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Carpal Tunnel
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from OneLook
Ergodic:
adjective:�� positive recurrent aperiodic state of stochastic systems; tending in probability to a limiting form that is independent of the initial conditions
so, something that happens once in a while, sort of regular-like, in something that is basically irregular?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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like a run of heads.. when tossing a coin a 100 (or a 1000) times. in the long run, you'll get 50/50 but in the short run, you can get heads ten tims in a row..
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old hand
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old hand
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And here I was thinking it would be one of those strange attractor thingies you her all those chaos theoreticians speaking of - something like if a butterfly flaps its wings in Mongolia, what the heck, we'll still get rain during a British Summer.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Mehbe you wouln't get so much rain if all them Mongolian busterflies quit flappin their dang wings so much.
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old hand
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old hand
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in the long run, you'll get 50/50 -
Just to add my own twopence: The most significant thing about ergodic processes is, that the above result turns out whether you flip the coin today or tomorrow, in U.S. or Europe, on a mountain or at sea level etc. Most of basic thermodynamics relies on the ergodic behavior of molecules etc.
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There is a lesser-known second definition of "ergodic", as well. In the field of game studies, ergodic refers to a piece of literature that requires choices by the reader/viewer/player to advance. The term was coined by Espen Aarseth, one of the preeminent names in the field, by combining the Greek roots for "work" and "path".
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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game studies - literature?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Game studies people tend to use literary terms in their discussions - read, text, literature. In this case I'm just using it to refer to the group of collected works that are being studied.
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Carpal Tunnel
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ah, thanks. I was remembering those books that were popular a few years back, that had alternate storylines and endings.
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those books that were popular a few years back, that had alternate storylines and endings
The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books are classic examples of ergodic literature (if not classic examples of literature in the more traditional sense!). There are other book-form examples -- there's apparently a Nabokov book where a sort of secondary story is told through the endnotes, which the reader can choose to read or not read.
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