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gwern you are so great!

Hello THere

He's not really omniscient he just knows how to act under pressure and with particular closed systems/ scenarios where he has access to information it's not omniscient as he needs to be provided the information in order to act, by contrast characters like Akagi and the main character from one puts is I think someone that fits into the omniscient category. Kaiji is someone that acts wherever push comes to show and when he is put into a situation that provides him that drive and is lazy and complacent when he lacks that drive due to a lack of initiative and the temptation of an easier way out, and I think that underlying principle has an almost universal truth to it, not saying that anyone can come up with what kaiji does by the rationale behind it is plausible. Is it a bit stretched? I guess I certainly dont think I would be able to come up with that nor would the average person but the author was able to and he was a person who wrote it in there and he provided ample reasoning for the plans to be the way they were. I guess my main leg to stand on is that kaiji character writing is consistent and he is flawed as well, those two i think are enough to make him a believable human.
Sorry if anything in my comment offended you that wasn't my intent, and I also watched years ago so my memory is probably as reliable or less so than yours , and I am willing to debate about it if you are willing to but I understand if you aren't.

Also how often are you on mal?

Hey i found you through your blogpost and was very interesting but i personally find your reviews a bit lack luster in comparison, apologize if i offend.
I disagree with your kaiji review and i would like to bring up some points to defend the show cause i am a fan but i would prefer to do that in the form of a discussion. Starting with what about kaiji the character did you find implausible?

Put up my review of _Evangelion 3.0_ at https://www.gwern.net/newsletter/2019/07#evangelion-3.0 (MAL frowns on links in reviews and I wanted to link some sources).

hi, I friend requested you after finding your essay on Komm Susser Todd and liking your general taste in anime so I could save your profile. if you don't accept randoms, I don't mind. just a heads up. if not, if you dont mind leaving a comment on my profile so I can find you later that would be great.

Loved your Kaguya review and I agree with many of the points you make.

Thank you for your work !

Greetings from Portugal.

I just realized: you're the gwern from the rationalist blogosphere, aren't you?

You read R J Lipton's blog?? This is very strange.

Given what you've said, I'm assuming your background is in statistics, which is no further from theoretical physics than theoretical computer science. How is it you have trouble with Greg Egan and follow GLL, which is even more technical? I'm starting a PhD in theoretical CS this fall and I don't understand their posts sometimes.

I agree with you, karuta is an probably easier sport than tennis, which is why it is not professionally played. But you're drawing the line at an arbitrary place and saying this belongs in the same class as Tic-Tac-Toe.

I seriously doubt anybody's going to come up with an efficiently computable strategy for chess which allows White to always win, given how it's at least PSPACE-complete. (I can be a computer science nerd and say that in the absence of such, chess as it is played is also trivial because it relies only on heuristics and processing power - if a player is actually going to brute force at each stage. Then the only meaningful sports would be ones in which players are expected to come up with algorithms on the spot and the best algorithm wins - that is, programming competitions.)

Anyway, at the end of the day, I suspect several sports anime are popular not because viewers are interested in that sport in particular, but because they can possibly identify with the protagonists in terms of liking *something* and striving towards it. In Chihayafuru's case this is easy to do because the characters have more depth than most shounen sports. Also, the fact that they are into an obscure sport which people constantly don't take seriously, but they decide to do it anyway can be seen as admirable (yes clearly you don't think it should be taken seriously, but there are people who are willing to ignore that).

To be clearer, my question was how does this make karuta different from some sport like tennis, which also relies on physical abilities which are somewhat inherent and somewhat acquired by training. Granted the level of training required may be different in the two cases, but it's the same principle. In fact I'd go so far as to say karuta requires more strategy than tennis, though obviously way less than say chess.

And I'm sorry for being pedantic but Tic-Tac-Toe and lottery analogies aren't appropriate. Tic-Tac-Toe is a trivial sport not because it only involves reflexes, but because it allows the first player to always win.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.

I'd like to ask you something about your Chihayafuru review though, because it wasn't clear to me and I do really like that show. Did you mean to say that you think karuta is worse than the average sport? If so, in what way? Personally I don't really like any sport, but I thought the show presents karuta in a reasonably interesting way - at least enough to keep me invested in it for the characters' sake, and the characters are the main reason I like the show.

I'm not familiar with Gene Wolfe, actually. Is he someone you'd recommend? I looked him up and apparently his work has strong religious themes? I'm not terribly fond of that.

Have you checked out Greg Egan's website? He has abundant resources on the science behind almost all his works. I think Orthogonal is the most well-documented in fact. Personally, I didn't think this was the most inaccessible of his works, though it is the most ambitious. But I studied physics, so.

Egan does maintain that he need not tone down the scientific content of his books in order to interest people, and that the scientific content itself should be interesting enough. An idealistic view, perhaps, but it does make his work rewarding for someone willing to put in the effort.