[MUD-Dev] Geometric content generation

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Martin" <ya_hoo_com at yahoo.com>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" <olag at ifi.uio.no>

>> Now, if this response is perceived as inflammatory, then keep in
>> mind that the initial stimulation made me _cringe_.

> I'm a bit confused. AFAICS no-one is claiming that the study of
> rats is the be-all and end-all to interpreting how people will
> react to a game design, but that this iw what you are objecting
> to; it seemed to me that the point of the article was that the
> behaviour of rats in a specific test environment corellates
> extremely well to the behviour of humans along one of their
> behavioural axes (i.e. the tendency to seek incremental
> improvement and reward ), and by examining many many experiments
> of one, we can start to understand and generalise about the other
> - in a way that is otherwise probably impossible because of the
> lack of human test subjects to sit around for months testing the
> hypotheses.

You don't really need humans to sit around for months testing these.
Just to expand, the same reward schedules have the same effects in a
broad variety of species, up to, and including primates. So it's not
a story just about rats. Also, there's a lot of strong correlation
between drug addiction in rats [and some of these schedules for it]
and in humans. The simplest level of addictive/reward systems is
strongly homologous between rats and humans, at least for drugs like
cocaine, morphine, etc.

    rayzam
    www.travellingbard.com


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