A Programmer's View of Morals

Here's an age-old question.  Are humans inherently moral?  That is, are they born with a sense of compassion and respect for others?

Conventional theories are as follows:

Yes, humans are inherently moral.  Emotions are not learned.  When a baby is born, it can instantly recognize its mother.  It is encoded in the human psyche that treating someone poorly will result in being treated poorly in return.

No, on the other side of the spectrum, humans are not inherently moral.  This is why early parenting is so crucial in making a child fit for society.  This is why children with unhealthy home environments tend to develop social disorders.  Morals, and consequently, the ability to assimilate into society, are learned.

Here's the problem with both theories:

Genetic makeup is not hard-coded.  As far as science tells us, genes tend to be much more abstract than just "the gene that makes you respect people" or "the gene that makes you love people."  If that were the case, and things like respect and love could be hard-coded into the psyche, then morals can be, too.

And sure, there's a trend between good parenting and social assimilation.  But this doesn't tell the whole story.  Once again, inherent morals would have to be directly integrated into human biology.

My purely theoretical take on this:

My theory depends on the human brain working as a neural network where people are born with a randomized genetic makeup and filtered out via natural selection.

Quick overview.  Neural networks are made up of neurons that receive inputs and fire outputs.  If all of the inputs and their weights surpass a certain threshold value, then the neuron fires all of its outputs into other neurons.  Otherwise, it stays silent.  Think computer chips.

Apocalyptico : Initialization

After a game designer's block of three freaking months I'm motivating myself to finish a game by doing it in a short amount of time.  Enough to fit into my deteriorating attention span.

Apocalyptico!

Progress will be posted on ThatDevBlog as per usual.  Detailed design doc in that post.

This is probably a bad idea.

Turing Machine : Langton's Ant

Starting to really like C++.

Turing machine with emergent behavior based on Langton's Ant.

9-color variant of Langton's Ant, LRRRRRLLR

Source available via GitHub.  Written in MSVC++ 2010 Express (C++ with SDL).

Yes, I know my solution names are misspelled.  Yes, I'm too lazy to change them.

C++ : Conway's Game of Life

Working on a Conway's Game Of Life cellular automata simulation in C++ with SDL.

Source code available here at GitHub.  Compiled in MSVC++.

 

 

4 Hour Jam #1 : Post-Mortem

To be honest, I was really really worried this wouldn't work out.  Between Livestream lagging and some people not coming and Firefox crashing and

IT WORKED PERFECTLY IT WAS GREAT

Can't thank you all enough, those of you that participated, for making this a success.  We had maybe 3 or 4 streams going on at the same time and everyone was working on something pretty great.

Official Post-Mortem Post

Thank you all again, it's been fun.

4 Hour Game Jam

Full post here.

The last one is way overdue and I got fed up with the servers over at YYG so I'm moving it.  Don't get me wrong, the people over at the YoYo Games Forums are great.  It's just when you have to wait several minutes every time you want to make a post, you get sick of it.

Anyone is welcome, not just game designers.  If you can draw, that'd be cool too.  Set up a Livestream or something.  Or storyboard writers, do that.  Or if you just want to chat or advertise whatever you're working on.  Everything is okay.  If you have a pulse you should most definitely join.

Saturday, 17 March, 2012 - 2:00 PM EST - 6:00 PM EST (GMT -5).

The jam will be posted entirely on the IRC channel.  A post-mortem will be posted on the 4 Hour Jam blog, with links to everyone's stuff (with your permission, of course).

Join us on the IRC at #4hourjam at irc.boredicons.com.

IRC: irc://irc.boredicons.com/4hourjam

Online IRC Clients:
IRC: irc://irc.boredicons.com/4hourjam
Mibbit
wsIRC

Other IRC Clients:
ChatZilla: Firefox addon
Miranda: Open-source standalone

Hope to see you there.

Film (Documentary) : Indie Game

Posted this on the side blog but it deserves a mention here.

I... really don't know what I'm doing.

I've spent enough time (five years?  six?) on indie game design that if I don't capitalize on it I'm put way behind.  Really shouldn't be doing this.

Should've went into the art of economics, where your job is to buy low and sell high and directly screw people over.

Should've went into the art of business, where your job is to lie and cheat people out of their investments.

Should've went into the art of law, where your job is to support clients you hate and positions you'd never bet your dinner on.

Instead I decide to be all, hey, I'm going to pursue a job I love and a job that doesn't directly take away from the world.

1:28-1:34

If you haven't noticed I've been really stressed out over this.  Sorry if this sounds a bit on the pretentious side.  It's just not the best of circumstances is all.