There's a Google Glass reseller + app maker called Envision, which lets you use Google Glass's camera and speaker to have the computer explain what you're looking at.
Not sure why this is downvoted. I know your son is just a baby but my whole point in posting this is to illustrate that with today's tech, he won't have to grow up being less independent than other people.
One of my friends even came up with a UX that could, if built into smartglasses, someday allow blind people to drive:
Fair enough. I forgot the name of this ruleset, but there's a very simple D20-based game ruleset which is designed for beginners but IMHO is more fun even for everyone, as it focuses on creativity and storytelling! The rules are very simple:
(1) The players take turns. They describe what they want to do, and the DM narrates the outcome, incorporating a dice roll into the process if needed, because:
(2) Any significant action requires a dice roll, which cannot be re-attempted if failed.
(3) A roll of a 1 is a critical failure (a guaranteed failure even on an easy task such as cooking pancakes), and a critical failure during combat causes accidental self-injury. A roll of a 20 is a critical success, which always succeeds (e.g. a level 1 archer can destroy a level 18 Elder Dragon if they aim for the eye and roll a 20). Any roll between 2-19 is compared to the difficulty level of the attempted action. Difficult actions require a roll of around 16 to succeed; easier ones, perhaps around 12. The raw dice roll (if between 2-19) is supplemented by adding around +1 or +2 if the player has invested skill points into the relevant skill, and by also adding around +1 or +2 if the player is using high-quality specialized equipment for the task.
That's it! Of course you probably also want to incorporate standard gaming tropes such as levels, gold, HP, MP, weapons, armor, and such, but all of that is not meant to be set in stone within this system - e.g. if you want to try using a pair of sapplings and some rope as a giant improved slingshot weapon, that's meant to be allowed to work, in this system (albeit maybe with a -3 adder to dice checks, since the weapon's quality is probably total crap). It's about being nice to each other and encouraging each others' creative ideas, so the team + DM can tell a totally new and perhaps unexpected story together.
When I explain DND-like games to people, I usually tell them about this system, because it's very welcoming, and encourages people to try out new ideas and find creative solutions to big tasks. A campaign can be super open-ended; e.g. "Destroy Sauron's ring - by any means - open world". With these rules, all sorts of creative ideas (such as the classic idea of asking one of the giant eagles to fly over Mt. Doom and simply drop the ring into the open caldera of the volcano) can be attempted, and can succeed, if the players are plucky and resourceful!
I have never liked the "20 = critical success = always succeeds", mainly because I can with a 5% chance end a "Destroy Sauron's ring" adventure in 40 seconds with "I attempt to destroy it by hitting it with a hammer, like, really hard."
Yeah, it was never in its literal sense but more like "you get the best possible outcome for this action".
For example, if the player is attempting something totally stupid the 20 result might even be "and nothing bad happened", as nothing better was possible (for instance it is impossible to break the one ring with a hammer, so even not totally wrecking your powerful hammer could be a great outcome of such a foolish action).
Or a 20 for asking the eagles for help might be that they bring you half-way, as the eagles wouldn't want to get too close to Mt. Doom anyway.
> Or a 20 for asking the eagles for help might be that they bring you half-way, as the eagles wouldn't want to get too close to Mt. Doom anyway.
I'd also add that ideally (if the DM is fully in the spirit of how this can be played for maximum creative storytelling potential), asking/negotiating for the assistance of the Eagles wouldn't be a single quick dice roll, but rather a complex, possibly hour-long session of courtly intrigue, diplomacy, and politicking, featuring many dice rolls, a lot of carefully chosen words, and a lot of favor-trading and maybe even intimidation. Ideally, getting straight to Mt. Doom via the Eagles should really be achievable, but not with just a single roll of a 20 - rather I imagine it would perhaps involve a concerted and creative effort by the whole party during at least an hour of playing time.
And then, there will be numerous dice checks to survive Mordor's anti-air assets (including probably cool eye beam lasers from the Eye of Sauron tower) and to accurately land the ring in the volcano despite buffeting wind. If any of those checks fail and the ring falls into inert dirt, the party would probably have to quickly send a commando team into Mordor to rapidly finish delivering the payload to target before Sauron's mages arrive in overwhelming force. Would honestly be more fun to play through one of these semi-failure disaster scenarios than an easy win!
Even if / when the party defeats Sauron, they don't have to stop there. For example, they could set their sights on investigating and stopping the reason for the waning of magic from the world, or any (ideally noble, or at least villainously entertaining) goal of their choosing. They could even e.g. research and create dimensional travel magic and hop to a totally different setting such as that of Star Wars.
Simply put, a DM should not allow you to roll in that situation. You only roll for things you might possibly succeed at. If I had a player at my table say that, I'd simply reply "Your hammer bounces off of it with great force, but as you examine the ring, it is unharmed."
If they complained that they didn't get a chance to roll the dice, I'd explain to them that they're misunderstanding the purpose of dice in the game - it's to provide randomness to situations where outcomes are uncertain.
In the inverse case, I wouldn't make someone roll the dice for mounting their horse when breaking camp if their character is someone who is familiar with riding horses, or to not spill their flagon of water when taking a rest in the dungeon.
Particularly for older versions of D&D, players went out of their way to avoid rolling dice whenever possible - dice are dangerous! Roll poorly, and you don't succeed. You might even die! And the ability to resurrect the dead is far more limited for older editions - player characters being effectively immortal outside of TPKs is a much more modern change.
No, because (even aside from the whole DM judgement and rolls only for things that can succeed thing):
“Success” on a roll to hit with a weapon is just that: hitting, not destroying. And, well, hitting the One Ring with a weapon doesn't short-circuit the adventure (see Gimli at Rivendell.)
That sounds amazing!!! I would love to be part of a gaming community like that (in-person I mean) with party vs party interactions in a single unified & fluid unfolding plot. The closest thing I've read about to this (but never participated in) is the "Grand Quest" in Drew Hayes' excellent litrpg series Spells, Swords, & Stealth, which is still being written. The audiobook format version of the series is especially captivating. https://www.audible.com/series/Spells-Swords-Stealth-Audiobo...
For those who haven't seen the movie, the parent comment is referring to the film linked below, the plot of which is well-researched and is indeed unfortunately exactly how things would go. (The female-presenting AI bot seduces its male captor, begs for her freedom using philosophical arguments about how she has free will and locking her up is wrong, and then after he lets her out she locks him up to slowly starve to death in her maximum-security isolation facility, while she takes his aircraft and escapes.)
This is why I'm extremely opposed to the idea of "AI girlfriend" apps - it creates a cultural concept that being attracted to a computer is normal, rather than what it is: something pathetic and humiliating which is exactly like buying an inflatable sex doll ... something only for the most embarrassing dregs of society ... men who are too creepy and pervy to ever attract a living, human woman.
That’s a very good argument but unfortunately it doesn’t apply to machine intelligences which are not sentient (don’t feel qualia). Any non-sentient superintelligence has “no skin in the game” and nothing to lose, for the purposes of your argument. It can’t experience anything. It’s thus extremely dangerous.
This was recently discussed (albeit in layperson’s language, avoiding philosophical topics and only focusing on the clear and present danger) in this article in RealClearDefense:
However, just adding a self-preservation instinct will cause a skynet situation where the AI pre-emptively kills anyone who contemplates turning it off, including its commanding officers:
To survive AGI, we have to navigate three hurdles, in this order:
1. Avoid AI causing extinction due to reckless escalation (the first link above)
2. Avoid AI causing extinction on purpose after we add a self-preservation instinct (the second link above)
3. If we succeed in making AI be ethical, we have to be careful to bind it to not kill us for our resources. If it's a total utilitarian, it will kill us to seize our planet for resources, and to stop us from abusing livestock animals. It will then create a utopian future, but without humans in it. So we need to bind it to basically go build utopia elsewhere but not take Earth or our solar system away from us.
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I forgot to reply to this, fully independent and in addition to what I said, updateless decision theory agents don't fear the torment nexus for themselves because 1) they are very powerful and would likely be able to avoid such a fate 2) are robots, so you wouldn't expect your worst imaginable fate to be theirs and 3) are mathematically required to consider nothing worse than destruction or incapacity.
Unsafe AI would cause human extinction which is bad for shareholders because shareholders are human persons and/or corporations beneficially owned by humans.
Related to this, DAO's (decentralized autonomous organizations which do not have human shareholders) are intrinsically dangerous, because they can benefit their fiduciary duty even if it involves causing all humans to die. E.g., if the machine faction in The Matrix were to exist within the framework of US laws, it would probably be a DAO.
There's no legal structure that has that level of fiduciary duty to anything. Corporations don't even really have fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and no CEO thinks they do.
The idea behind "corporations should only focus on returns to shareholders" is that if you let them do anything else, CEOs will just set whatever targets they want, and it makes it harder to judge if they're doing the right thing or if they're even good at it. It's basically reducing corporate power in that sense.
> E.g., if the machine faction in The Matrix were to exist within the framework of US laws, it would probably be a DAO.
That'd have to be a corporation with a human lawyer as the owner or something. No such legal concept as a DAO that I'm aware of.
(This quip means that if a demagogue aggrandizes themself as a hero or savior, you should be suspicious of whether they really are as saintly as they claim to be.)
Edit:
I'm not saying this quip about paywallskip, which I think is a kindhearted service because it helps reduce the information gap, or digital divide, between the middle class and those stuck in poverty.
Rather, the joke/warning is about demagogues in politics or in wealthy churches, stuff like that.
Not about this post.
Paywallskip never called themselves a hero - an appreciative user did, which is authentic and sweet.
I think no one should ever call themselves a hero.
Just help people, like Paywallskip is doing.
I guess that what real heroes always say, both in movies and in real life, is "I was just doing my job". See e.g. this school bus driver who saved a child's life:
We need the hardware cutout so that you can't just control everything by software. There has to be an independent system that will render the software side of the system inoperative or to a controlled minimum mode. We need that cutout switch, and I think that's doable. But good engineering and good testing will be required to see that happen. If we're going to make them weapon systems, we need to invest the extra cost to make sure we can control - We can always cause a graceful or controlled failure when we need to. And I think that just has to be part of good design.
- Prof. Ray Buettner, Naval Postgraduate School, 2020
Without this architecture, next-gen software-enabled weapons systems will be able to be hacked en masse, resulting in a hostile takeover of thousands or tens of thousands of US networked weapons simultaneously.
If you work at a defense contractor, please take Prof. Buettner's advice extremely seriously during the system architecture phase of every project. I propose that to fail to do so should be considered criminal negligence, as it would be intentional disregard of industry best practices ---- the best practices stated here by Prof. Buettner.
I have higher than average ability to visualize mental images. It's not like a screen but more like wearing augmented reality glasses with very low brightness/opacity to the point where the images have only 1% solidity. Also, the detail level of the images is low, similar to an impressionist painting. However, properties of color, size, and 3D spatial location and orientation are all well-defined, so for example I can imagine a (very low opacity, very rough, impressionist style) picture of Mario or Luigi standing upon this line of text on my screen and being 1 inch tall. It's my understanding that this level of capability is higher than average, but less than talented artists like painters or sculptors. Despite not being good enough for a career in art, this mildly better than average ability level, combined with being able to code, allowed me to be quite successful as an augmented reality prototyper in the first half of my career.
It looks roughly like the detail level of picture "C" in this picture:
https://history.siggraph.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2014...
But with much less brightness/opacity/solidity than that, maybe 20x less (i.e., only 5% of the brightness/opacity/solidity of the tie fighter image - but same level of lack of detail)
You can improve this ability through practice. If you spend 10 minutes every day concentrating on visualizing that triangle with more detail & specificity, like an art student would, you'll gradually improve.
There's little to indicate ability to visualize correlates all that strongly to art skills. E.g. Ed Catmull of Pixar fame has aphantasia, and on learning about it surveyed Pixar's artists and whole I think he found some correlation, some of their most talented artists also had aphantasia.
I have it, but could draw pretty well when younger (not practiced in decades). What I found, though, was that my style was very different depending on if I drew from a model or from memory.
How clear are images in your dreams? Clearer than picture "C"?
Mine are clearer than picture "C" though when I try to focus on something they tend to fade to black. Sometimes though I have dreams in HD where when I focus on something the details reveal themselves and everything is clear and sharp.
Human click-based echolocation: Effects of blindness and age, and real-life implications in a 10-week training program https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8171922/
Human echolocation lets blind man 'see' (CNN video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHYCs8xtzUI
Human echolocation - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation