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Nature invented play long before it invented us
- rolph 6y agomachine learning is not a concept original to human tech, it is [perhaps] unintentional biomimicry
- godelski 6y agoLots of ML has been based on mimicking nature. Not well, but many concepts are at least inspired by it.
- rolph 6y agoim glad you can appreciate the concept. im guessing your not a philosopher.
- t-writescode 6y agoWhy did you say that? What benefit did it bring to the conversation to insult them?
- rolph 6y agohow is it an insult to guess that someone is not a philosopher?
- t-writescode 6y agoPeople tend to only say something that has contextual relation to the conversation at hand. You don't interrupt a conversation about aqueducts to say "I got mud on my shoe once", so a reasonable interpretation is that something they said made you think they're not something; and, since the conversation was about relating things to other things and that's a very philosophical act, the insinuation is that they're bad at it.
- rolph 6y agothat sounds like a somewhat unrealistic reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference_focused_psychotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference_focused_psychothe... so help me out here, im insinuating that someone is bad at philosophizing by guessing they are not a philosopher, when they make a statement that has the hallmarks of a scientist, and none of the hueristic qualities of philosophy. i know its impossible to tell now, however my original comment was the first response to the parent submission, the philosophy was the interrupt event.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- t-writescode 6y agoIf you were going to say they seem like a scientist, it would have been better to go with "I'm guessing you're a scientist or in a science field?" A similar kind of way of speaking would be something like "I'm guessing you never went to college". This would be similar to calling someone an idiot. Or "you program like someone that's never taken a class in it". These are difficult to take positively because nearly every connotation implies that they're somehow lacking something. Rather than speaking about how someone is lacking, it's wiser to speak about how what they're doing is a positive. "You didn't go to college, did you?" is negative; but, "Are you self-taught?" is a positive. Self-taught implies a sort of stick-to-it-iveness and discipline, where as not going to college, again, implies a failing on that person. Does this make sense?
- godelski 6y agoI appreciate the defense but you probably shouldn't argue with them. I'm guessing they are trolling or egocentric (not a meaningful difference). I mean they are supposing that one cannot be both a scientist and a philosopher at the same time, which illustrates quite a naive viewpoint of what science actually is (there's a reason physics was called natural philosophy). Such a notion is a bit ludicrous and so I didn't even want to give it merit by acknowledging the insanity of it. And I mean come on, they said "machine learning is just bio-mimicry big whoop" and I responded "yeah, that's kinda the point"[0] because clearly they don't understand the bio-inspiration of ML and its history, which is a bit obtuse considering we call them "neural networks." And that's without even looking at things like dropout (inspired by sex), genetic programming (sex again), or exploration/exploitation strategies (which are directly related to play). Just let them ride their imaginary high horse. But I do have to give them props for the strangest insult I've gotten all year. [0] It would be very naive to actually say that ML is bio-mimicry. It has a lot of bio-inspiration but does things vastly differently than what biology actually does. But one cannot ignore the inspiration despite the implementation being vastly different.
- mam2 6y agonot sure why you are downvoted. playing is literally an exploration strategy
- 867-5309 6y agoone could argue this whole forum is synonymous with "Player News"
- godelski 6y agoBecause ML is vastly different than biology in implementation. It is accurate to say that ML is bio-inspired (which they insulted me for saying) but it is not accurate to say that it is bio-mimicry. That's an insult to the elegance of biology. Sure there's some similarities, but gasoline would not make for good soup.
- kashyapc 6y agoAny study of "play" must take into account of the classic work, 'Homo Ludens—A Study of the Play-Element in Culture', by the maverick Dutch historian, Johan Huzinga, from a 100 years ago. ("Homo Ludens" means "Man the Player" in Latin). To quote the abstract of the said book by Huizinga: [...] He identifies five characteristics of play: it is free; it is not "ordinary" or "real" life; it is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration; it creates order; it is connected with no material interest, and from it no profit can be gained. With cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics, Huizinga examines play in all its diverse guises—as it relates to language, law, war, knowledge, poetry, myth, philosophy, art, and much more. As he writes, "Civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it." Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of "man the player" through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and early modern world. With an eye for our own times he writes: "In American politics [play] is even more evident. Long before the two-party system had reduced itself to two gigantic teams whose political differences were hardly discernible to an outsider, electioneering in America had developed into a kind of national sport." With its remarkable historical sweep, Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come.
- tarruda 6y ago> He identifies five characteristics of play: it is free; it is not "ordinary" or "real" life; it is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration; it creates order; it is connected with no material interest, and from it no profit can be gained. According to this, video games are a form of play. I've always been told that playing video games is a waste of time, it would be interesting to see scientific evidence that it is actually good for you.
- mhh__ 6y agoKids playing FIFA as opposed to loitering outside the shops, smoking etc. is probably good for them and society.
- 6y ago
- jsinai 6y agoThis really became vivid for me the last time I visited the Kruger National Park in South Africa. I was in a wooden hide overlooking a small lake, and was lucky enough to witness a herd of about 20-30 elephants emerge from the bush on the other side of the lake. For the next hour they did nothing but play in the water under the baking heat (this was one of South Africa’s hottest Decembers on record). One of the baby elephants was particularly mischievous and enjoyed spraying it’s mother with water from behind. When the herd decided to leave, this baby elephant and another insisted on staying for a few more minutes. It was funny to see the mother’s come back and get them. Elephants really are incredible creatures, which I had seen many times but never like this. All the seriousness in their imposing size disappeared quite literally in the water. It was amazing to see a group of animals in the wild do nothing but play. It reminded me that we humans sometimes just need to do the same as well, with no reason or productive purpose.
- londons_explore 6y ago> with no reason or productive purpose. To learn the productive purpose, try sitting in the corner while everyone else plays. After a while, you'll find yourself shunned from all kinds of activities, and even maybe bullied and considered an outcast. Do it long enough and it might affect your mental health and lead you down a path of depression or suicide... Which leads to a possible purpose... It's detecting "bad" community members and expelling them. Nearly all animals that play also sometimes expel or kill some members of their own community.
- vram22 6y ago>It was amazing to see a group of animals in the wild do nothing but play. In fact that is the norm in the wild, and even among primitive tribes today. Also among many non-primitive but simpler (than us) people in rural areas. >It reminded me that we humans sometimes just need to do the same as well, with no reason or productive purpose. Yes. See this linked comment and my reply to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24860432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24860432
- noodlenotes 6y agoThis may be obvious to everyone else, but it wasn't until I adopted a dog that I realized how much "playing" is reinforcing skills needed for survival, like hunting and fighting. When dogs play with each other, they mostly wrestle or chase. It's hopefully in a non-violent context at the dog park, but it exercises the same muscles and reflexes that dogs would need for real fighting. It's been cool seeing my dog grow up and get better at skills like catching a ball in midair (chasing prey). Even human play mimics skills needed for survival, we just need more complicated skills, like war strategy and creativity. Just think about sports, board games, and so on.
- xyzelement 6y agoSame with playing with my 5 months old son. Playing forces him to track objects, grasp, pull/push, try to roll over to get something, etc.
- kqr 6y agoI'm glad I took the time before my baby was born to read a bit about human development and the purpose of laughter and so on. It made me realise how similar a human infant is to a baby chimpanzee. And sure enough, my baby loves being treated like one, with the fake climbing and play wrestling and whatnot.
- vram22 6y agoWhat is fake climbing?
- kqr 6y agoHe really wants to climb things and me, and probably has the strength for it, but lacks the coordination to successfully apply his strength toward that goal. But if I help out by supporting him (physically) he gets to experiment with various ways to grab hold of things and pretend that's the reason he's gaining altitude too.
- jchanimal 6y agoI’ve been thinking lately about how games are the root of formalisms. Turn based games with rules seem a unique bridge from the messy world to the ordered Platonic realm.
- euske 6y agoI think that play is a form of behavioral exploration that nature can be "creative". You can think of evolution and genetic mutation a kind of "play", and it's not all that surprising that this mechanism is built into every creature. We have to act somewhat randomly or erratically in order to overcome whatever obstacle we're facing (which sometimes we aren't even aware). I also become keenly aware of this when I play with ML because we design this kind of randomness into the system on purpose. I think that it's universally acknowledged truth that every creative/intelligent being has to have a right mixture of randomness and focus.
- xyzelement 6y ago>>> A mountain climber, von Helmholtz said, “hits upon traces of a fresh path, which again leads him a little further.” A big example of this in my life was doing my MBA (I was a hardcore developer/dev manager at the time.) While many classmates had specific goals like leaving a career behind or breaking into investment banking, my thought was more like "I got the time, my employer will pay tuition, maybe this will be challenging and fun." Fast forward a few years, I "naturally" ended up in product management. Not because it was my goal, but because the time in b-school taught me how to think about strategy, markets, communicate more clearly, and just be more sociable and have skills to confidently meet high-level clients and not embarrass myself. In other words, "playing at business school" happened to give me skills that enhanced my life in an unexpected (though in retrospect predictable) ways. Smaller examples of this abound. During COVID lockdown I randomly bought a raspberry PI and some basic electronic components. Soon after I ended up buying motor controllers, a tank chassis, sensors (and a soldering iron..) Without intending to, I went from someone who's "never done anything with electronics" to someone who "has built an autonomous rover that navigates by sonar." Completely useless but - for example - it opens up future opportunities to confidently work on a hardware business/product should an opportunity arise. A final example - also during COVID lockdown - our living room in-wall AC was barely blowing air and also getting wet. Repair people said that everything is working fine, that's just how it is given the airflow in the location of the unit (which didn't make sense because my wife remembered it working better a few years ago.) I decided I was going to figure it out - for fun. I didn't know anything about ACs and I figured there's a good chance that I'll fuck things up more, but the "worst" would be buying a new AC (about $2000) which might work better anyway despite what the repairmen said. So basically I had "room to play" Several days later, after several trips to a parts distributor in Queens, after learning about and switching out capacitors, etc. I didn't fix the problem. I started to try to measure the current going across the blower fan motor (I learned enough to associate the ice/condensation with insufficient air flow) when I short-circuited something and the motor sparked, smoked, and died. FUCK. Here's the scene of devastation (at about 3am) when I finally extricated the old burnt motor out of the unit: https://ibb.co/crYxs4R https://ibb.co/crYxs4R One more bike trip over the bridge to pick up a new motor, then one more because the new motor had a different thickness shaft and I needed bushings, I replaced the motor and noticed right away stronger airflow. Long story short, the old motor was slowly failing (before I made it fail quickly by blowing it up.) So now, we have a perfectly working AC and it cost about $300 (vs living with it or paying $2000 for a new one) and most importantly, I had fun and accidentally learned the skills that will make me a much more confident home owner in the future. There was a funny exchange I had with a colleague when I took a day off to work on the AC. He couldn't believe I took time from "the big important job" to do mechanical work, but he was missing the point - the reason I had "the big important job" is that I do shit like this and acquire random skills that help me move forward.
- WalterBright 6y agoIn other stunning research news, grass is green :-)
- mensetmanusman 6y agoI like the idea of play as one of the highest forms of existence. E.g. we work to make money to eat to have energy to have leisure time to play.
- strogonoff 6y ago> We work to make money to eat to have energy to have leisure time to play. So what do you think about the idea expressed in the article, that play is fundamental to survival? You stated a thesis that seemingly argues the opposite. The article spends thousands of words to support its reasoning, now I’m curious to know yours.
- patcon 6y agoI think you're in agreement? To clarify, I understood the commenters placing "play" last was because it was at the top, and the root rationale. making money -> eating -> energy -> play
- strogonoff 6y agomensetmanusman: “survive to play”. The end purpose is play. Survival is the means of getting there. TFA: “play to survive”. The end purpose is whatever survival entails (probably reproduction, or more generally passing on one’s genes). Play is the means of getting there.
- cko 6y agoI wouldn't say he's saying the opposite, but adding that we also work/live to be able to play.
- strogonoff 6y agoHow can the idea of “live to be able to play” be reconciled with the substance of the article?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thunderbong 6y agoI've found 'Finite and Infinite Games' by James Carse to be amazing thorough and enriching book along these lines. https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1476731713/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/...
- iamcreasy 6y agoThanks for the recommendation. I'll read it.