tangent4ronpaul
Banned
- Joined
- May 11, 2007
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- 21,101
I read ^^^ and my first thought was "Why the hell not?" OK, this is out of the box/devils advocate type stuff, but sometimes playing with dynamic rules yields interesting results. A computer program is a set of rules, so I was instantly reminded of REDCODE/CORE WARS, as well as self-reproducing, self recognizing, self-healing and self modifying code. That and some early worm experiments.
CORE WARS is a programming game where you write a program as does the opposite player and you release them into a virtual memory pool where you can have no control of it. It then goes out and does what you told (programmed) it to do. Both programs take turns executing operations. The ultimate goal is to break your opponents program. This started out kind of like a game of "battleship" where you both have pegboards and ships and try to sink the opponents by calling out F6 or whatever, but in this case writing a location in memory. Then people started copying their programs so there were more than one running at once and all of your programs dying was less likely. Then they started identifying the other code and stealing instructions from it, wrapping it in their own code and seeing if it did anything interesting...
This eventually led to a field called evolutionary computing where you have a program that writes other programs and these programs are tested to see if they give the desired output. Some very fast algorithm have been discovered this way. Usually things that are completely non-intuitive to humans. An important lesson here is that you can paint yourself into a corner. The strategies or genetic code of what you are trying can hit an end branch and must be stepped back from 2-3 cycles sometimes in order to make future progress.
So what does this have to do with campaigning and the political fight? Quite a bit actually... I'm tossing it out there as a Gedankenexperiment. A perspective different than common to think about our current situation from. Remember when our "opposition" adopted what we call "4th generation warfare" and having a standing army was suddenly a detriment? Remember that many of the same mathematical formulas show up in very diverse fields. A good strategy might be predicting when the opposition is about to paint themselves into a corner or recognizing that they already have done so.
To get you started on this mindset:
As to case law or laws enacted by Congress, you can easily see that the country has painted itself into a corner everywhere! Each case/new law placed on the shoulders of a older law, and so on. I mean we have Corporate personhood because of a clerical error!
When we had a bunch of YAL volunteers last cycle and put them up in an unheated summer camp and someone came with the flu... What kind of a strategy/program were we running?
What about when Paul did his own show next door to debates he wasn't invited to? When he basically hijacked their media and audience and upstaged them? What kind of program?
When the RNC was breaking rules and our delegates responded and it went slightly viral and the media ran with some of it - what does that redcode program look like for both sides?
I'm just trying to get people to think about things differently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War
-t
