Tuesday, May 04, 2010

you know what would go well with this pasta? Warcraft II

Yesterday CM and I cooked pasta.



Afterwards I was washing the sauce skillet. As I poured out the dishwater, a bit splashed onto the leftover penne pasta in a collander in the sink.

CM: [reaching for the penne to put into a tupperware]

Me: "I spilled some dishwater on it, but I already rinsed it off."

CM: [jerkily pulling penne out of the sink]

Me: "You want to wash it again, don't you? I can tell by your hesitant motions."

CM: "Okay, yes." [washing the penne]

Me: "I could tell because just now you were like those AI characters in video games, when they have two conflicting goals. They go into hysteresis and start twitching."

CM: "That's not very good AI."

Me: "It's actually extremely good AI, because it exactly modeled what you just did as a human. It would've passed the Turing test."

CM: "No. When I play Warcraft II and send my peon to mine gold, and he starts twitching, I don't wonder to myself whether he's experiencing dissonance between obeying my orders versus going home to his wife!"

1 comment:

Wanda said...

They go into hysteresis? Do you mean hysterics?