[HN Gopher] Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
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Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
Author : whb101
Score : 130 points
Date : 2024-03-28 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (playedgar.netlify.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (playedgar.netlify.app)
| troutwine wrote:
| Is this meant to be a game? I am unable to type my own prompt,
| the site is filling its own prompt in and then requesting that I
| press enter to allow it to do so again. I figured there was an
| intro but the self-play is more and more elaborate without
| handing it over to the player.
| squigz wrote:
| I don't think so. I think that's basically the only
| interaction; it's just a medium for telling a story
| jes5199 wrote:
| I think it's a short story with a slow-motion text reader
| moolcool wrote:
| It's a choose your own adventure game, you have to get through
| the exposition
| squigz wrote:
| That was funny. Gotta watch out for those crabs...
| davedx wrote:
| At least it's not Zurks... _shudder_
| jes5199 wrote:
| yes, this is what we thought robots would be like before we had
| LLMs
| yungporko wrote:
| I'm sorry, as an AI language model, it would not be ethical for
| me to build a dyson swarm around the sun. Perhaps I can help
| you do something useless instead?
| srackey wrote:
| I wrote this comment:
|
| " Prediction: Eliezer Yudkowsky will go down as the most mind-
| destroying author since Karl Marx. Another: you ask the AI genie
| god to do something and it annihilates humanity. Ahhhh! Air
| strike all the data centers! " and it got flagged within 15
| minutes.
|
| Seems that the AI cultists and or Marxists already are too
| embedded here. Perhaps it was a bit inflammatory, but I know many
| folks who have been utterly pwned by AI safety brainworms, and
| the "game" linked is the same argument we've seen a million
| times. It would be a shame if AI was the next nuclear power: a
| promising tech kneecapped by what are essentially religious
| activists.
|
| Religious activism posing as secularism seems to be a weak spot
| in our collective thinking.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post repetitive comments to get around moderation.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39855922 was flagged (by
| users, not mods) for good reason. Adding the same comment again
| plus a bunch of equally inflammatory meta is definitely not a
| move in the right direction.
|
| Edit: it looks like you've been posting in this ideological
| flamewar style in other threads too:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39228978 (Feb 2024)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145606 (Jan 2024)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39041969 (Jan 2024)
|
| Can you please not? It's not what this site is for, and
| destroys what it is for. We're trying for something quite
| different here, as you'll see if you review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| srackey wrote:
| I'm sorry dang. I enjoy debate but admit I have a habit of
| going too far with the snark and sarcasm. Will be more
| respectful in the future!
| dang wrote:
| Appreciated!
| 1nd1ansumm3r wrote:
| I tried to get through the intro but it never seems to end. Is
| there a game to be played at some point? Thanks.
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| There's maybe like 10 steps of the intro prompts to get to a
| place where you can make a choice and if you pick wrong it
| makes you re-run the ~2min of "simulation".
|
| Possibly a neat concept, but a game needs to lead with the game
| part.
| MetallicDragon wrote:
| There is no "right" choice. Both choices immediately end the
| "game". It's just a short story with two endings.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| C'est la vie...
| fourteenfour wrote:
| The intro spun up my fans then crashed Firefox when I tried to
| resize the window. Switched to Chrome, still spun up the fans
| and was extremely slow even when just rendering the slowly
| appearing text. Clicked through a few of the prompts then quit
| when it seemed like there was no game and it was struggling to
| just display text, lol.
| google234123 wrote:
| I gave up waiting
| jameshart wrote:
| It's trying to get that septillion joules of energy
| squigz wrote:
| What a plot twist
| sroussey wrote:
| Worked smooth on my iPhone.
|
| That animation is credited to someone else.
| sroussey wrote:
| Ah, here it is:
|
| https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/WNyvPGZ
| 1nd1ansumm3r wrote:
| I am thinking back to an IOS game called FlappyBird. The creator
| intentionally aimed for game dynamics that would hook users in
| the first 30 seconds. As a result, the gameplay mechanics were
| quite shallow and limited. But on the flip side, the game gained
| a huge following. You might do some balancing here, not to say
| there must be instant gratification but a better lead into the
| gameplay might help.
| mproud wrote:
| I fail to see the similarity.
| gffrd wrote:
| Parent is not trying to draw similarity, but contrast: Edgar
| takes while to get to rewarding feedback (but has rich
| gameplay), while Flappy Bird gets to gratification
| immediately (but has shallow gameplay)
| Filligree wrote:
| Where's the gameplay?
| teekert wrote:
| Is this a joke? Like that gif of that guy climbing that
| tower that is just a loop?
| pixelesque wrote:
| It's more a story than a game isn't it?
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| On the other hand the paperclip optimizer AGI factory game went
| viral
| TheGRS wrote:
| You start playing right away in that game.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I've never stopped :(
| gs17 wrote:
| This isn't a game, it's a short story.
| __alexs wrote:
| Is Dear Esther a game?
| recursive wrote:
| How is it that displaying text can be churning through so many
| CPU cycles? My whole laptop is slowed to a crawl.
| indy wrote:
| Web tech magic
| whb101 wrote:
| Just made some optimizations.
|
| Never got my fans spun up even on an old MacBook, so I assumed
| everything was peachy, but there were some wins to be had. I
| was doing a small amount of parsing during the "typing" effect
| to prevent small glimpses of styling syntax from showing up,
| and found some wins there. Also cut down the number of
| particles in the intro animation, though that's a Svelte
| component that's being destroyed once you start.
|
| Thanks for flagging.
| snailmailman wrote:
| Simply having the page open makes my GPU fans spin to max,
| and the whole page lags. The text stutters, the orange
| particles at the start are a slideshow, etc. Task manager
| shows my GPU "3D" processing at 100% for some reason, even
| though the page seems to be almost entirely text?
|
| Windows 10, Firefox. Nvidia GPU. Not sure whats happening.
| bhaney wrote:
| That's interesting. I'm on a 12 year old macbook (macOS,
| Chromium, Intel HD4000 iGPU) and it runs perfectly fine.
| Everything's smooth, including the particles at the
| beginning.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Yeah, my iphone didn't break a sweat...
| Twirrim wrote:
| Fine on Firefox, Intel GPU, Linux. about:performance shows
| it at 27MB and 14% CPU usage at peak.
| recursive wrote:
| Thanks. I guess it's slightly improved? The orange particles
| at startup improved from 1fps to maybe 2fps. Opening the
| devtools locked up the whole browser for a solid 10 seconds.
|
| I'm not totally sure what's going on here. My typical
| profiling techniques show almost all the time going into
| "ZwUserMsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx" in a non-js stack frame.
| I don't really understand what that means.
|
| Anyway, something is up, and I don't really know what it is.
| The UI of the actual app still intermittently locks up for
| seconds at a time.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| In case anyone has not tried it, the Dyson Sphere Project on
| Steam is tremendous fun. A different spin on the Factorio
| gameplay loop.
|
| I completed it before combat was added, and enjoyed the low
| stress environment.
| retrofrost wrote:
| Seconding Dyson Sphere Program its great, though it can be a
| bit of a tale of 2 games. Pre-ILs and Post-ILs which can get a
| bit samey since most of your production stacks become
| relatively samey. You can turn off the combat enemies, though
| honestly I'm enjoying my play through with them because they
| force a lot more consideration in not only how you expanded but
| why and when you expand.
| alx_the_new_guy wrote:
| Been there, done that.
|
| Nothing beats industrial Minecraft (in it's prime, which it
| isn't in atm as far as I konw) IMO.
|
| Not even close, when considering the ability to add
| magic/farming/computer stuff.
|
| Though Minetest[0] has some pretry cool packs.
|
| [0]https://www.minetest.net/
| wging wrote:
| If anyone is wondering, you can turn off combat if you want to
| experience the same low-stress building experience. I think I'd
| recommend that for a new player, there's a lot to figure out
| and enjoy even without gradually increasing threat levels from
| the dark fog. I enjoyed the new defense mechanics but the first
| couple run-throughs without them was also great. Just a
| different experience.
| jjcm wrote:
| Highly recommend playing with friends as well if you haven't.
| Nebula mod adds multiplayer support and it's quite stable.
| ukd1 wrote:
| By completed, I assumed you mean made a Dyson Sphere / unlocked
| all the research? Or do you mean built a sphere around every
| star?
|
| p.s. love this game, too many hours in to it!
| yoav wrote:
| I don't understand the game.
|
| I tapped the screen maybe 30 times and went through it typing to
| itself and failing and succeeding at different tasks.
|
| If I kept going would I eventually get to type something?
| bhaney wrote:
| Who told you it's a game?
| whb101 wrote:
| This one gets it
| gs17 wrote:
| The URL starting with "play" (with "Edgar" being the next
| word, and the title that greets you) gives people the
| impression that it's going to be them playing a game called
| Edgar. Yes, technically, "play" could refer to the text
| animation running, but it's very easy to see how people might
| have expected a game where you try to convince an AI that the
| swarm can be made successfully.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I would not call this a game. I liked the story but this would've
| been more convenient as a blog post.
| bredren wrote:
| Ya, I kept expecting free text entry. More like a choose your
| own adventure.
| ChilledTonic wrote:
| Isn't it kind of sad that we seem to have stopped writing science
| fiction that has any hope of a successful future?
|
| The moral of the story with Edgar seems to be to never leverage
| technology to do anything at all.
| whb101 wrote:
| This untrue
|
| Culver's uses ice cream machines
| kadoban wrote:
| The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, the
| Culture series, and Vorkosigan Saga
|
| Sci Fi does tend to be bleak, these are the ones I can think
| of.
| smsm42 wrote:
| It's not used to be. It used to be optimistic. But then I
| guess the creators thought that "real literature" should be
| more "complex" and started to put more fear and desolation
| in. After all, as we know, all happy futures are alike and
| all unhappy futures are unhappy in their own different ways.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Vorkosigan Saga
|
| Bujold ranks near Terry Pratchett in terms of my favorite re-
| readable books.
|
| Yeah, it's space opera, but it's damn good space opera.
| squigz wrote:
| The Culture series is some of the best scifi I've ever read -
| and indeed, very hopeful and optimistic. Thanks for the other
| recommendations!
| chr1 wrote:
| The way this "game" presents its "moral" without even trying to
| logically justify it is simply offensive.
|
| The "bad" ending is not in any way connected to the project,
| with same success it could say you do nothing and in a year an
| asteroid falls on earth bringing the same nanowhatever.
|
| The "good" ending is the hero saying that he wants to revert
| effects of "global warming". But if you have ability to build
| one millionth of Dyson swarm in space, global warming is not a
| problem, because you can build a planet level swarm to have
| fine grained control of weather, and revert, say, effects of
| earlier climate change that had converted Sahara into a desert.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Holy crap. Reading that slowly is _painful_. Can you please give
| an option to make it instant, or at least speed it up 2x-3x?
| snapcaster wrote:
| Holding down enter speeds it up
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| A short but nice experience, with pleasant UI and a bit of fun of
| prompting. Thanks for sharing and good job :) Maybe try longer
| forms as well because maybe you might find yourself in writing
| scifi
| whb101 wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words. I've dabbled!
| https://boilingdown.ghost.io/deluge/
| https://boilingdown.ghost.io/sunspot/
| https://boilingdown.ghost.io/grow-up/
| snapcaster wrote:
| Just let me play quicker. I got the point after the first example
| and then seemed like I had to watch endless examples (gave up
| before getting to the point where I could type the prompts)
| bhaney wrote:
| It's a short story told through a handful of prompt cycles, not
| a game. You never get to write prompts yourself.
| eddieroger wrote:
| It's like Universal Paperclips with a plot. Neat.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Somehow I loved U.P. but watching this reminds me of old text-
| based adventures with contrived arbitrary obstacles which would
| only be funny if you didn't spend many hours getting by them.
| Or a detective novel with an obscure unguessable resolution.
|
| It's like training the three laws of robotics into something
| that communicates in literally and doesn't have any sense to be
| cooperative. But every now and then will let you know how it's
| being uncooperative by saying "btw, humanity's dead again." I
| guess I don't like hard puzzles that are hard for their own
| sake.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| I came here to comment the same thing. And just in case other
| HN users are not aware of it, here is the link for U.P.
| https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
|
| Thank me later for the productivity sinkhole and all the wasted
| time ;-)
| ansible wrote:
| Eh, you sort of had agency with that game. At least in the
| sense that it is possible you could screw up and it would take
| a long, long time to get over that. Buying too much of resource
| A, when you should have saved up money for resource B, that
| sort of thing.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Fun, but you need a way to skip the intro after the first
| playthrough. Its way too long to sit through everytime.
| geniium wrote:
| I must be too tired for this kind of stuff.
| iwontberude wrote:
| I made it like 4 seconds before I hit back
| gillh wrote:
| Have to provide precise instructions to LLMs to get anything
| useful.
|
| Instructions for operating the "Holy hand grenade of Antioch"
| from Monty Python and the Holy Grail are a good example:
|
| ''First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count
| to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt
| count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt
| thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then
| proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
| the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand
| Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My
| sight, shall snuff it.'
| smsm42 wrote:
| (Spoilers)
|
| It takes Edgar 54 days to build a swarm taking metallic elements
| from all sources, including living organisms. But then when
| instructed not to harm living organisms, it still takes Edgar 54
| days to do the same. Extracting metals from humans can't be the
| most efficient - or even in the top 100 of most efficient, likely
| - way to get metals. So why would Edgar do that?
|
| Also, how Edgar is supposed to be responsible for ensuring humans
| do not go to war for energy sources and that new technology can
| not be used ever to harm humans? Pretty much any high-energy
| technology (and by high-energy I mean something from the muscle
| power of a human upwards) can be used for harm. These conditions
| are clearly impossible.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >So why would Edgar do that?
|
| Because it's funny?
| smsm42 wrote:
| That's one twisted sense of humor. Maybe I am underestimating
| Edgar.
| cbsmith wrote:
| I thought it changed to 57 days.
| ajuc wrote:
| (Spoilers)
|
| The fact that Edgar reports on the consequences that we find
| disturbing about the unsuccessful attempts and the fact that he
| can predict human behaviour in some of the scenarios (like the
| fact that the project will be reassigned) - indicate that Edgar
| knows what we mean in the first place, and does something else in
| these hypothetical scenarios on purpose.
|
| If Edgar really didn't knew that taking iron from human blood is
| a problem - he wouldn't be reporting on it (like he ignored
| billion other factors in each scenario).
|
| This indicates bad will and possibly a manipulation attempt,
| which means the project is a no-go no matter the response in the
| scenario.
| Hasu wrote:
| (more spoilers)
|
| I thought the ending where you build the project points that
| out - everyone dies anyway. Edgar was always going to kill all
| the humans, he just had to joke about it beforehand.
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