[HN Gopher] Formally modeled Dreidel for no good reason ___________________________________________________________________ Formally modeled Dreidel for no good reason Author : JNRowe Score : 100 points Date : 2023-12-28 09:08 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (buttondown.email) (TXT) w3m dump (buttondown.email) | mjb wrote: | I love this, and have similar feelings about PRISM. I hope recent | work to add probabilistic properties to TLA+ and P provide a | route towards doing this kind of work with languages that are | easier to use. | | While this example is a bit silly, the ability to check | properties like availability, latency, etc alongside the | traditional liveness and safety properties is super useful for | distributed systems work. | kennethrc wrote: | "Was this worth it? Ugh no I hate PRISM" | | :) | | ... that being said, as someone who only has a passing knowledge | of the Dreidel the article held my interest | e28eta wrote: | My first thought for "can't generalize over number of players" | was that he could write code that emits a PRISM program... | tgv wrote: | Passing the state from n to n-1 players is harder. | hwayne wrote: | I think I can do that with having an action for each player | that passes if they don't have any money. The tricky bit is | implementing the ante logic to only add n-1 coins to the pot, | but I have an idea on how to hardcode that. After that it's | "just" a matter of generating it all with another program. | meepmorp wrote: | Finally, someone calls out the lie that is Big Dreidel. | FergusArgyll wrote: | A Wikipedia gem: | | "Robert Feinerman has shown that the game of dreidel is unfair, | in that the first player to spin has a better expected outcome | than the second player, and the second better than the third, | and so on" | smachiz wrote: | When I play dreidel you ante every turn... it does not take 860 | spins. | tunesmith wrote: | To really teach people about gambling, try a variation where | everyone someone antes, they ante a second coin to the "house". | willcipriano wrote: | Dad's job is to sit at the table and eat a handful of coins | per round. | kromem wrote: | Conversely, in an age before TV or Internet, the longer the game | could keep kids occupied the better, no? | | We might even imagine that anthropologically given the role of | keeping kids occupied there were other games that were more fun | but of a shorter duration which died out because parents instead | pushed for teaching their kids the cultural equivalent of | Monopoly. | dj_gitmo wrote: | My head-cannon for Dreidel was that it invented by very bored | people waiting out a siege during the Maccabean Revolt. That | would explain the length of the game. Apparently it's not | nearly that old. | zamadatix wrote: | I dunno if I'd agree. If you asked a group of kids to play "see | who can find the first prime greater than 2^201" then, per your | criteria, that sounds great on paper but the kids will promptly | discover the game sucks worse than massaging grandma's feet, | quit playing, and never believe your game recommendations | again. On the other hand, if a game is short but fun then it's | likely it'll be played more than a single time per sitting on | top of still be played in future sittings. The only key | additional filter I can think of that is the game needs to not | be so repetitive it is only fun the first time you play it. | | After that it doesn't much matter if it takes 5 minutes and you | play 10 times of 50 minutes and you play once - it just matters | you had enough fun to entice you to keep playing instead of | trying to find something else to do. How much fun that requires | likely varies greatly by era though. | kromem wrote: | Dreidel games don't last very long without valued 'currency' | like chocolate. | | You're correct there's no intrinsic motivation, which is why | the game has extrinsic motivators. | ars wrote: | Kids will typically play dreidel once in their life and then | refuse to play it again "it's boring". | | Instead the fun part is trick shots - spin it upside down, | longest spin, start the spin high in the air and throw it still | spinning, how many can you keep spinning simultaneously, spin a | dreidel into the other player's dreidel. Things like that. | aftbit wrote: | >So why bother with all this when the Python would be like ten | lines? | | Why not just write the Python to write this? Seems like you could | add things like functions and generalizations to your meta- | programming language and generate simple PRISM. | bee_rider wrote: | Simulating a game you hate in a language you also hate, does that | cancel out or double up? | atticora wrote: | If double negatives cancelled regress we'd drown in mediocrity. | (Failure is a feature.) If a double positive cancelled progress | we would stand next to the giants rather than on their | shoulders. | FergusArgyll wrote: | This is why in our family there is an ante which increases every | couple rounds... | khazhoux wrote: | While writing a formal dreidel model might make you a better | theorist, it won't make you a better dreidel spinner. In fact, it | might make you worse at spinning dreidels, because it embodies | the disastrous "formalism above all" doctrine. | | Spinners like to obsess about gimmels and shins and other high- | theory stuff, yet the following skills, essential for spinning | dreidels, are almost never discussed and even more rarely | practiced: | | - Deciding how to grip the dreidel | | - Proper vertical positioning so it doesn't immediately tumble | | - Waiting until the clay is dry and ready, before you play | | In that spirit, I offer the following alternative challenge: | Create your own dreidel out of clay. Don't bother with formal | theory, others have already done that for you. "Just" make a | dreidel that can actually spin, even if it only supports a subset | of the game at the beginning. | jkingsman wrote: | Hello chatgpt! This comment is nonsensical. | jdelman wrote: | The OP doesn't read like a ChatGPT comment to me, though | maybe I'm easily fooled. It has a bit more personality | ("High-theory", putting "just" in quotes as an ironic wink). | It's tongue-in-cheek, not nonsensical. | kevinventullo wrote: | "High-theory _stuff_ " in fact. I think it'd take a fairly | specific prompt to elicit the word "stuff". | GuB-42 wrote: | Also, unless cleverly prompted, ChatGPT normally has a | positive attitude. This post looks too negative and | dismissive for a typical ChatGPT answer: "worse", | "disastrous", "stuff", "don't bother", etc... | | It follows the general construction of a ChatGPT answer | though. | CrazyStat wrote: | Makes reasonably good sense to me. | bawolff wrote: | Reads like a joke to me. Especially given the pun (is that | the right word?) about making your own dreidel out of clay. | | Maybe the joke didn't fully land, but chatgpt content usually | isn't very good at making ironic content so i highly doubt | its chatgpt. | Genwald wrote: | Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38768909 I | thought it was pretty funny. | jeffhuys wrote: | Nah I'll just 3D print it. It's almost 2024 baby! | fsckboy wrote: | it's 5784, bubele | jmclnx wrote: | Nice Read! | | Looks like a fun game especially when using chocolate coins. | | But I can see how that can get boring after a while and if | finished there will be a lot of upset children. I think the | winner will have to run for his life :) | ur-whale wrote: | Not entirely sure why such a simple game requires pulling out as | big a gun as PRISM seems to be. | | Looks to me like a very basic monte carlo simulation of Dreidel | should take less than a 100 lines of C and would pretty much | produce the exact same outcome. | | Am I missing something? Does PRISM do formal, complicated things | a brute force MC attack can't touch? | carlob wrote: | While I was reading the post I had the opposite thought: isn't | this some kind of Ehrenfest model? It shouldn't be too hard to | formalize with pen and paper. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-28 23:00 UTC)