Unexplainable Questions

[Frothingslosh]

The worst part is I've seen it before. I should have been able to answer it without working through it. :-/

 

[Libre]

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood?

 

[Vassago]

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood?

That's been answered...

"He would chuck the wood as much as he could if a wood chuck could chuck wood."

 

[Libre]

Ah yes. You're right - that clears it all up.

 

[Libre]

Another thing that had always puzzled me, is how do animals think? How do they form enough of a cognitive thought to realize they're thirsty - for example? I - we humans that is - tend to think verbally. I tell myself, I'm thirsty - get something to drink. Even if I bypass the words, I get a mental image of a drink, and myself guzzling it. But what happens when animals like dogs ( highly intelligent) to insects to amoeba. What makes them "decide" to do something. We can day that it's "instinct" but that explanation isn't very illuminating. It's kind of like answering how did we get here by saying the Creator created us. It just puts the question another step away without answering it.
So how do animals "lower" on the evolutionary scale than humans, think, without language or reasoning to guide them?

 

[Bladerunner]

Another thing that had always puzzled me, is how do animals think? How do they form enough of a cognitive thought to realize they're thirsty - for example? I - we humans that is - tend to think verbally. I tell myself, I'm thirsty - get something to drink. Even if I bypass the words, I get a mental image of a drink, and myself guzzling it. But what happens when animals like dogs ( highly intelligent) to insects to amoeba. What makes them "decide" to do something. We can day that it's "instinct" but that explanation isn't very illuminating. It's kind of like answering how did we get here by saying the Creator created us. It just puts the question another step away without answering it.
So how do animals "lower" on the evolutionary scale than humans, think, without language or reasoning to guide them?

Simple! Have you ever craved something, you just could not call it by name and then you run up on it by accident and say 'that is what I was craving" Well, animals don't crave pickles or Rocky Road Ice-Cream (????) but their bodies do need certain things (includes a large spectrum here ) to survive. It is an automatic process and is not really an 'instinct' or thought process but something the body needs. The thought process would kick in when trying to find the craving. (i.e. where to get water?,,etc.)

Blade

 

[Frothingslosh]

Libre, let me ask you this - have you ever been in a competitive event of some kind (sports is most commonly where this is found, but it happens in fighting/sparring and just about any kind of competition) where you entered what athletes call 'the zone'? That's a point where you're operating on a completely different level, not really thinking so much as knowing what's going on, KNOWING what the best response is going to be, often knowing what your opponent is going to do, and reacting to all of that instantly, without thought ever getting in the way to slow things down.

Miyamoto Musashi referred to that as being in the moment, and it was part of his final ring in his masterpiece 'The Book of Five Rings', as samurai specifically worked toward reaching that. It comes from extensive training and experience in something.

I have a feeling that for most animals, it works like that most of the time. That said, however, trust me when I say that my three cats have figured out how to do some pretty amazing things. One has learned to open doors with handles rather than knobs, and another not only figured out how the water faucet works, but how to turn it on! The last one is basically dumb as a stump, but she when she's cuddling and getting her back rubbed, she tries to pet you back.

So while there may be no language in most (although some chimps seem to be able to construct sentences in sign), but there is definitely 'thought' of some sort - even if just on a minimal, VERY basic level far below logic - for them to be able to reason things like that out.

 

[Brianwarnock]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...sly-thought-solvable-people-apes-monkeys.html

 

[Libre]

Froth - I've definitely been in that "zone" in several different activities - not always competitive - but one that is, is golf. Several times, for no understandable reason, everything became clear to me - and I played well above my usual level.
By far, the activity I'm most expert at, and have spent more time trying to master than any other, is the classical guitar. Every now and then, I seem to float above myself and time seems to slow down for me - everything is perfectly clear - all the notes - all the spaces between them - are huge. If I were a baseball batter, the pitch would be coming in at 10 miles per hour and the baseball would be as big as a grapefruit. It's extraordinary. It's tough to hold on to - usually the next day I'm back at my normal level - but when the conditions are perfect and I've been practicing, I can almost make it happen now.
I've been playing guitar for more than 50 years.

Have you - or any other forum members - ever felt like that? What were you doing? How have you tried to create the circumstances to promote it?

 

[jdraw]

Not necessarily an unexplainable question, but one that doesn't have an obvious answer.
Strange "animal pairings" -- Jack and Charley from Nature on PBS.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Froth - I've definitely been in that "zone" in several different activities - not always competitive - but one that is, is golf. Several times, for no understandable reason, everything became clear to me - and I played well above my usual level.
By far, the activity I'm most expert at, and have spent more time trying to master than any other, is the classical guitar. Every now and then, I seem to float above myself and time seems to slow down for me - everything is perfectly clear - all the notes - all the spaces between them - are huge. If I were a baseball batter, the pitch would be coming in at 10 miles per hour and the baseball would be as big as a grapefruit. It's extraordinary. It's tough to hold on to - usually the next day I'm back at my normal level - but when the conditions are perfect and I've been practicing, I can almost make it happen now.
I've been playing guitar for more than 50 years.

Have you - or any other forum members - ever felt like that? What were you doing? How have you tried to create the circumstances to promote it?

Actually, yes, all the time. I started doing it as a kid playing baseball and in 7th grade, between that and finally losing my fear of the ball, went from a .100 batting average the previous year to about .650 that year. Then I stopped playing because I realized I hated the game and only played it because my dad wanted me to.

I can generally do that when fighting/sparring, as well, and pretty much any time I play video games competitively (yeah, I'm a gamer). Different people reach it different ways, but for me, it comes from an insane-level concentration where literally nothing else exists for me except what I'm doing. That's something I can do without a whole lot of preparation or effort, although it requires me to know what I'm doing REALLY well.

One place I wish I could do that is chess. Some people can - one reason Garry Kasparov was so, so good is that he could throw the board into insanely complicated, aggressive positions and then just play what 'felt' right rather than work through the intensive, 10-15 move calculations grandmasters usually go by.

 

[Libre]

Ah. Got the PS4 last week. I've had the PS3 for 5 years.
What is your fave system and fave games, Froth,

 

[Frothingslosh]

Actually, I'm a PC gamer, since my favorite genres are RPG and Strategy (both TBS and RTS).

Favorite games of all time would be Planescape: Torment, followed by Civilization IV. I also played the hell out of the Mass Effect series right up until the last ten minutes of Mass Effect III.

PvP, I've played the hell out of the Age of Empires series, Age of Wonders, and Starcraft. I also played a Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies, meaning I could be forced into PvP at any time by bounty hunters with a mission to kill me, and since they didn't wave flags saying what they were and didn't show as pvp-flagged, I would (in theory) have no clue they were after me. Of course, most of them sucked and advertised it a mile away, but them's the breaks.

 

[Libre]

I like pc strategy games - command and conquer being about my favorite. For RPG, Diablo is about my favorite one. The playstation has a killer version of Diablo - I've played Diablo I, II, and III on PC, and Diablo III on both PS3 and PS4. The ps versions are absolutely awesome. I only play single player though - never multiplayer online.
I'm also an avid chess player but I pretty much stink.

 

[Frothingslosh]

I love chess, myself, but I've not played it in probably 20 years. Used to play in tournaments. My I spent around 9 months playing at a D level, stopped playing tournaments for a bit due to $$$ but kept studying and practicing, and then played in the Michigan Open. I wound up doing well enough there to increase my rating almost 200 points, and my performance AT the tournament was just a hair under the 2000 (expert) level.

I've thought about getting back into the tournament scene, but I'm sure my game has massively deteriorated, and being class D at 44 would be a bit embarrassing, anyway.

Oh, and by RPG, I mean more old-school: Might and Magic, Baldur's Gate, Planescape, etc. Diablo and its clones are Action-RPG, and while they're certainly entertaining, I don't enjoy them anywhere near as much.

 

[Libre]

I'm not familiar with these old school rpg's. They're pic games? Are they downloads or discs? Can you describe the difference between these and Diablo?

 

[ConnorGiles]

Glad to see we have some PC gamers in (I am one myself - I play most genres, used to play the old/newer might and magics). Take into account I am 18 so the game can't be that old (but to me it is )

 

[ConnorGiles]

and I am very glad to see we have been carrying this thread through the weekend.

adding to my previous question, (Irresistable force against Impenetrable barrier) Gandalf vs Dovahkiin

 

[Frothingslosh]

I'm not familiar with these old school rpg's. They're pic games? Are they downloads or discs? Can you describe the difference between these and Diablo?

The ones I listed are all PC games based more on a pen-and-paper model than the Diablo model. Might and Magic was a series that ran for maybe 15 years and had nine RPG installments. (The TBS Heroes of Might and Magic series is still going strong.) The Dungeons and Dragons-based Baldur's Gate was released in 1998 and single-handedly revived the CRPG genre; I'm actually finishing an Insane-difficulty Ironman (no-reload) playthrough for the BG series right now. Planescape: Torment is another D&D-based game that came out shortly after BG; it and the unrelated Fallout are generally considered the two best CRPG's of all time. Torment, for example, had over 800,000 words of dialogue (War and Peace has 500,000), and the store is, while different, amazing.

Another good series is Deus Ex, set in a world where the conspiracy theories are true. It even had an installment come out a few years ago: Human Revolution.

All of the games can technically be found on disc, although most are no longer in production.

All of the Baldur's Gate games (original and Enhanced Edition - a 2010's update), Planescape, some of the Might and Magic games, and the original Deus Ex can be found on www.gog.com . Both BG Enhanced versions can be found on Steam as well, as well as Deus Ex.

Other good RPG's - Fallout, Ultima (except 9, that was a disaster), the Mass Effect trilogy (although the ending of 3 may piss you the hell off - it was really bad), Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Inquisition, Neverwinter Nights, the Witcher is REALLY good, and Shadowrun: Dragonfall.

Oh, and Connor, I've been a computer gamer since I got my first one back in 1986 and discovered Ultima IV. It was a natural progression, since I played RPG's ever since discovering Dungeons and Dragons at the end of 1978.

Edit: Oh, right, difference between them and Diablo. Diablo has some character development, but interactions are limited both in number of people and possibilities, and the vast majority of the game is based on the idea of 'go from X to Y, killing everything in between, and then kill the boss'. The combat tends to be more active, as you have to click everywhere all the time and you're generally cycling through abilities as fast as you can. Resource management is often critical in a non-action RPG.

The ones I mentioned tend to be a LOT heavier on dialogue (even Mass Effect, where it's all voiced) and focus far more on problem solving than in just taking out the next boss. Character development tends to be more involved and more complex, too, than in action RPG's of the same era. (That's not to knock Diablo - I liked that game too, and I know how tough the skill trees could get in D2.) I think the closest I can say is that, while Diablo certainly has a basic story, CRPG's are about telling a story, while ARPG's are about the action scenes. Neither is bad, just different.

Also, most of the CRPG's tend to have you playing (or at least using) multiple characters, while in ARPG's you tend to be alone.

 

[ConnorGiles]

A lot of those modern games I have played (Dragon age, Fallout, Mass Effect, Witcher etc...).

I think we have a common interest here Frothingslosh

RPG's are one of my favourites too, shoot'em ups are mostly the same to me.