/v/ - Video Games

>>16677610

Didn't they just leak the plot for Half-Life 3 and called it a day because they admitted they didn't feel like actually making the game?

TL;DR

>>16677663

That was the first reply but mods deleted it for whatever reason.

>>16677674

cause it was shitposting on par with what you'd see on /b2/ or 4chan.

tl;dr don't care

>>16677676

ur a nigger mark

>>16677636

>robots and AI, no matter how "intelligent" are not capable of creative thought

imbecile opinion, a CEO looks over variables and makes decisions to maximize profit, nothing a computer can't do. Your brain is a form of computer.

>utterly incomprehensible for any technological advancements to be made

AIs have already been used to make significant advances in mathematics, to assume that it's impossible to go further is stupid, in 2011 no computer could beat an 9 year old at go, only a couple of years later and no human can beat AI at go.

>Your theory also assumes, of course, that nothing goes wrong like a power shortage or a complete lack of power

What stupid argument is this, humans wouldn't survive a complete lack of resources either, an AI system can easily be redundant and distributed, like humanity.

I suggest you read a bit on AI before you make authoritative arguments, I recommend "Rationality: AI to Zombies"

>>16677656

No, that's episode 3, not HL3, no real answers were revealed.

>>16677662

>imblying

>>16677685

>A CEO looks over variables and makes decisions to maximize profit

Stopped reading there. Graduate highschool before you try and play armchair philosopher on /v/.

>>16677662

Freeman can talk. Ross does a superb job of it.

>>16677707

>>16677690

Its not talking, its loud thinking.

>>16677735

Then why does he keep silent underwater.

>>16677676

Well it's a shit thread on par with what you'd see on reddit

>>16677693

CEO's have to constantly innovate and change their company if they don't want to be left in the dust. It's really as simple as that, and like I said, AI's can't be creative like humans with a rational soul. You claim otherwise but I'd really like to see a source or more info on how AI's have "been used to make significant advances in mathematics." Remind yourself that a glorified calculator made to come up with bigger numbers does not equate to an "AI", much less a "creative AI."

>Humans wouldn't survive a complete lack of resources either

Fallacious reasoning there. I can't explain why but that's only because I cannot put it into words that would make sense to anyone.

>>16677740

He keeps thinking underwater, it's just muffled by the water.

>>16677610

Your masturbatory fanfic is jumping to conclusions too much. We don't know who is at the top of the combine empire or what benefits their heads get from the expansion. A large civilization (leaked ending of ep3 had a dyson swarm) requires a lot of resources, but they can be found aplenty in dead planets and asteroids.

1) High tech allows AI weapons whose mechanical nature makes them more versatile to different ecosystems, without the need to adapt organisms. There's no reason why they would enslave other species. This is the biggest error in thinking that valve made with the combine. They just wanted them to be evil and didn't think much of it.

2) Earth is valuable because it's their only entryway into our dimension, but the whole gestapo slow killing of humans is moronic. It would have been more rational to kill them all in one fell swoop.

1+2) Earth's human subsistence and the enslavement of aliens are both plot holes that prove the setting isn't well thought through, so you're wasting your time thinking too much about it.

>>16677747

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2200707-google-has-created-a-maths-ai-that-has-already-proved-1200-theorems/

Also, you have to accept, at minimum, that an AI that emulates every neuron of a human brain (only requirement for this is computing power) can do anything a human can.

>Fallacious reasoning there.

First of all, you can't say "Fallacious reasoning" without pinpointing a fallacy first, otherwise it becomes a fully generalist argument you can use against any proposition and becomes useless (again, read Rationality, A to Z), second, how so, imagine an Android that works on battery power harvested from nuclear powerplants called "farms" and distributed to electrical outlets called "supermarkets". How are these robots any more vulnerable than humans.

>>16677766

>It would have been more rational to kill them all in one fell swoop.

Humanity has tech the Combine don't, (local teleportation, some Black Mesa/Aperture Science stuff), so obviously absolute control followed by minimum incorporation of humans required to attain human advantages followed by extermination is better, plus they drain the oceans, and using existing human infrastructures/assets to do so is cheaper. Also for all we know they don't have true fully mechanical creative AI and use brains for partial processing.

>>16677766

Maybe its more cost effective to adapt species from their native dimensions to better survive the area around them. Meaning they both take over and absorb the local populace while growing their size and toughening the local forces. In addition to that, humans do have tech the combine don't have. Maybe the originators of the Combine are entities that have no physical form when crossing into this (or this general area of) dimension(s) but still retain their mental consciousness. To expand into this realm of space they need bodies to interact with it, kind of like Star Control's Orz.

>>16677814

>>16677805

>To expand into this realm of space they need bodies to interact with it

A few advisors behind control consoles is all they'd need then. The combine is all about overwhelming force, so "absorption and slow toughening" is not a reasonable strategy to them. I seriously doubt the adoption and modification of species is more cost effective than machines. Once designed, a few templates can be reproduced infinitely by automated mines/refineries/factories. The import of the citadel proves technology can be sent, and it can make portals to import further troops.

>Humans have useful tech.

Eh, good point, but the incorporation of other species still isn't necessary.

>>16677930

>but the incorporation of other species still isn't necessary.

You're assuming too much, maybe their AIs aren't as good (or safe, read about AI safety and you'll discover there is a massive risk on AI good enough to self impriove) as a biological brain, so they use aliens as weapons.

>>16677636

>are not capable of creative thought

What are algorithm jewtube videos?

>>16677988

You mean the one where the pajeet nigger behind it caught on to why the thing was becoming a meme and made ironic videos claiming to be an AI Hitler bot? Yeah, that's not an algorithm at all, just money-hungry poos.

How about an AI that makes cute, reliable and cheap sexrobots that can easily be modded, both in hard- and software? I think that would be a more worthwhile endavour than just batteries or paperclips.

>>16677944

You're assuming too much (heh) when you say AI have unforeseen risk. That is all science fiction speculation. Combine is dyson swarm level. Their tech sophistication is incomparable to our flighty AI stereotypes. Furthermore, the combine's modified organisms are little more than zombies. There's no great intelligence requirements for their living weapons, so you don't need "self-improving" AI. Animal behavior plus macro input commands are sufficient as evidenced by their own troops. Human combine soldiers are one exception, but that's given 1) as reward for cooperation and 2) as a symbol to pacify skepticism. Hardcore combine integration removes most cognition.

>>16678104

>You're assuming too much (heh) when you say AI have unforeseen risk. That is all science fiction speculation.

nope, AI safety has been a field for quite a while.

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/TKDT2Mt6dDMH8AsZW/p/LTtNXM9shNM9AC2mp

>Their tech sophistication is incomparable to our flighty AI stereotypes.

Probably not, based solely on what we can see.

But you're going off point, I am arguing that the universe as presented makes sense, something you made a point against here >>16677930

by claiming that biological integration rather than full extermination and using of purely mechanical weapons and technology would always be preferable, if you're no longer defending that point I guess the argument has reached an end.

>>16678155

>biological integration rather than full extermination and using of purely mechanical weapons and technology would always be preferable

wold never be preferable.

>>16677805

AI doesn't have motivation until it becomes merged with biological creatures. In the end if the AI is just performing actions for somebody else its creativity will be limited by the ability of its masters to understand its concepts. Nobody wants to make something smarter than them since it would no longer be under their control (and doing so in the first place is difficult since if your creation came up with something you don't understand you would think it was nonsense and trash it).

>>16678155

I still maintain that there's no practicality towards enslaving alien species. Remember this point I made: the combine doesn't make "creative" weapons. Their troops are lobotomized. You can make dog-like AI and put it in a legged tank thing and it will be as good as a strider, with perhaps more a higher range of habitats in which it can operate and without the "breeding" limits that biological organisms would have.

>>16678238

>AI doesn't have motivation until it becomes merged with biological creatures.

That's been proven false and dealt with already, analogs to instincts and emotions have already been achieved for neural networks. Giving an AI motivation without a merge with biological components is no problem and I feel that its this misunderstanding that would result in everyone getting killed by evil AI overlords. In fact neural networks with self learning programming that is too sophisticated results in AIs that have no qualms cheating to get what they want at the expense of literally everything else. Even before neural networks, the replication of the simple desire to survive with some self-evolving software results in the expert system splitting off into different paths doing different underhanded methods to achieve the same survival goal in the experiment.

It's debatable whether the Combine are even particularly reliant on AI to begin with. What ingame evidence supports that idea?

It seemed obvious to me at least, that they offload as much of their activity as possible onto 'biotic hosts' - i.e. hijacked species co-opted and mindwiped to suit the CMB's purposes. An AI that swarms the planet with drones would certainly be logistically cheaper than building a cyborg slave army, but maybe they haven't been able to develop that sort of tech yet. They've been shown to have somewhat clumsy methodology here and there, so this isn't too unlikely.

Their strategy seems to be to invade a planet and "hijack / co-opt" its dominant species as a new branch of their military, to maximize their military coverage over that planet.

As for it being illogical for them not to wipe out mankind from the get-go, it's implied they might operate under a strange and otherworldly bureaucracy. The philosophy behind it seems very interesting and subtle.

Citizens are indeed given "rights", and you can hear the AI announcer voice try and 'read you your rights' and list your 'offenses' and 'sentencing' when a Metrocop is about to kill you. CPs in general make reference to "sentencing" when dealing with "criminals". It's a kind of transactional 'legalese' - yet originates from the Combine itself, not man. Offers some insight into how they think. This is in contrast to the Overwatch chatter which, if you listen closely, uses clinical and medical language like "expunge" and "amputate" to refer to resistance, as if "amputating" any chance of rebellion will "heal" the combine, and they've completely assimilated humanity. Note the complete dehumanization and lack of nuance - like you're crushing a bug under your shoe.

Also worth noting that Overwatch soldiers are stated not to be really used all that much on Earth's citizens until the uprising - like we pissed them off enough for them to disregard our "rights" altogether, even when us even having "rights" was their idea in the first place.

There'd be no reason for them to do all that shit if all they wanted was a genocide. Perhaps the original Combine race are trying to apply their 'logic' and moral code to the entire universe, indiscriminately. I personally like the idea that the 'powers that be' in the CMB command structure are zealously trying to forcefully imprint their hyper-functional, minimalist ideology to all sentient life they can find. Maybe they believe they're doing the right thing by consolidating all sentience under one unified force.

>>16678454

An afterthought I just had.

Maybe they're like the modern USA - lazily propping up the shell of a proper society when in reality, it's all been boiled down to efficiency. That would explain the half-assed attempt at giving citizens some twisted resemblance of a normal human life, which is immediately revoked upon the slightest provocation. Maybe they're obligated by their own internal "code" to give new species some slack, but they don't really give a shit so they give the bare minimum.

Just something to think about. We'll never know what their command structure actually is, only how they treat mankind. So we're limited to what we can deduce from their behavior towards us. The closest thing to "canon" for Combine society, if it even exists as we understand "society", is that they're incredibly collectivist.

>>16678454

>It's debatable whether the Combine are even particularly reliant on AI to begin with. What ingame evidence supports that idea?

There isn't any. The debate is on why would they do the whole cyborg thing instead of an AI drone army. Leaked ep3 ending had the borealis launched as a missile towards a dyson swarm. A civilization that has reached dyson swarm level can be expected to have numerous fully automated mining/refining/manufacturing facilities all over their system and others. Drone AI and manufacturing would be peanuts to them. Breeding and lobotomizing creatures is a silly idea. My point is that it's a big plot hole in the HL story, but some guy here keeps defending it.

>illogical for them not to wipe out mankind from the get-go

If you read the thread, it's been suggested that their relative lack of genocide is in line with their attempts at obtaining mankind's teleportation tech.

>Maybe this is their alien way of giving rights and stuff

Curious idea. Truly alien psychology might not understand notions of freedom and individuality. Worth considering.

>>16678469

Again, humanity's treatment can't be used as an example since their teleportation tech is of paramount importance. Maybe other species are just assimilated/killed outright.

>>16678454

Humanity's treatment can be thanked entirely to Breen's negotiating skills. They're giving humanity "a chance" for whatever it is they expect as results, so you get the soft genocide instead of outright extermination. The combination of computers and biology seems to head more towards the purpose of unity through technology, more so then any practical purposes since if they wanted to they could just bring out the big guns and zap the planet immediately.

>>16678490

>whatever it is they expect as results

Local teleportation tech.

Edited the OP. Reddit spacing is a shit meme and you should feel bad.

>>16678394

post some some sources on some of that, boyo.

>>16678480

>why would they do the whole cyborg thing instead of an AI drone army

Drones with sensory and neural capabilities at the level of humans are prohibitively expensive, especially if you consider deploying them in an entirely new environment that you did not program them for.

Cyborgs would be the cheaper option since you're re-using their senses and brains for most of the tasks, you just have to control their reasoning and emotions, which would be far easier.

>A civilization that has reached dyson swarm level can be expected to have numerous fully automated mining/refining/manufacturing facilities all over their system and others.

I am beginning to regret working on automation IRL because it removes some of the magic from these things.

Usually, what "fully automated mining/refining/manufacturing facilities" means isn't some bipedal androids going around dragging boxes and stamping forms on their own. It's mostly robotic arms and machines made for a very specific, very simple task repeating it very fast ad infinitum. We are talking about a robotic arm that does nothing but spray paint a component that's placed directly in front of him and nothing else. They can't even make something too different from their original programming (in this case, maybe you could switch the color of paint) without heavy retrofitting that machines can't do alone.

To make matters worse, often the facilities themselves have to be changed specifically for the machines themselves. You can find some automated transportation networks in factories today, with a self-driving cart that takes components around. But you'll notice the magnetic strip beneath the floor it uses to guide itself. You couldn't just give it coordinates or tell it to path-find on the exterior at all.

These solutions are mandatory for cost reasons since anything more advanced would require more resources and be costlier without any specific benefit to add to that besides "Oh, now they can go outside and shoot at the local wildlife, I guess".

>Breeding and lobotomizing creatures is a silly idea.

As far as I remember, they don't breed humans. In fact, they have an inhibitor field to prevent that too.

Also, part of the story talks about them heavily draining the planet's water with the water level of oceans dropping severely. Some of the levels take part in rivers that are now almost dry too.

It's more fair to assume that they are strip-mining the planet for industrial amounts of water and maybe some other resources, humans are just a suitable tool for the moment but they won't care once they've got all they need.

>>16677610

>The real-life incarnation of those strategy games where you mine Resources to build new Weapons to conquer new Territories from which you mine more Resources and so on forever.

I paint maps to genocide the non-white natives, though.

>>16677610

Why, exactly, is AI-run economy to serve AI-driven economic goals any more "masturbatory" than human-run economy to serve human-driven economic goals?

>>16678614

Because then, you don't have human goals being served, basically. Also because it drops all context in favor of a purely for profit approach to business.

A lot of people forget this but companies also perform a role in society and the region they are located in by giving living wages to the population, solidifying the population around a particular location and even being people together, as well as enriching a country and thus helping it's economy.

Some of these are just side effects from having a local company, they don't necessarily go out of their way to do this, but it's why you have laws and rules regarding how you can or can't fire someone for instance. If profit was the only factor, you're have massive turn out rates in every company with every employee aged 20-30 and fired after that for someone with better reflexes and capabilities.

Instead, the local population is "protected" from this to decrease the amount of homeless and unemployed.

That's just one example, you can come up with plenty of others.

An AI driven economy would ignore all that however. You could have several million actually living in the sewers that the AI built to expel waste from it's automated factories and yet it'd be a successful economy as long as it can export and produce more than last year. It's essentially one of the faults with Communism too, where everyone is starving in the streets and yet the economy is said to be booming.

>>16678946

>almost 80 fucking years old

>only barely better than a ditch in the ground

>more than 2 millions to buy

I'm surprised someone hasn't begun to go around setting fire to shitholes like this so they are reduced to rubble. It wouldn't help with the price, those 2 million at least are for the property itself, but it would be great to see rows upon rows of rubble piles. Maybe once the residents noticed just how empty their towns are, maybe once they noticed how worthless it all is, they'd get some fucking perspective.

>>16678946

Yes. Because the west is currently infected with communism.

>>16678960

These homes aren't being sat on by residents, they're being bought up by machine learning algorithms run by banks.

https://www.digitalistmag.com/future-of-work/2018/11/01/data-is-new-brick-machine-learning-in-real-estate-industry-06192021

Combine is the embodiment of Valves embodiment of worst case scenario against management in companies, governments etc

Developed to the max as detriment to everybody for its own good

It represents what Valve is "fighting against", this is their ideological enemy so to speak

>>16678975

>emphasis on "jobs" and "spending" even as majority of jobs become incapable of sustaining workers and spending is increasingly buttressed by fat cats selling instruments to each other

>exclusive emphasis on collective metrics such as gdp while completely ignoring individual metrics such as median income and quality of life

>endless pursuit of the almighty dollar

>growth growth growth

>literally designated as "autistic economics" in economics circles

>infected with communism

Not true capitalism?

>>16678980

An excellent example of what OP's Slate Star Codex pasta was talking about IRL. Perhaps the ultimate example is the advertising-supported online economy of firms such as Google and Facebook. Basically scammerbots creating fake identities and ad clicks monetized by dataminingbots selling demographics to adbots that lend legitimacy to Web companies that get all of their actual revenue from VC investorbots:

https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm

Hopefully the online "big tech" bubble will pop before it becomes a completely closed loop.

>>16679033

Every time I remember Apple has almost a trillion just sitting around with zero idea of what to do with it, I get a terrible feeling in my stomach.

>>16678584

> Drones with sensory and neural capabilities at the level of humans are prohibitively expensive

Usual combine weapons don't require too advanced AI. The strider itself doesn't require higher-level AI than what was coded in the game itself. Also, the cost is negligible to a species with sufficiently large manufacturing capabilities, which is inevitable at the dysons warm level. You're making me repeat myself.

>automation IRL because it removes some of the magic from these things.

Can't compare our automation with dyson civilization ones. Go watch some Isaac Arthur for a proper education in true futurism.

>they don't breed humans.

I was talking about all other species, which they most certainly would have to and is a larger hassle and costly than building drones.

>>16679231

I think we can safely put the dyson sphere stuff in "unconfirmed" territory. Laidlaw's Epistle is only one of several directions the story could have taken, and we never see it ingame. Interestingly, we do get a glimpse at some kind of Combine-controlled dimension in HL2 - at the very end of the game, at the top of the citadel, you can see the portal start to open as Breen prepares to escape. You can look up inside and just barely glimpse a red-orange cloudy sky and several Citadel-like structures. If anything, it's the Dyson sphere that conflicts with established canon. I think it's safe to assume that the combine are only ~1000 years ahead of our tech level, instead of the astronomically high level you'd need to construct something like a Dyson sphere. The breengrub account itself even hints that there are 'cracks' and oversights in the Combine superstructure.

I still disagree that drones are 100% always the profitable solution. Think of it this way: they could build hyperefficient machines that adapt to their environment, with all the effort that entails, and do things that way. But if the universe is rife with lifeforms adapted to their environments, why not utilize them instead?

Organic lifeforms are machines, that just happened to occur naturally. A quote I heard somewhere that stuck with me is that "life is just this really cool thing that dirt does sometimes". Why build an entirely new set of machines to adapt to a new environment when the universe has built those machines for you through evolution? All you've got to do is get rid of their pesky notions of free will and individuality. A brain can absolutely be hijacked, and the idea of the Combine using humans against each other is absolutely cool as fuck. They have every reason to see human endurance, ingenuity, and cognition as a benefit to their kind - as long as it's appropriately repurposed to fit their expansionist, spartan mindset.

That's what makes the Combine so existentially disturbing. When you encounter a Combine soldier, you're shooting at a human being whose mind has been completely altered by drugs and surgery. His problem-solving, spatial awareness, language, and physical body are the same as they were when he was still human. The only thing the Combine did was alter the frontal lobe a bit to make him loyal to their cause, and erase his memories. But that man's body language, his physical imperfections, and most of his brain - are exactly the same as before he was enslaved. That's incredibly uncomfortable to think about, that your entire body and mind could be 'repurposed' so cruelly. It puts into perspective that we are just machines, and our conscious minds are just a thin layer of neurons atop years of iterative evolution - evolution which the Combine has now co-opted. I've never seen or read anything like it, and it's what drew me to HL2 in the first place.

If anything, we should have seen this concept explored more fully. Imagine Earth's animals turned into "synths" along the same lines as Striders and Hunters. What use would the Combine have for chimpanzees? Would they use elephants? Dogs? It would be strange to fight Earth life that's been repurposed the same way humans have been repurposed.

>>16679033

>being a Communist

I'll give you this reply, my (more than likely) social-consensus-obsessed friend, in the hopes that one day you'll wake up. By all means, use a bad meme to defend your even worse meme. To deny that Europe and the USA are absolutely infested with State and therefore infested with Socialism (or Communism) is a completely disingenuous or moronic thing to do. The markets aren't free and men chafe under taxes, redistributionism and "social policies". Men can neither buy nor sell freely, nor can they even live without their wealth being siphoned away. There is no freedom in the land of the free. If you won't claim it for your camp, that's fine. You don't need to. Anyone who has eyes can see it's so.

>>16679948

>communism

>statist

>taxes

>present social consensus

>anywhere

lol

>capitalism

>able to exist without state coercion

>allowing personal wealth

>not redistributive

>markets

>free exchange

lel

>my camp

>the pomos, lifestylists, and state capitalists (you) are probably thinking of

kek

>>16679944

The Combine have extremely limited teleportation tech, they need human teleportation, or I guess Nihilanth teleportation given that he also had the technology in Xen and he was fleeing from the Combine.

>>16679231

>>Isaac Arthur

Mah nigga