Some other math/crypto sci-fi

dmolnar dmolnar at hcs.harvard.edu
Wed Jan 24 22:17:57 PST 2001




On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Alan Olsen wrote:

> You could do a collectable card game based on the patent mess, but the
> idea of a collectable card game has already been patented.  (Now owned by
> Hasbro now that they bought Wizards of the Cost.)

Wait, there are non-Hasbro collectable card games, aren't there? Do they
all simply license from Hasbro? 

In any case, simple collectible cards would be all right to start with. So
what if they "happen" to fall into patterns. They're algorithms!

"I'll trade you a Floyd-Warshall for a Rabin-Miller, but only if you
throw in a Nisan-Wigderson Derandomizing Pseudorandom Generator...I'm low
on randomness." 

Instead of Mana, have "time," "space," "randomness," and other complexity
measures. (Death to the first person who suggests "ink.") Trade off
between the two as appropriate. Special cards ("Blum Speedup Theorem")
affect resource consumption. Maybe offer other cards which give benefits
at a cost ("Superstitious Mathematician" - halves time required to run
algorithms, but doesn't believe in randomness so you lose all randomness
counters...)

-David





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