demagogue

The way I see it, it's all "strategy", but at different levels of grain ... On the First Person level, you have no more info than what the PC has, so decisionmaking is very immediate. For 3P, you have more info than the PC, so gameplay and decisionmaking is more "abstract" in charting out his activity (like you're radioing them in to the PC), to a God's Eye p.o.v. where you can see the whole world and plot on a very abstract scale knowing *many* global things that the PC could never know. They can all be fun in their own way, but you have to admit they are each different paradigms, and run on a scale from immediacy to increasing abstractness .. so IMO it ultimately depends on what kind of "strategy" appeals to the way you like to think in games, or what mood you are in. Are you more in the mood for a boardgame kind of strategy, or paintball (or if I'm going to use an analogy, more like "gestapo", actually a game we used to play at night in the woods, like a nighttime, stealthy capture the flag)?

An extreme case came to my mind, too (as if the case needed more help). When I visted one of those massive "tourist caves" once, they turned out the lights in one large cavern, and it was seriously *pitch* black except for one tiny, tiny red light from someone's camera (or cell phone) really stuck out, and I could tell when people were crossing in front of it because it would pulse in and out of blackness as people passed. Technically silhouette recognition, but from my p.o.v. it was from my memory of the light being there and then being swept in total darkness, not even contrast this time; realistically it was whatever miniscule amount of light was actually hitting him *exactly* in line with my line of sight on the other side ...hardly practical to check.

I was thinking of those exact 2 names myself.

Yeah, but then again there are some people that have released new texture packs at TTLG for T2 and TDS that are pretty good IMO and I wonder if they even know about the need here (not that I trust my opinion of what's really "good", just that some look better than others). Yeah ... I don't know what they were expecting. That kind of attitude makes more sense for some of the other modding communities, like BF-1942 or Source (maybe Unreal), where there's just gobs of people and project ideas, and everyone's kind of doing their own thing, they post their ideas and scout for any random person interested, and there doesn't seem to be much deeper connection between them (and I don't feel like I'm exaggerating that too much). And isn't that the most awful name. I mean, come on, what worse way to taunt for a C&D than calling yourself "Thief Transgressions".

Just a quick note, what you two say about the AI gives me a warm fuzzy feeling ... that's great to hear.

Yeah, it's hard not to notice when you change between 1stP and 3dP you're really changing the whole character of the PC, the game, and the gameplay. 3rd Person instantly makes me think of Tomb Raider-esque gameplay, where you really use the environment as something for your PC to manipulate to advance, more running, jumping, hanging puzzles, and NPCs as just another kind of environmental barrier to "navigate" around (but this time one that shoots back). A bit more gimmicky, although fun in its own way for what it is. 1st person, the environment isn't something you *use* so much as it's something you're *in*, immediately more immersive, more concentrated on the NPCs *as characters in the world with you*, who is where?, than on the hallways and ledges and NPC's around you as just different categories of hurdles in your way, which can never escape a kind of superficialism IMO. FP just makes the gameplay and the whole world a level deeper, again IMO. I wouldn't mind seeing a few 3P oriented FMs if they come out for Darkmod if they can be pulled off, some classic Tomb-Raider like hopping around. They could even be very fun for a quick jaunt, as long as the 1stPerson experience isn't in any way compromised to cater to them. But they just won't tap into what really excites me about FP gameplay that 3P just can't capture. Of course, this is just my preference, but I don't mind acknowledging that TDM's design comes with a kind of gameplay agenda that I happen to agree with.

Crack pipe or not, it's interesting to hear his p.o.v. No wonder I hear you guys complaining so much about wanting texture artists and AI coders. It's not intuitive that you aren't getting textures faster, though. A lot of people around TTLG seem to love making new textures... And while it's not trivial to make good textures, it's not so difficult (comparitively speaking) for someone with a digital camera, time, and knows their way around photoshop or paintshop. I'd have thought this would be the relatively easier area to find support. Or is it just the sheer number of textures you need? Geez, I really hope you guys can get people to take care of the AI, though ... That's where this brand of gameplay really shines IMO. I actually took AI logic as an elective in college, but too bad my programming isn't up to par with my theoretical studies.

He did this with that Chinese movie *Hero* too ... Kind of strange, he has no real role to play in making either movie. It's just to get people interested in foregin flicks. It would work better if he'd pick a little better movies to do that, though. Both Hostel and Hero aren't really the best the rest of the world has to offer over Hollywood IMO.

Yeah, I think that's the best way to go, too. ZB, what about poison tipped arrows for what you're talking about? It may add up to the same thing in the end, but seems a little more intuitive IMO. But I don't have a strong opinion about it. Just a thought. An aside: I could imagine a mace-gas effect lasting for a while ... not knocking a guard out but blinding him so that you could run past, but he also shouts out ... more intuitive than a flash bomb at least.

I wonder if I missed something here. Couldn't the same thing happen with automatic? What if you want to fire a gas arrow at a pursuing AI that runs into a gas room with you, so you go into auto-breath-hold, then you shoot off a gas arrow which explodes next to you, still in the gas-room (or there's just a gas-mine on the ground for some reason) ... so do you take damage from the gas-arrow or not? You're holding your breath because of the gas room, but gas arrows seem separate from the whole breath-holding side of things. I'm sure this has already been thought about, but anyway just occured to me with this post. ZB, it's interesting you bring up that cite (as long as we're in webgeekery mode). A project I've dabbled a little in (re: military law) is how the US uses things like phosphorus gas (i.e., white smoke), which aren't covered under the chemical weapons convention since they are only supposed to be defensive (covering troops to run thru, etc), "arguably" as an offensive weapon, since it turns out there is some contact damage, particularly if they lob a phosphorus grenade that goes off right next to someone's face, makes for some nasty skin effects, and what really counts as "contact" damage, what it says on the label or what physiologically happens in real life under various conditions, and how do you draw the line... Anyway, because of that project I researched a little about the human effects of different substances, and what gets in the CWC and what doesn't, and why, etc... It would be interesting to think about more accurate representation of things like gas in-game, but I also like the simplicity of the Thief world and wouldn't be such a fan of going over board. (It reminds me of the debate in the Battlefield 1942 - WWI TC whether they wanted things like mustard gas in it, and they voted no because it's just not fun to play a game with that kind of thing, and everyone would just use it for every battle, etc...)

There are enough hapless newbies in TTLG that require your services to be dishing them out here (one just asked in ThiefGen "why can't we remake the T1/T2 levels in T3 with its leet graphics already?" and I wondered when you'd pop up) ... but anyway, just to play your game: "Unique" wouldn't capture what I meant at all. It's not just that the features I was talking about (whistle-blowing, breath-holding) are *unlike* other, existing features. You could say the same thing about jumping and leaning, e.g., if you were starting from scratch (say it's 1997), you already have jumping, and now you are debating whether leaning should also be a part of the interface. You wouldn't want to strike it out *merely* because it was different from jumping, and thus unique to the present interface. The term "sui generis" gets much closer to what is really problematic about whistle-blowing and breath-holding as distinguished from jumping and leaning. It's not the relative feature of "uniqueness", that is, different relative to other things already there, which could be totally arbitrary depending on the order you add features. It's that whistle-blowing and breath-holding create and only fit into their own, self-contained little interface-universe, that is, they only fit into a special class particular to just themselves and no other feature. The dictionary supports my distinction, I think, although it is a little ambivalent (a legal dictionary would do it even better, but anyway) : Unique: Being the only one of its kind [i.e., nothing like it] Sui generis: Etymology: Latin, of its own kind, literally "to itself-categorized / -originated / or -generated": constituting a class alone : unique or particular to itself It's the "to itself-generated" and "particular to itself" parts that I'm specifically relying on, which goes further than mere "uniqueness". For the features of which I spoke, you would only ever use them for very discrete tasks/puzzles which, in turn, only specially call on just those features, whereas jumping and leaning have very general versatility in any situation, so they aren't particular to just themselves. You wouldn't create them just to work their own, self-contained interface-contexts. There are lots of times you'd want tojump or lean, not just in "specifically-created jumping/leaning puzzles". So while leaning could be "unique" in a particular context (my hypothetical above), it could never be sui generis in the (admittedly technical) way I'm using the term. There is perhaps no exact term that captures this "special to it's own, specially created, self-contained interface-context", but sui generis really hits the nail on the head IMO (much more so than being merely "unique" as in different from all the other features) and at any rate comes much closer than any term I could think of. Since it is a technical term, maybe people use it differently in different contexts, but the way I was using it, it fits right in specifically with the *legal* use of the term. (And as for being obscure, it isn't for me because I use it in law all the time. But I admit that it isn't in common use in normal conversation. I used it anyway because I thought that the technical understanding of it, as I've tried to explain here by distinguishing it from "unique", really fit this situation well. And now I've explained why.) As for degrees of sui generity ... this is open to hermeneutic (interpretational) debate I think. It's a strong intuition, though, and something that the term should be able to capture even under conservative hermeneutic theories. Of course, my point is valid if you just strike out the word "so" and admit no degrees of "self-containedness" among features. And with that interpretation jumping/leaning would surely be in and whistle-blowing/breath-holding would surely be out, and my point will stand. So we can both have our way on that point, no-degrees of sui generis, and everybody wins. But if you don't admit degrees, then you might be missing a useful perspective buried in my use of that term. Sometimes the "self-containedness" of features really does seem to be on a scale of degree. Think about wall-hugging? Is it general-purpose to many gameplay situations or specific to its own specially-created use? It fits in a middle area, I think. In fact, I'll go so far as to say: as I was using the term, I think you actually could have a sliding scale of the general-usability of interface features. Consider such a scale with one pole being "general to most if not all gameplay uses" and the other pole being "specific only to its own specially designed task which (in turn) only calls on that specific interface feature". It might look like: (1) direction keys, walking (2) weapon draw/cycle (3) inv object draw/cycle (4) running (5) leaning (6) strafing (7) ducking (8) wall hugging . . . (9) whistle blowing (10) breath-holding I think this way of framing decisions about what should and shouldn't be part of the general interface is very useful. And the term "sui generis" gets us closer to this understanding than any other term, including "unique". So I stand by my decision to use the term and even my non-standard application of it (although I am willing to back down on the non-standard application for my above post, which didn't require it, but nevertheless would be enriched if it did). Judges, can we rescind those cockpunches and place all trial-costs on the complaining party in the form of a bucket of toilet water to the face? As for multiple stim "trap" gas vs. "corrosive" (boundary) gas vs. whatever else they can imagine... Whatever. There were a number of ideas on the table, and I don't seem to recall any official, final decisions being made. But anyway, the point wasn't particular to *which form* of insta-harm gas is used, just *some* form. I'm happy to substitute multiple-stim type with "corrosive" type and the general point still stands, that I probably won't use 'auto-hold-breath' gas if it's there. So it's not such a big deal to me. The fact that corrosive gas will also be part of the default set-up, as we all know 110% guaranteed because it's been "noted, repeatedly" ... then all the better. Mainly, though, I just chose that wording because it's what I had in mind at the time, nothing more ominous than that ... and to be honest, my personal preference is *still* towards "trap" type gas than gas rooms (auto-breath-hold or corrosive), just because gas-filled rooms always struck me as a little bizarre and unnatural ... although I concede that my above post didn't explain that, but I'm telling you now.

The more I think about this, the more it occurs to me that these alternative gameplay techniques, because they are so sui generis (that is, really only useful for the one puzzle they were created for), are probably best addressed with inventory-frobbing something you pick up just in the context of that mission ... so like a little whistle or bird-call you can carry (which T2 actually *did* have, although not for general use, but it seems easy to rig something like that up) or a rag or even better a painter's-mouth-cover that (some readable suggests) is useful for covering your mouth to avoid/filter breathing in fumes, and then you can get the idea that when you inv-frob it, it covers your mouth, effectively holding or filtering your breath until you frob it off (remember GATI had something like a chemical rag to frob-knock a person out) ... and each mapper could custom make such objects him/herself. I was never that keen on a special key anyway and just ran with it to be devil's advocate a little (an inv-frobbable object seems much more preferable). But automatic breath-holding also rubs me the wrong way ... but maybe it just means I'd personally tend to mimick gasrooms DX or Thief style (with scattered stims) and not even have to deal with it.

Hey, this is the public forum. We work with what we can get... (_");

Why don't you just pick one of these services and put the link in this thread: http://www.freewebspace.net/guide/diskstorage.shtml I'm sure one of them is bound to work well.

Yeah, but should it happen automatically?

Heh ... this is called the inheretance (or entitlement) bias in economics/cogsci ... people having affinity for (or at least overvalue) something they already have, but are skeptical of (or undervalue) something that threatens to change what they already have, even if it's the *same* feature introduced in different contexts. I tend to think that the more transparency the better ... try to present options in both contexts if you can, so ideally you'd have the skeptical discussion and a little demo of a "nonstandard" option so people can see how it feels in-game going on at the same time (and force the skeptics to frame their arguments in terms of how it plays out). Hard to get rid of the bias totally, but you can recognize it's there and you can let the two sides of it counteract each other in some respect. Anyway, I guess if I think about it, both DX and T2 both used discrete gas-stims even for rooms that were supposed to be gas filled and that worked for most trap-purposes. And now you are talking about adding something more constant & water-like ... automatic? hmmm ... I can see it both ways. I guess I have nothing new to add, except: ZB: re: no first -breath sound, I'd think if you're going to have any breath-holding at all you might want *some* audio-cue. It doesn't have to be an elaborate *huupf*, but something small and telling, an *ugnh* (?). It might be strange either running through corridors or walking into a dark room, before the player registers the gas, and all of a sudden a *breath-left* meter pops up (although altered vision would help). I know it doesn't happen with water, but then again it's always obvious that you're in water, but it might not be obvious you're in a gas chamber for a second. It might not be missed, but it's just an intuition.

I have to second that. I ran into this little jewel on HOTU and the fact that it refers to an official NASA spaceflight manual for its own manual I thought was pretty cool. And it has a great mod community that keeps introducing new stuff.

Just for completeness sake to address this point: I'd think the idea of running out of air while holding your breath (outside the water context) is dumb too and my intuition is that you'd just automatically/involuntarily release your breath and take a gasp of air (mechanics wise: it automatically toggles off), and if you're in gas you'd start taking damage from that point (according to the gas, not the breath holding like in water, and you can't rehold your breath inside gas because of the gas) and if you're not in gas then the hold-breath is just released, no problem, game-on. A toggle key sounds like a good idea just in the case when you're standing right in front of a gas chamber, you know it's there, you want to run through it, you don't want that first cough, so you can toggle-on holding breath right then and there and then toggle it off when you're out, or just wait for the breath to run out and it will toggle itself off. And then it can still happen that if you blunder/fall into a gas chamber or a trap goes off, you take damage right off DX style and have to find a way out fast, since the whole point is you didn't see it coming. (And BTW, this is the one situation where doing it automatically seems a bit counterintuitive, since it's meant to be a trap ... but if it takes 30 seconds before any damage then it's a trap that doesn't cost anything. Logic-centric gameplay works better when there's a real cost to erring.) Anyway, I can see pros/cons on both sides, & I can see some of your points against it ... it's a matter of weighing everything up and seeing which is just better/more intuitive in the end.

My only contribution is my first intuition that, unlike water, it seems with gas that maybe the breath-holding should hold-off for maybe 1 breath and then start, so there'd be one breath, a bad cough, and maybe a little damage taken, and then you hear the tell-tale sign of breath-holding and a meter or whatever. I just have the image, if I entered a gas filled room that that first rancid breath would be the cue I need to hold my breath, and it would really convey the message that it's a room full of rancid gas that you are now entering. Also, this way there is still always a little cost for directly entering (after all deadly) gas that you might expect which you wouldn't expect with water. The issue with this is you would expect this the first time, but it might come across as dumb to forget to start holding your breath *every* time you want to run through the passage (that was what actually bugged me about SS2; not being surprised by gas suddenly filling a room, but when I *see* it there, or have to run *back* through it, you'd think I'd have learned to hold my breath in advance.) BTW, this is the advantage I see to Spar's idea about a breath-holding button ... because then you only have yourself to blame for not remembering to hold your breath *in advance* before entering the gas, which actually isn't natural, whereas with water it's a reflex. And it fits with the intuition, before entering a room of gas, that you'd mentally say to yourself, "ok, here we go, *huuuughh*" (hold breath) and then you start running. So it's not a terrible idea, I just don't have a feel right now how the gameplay would pan out. I also have the intuition that it's not a good idea to add more gameplay affecting functions unless they really have added value. So I'd have to see the two versions in action to have a better idea if there's really added value with a new keyed function or if it just comes across as gratuitous.

I don't know how much more I can add to what Domarius said but anyway: Here's a more specific tutorial on readying a Soundfont bank file for use on a Soundblaster card, but maybe it says the same thing that Dom's site says (just from the card's pov instead of the synthesizer/sequencer program's). As Dom said, it changes the default instruments for MIDI files on the card from the tinny deafult ones to better sounding custom ones (which is essentially what a soundfont bank file is, and if you find a good one, it sounds *so* much better): http://dmzweb3.europe.creative.com/SRVS/CG...s.creative.com/ The two things you need to get going is (1) a good sounding soundfont bank file ... there are a lot on line, and (2) a loader, which effectively will be your Yamaha synthesizer/sequencer program. It *should* support soundfont loading on its own (if it was recommended, then I'd imagine it does, but I don't know), and that will be explained in its documentation or some online tut if you can find one. And FYI, there is a free soundfont editor here (Vienna SF Studio 2.4) that I *think* could also serve as a loader, but don't quote me on that, because for all I know it just loads soundfonts for use with the editor and not universally default, but I really think it works as a loader too. The advantage with this, of course, is that it gives you the option of picking and choosing various instruments to customize and create your own soundfont file: http://asia.creative.com/support/downloads...&y=16&details=1://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...soundfont file, e.g., if you *just* want to add a new chorus sound.://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...w chorus sound.://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...w chorus sound.://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...w chorus sound.://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...w chorus sound.://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...w chorus sound.://http://asia.creative.com/support/do...w chorus sound.. Technically it's not even necessary to have loader support on the synthesizer because apparently you can do it by directly accessing the card without a dedicated loader, but I don't know how to do that, and anyway a loader makes the process so much easier. If your Yamaha doesn't do it, then you should google for one that does. I did all of this using Cakewalk, but I don't really use MIDI outside of Cakewalk so I don't know so much about your situation. Anyway, the documentation for your yamaha should steer you the right way. Good luck.

Oops! Make that *Don* Ross ... I didn't have the book in front of me when I wrote the post and just did it by (bad) memory. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/026218246...glance&n=283155 Thanks for your suggestions Max. The Ross book starts of distinguishing just what economics is the study of ... utility-optimization in the face of scarcity. I don't think it ever claimed to cover *all* behavioral patterns, but then again it also took pains to say that no particular behavioral patter could be a priori left out of the "machine" either, e.g., religious, artistic, political behavior, etc. So there you go. But I haven't got to the really interesting chapters at the end that talk about the actually links between econ and cogsci, so I'm anxious to know where he's going in that regard. I know right now he's focusing on just what "utility" really amounts to, what it is to "want" something that prompts you to action, and how the maximizing of satisfying that desire lets you choose among options, theoretical stuff like that. The Glumcher book "Neuroeconomics" looks at it in the reverse direction, how evolution actually "designed" neural-areas to be optimizing-machines, so the lessons of economics could actually be used to understanding the wiring, and uses the example of the (LIP) system which directs your eye muscles, that is, visual focus, what you want to look at, how you want to look at it, when, for how long, etc ... and the case is really pounded home that it uses a simple method of relative expected utility to weigh various "look at me!" options and choose among them, at least in part. And then it goes on to suggest that this sort of thing is a general feature in a lot of behavioral decisionmaking and should color how we look at these sorts of brain areas, at least for low level, more "reflex" like behaviors. The higher-level/more reflective decisionmaking you go, maybe the more things get complicated. This has got to be one of the more meandering threads ... anyway, I like it; sort of a grab-bag of what's interesting in the world right now. And it's not like you guys police OT so much in these "undisciplined" forums to stave off the overly-curious masses...

Hey Maximius ... I know exactly what you're saying. First, I was mainly talking about economic thinking going into cogsci (and a lot of behavioral studies, pidegons eating breadcrumbs, etc...), not vice versa. But now that you mention it ... On reflection, there's too much I want to say and not enough time, so I'll try to keep it snappy. I was educated in a tradition that was worried that classical theory was being too reductive to a lot of behavior, too. Recently I've started to rethink that skepticism ... because I'm reading a book *right now* where the exact thesis is that cog sci is going to vindicate classical economic models. Dan Ross's Economic Theory and Cognitive Science. The book is incredibly engaging; I can't put it down! But since I'm still very early in, I don't feel confident responding to your point yet. The best I can do right now is just point to that book (actually it's 2 volumes, the first is on microeconomics, individual decisionmaking, the second is on macroeconomics, larger trends) and say there's your best response that I know of directly to what you are wondering about. But so far, I'm hooked. The WW1 example you mentioned I studied in law school (as I studied international law), and that experience was a leading reason for things like the Marshall Plan and the European Union as ways to more properly deal with ending a War and restoring order, which were significantly more economically rational. The psychological motivation behind something like the refusal to offer debt relief (not only that, but Germany had to pay reparations to the Allies until 1989!) revolve around the phenomenon of a "desire for recognition;" the US/Allies wanted to reinforce their world position to Germany/Old World ... really 19th Century way of thinking. Carl Schimdt really summed up this way of thinking in some of his books (Political Theology), and more recently Fukuyama (who has the added benefit of explaining its contrast to homo economia, our economically rational selves) ... although you should also take what they say with a grain of salt since they are talking with a definite political bias. But anyway, I've read lots of articles distinguishing people's "economic" self from their "autobiographical" self (whatever identity features are important in making up who they think they are). I can't answer to this until I've read more into Ross's book, but I want to know myself what the relationship between these two ways of behaving are, whether it's like 2 different selves or something more general going on. I'll let you know what I come up with!

Just on the last point, I like www.artchive.com, which has a pretty extensive collection of free, downloadable art. But it's not a wallpaper site per se, and the quality might vary across pieces depending on what you want ... but I've always used it for my backgrounds, I guess just because it's such an extensive collection in one place and still free.

Since I find this topic endlessly interesting, I feel like explaining a little. The connection between economics and cogsci is a recent development, championed by a guy named David Marr in explaining vision, although he died very young before he finished his book. It isn't so much connected to the externalist thesis ("long-arm functionalism" in the vocabulary I studied it). It's connected to the idea that the brain was "designed" by natural selection pressures, which are themseleves sensitive to environmental variables, climate, the ergonomics of motion given the Earth's gravity, etc ... and the whole *point* of natural selection is to, over time, optimize the "survival/reproduction" rate of an organism within an environmental context. So if you're trying to explain why a brain mechanism is built this way, it's natural to look to economics, the science of optimizing X under conditions of scarcity, as explaining the function that natural selection was pushing the system towards. It becomes like a window into the programing logic of the system, so to speak, so we aren't constantly bogged down by looking just at the wiring. The reason why it's so useful is that it's a step beyond the traditional psychological theories which looked solely at the wiring and tried to tie every exact set of output (behavior) to the exact set of inputs (sense data) as a series of sophisticated reflexes (think of Pavlov, we're all conditioned like dogs to "do X" when we "see Y"). This traditional theory had such a strong hold on the whole field for so long, that it was a roadblock to progress for most of the 20th century. It really took a few bright guys in the mid-80s (like Marr), along with the computer revolution and the growing acceptance of looking towards evolution theory to change the paradigm. More to say, but I have to go...

Two more, ok 3 more, quick points (slash book recommendations ... sigh, there are just too many these days) while I'm thinking about them, (1) A good synoptic overview of the architecture of the mind and how neurons work together to make cognition is a book called Enchanted Looms (can't think of the author now). (2) Terrence Deacon's "Symbolic Species: Coevolution of Language and the Brain" answers a question that had always stumped me and that someone's post just reminded me: why don't animals have simple languages? It's always either all or nothing (or at best the proto-language of sign-language chimps, which is at any rate not natural) ... there's no slow, gradual development of language like many important cognitive features, just wham, seemingly out of the blue, and this is arguably the most important aspect of human cognition! This book tells a story about how brains started for the first time in evolution being able to handle "representations" of ideas in addition to the ideas themselves, like treating them as abstract concepts, which opened the door to using symbolic representaitons of the ideas, i.e., language. Very illuminating. (The Lopsided Ape by Cornalis or something like that is another good book in this vien, which locates language's origins in the freeing of the hands with bipedalism as trees died out in East Africa 2 million y.o., leading to representationalism as we can begin to manipulate objects *as objects to be manipulated* (like tools) because now we can properly get our hands on it.) (3) Glumcher's book I mentioned before on Neuroeconomics does a great job of showing why the neural-net paradigm isn't the right paradigm for human cognition (even if it can play a helpful supporting role), because it would assume all cognitive features are like S/R functions, that is, reflexes, see X: do Y (although usually more complicated than that, but also no more than that) ... which is the classic foundation of psychology a la Pavlov and his salivating dogs, but has been undermined for the last 10 years with the idea we're talking about now, that the brain is actually "designed" to be goal-oriented according to the pressures of natural selection and, as people like economists have long known, human decisionmaking embeds more metalevel computations like relative expected utility into just about all decisions, so more has to be going on. (Then if you wanted to go the next step in this line, there's a book by Dan Ross called Economic Theory and Cognitive Science which unites all these ideas right with Dennett. I loved it, but you need to do a bit of background work in economics to follow it.) I actually wish I could get back into grad school to keep studying this stuff, seems so much more interesting and useful for the world than the legal work I'm doing now.