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Like, conceptually it's absolutely unpredictable
That's exactly what I was going for; I wanted phenomena which couldn't have been predicted without using the dataset.
Misc. prelim notes:
- There's a random element. (Existence proof: 16079 and 17759 were the same fight but we only lost 17759.)
- There's an implicit chrono effect: It looks like this war has been developing not necessarily to our advantage. (Luckily it seems like this is probably 'just' enemies outnumbering our troops more frequently in later rows, and not anyone actually getting better/worse at their job.)
- The number of troops sent scales with the size of the enemy forces, making inference trickier; however, I haven't seen anything contradicting the hypothesis that loadouts are decided by throwing darts at a board.
- Specific weapons counter specific enemies: in particular, the Minigun is usually pretty lousy, but drops Scarabs like flies.
- I expected to find synergies between weapons, and didn't. I did, however, find some antisynergies: Miniguns and Flamethrowers are hella redundant (presumably because they're both anti-Scarab bugspray), and the [MPR] set all clash with each other ("Why do you need Gun? You already have Gun!")
- Guaranteed victories seem possible. (A single soldier with a minigun can perfectly-reliably survive 5 Scarabs, but not 6.)
1Thanks for running this when my one was going to be late, and thanks for checking with me beforehand.
(Also, thanks for the scenario, like, in general: it looks like a fun one!)
I (to my own surprise) got an "above average" score when I took this test a few years back, which I attribute mostly to the lack of emotional and circumstantial 'noise' in the images. I don't think being able to tell what is being emoted by a professional actor told to display exactly one (1) emotion, with no mediating factors, has much connection with being able to read actual people.
(. . . though a level-2 version with tags like "excited but hesitant" or "proud and angry" or "cheerful; unrelatedly, lowkey seasick" could actually be extremely useful, now I think on it.)
Typos:
"Al gore"->"Al Gore"
"newpaper"->"newspaper"
"south park"->"South Park"
"scott alexander"->"Scott Alexander"
"a littler deeper"->"a little deeper"
"Ai"->"AI"
(. . . I'm now really curious as to why you keep decapitalizing names and proper nouns.)
Regarding the actual content of the post: appreciated, approved, and strong-upvoted. Thank you.
an alliance socialist nations
an alliance of socialist nations
I didn't like this post, but I did very much like the "insight porn" post it linked to. (Unfortunately LW doesn't let you simultaneously downvote and strong-upvote a post, so consider my weak-upvote as a sum-of-vibes.)
If someone says ‘What’s for supper?’ a beginner will desperately try to think up something original. He will carefully evaluate dozens of options in his mind.
“Is this funny?” “Will this not reveal something weird about myself?”
It will take him ages to come up with something and eventually he will say something “fried mermaid”.
An improv pro would simply respond “fish”.
Taken - almost verbatim, without attribution - from Impro, by Keith Johnstone. (I don't know whether LW would consider this plagiarism, or consider that to be bad.)
taking it out early and letting it sit
What I actually usually do is move it from the freezer to the refrigerator like 15min before I eat it, so the change in temperature is more predictable and evenly distributed (instead of some parts being melted while others stay too cold).
Is the point that it's initially too hard to scoop?
That and it being too cold to properly enjoy the taste.
(The votes on my original comment make me think most people are less concerned about their dessert-that's-supposed-to-be-cold being too cold. Typical-mind strikes again, I guess.)
Description of an investigative cul-de-sac:
I notice that
I reason that
This is what we'd see in a turn-based fight where humans
aggressivelyheroically always take the first move, and the xenos move randomly. The Artilleryman caps a Tyrant every time; the remaining Tyrant then picks a random human to squish; they pick the dud half the time; we get the coinflip we see.But then
I find out that there are 2v1 fights between two Tyrants and a lone Artilleryman, and these have the exact same 50% win chance; the dud isn't even useful as a decoy; my hypothesis is falsified.
From all this I conclude
Absolutely nothing.