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I have truly benefited from playing Factorio. It sets you up with a logistical mindset, you learn to think about setting up a "supply chain" before you do some

I have truly benefited from playing Factorio. It sets you up with a logistical mindset, you learn to think about setting up a "supply chain" before you do something. This becomes a very abstract skillset that you start to apply in multiple areas of your life. Secondly, it takes your thinking to a higher, more abstract level when you learn to build factories that build factories that build... Thirdly, you learn polymorphic thinking in a high level. Like, products that are then taken through different processes produce entirely different things, and then some of them are fed back to this system. I have played the game for low two-digit hours, but it augmented my thinking in a concrete way. I will highly recommend Factorio. Chess has also benefited me in being more far-sighted in shorter terms. Especially in situations with real rivals, or even without. Scrabble had helped me learn in an early age that clever tricks and pragmatism help me win more than qualities like "elegance", etc. It was a lesson 'thrown in my face'.

fragmede 2y ago
Tony Zhu has a whole video about Factorio and software engineering: https://youtu.be/vPdUjLqC15Q https://youtu.be/vPdUjLqC15Q
federalauth 2y ago
Can you give specific examples for how you’ve applied skills learned in Factorio to real life situations?
- __rito__ 2y ago
  Please use your imagination. My comment is abstract, and deliberately so. You can apply these in any field of life.
- spartanatreyu 2y ago
  Factorio is amazing and the way it makes you remap certain parts of your brain works differently depending on the person, and the paths they took in the game, so it is a little hard to describe. Based on how other people try to explain it, I'd say the closest comparison matches the experience of being a "traditional" programmer being exposed to haskell. You've kind of just got to play it to experience it yourself. There's two parts to factorio: 1. You have to figure out what the next goal you need to focus on is, and then work backwards through the steps you'd need to achieve to get there. 2. You need to wrap your head around the task at hand figuring out how to build pipelined systems in a limited space. You might think you need A which can be turned into B which can be turned into C, which is correct. But it turns out the next step you planned requires some of your C to be turned into D while still making C, then you need to combine come D with B to make E, but suddenly you're not getting enough C to make D because you're using too much of the B to make E. You can swap some of the things that turns A into B to make B at a faster rate, but the A to B thing takes up more physical space, so now you need to move the things around in space without ending up getting tangled. Repeat these two things in a loop for the basic game loop, then add in the occasional emergencies that you didn't foresee that can wildly change your current objective. The difficulty curve in the game is designed in such a way to always let you figure out what your next objective is, but without you knowing all the pieces to get there. And there are multiple paths to the end so you need to figure out how you're getting there. Plus each of the ways you can use to get to the end work in different ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes utterly different. Because Factorio is always training your brain in different ways, you'll find that you're way of problem solving has become better every 10 hours or so. You'll randomly get ideas out of the game of how to improve things or do things in a different way and you can try them out whenever you get back to the game. Even when you finish it, you can go back and retry it to see just how much you've retrained your brain. You might even want to try the different paths to brain train other methods. You can finish the game for the first time in about 50 hours. Depending on how much you game, this may be a lot, or hardly anything, but I'll point out that it's not one of those repetitive daily-mission grind-fest second job games. It's much more like reading a really good book series that you're enjoying.
growingkittens 2y ago
I have noticed the same effect from studying different methods of information organization (such as ontologies or mind maps). Experience with a structured mental path is a fundamental part of learning. I've seen many educational games that explicitly teach skills, but don't necessarily offer an experience path for the application of those skills. Factorio is more along the lines of what an educational game should be.
- __rito__ 2y ago
  What are the methods that you have studied? What learning resources did you use? What are some of the methods that you would recommended?
  - growingkittens 2y ago
    I actively collect methods of information organization, so "which have I studied" is too broad to list in a comment. Learning resources - the greatest learning resource is teaching yourself how to learn, and understanding how your personal learning system works. When I go to learn something: - I don't use just one source. I look at multiple sources, comparing different perspectives as part of the learning process. No one author will explain things in "just the right way" to make things click. - I build a dynamic MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) "framework" as I learn a subject, which can organize every piece of information I might need to save. If a piece of information does not fit the framework, the framework is changed. - I use image search to quickly find different perspectives of a particular concept. Information organization recommendations: In general, I would start with "the basics" - a process - even if you're sure you understand it well. See if you can organize what you know into a MECE framework, and find out if your understanding of the information is "siloed" (based on a condition, such as context). Ask yourself how broadly you are able to apply your understanding, or pick an "unrelated" subject and organize it from a process view as an exercise. Look at different models of a process and which components are always included, and which are not.

fragmede 2y ago

Tony Zhu has a whole video about Factorio and software engineering: https://youtu.be/vPdUjLqC15Q https://youtu.be/vPdUjLqC15Q

federalauth 2y ago

Can you give specific examples for how you’ve applied skills learned in Factorio to real life situations?

__rito__ 2y ago
Please use your imagination. My comment is abstract, and deliberately so. You can apply these in any field of life.
spartanatreyu 2y ago
Factorio is amazing and the way it makes you remap certain parts of your brain works differently depending on the person, and the paths they took in the game, so it is a little hard to describe. Based on how other people try to explain it, I'd say the closest comparison matches the experience of being a "traditional" programmer being exposed to haskell. You've kind of just got to play it to experience it yourself. There's two parts to factorio: 1. You have to figure out what the next goal you need to focus on is, and then work backwards through the steps you'd need to achieve to get there. 2. You need to wrap your head around the task at hand figuring out how to build pipelined systems in a limited space. You might think you need A which can be turned into B which can be turned into C, which is correct. But it turns out the next step you planned requires some of your C to be turned into D while still making C, then you need to combine come D with B to make E, but suddenly you're not getting enough C to make D because you're using too much of the B to make E. You can swap some of the things that turns A into B to make B at a faster rate, but the A to B thing takes up more physical space, so now you need to move the things around in space without ending up getting tangled. Repeat these two things in a loop for the basic game loop, then add in the occasional emergencies that you didn't foresee that can wildly change your current objective. The difficulty curve in the game is designed in such a way to always let you figure out what your next objective is, but without you knowing all the pieces to get there. And there are multiple paths to the end so you need to figure out how you're getting there. Plus each of the ways you can use to get to the end work in different ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes utterly different. Because Factorio is always training your brain in different ways, you'll find that you're way of problem solving has become better every 10 hours or so. You'll randomly get ideas out of the game of how to improve things or do things in a different way and you can try them out whenever you get back to the game. Even when you finish it, you can go back and retry it to see just how much you've retrained your brain. You might even want to try the different paths to brain train other methods. You can finish the game for the first time in about 50 hours. Depending on how much you game, this may be a lot, or hardly anything, but I'll point out that it's not one of those repetitive daily-mission grind-fest second job games. It's much more like reading a really good book series that you're enjoying.

growingkittens 2y ago

I have noticed the same effect from studying different methods of information organization (such as ontologies or mind maps). Experience with a structured mental path is a fundamental part of learning. I've seen many educational games that explicitly teach skills, but don't necessarily offer an experience path for the application of those skills. Factorio is more along the lines of what an educational game should be.

__rito__ 2y ago
What are the methods that you have studied? What learning resources did you use? What are some of the methods that you would recommended?
- growingkittens 2y ago
  I actively collect methods of information organization, so "which have I studied" is too broad to list in a comment. Learning resources - the greatest learning resource is teaching yourself how to learn, and understanding how your personal learning system works. When I go to learn something: - I don't use just one source. I look at multiple sources, comparing different perspectives as part of the learning process. No one author will explain things in "just the right way" to make things click. - I build a dynamic MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) "framework" as I learn a subject, which can organize every piece of information I might need to save. If a piece of information does not fit the framework, the framework is changed. - I use image search to quickly find different perspectives of a particular concept. Information organization recommendations: In general, I would start with "the basics" - a process - even if you're sure you understand it well. See if you can organize what you know into a MECE framework, and find out if your understanding of the information is "siloed" (based on a condition, such as context). Ask yourself how broadly you are able to apply your understanding, or pick an "unrelated" subject and organize it from a process view as an exercise. Look at different models of a process and which components are always included, and which are not.