11 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 81st comment:
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To me magically giving a golem the ability to understand relatively complex commands is akin to the suspension of disbelief required to make magic possible in the first place.

Also, similar to the need to explain the understanding of verbal commands is the need to explain the ability to walk and fight. These things would also require programming not yet sufficient even with modern tech.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 82nd comment:
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Runter said:
To me magically giving a golem the ability to understand relatively complex commands is akin to the suspension of disbelief required to make magic possible in the first place.

Sure, I agree. But people were trying to give physics-based explanations for these things. If one is willing to just say "look, it's magic, k?" then all problems go away. :smile:
11 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 83rd comment:
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I guess my point is that in science fiction its fine to misrepresent what is possible.


Even if magic isn't part of it.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 84th comment:
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In my experience science fiction tends to either say nothing about how things work, and then not say things like "oh that's not possible because <…>", or go to considerable lengths to explain basically how things work and therefore why this or that thing will not work.

In general, different people have different goals for how self-consistent and rules-abiding a world's physics are.

So if somebody says "well, you can't charm a robot because in my world charming works only on intelligent beings", you are essentially saying that you believe the golem is unintelligent, which leaves room for arguing whether or not that is indeed the case; etc.
11 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 85th comment:
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Yes. But I think if they choose to make charm work on said golem it isn't as silly as charming a laptop or fortress.

So I think some of the early comments were over the top in this thread.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 86th comment:
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The objection was not only to the 'what' but also to the 'why'.
11 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 87th comment:
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Runter said:
To me magically giving a golem the ability to understand relatively complex commands is akin to the suspension of disbelief required to make magic possible in the first place.

Golems can't (usually) understand complex commands, only very simple ones. Of course those simple commands can involve complex actions, but those actions tend to consist of things that would require little in the way of conscious mental effort for a human. This distinction is important when you consider that golems are created by magic - because it makes it difficult to guess what is going on under the hood, and difficult to compare it with modern hardware.

After all, if magic can animate a human skeleton, and that skeleton can then follow simple instructions - despite having no eyes, ears or muscles - then that strongly suggests that magic is doing most of the work. Magic isn't just acting like software, it's acting (at least partially) like hardware as well.

Runter said:
Also, similar to the need to explain the understanding of verbal commands is the need to explain the ability to walk and fight. These things would also require programming not yet sufficient even with modern tech.

Yet simulating such actions is often considered trivial for magic (and nobody suggests that illusions are intelligent). If a magic spell can handle the movement, then from a programming perspective you've already got a fully working plug-and-play "application" for your golem that'll handle the movement for you.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 88th comment:
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KaVir said:
Yet simulating such actions is often considered trivial for magic (and nobody suggests that illusions are intelligent). If a magic spell can handle the movement, then from a programming perspective you've already got a fully working plug-and-play "application" for your golem that'll handle the movement for you.

Not necessarily. If you want to talk about the "physics" here, let's consider the two possibilities for how an illusion could work:

1- Internal to the victim
An illusion is arguably something that takes place in a person's mind. In other words if I am affected by an illusion spell, I could just as well be magically duped into conjuring up all the illusion's actions myself. This is why illusions are often countered by a form of plausibility or belief check; if you realize that what you're seeing isn't actually possible, the illusion can be broken. (Perhaps the spell tried to get you to stretch actions further than another part of your brain was willing to go.)
So under this view of how illusions work, it is not at all the magic that is handling movement, etc., but the victim's brain – the magic is merely convincing the victim's brain to do so.

2- External from the victim
If, however, an illusion is truly external to the victim, that is, it exists whether or not that particular victim is there, then arguably the illusion is, in fact, just as if not more "intelligent" than the golem but merely without a tangible manifestation. (It can be 'more' intelligent because these illusions are generally doing things far more complex than you seem willing to let your golems do, such as holding conversations.) It would be sort of like a specter that had no way of affecting the world other than working on people's minds.
11 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 89th comment:
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The illusion was just one example. Perhaps a better example would be Unseen Servant - as "an invisible, mindless, shapeless force that performs simple tasks at your command" it could perhaps be perceived as a bodyless equivalent to the golem. And as a level 1 spell, it represents very trivial magic.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 90th comment:
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KaVir said:
The illusion was just one example. Perhaps a better example would be Unseen Servant - as "an invisible, mindless, shapeless force that performs simple tasks at your command" it could perhaps be perceived as a bodyless equivalent to the golem. And as a level 1 spell, it represents very trivial magic.

Well, when you look at what that thing is doing, it falls under the extremely simple command interpretation that is, in fact, feasible today. I would agree that such a thing is not intelligent, because it can only handle trivial, unambiguous commands that require no judgment whatsoever.

However, even a relatively simple golem is capable of more complex instructions, such as "kill anything that harms X" or "defend this place from hostile intruders" – that requires at least some subjective judgment call. (Was that insult "harming"? etc.)

So basically, the magic here for the invisible servant is capable of producing a thing that has "thinking power" roughly similar to a modern-day computer with relatively standard software algorithms.

Again, different people have different definitions of what golems actually are and can do, so it's important to keep that in mind lest people argue based on definitional differences…
11 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 91st comment:
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I think unless a game claims to be part of a universe of games such a dnd its strange to argue about the physics of magic.

For example, I'm pretty sure a dnd based game will have different explains than a starwars based game.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 92nd comment:
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Strange, perhaps, to argue about a game's physics using D&D physics if the game isn't D&D-related, but as a general statement I don't see anything wrong with trying to discuss the "physics" of magic, at least concerning self-consistency and so forth.
11 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 93rd comment:
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The Unseen Servant can "run and fetch things, open unstuck doors, and hold chairs, as well as clean and mend". Perhaps more importantly, it can perform any task with a DC of 10 or less, as long as it doesn't require a skill that can't be used untrained. That means it could craft a wooden spoon or an iron pot, hunt or forage for enough food and water to feed one person, tie a firm knot in a rope, ransack a chest full of junk to find a certain item, etc.

The only thing it can't do that the golem can is attack - however the golem is "incapable of any strategy or tactics". It simply slams the target until they drop. That doesn't strike me as any more difficult than making a pot or foraging for food, and I strongly suspect that the only reason the Unseen Servant can't attack is for game balance reasons.

P.S: Runter, the reason I brought up D&D golems is because they provided the main source of inspiration for golems in my mud.
11 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 94th comment:
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KaVir, I think it basically comes down to you defining golems as being one way, and other people defining golems as being sophisticated enough to interpret commands with context sensitivity, etc.
11 Aug, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 95th comment:
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It seems rather pointless to state that you think "X is/isn't intelligent" without qualifying that opinion with "because it does/doesn't exhibit properties/behaviors A, B, and C." Myself excluded, I haven't seen anyone on this thread actually offer up a list of criteria that they use to define intelligence. If you don't have a list that you apply to things to determine whether or not they're intelligent, then you really have nothing concrete with which to support your opinion, and I would assume that you're only classifying things based on gut-feelings (obviously not the most scientific method).

I'll admit that it doesn't "feel right" to classify an AI as intelligent, but they exhibit the behaviors that I expect of an intelligent thing, so the only rational and logical conclusion is that they are, in fact, intelligent. This is the same logic that is used everywhere else in life to classify things. Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit? It doesn't "feel right" to a lot of people to classify a tomato as a fruit, but if you apply the list of properties that defines a fruit/vegetable, it's obvious that it is actually a fruit.
12 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 96th comment:
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Deimos said:
Myself excluded, I haven't seen anyone on this thread actually offer up a list of criteria that they use to define intelligence.

Well as I've been talking about D&D, how about using the intelligence stat to define intelligence?

Stone Golem
Abilities: Str 29, Dex 9, Con , Int, Wis 11, Cha 1

Intelligence (Int)
"Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons."

"Any creature that can think, learn, or remember has at least 1 point of Intelligence. A creature with no Intelligence score is mindless, an automaton operating on simple instincts or programmed instructions. It has immunity to mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects) and automatically fails Intelligence checks."
12 Aug, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 97th comment:
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How does something that can't remember follow instructions? Where exactly does it store those instructions? As previously pointed out, D&D is too paradoxical to be a decent source to pull from. Also, the criteria "any creature that can think, learn, or remember" is even broader than my own list, and would encompass everything I've listed thus far (including your absurdly expensive coffee-maker), and more.
12 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 98th comment:
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Deimos said:
How does something that can't remember follow instructions?

Magic. The point is it doesn't remember events or people. It doesn't have a "memory" in the same way as a person or animal. It cannot learn.

I disagree with your view of D&D. While there are certainly things I dislike about it, I actually like the way it handles golems - which is why I used them for inspiration. It certainly makes a lot more sense to me than claiming my (actually relatively inexpensive) coffee machine is intelligent - in fact it would raise some serious moral issues for me if I really believed my coffee machine had a mind.

However if you want a game where golems, skeletons, or even coffee machines can be charmed, then go for it. Why not? Most muds don't bother differentiating between mobs, after all, so I doubt any players would complain.
12 Aug, 2010, Koron wrote in the 99th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
After all, if magic can animate a human skeleton, and that skeleton can then follow simple instructions - despite having no eyes, ears or muscles - then that strongly suggests that magic is doing most of the work. Magic isn't just acting like software, it's acting (at least partially) like hardware as well.

This is another logical inconsistency with the D&D source material. These undead are "mindless" and can't be charmed, but they can be controlled through an equivalent spell designed to, essentially, charm only the undead. I'm totally comfortable with hand-waving it by saying that magic's doing the work, but magic in this context either creates a rudimentary intelligence (even if it's an artificial one along the lines of your standard FPS bot) or directly controls the physical form of golem (or skeleton) in a way that uses its own intelligence (how abstract!).

KaVir said:
Well as I've been talking about D&D, how about using the intelligence stat to define intelligence?
Intelligence (Int)
"Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons."

"Any creature that can think, learn, or remember has at least 1 point of Intelligence. A creature with no Intelligence score is mindless, an automaton operating on simple instincts or programmed instructions. It has immunity to mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects) and automatically fails Intelligence checks."

As a fast definition, this is adequate, but I'm not sure it stands to higher scrutiny. Learning, remembering, and reasoning are undoubtedly qualities that contribute to our considering a thing intelligent, but I'm not convinced they are necessary. Someone who has suffered brain damage may be incapable of long term memory, but this new inability to learn from anything that happened more than thirty seconds ago does not make one no longer intelligent. Does it make one less intelligent? Yeah, probably.


KaVir said:
I disagree with your view of D&D. While there are certainly things I dislike about it, I actually like the way it handles golems - which is why I used them for inspiration. It certainly makes a lot more sense to me than claiming my (actually relatively inexpensive) coffee machine is intelligent - in fact it would raise some serious moral issues for me if I really believed my coffee machine had a mind.

I see a distinction here again. There is a difference between [intelligence? yes | no] and {intelligence 0-1000}. Both are absolutely relevant, but they ultimately express different concepts. I've been using the former while I'm not sure that's the one you're arguing. A coffee maker is pretty freaking stupid, but an AI still has the I for a reason (even if it is A). Our beloved super coffee dispenser strikes me as [yes] and {1} to represent an incredibly shitty intelligence capable of only the most basic comparisons.

The discussion has probably reached a point where it's rather pointless, as we agree on the larger issue that you need to be able to differentiate between mobs somehow to determine whether you want a given creature (or entity) to be vulnerable to a given effect. My issue is with the D&D interpretation of the rules, which I have always felt were less than inspired.
12 Aug, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 100th comment:
Votes: 0
I sufficiently answered this dilemma when I stated the obvious difference is the golem's lack of ability to create its own goals and priorities.
80.0/104