3 ms·

> The human input depends on the intermediate state, where the file input does not. Not sure what you mean by “depends” here. If I’m at a game controller I can

> The human input depends on the intermediate state, where the file input does not. Not sure what you mean by “depends” here. If I’m at a game controller I can smash buttons for years without caring what the state of the game is. It’s up to the game to make sense of those button presses and do the right thing.

dahart 8y ago
It’s a two-way dependency. You are taking about the game responding to the human, but I’m talking about the human responding to the game. Both need to happen, they are entangled, which is why you fundamentally can’t separate them and treat them as an abstract function of time, nor can you re-order the events (which may be necessary for pure functional interaction). Just because you can smash buttons randomly doesn’t prove anything, that’s not normally how people play games. Normally, they see what’s happening and respond in order to succeed.
- zachrose 8y ago
  Ok that’s something else then. I thought we were just talking about crafting a program that accepts user input (sensical or otherwise) and draws the right graphics on a screen. If you want a complete cybernetic framework to model the player and the game, I wouldn’t know where to begin.
  - dahart 8y ago
    I don’t want a model of the player at all. (And I don’t think it’s possible to make one that will solve this problem.) We are talking about how to increase the scope of FP to include the I/O layer, because it currently ends at the I/O interface. I’m arguing that it might be fundamentally, perhaps provably impossible to have pure FP when there’s unpredictable human interaction, due to the coupled dependency on intermediate state.
  - magicalhippo 8y ago
    Imagine a simple game where the player has to adjust a dial to tune in an old FM radio manually by holding either button A or button B. The game needs to provide feedback to the user as the tuning happens, in the form of more or less noise, so that the user can stop when the station is found.

dahart 8y ago

It’s a two-way dependency. You are taking about the game responding to the human, but I’m talking about the human responding to the game. Both need to happen, they are entangled, which is why you fundamentally can’t separate them and treat them as an abstract function of time, nor can you re-order the events (which may be necessary for pure functional interaction). Just because you can smash buttons randomly doesn’t prove anything, that’s not normally how people play games. Normally, they see what’s happening and respond in order to succeed.

zachrose 8y ago
Ok that’s something else then. I thought we were just talking about crafting a program that accepts user input (sensical or otherwise) and draws the right graphics on a screen. If you want a complete cybernetic framework to model the player and the game, I wouldn’t know where to begin.
- dahart 8y ago
  I don’t want a model of the player at all. (And I don’t think it’s possible to make one that will solve this problem.) We are talking about how to increase the scope of FP to include the I/O layer, because it currently ends at the I/O interface. I’m arguing that it might be fundamentally, perhaps provably impossible to have pure FP when there’s unpredictable human interaction, due to the coupled dependency on intermediate state.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  Imagine a simple game where the player has to adjust a dial to tune in an old FM radio manually by holding either button A or button B. The game needs to provide feedback to the user as the tuning happens, in the form of more or less noise, so that the user can stop when the station is found.