Ok, here's something cool I found. There's a community of guys who produce "tool-assisted speedruns" (TAS's) of old videogames. That means, they carefully play the game, one frame (1/60th of a second) at a time, doing everything absolutely perfect to complete the game in a ludicrously fast time. Then they publish a movie of the game being played, and it can be pretty fun to watch. For example here's a Super Mario 1 TAS where the old classic is beaten in just 5 minutes:
Obviously such a fast completion would be impossible with just a human playing the game in realtime. The movie also exploits the hell out of glitches in the game. The TAS philosophy is, beat it as fast as possible using the game the way it was sold in stores, so if they sold it with bugs, you're free to exploit those bugs just as long as you don't hack any new bugs in...
So it got me thinking. What would it be like if a real human life were "speedrun"? Just to simplify things let's assume the run starts on the human's 18th birthday.
Well, first you'd have to agree on a definition of "winning". Let's say (just as an example) that "winning" means getting a billion dollars. Then the run would be extremely fast. The guy would walk to the nearest internet connection, log into some investing fund or whatever, sign in as Bill Gates or some Saudi oil shiek (since it's a speed run he can just guess the login info on first try), and send himself a billion dollars. Depending how long it takes to get to an internet connection, the run could take less than ten minutes.
Okay, so maybe money wouldn't make the best speedrun. Let's say you "win" when you find the cure for cancer. Well, there's no need to actually work to find it. Since it's a speedrun, you can just guess it and miraculously get it right on the very first guess. It'd be a pretty dry speedrun, just a matter of typing it up. If the cure were simple enough, you could quicken up the public dissemination process by crashing a live TV broadcast somewhere and announcing it there. That could be fun.
Money would be too fast, so would a cure for cancer. Let's think more global. Let's say you "win" when you become the unchallenged dictator of the entire world. I think this makes for a slightly more interesting speedrun. What would be the fastest possible path to world domination? Could you call up world leaders on your cellphone (you could just guess their private phone numbers with 100% accuracy) and somehow convince them to hand over control to you by saying the right things? What would you say? It'd probably be something unexpected. Everyone, even world leaders, has secret desires in their heart. Since it's a speedrun, you could just randomly guess what, say, the U.S. President's fondest wish is, and use that to convince them to hand over the reigns of power.
What if the rules stipulated your world conquest had to be achieved by purely militaristic means? Then things get really interesting. I think the speedrunner would start out stealing a stealth bomber from the nearest airbase. To do that, they'd just run in... the MPs would no doubt open fire, but since it's a speed run you could just dodge the bullets perfectly. Once you were in the cockpit and in the air (it's a speedrun so you can just guess how to fly the damn thing), there's any number of ways you could proceed.
The hardest part would be conquering the first nation. Once that's done, you can just send orders to that nation's military, now under your control, to invade other nations. As a speedrunner, you could just guess the absolute perfect strategy for your armies to use, and transmit that to them, and the world conquest would go pretty fast. Certainly no longer than a week, since you're constantly on the phone with the troops telling them exactly the perfect course of action to take.
I think a more interesting winning definition might be, you have to establish a colony on Mars in order to win. You could use the previous goal, world domination, as an intermediate step, since controlling the whole world would definitely put you in a better position to launch a Mars colony. The optimal time-to-Mars-colony would probably have to be a compromise between launching right away, and developing technology first. Since it's a speedrun, you could just *guess* whatever technology is physically possible, but it would still take time to communicate it to regular humans who aren't in speedrun mode. And it'd take time to physically put new technology to work, having to assemble new machines and such. If you just immediately launched the Mars fleet, the mere travel time from Earth to Mars would take a long time, all during which the speedrun clock is ticking. Improved technology would speed up the voyage, by allowing faster ships, but it would take time to implement new technology, so the best solution would be a compromise.
Or maybe you could immediately launch, bringing tons of materials with you, and implement the new technology *while in route*... that way maybe you could get the best of both strategies. Yeah. I like this idea. You'd be modifying your space fleet mid-voyage.
Let's look at a different type of win-goal. Let's say you "win" when you get every person on the planet to love you. (And you can't start out as GlowingFaceMan, that'd make it too easy) This would be a serious challenge, probably harder than the Mars colony, just because the rules say *every* person has to love you. If just one single person dislikes you, you haven't "won" yet. I'm at kind of a loss thinking how this particular speedrun would go. Just becoming known by everyone would be easy, as the world dictator run demonstrated. But it seems no matter what you did, someone somewhere would disapprove. If the rules just said 99.9% of the world population had to love you, you could pull it off just by curing all diseases and ending world hunger and poverty (all of which would be somewhat quick, a la the curing cancer run). Even then though, people like the former world leaders would resent you. I guess one "cheat" would be to just annihilate the world population so you're the only person left, but that's no fun.
One winning definition would just be, achieve total personal happiness for yourself. This is an interesting speedrun because it's very minimalist. I mean, theoretically, since you control your own emotions, as soon as the clock starts ticking you could just decide to be happy, and go through with it. Human nature itself is kind of fundamentally opposed to happiness, people have a tendency to base their happiness on external factors, but there's nothing really stopping the speedrunner from just sitting down and being happy, even if to the rest of the world they're just a dude sitting there. Interesting to think about, philosophically.
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Here's some other stuff for you to read. You know, while you're waiting for the world's population to implement the amazing new technologies that you just invented from thin air so you can colonize Mars.
Connections Between Japanese Language and Buddhism
Eight Rules of Leadership
Getting the Girl: What can we learn from Indiana Jones?
Obviously such a fast completion would be impossible with just a human playing the game in realtime. The movie also exploits the hell out of glitches in the game. The TAS philosophy is, beat it as fast as possible using the game the way it was sold in stores, so if they sold it with bugs, you're free to exploit those bugs just as long as you don't hack any new bugs in...
So it got me thinking. What would it be like if a real human life were "speedrun"? Just to simplify things let's assume the run starts on the human's 18th birthday.
Well, first you'd have to agree on a definition of "winning". Let's say (just as an example) that "winning" means getting a billion dollars. Then the run would be extremely fast. The guy would walk to the nearest internet connection, log into some investing fund or whatever, sign in as Bill Gates or some Saudi oil shiek (since it's a speed run he can just guess the login info on first try), and send himself a billion dollars. Depending how long it takes to get to an internet connection, the run could take less than ten minutes.
Okay, so maybe money wouldn't make the best speedrun. Let's say you "win" when you find the cure for cancer. Well, there's no need to actually work to find it. Since it's a speedrun, you can just guess it and miraculously get it right on the very first guess. It'd be a pretty dry speedrun, just a matter of typing it up. If the cure were simple enough, you could quicken up the public dissemination process by crashing a live TV broadcast somewhere and announcing it there. That could be fun.
Money would be too fast, so would a cure for cancer. Let's think more global. Let's say you "win" when you become the unchallenged dictator of the entire world. I think this makes for a slightly more interesting speedrun. What would be the fastest possible path to world domination? Could you call up world leaders on your cellphone (you could just guess their private phone numbers with 100% accuracy) and somehow convince them to hand over control to you by saying the right things? What would you say? It'd probably be something unexpected. Everyone, even world leaders, has secret desires in their heart. Since it's a speedrun, you could just randomly guess what, say, the U.S. President's fondest wish is, and use that to convince them to hand over the reigns of power.
What if the rules stipulated your world conquest had to be achieved by purely militaristic means? Then things get really interesting. I think the speedrunner would start out stealing a stealth bomber from the nearest airbase. To do that, they'd just run in... the MPs would no doubt open fire, but since it's a speed run you could just dodge the bullets perfectly. Once you were in the cockpit and in the air (it's a speedrun so you can just guess how to fly the damn thing), there's any number of ways you could proceed.
The hardest part would be conquering the first nation. Once that's done, you can just send orders to that nation's military, now under your control, to invade other nations. As a speedrunner, you could just guess the absolute perfect strategy for your armies to use, and transmit that to them, and the world conquest would go pretty fast. Certainly no longer than a week, since you're constantly on the phone with the troops telling them exactly the perfect course of action to take.
I think a more interesting winning definition might be, you have to establish a colony on Mars in order to win. You could use the previous goal, world domination, as an intermediate step, since controlling the whole world would definitely put you in a better position to launch a Mars colony. The optimal time-to-Mars-colony would probably have to be a compromise between launching right away, and developing technology first. Since it's a speedrun, you could just *guess* whatever technology is physically possible, but it would still take time to communicate it to regular humans who aren't in speedrun mode. And it'd take time to physically put new technology to work, having to assemble new machines and such. If you just immediately launched the Mars fleet, the mere travel time from Earth to Mars would take a long time, all during which the speedrun clock is ticking. Improved technology would speed up the voyage, by allowing faster ships, but it would take time to implement new technology, so the best solution would be a compromise.
Or maybe you could immediately launch, bringing tons of materials with you, and implement the new technology *while in route*... that way maybe you could get the best of both strategies. Yeah. I like this idea. You'd be modifying your space fleet mid-voyage.
Let's look at a different type of win-goal. Let's say you "win" when you get every person on the planet to love you. (And you can't start out as GlowingFaceMan, that'd make it too easy) This would be a serious challenge, probably harder than the Mars colony, just because the rules say *every* person has to love you. If just one single person dislikes you, you haven't "won" yet. I'm at kind of a loss thinking how this particular speedrun would go. Just becoming known by everyone would be easy, as the world dictator run demonstrated. But it seems no matter what you did, someone somewhere would disapprove. If the rules just said 99.9% of the world population had to love you, you could pull it off just by curing all diseases and ending world hunger and poverty (all of which would be somewhat quick, a la the curing cancer run). Even then though, people like the former world leaders would resent you. I guess one "cheat" would be to just annihilate the world population so you're the only person left, but that's no fun.
One winning definition would just be, achieve total personal happiness for yourself. This is an interesting speedrun because it's very minimalist. I mean, theoretically, since you control your own emotions, as soon as the clock starts ticking you could just decide to be happy, and go through with it. Human nature itself is kind of fundamentally opposed to happiness, people have a tendency to base their happiness on external factors, but there's nothing really stopping the speedrunner from just sitting down and being happy, even if to the rest of the world they're just a dude sitting there. Interesting to think about, philosophically.
----------------------------------
Here's some other stuff for you to read. You know, while you're waiting for the world's population to implement the amazing new technologies that you just invented from thin air so you can colonize Mars.
Connections Between Japanese Language and Buddhism
Eight Rules of Leadership
Getting the Girl: What can we learn from Indiana Jones?
Posts
1 comments:
Nice post! Check out our discussion:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7602
Love,
alden
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