging where required as opposed to patiently dodging waiting for an opening to attack.

Thanks for the offer, I would have taken you up on that, unfortunately I have it on Xbox, not PC.

I don’t find Elden Ring puzzling, but maybe I haven’t played enough. From what I’ve seen so far it’s more trial and error and than figuring stuff out, which I find boring.

Skill trees in general I think are bit of a cop out in most action games, let alone having to decipher them. I’ll reach for 4X games like Stellaris or Civ if I want to sit and think about how stats affect outcomes.

Yeah boss battles are usually pretty easy in Zelda, as you say, 3 hits and done most of the time. They’re traditionally about getting the player to master the technique or item you’ve just unlocked. Have you tried running straight to Ganon if BotW or tackling The Depths in TotK though? I don’t think either of those tasks could be considered simple.

Surprised you only like the first one, the games are constantly innovating in terms of gameplay and design, but the first is a pretty standard affair. A lot of the time the simplicity is what enables the fun, fluid gameplay as with most games Nintendo put out.

If I want a challenge I’ll play online shooters or pretty much any roguelike where when I die I don’t come away feeling it was unfair. Tbh I think I just don’t enjoy modern action RPGs in general rather than it being a specific Elden Ring criticism. I find they try to cater to lots of mechanics that other games implement better but fully aware that’s an unpopular opinion.

Yeah, glad I didn’t buy this. Thought it was hated on a bit too much though.

I enjoyed the combat more than most RPGs and some of the hand crafted environments were nice. Found the ship building quite fun too.

Cheers, probably just not for me then.

Elden Ring.

Waited all year until it was on sale as I thought it might not be my cup of tea, tried not to let my prejudice get the better of me but felt it was such a drag I had to put it down.

It was recommended to me as I like Zelda but it couldn’t be further from the things I like about it: innovation, fluid gameplay, freedom, puzzles, multiple ways to tackle enemies.

I don’t think it’s the difficulty as I play lots of roguelike and bullet hell games. My main gripe is the clunkiness of the combat to the point it’s unfair. Like you don’t really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.

Also I kept hearing how good the graphics are but I think they’re kinda average although the actual art style is quite nice.

Any suggestions on how I might enjoy it would be much appreciated as I haven’t got very far.