Frankly, I've been following MMOs only because I am desperate to get away from the genre as soon as possible.
Let me explain.
I love group play, I love questing, and I love RPG mechanics, so MMOs are simply the best option available to me at the moment (and for the last 10-12 years). However, I despise the spastic, chaotic mess of thousands of players running about and casually beating or blasting things into oblivion. I only want to cohabit the world with my friends. A world which is story-heavy and thick with atmosphere. A Bethesda or BioWare campaign geared towards multiple users.
The Neverwinter Nights series doesn't count: the campaigns were awful; it was all about the toolset.
I want this in the RPG, RTS, and FPS genres: cooperative campaigns. Why there hasn't been anything like it since Baldur's Gate II, I'll never understand.
09 July 2008
25 June 2008
Proof of Competence
Is it at all possible to achieve employment based not on the possession of academic degrees, but rather on the possession of the knowledge and skill those degrees represent? It should be, of course, but it does not seem to be. The reason is obviously that employers are (quite sensibly) unwilling to risk 'trial employees' and would rather see proof that someone else has previously established the competence of the potential employee. However, should there not be a method of obtaining a degree by demonstrating competence, rather than sitting through (and paying for) years of being told what one already knows? I would gladly spend every waking moment of one month on a gruelling test of all required knowledge and skill confirming my competence, rather than a few hours a day for several years sitting on a wooden chair learning nothing to confirm exactly the same data.
In fact, companies should design and issue these tests themselves. In this way, employers get exactly what they need and intellectuals need not waste their time with methods of education less effective than their own epistemophilia.
I breach this subject now because Delanie and I are seeking our own residence in order to spare ourselves the irritating and hindering idiosyncracies of our present company, and if we rely on her income alone while I spend all of my time writing and researching, our efforts are bound to be inordinately delayed and/or bear less than helpful results.
My writings will sell when complete, I am confident of that, but it has become excessively apparent that the interim will continue to be intolerable and harmful without our privacy.
In fact, companies should design and issue these tests themselves. In this way, employers get exactly what they need and intellectuals need not waste their time with methods of education less effective than their own epistemophilia.
I breach this subject now because Delanie and I are seeking our own residence in order to spare ourselves the irritating and hindering idiosyncracies of our present company, and if we rely on her income alone while I spend all of my time writing and researching, our efforts are bound to be inordinately delayed and/or bear less than helpful results.
My writings will sell when complete, I am confident of that, but it has become excessively apparent that the interim will continue to be intolerable and harmful without our privacy.
18 April 2008
Quantum Conworlds
My approach to fiction is one inspired by (I am not arrogant enough to say 'based upon') the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Many people misinterpret the M.W.I. to mean that every imaginable universe must exist, while what it truly suggests is that every possible universe must exist -- and it is especially important to remember that this only applies at the quantum level. Of course, larger scales are ultimately determined by the smaller scales, but due to the degree of quantum difference necessary to produce mundane macro-world difference, most universes would differ from each other from our perspective almost not at all.
However, there are circumstances in which the quantum can have a very immediate effect on the macro world, and it is these differences that would immediately stand out to us. For instance, our thoughts depend on mechanisms at or very close to the quantum level, to such an extent that actions such as lifting your arm, which is a very macro action indeed, are very rapidly expanded from almost ridiculously smaller neurological events at the quantum level. That is, a single neuron firing rather few ions and electrons produces quite a large effect very quickly, and the level of observational indeterminacy here suggests that for every thought a brain produces, there is a universe in which the thought is different. Just as there is a universe in which one of the photons currently entering your left eye takes a slightly different course, so, too, is there a universe in which you have already stopped reading this.
How this relates to my fiction is that I try my best to not write anything impossible. I try to derive it all from imagining quantum differences, which includes thought (thus choice) as well as natural law.
Natural law, of course, is where this all becomes very difficult. We cannot, for instance, with much confidence, suggest that a universe must exist in which the Milky Way has already collided with Andromeda, as there may not have ever been a point in time at which the event determining the speed of this process was indeterminate -- or it may be dependant upon one or many event(s) which, if different in any way, would have destroyed the possibility of the two galaxies existing at all. On a smaller scale, it is difficult to suggest that there is a universe in which the Titanic struck the iceberg yet failed to sink (because, say, metals are harder in this other universe), only that there is a universe in which someone made a choice which made it possible for the ship to change its course early enough to avoid the iceberg, or that a very early quantum-level difference in the universe (perhaps necessarily in the Big Bang) allowed the climate to be warm enough that the iceberg was not there.
Needless to say, thought/choice is the easiest to justify, so most of the fiction is derived from that, as it is immediate in comparison to something that has to be traced back billions of years, which I also have a little bit of.
I recognise that most readers will/do/can not distinguish between what quantum mechanics allows to be possible and what it does not -- neither do I, in comparison to even a first-year student in the subject -- but this method keeps me interested and motivated.
However, there are circumstances in which the quantum can have a very immediate effect on the macro world, and it is these differences that would immediately stand out to us. For instance, our thoughts depend on mechanisms at or very close to the quantum level, to such an extent that actions such as lifting your arm, which is a very macro action indeed, are very rapidly expanded from almost ridiculously smaller neurological events at the quantum level. That is, a single neuron firing rather few ions and electrons produces quite a large effect very quickly, and the level of observational indeterminacy here suggests that for every thought a brain produces, there is a universe in which the thought is different. Just as there is a universe in which one of the photons currently entering your left eye takes a slightly different course, so, too, is there a universe in which you have already stopped reading this.
How this relates to my fiction is that I try my best to not write anything impossible. I try to derive it all from imagining quantum differences, which includes thought (thus choice) as well as natural law.
Natural law, of course, is where this all becomes very difficult. We cannot, for instance, with much confidence, suggest that a universe must exist in which the Milky Way has already collided with Andromeda, as there may not have ever been a point in time at which the event determining the speed of this process was indeterminate -- or it may be dependant upon one or many event(s) which, if different in any way, would have destroyed the possibility of the two galaxies existing at all. On a smaller scale, it is difficult to suggest that there is a universe in which the Titanic struck the iceberg yet failed to sink (because, say, metals are harder in this other universe), only that there is a universe in which someone made a choice which made it possible for the ship to change its course early enough to avoid the iceberg, or that a very early quantum-level difference in the universe (perhaps necessarily in the Big Bang) allowed the climate to be warm enough that the iceberg was not there.
Needless to say, thought/choice is the easiest to justify, so most of the fiction is derived from that, as it is immediate in comparison to something that has to be traced back billions of years, which I also have a little bit of.
I recognise that most readers will/do/can not distinguish between what quantum mechanics allows to be possible and what it does not -- neither do I, in comparison to even a first-year student in the subject -- but this method keeps me interested and motivated.
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