Coming Out of the Dungeon: Mathematics and Role-Playing Games

After hiding it for many years, I have a confession to make. Throughout middle school and high school my friends and I would gather almost every weekend, spending hours using numbers, probability, and optimization to build models that we could use to simulate almost anything. That’s right. My big secret is simple. I was a high school mathematical modeler. Of course, our weekend mathematical models didn’t bear any direct relationship to the models we explored in our mathematics and science classes. You would probably not even recognize our regular gatherings as mathematical exercises. If you looked into the room, you’d see a group of us gathered around a table, scribbling on sheets of paper, rolling dice, eating pizza, and talking about dragons, magical spells, and sword fighting. So while I claim we were engaged in mathematical modeling, I suspect that very few math classes built models like ours. After all, how many math teachers have constructed or had their students construct a mathematical representation of a dragon, a magical spell, or a swordfight? And yet, our role-playing games (RPGs) were very much mathematical models of reality — certainly not the reality of our everyday experience, but a reality nonetheless, one intended to simulate a particular kind of world. Most often for us this was the medieval, high-fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), but we also played games with science fiction or modern-day espionage settings. We learned a lot about math, mythology, medieval history, teamwork, storytelling, and imagination in the process. And, when existing games were inadequate vehicles for our imagination, we modified them or created new ones. In doing so, we learned even more about math. Now that I am a mathematics professor, I find myself reflecting on those days as a “fantasy modeler” and considering various questions. What is the relationship between my two interests of fantasy games and mathematics? Does having been a gamer make me a better mathematician or modeler? Does my mathematical experience make me a better gamer? These different aspects of my life may seem mostly unconnected; indeed, the “nerd” stereotype is associated with both activities, but despite public perception, the community of role-players includes many people who are not scientifically-minded. So we cannot say that role-players like math, or math-lovers role-play, because “that is simply what nerds do.” To get at the deeper question of how mathematics and role-playing are related, we first need to look at the processes of gaming, game designing, and modeling

The torment of exile and the aesthetics of nostalgia : transnational Chinese neo-romanticism in Xu Xu’s post-war fiction

Physical exile certainly was a painful reality for Xu Xu. Restorative nostalgia might to some extent have informed his literary activity in those years. However, nostalgia in Xu Xu’s postwar fiction, I will argue in this paper, constitutes above all the expression of a quest for a purely aesthetic utopia that had already begun to take shape in his pre-war oeuvre and that came to full fruition in his post-war fiction. By analyzing a number of Xu Xu’s novellas from Hong Kong, such as Bird Talk, The Other Shore 彼岸 (1951), and The All-Souls Tree 百靈樹 (1954), I will show that nostalgia in Xu’s fiction is ultimately time and place unspecific, and that Xu himself was aware of the limits and fallacy of restorative nostalgia. Nostalgia, I will illustrate, was a way for Xu Xu to give expression both to a real sense of loss as well as a sense of metaphysical homelessness that did not directly result from his exile in Hong Kong, but that is bound up with the experience of modernity and the reality of China’s cultural post-war politics. Nostalgia thus becomes the expression of a literary aesthetic that connects Xu Xu to a number of other writers who are typically associated with a twentieth-century revival of romanticism, foremost Hermann Hesse (1877−1962). Like for Xu Xu, the expression of nostalgia was as much an aesthetic gesture for Hesse as it was a political gesture. My reading of Xu Xu’s use of nostalgia thus challenges conventional interpretations of the use of nostalgia in postwar Chinese literature and enhances our understanding of the interplay of aesthetics and politics in the work of Chinese writers in exile. In my analysis of Xu’s work in the context of neo-romanticism, I will draw on the work of Michael Löwy who understands the romantic critique of modernity as bound up with an experience of loss. “The Romantic vision,” Löwy writes, “is characterized by the painful and melancholic conviction that in the modern reality something precious has been lost, at the level of both individuals and humanity at large; certain essential human values have been alienated. This alienation, keenly sensed, is often experienced as exile […]” (Löwy 2001, 21). Löwy quotes Friedrich Schlegel as speaking of the soul, the seat of humanness, as living “under the willows of exile (unter den Trauerweiden der Verbannung),” far removed from the true hearth of homeland (Löwy 2001, 21). It is precisely this sense of metaphysical homelessness, I will argue, that lies at the root of the nostalgic longing expressed by Xu Xu’s fictional protagonists. Yet Löwy’s study on romanticism informs this paper in another way. Löwy understands romanticism as a highly diverse movement the numerous strands of which can be found in genres and literatures not usually thought to be part of the romantic canon. By drawing on Xu’s own critical writing on the role of the artist in society and by illustrating his intellectual proximity to writers and thinkers of the romantic movement, I will argue that Xu Xu’s postwar fiction contributes to a transnational romantic canon and constitutes a creative engagement with romantic aesthetics that links modern Chinese literature to global literary modernity

What\u27s in a Name? The Matrix as an Introduction to Mathematics

In my classes on the nature of scientific thought, I have often used the movie The Matrix (1999) to illustrate how evidence shapes the reality we perceive (or think we perceive). As a mathematician and self-confessed science fiction fan, I usually field questions related to the movie whenever the subject of linear algebra arises, since this field is the study of matrices and their properties. So it is natural to ask, why does the movie title reference a mathematical object? Of course, there are many possible explanations for this, each of which probably contributed a little to the naming decision. First off, it sounds cool and mysterious. That much is clear, and it may be that this reason is the most heavily weighted of them all. However, a quick look at the definitions of the word reveals deeper possibilities for the meaning of the movie’s title. Consider the following definitions related to different fields of study taken from Wikipedia on January 4, 2010: • Matrix (mathematics), a mathematical object generally represented as an array of numbers. • Matrix (biology), with numerous meanings, often referring to a biological material where specialized structures are formed or embedded. • Matrix (archeology), the soil or sediment surrounding a dig site. • Matrix (geology), the fine grains between larger grains in igneous or sedimentary rocks. • Matrix (chemistry), a continuous solid phase in which particles (atoms, molecules, ions, etc.) are embedded. All of these point to an essential commonality: a matrix is an underlying structure in which other objects are embedded. This is to be expected, I suppose, given that the word is derived from the Latin word referring to the womb — something in which all of us are embedded at the beginning of our existence. And so mathematicians, being the Latin scholars we are, have adapted the term: a mathematical matrix has quantities (usually numbers, but they could be almost anything) embedded in it. A biological matrix has cell components embedded in it. A geological matrix has grains of rock embedded in it. And so on. So a second reason for the cool name is that we are talking, in the movie, about a computer system generating a virtual reality in which human beings are embedded (literally, since they are lying down in pods). Thus, the computer program forms a literal matrix, one that bears an intentional likeness to a womb. However, there are other ways to connect the idea of a matrix to the film’s premise. These explanations operate on a higher level and are explicitly relevant to the mathematical definition of a matrix as well as to the events in the trilogy of Matrix movies. They are related to computer graphics, Markov chains, and network theory. This essay will explore each of these in turn, and discuss their application to either the events in the film’s story-line or to the making of the movie itself

What\u27s in a Name? The Matrix as an Introduction to Mathematics

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: In my classes on the nature of scientific thought, I have often used the movie The Matrix to illustrate the nature of evidence and how it shapes the reality we perceive (or think we perceive). As a mathematician, I usually field questions related to the movie whenever the subject of linear algebra arises, since this field is the study of matrices and their properties. So it is natural to ask, why does the movie title reference a mathematical object

The law's interface with expanding technology

The role of the law in technology assessment is described in generalized terms of a legal system as it confronts expanding technology. The functions of a technology assessment are considered to be twofold; provide for legislative action designed to channel technological advance along lines which are regarded as optimal from the standpoint of society's interests; and encourage and promote legislative action which will deal decisively with the potential disruptions and injuries caused by technology at a much earlier stage of the growth of the technology than is feasible under the present legal system. It is concluded that since new law always has a disruptive effect on expectations and commitments arrived at under old law, it is generally desirable that new legislation should make the least possible change in the law consistant with accomplishing the desired objective

Do We Live In An Intelligent Universe?

This essay hypothesizes that the Universe contains a self-reproducing neural network of Black Holes with computational abilities—i.e., the Universe can “think”! It then rephrases the Final Anthropic Principle to state: “Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in each new Universe to assure the birth of intelligent successor universes”. Continued research into the theory of Early Universe and Black Hole information storage, processing and retrieval is recommended, as are observational searches for time-correlated electromagnetic and gravitational wave emission patterns from widely separated Black Hole transient events indicative of the existence of a universal inter-Black Hole faster-than-light communications network

The new technological era - A view from the law

Legal implications in technological advance