Wordy Evolution

CoIin: Everyone else seems to think that the concept of evolution, and in particular the concept of evolution via natural selection, is a simple one. I don't. . Quite frankly, I get dizzy thinking of the ramifications of the theory.

The idea of this thread is to try and clarify my own understanding of the concept using the game Wordy as an analogy. Maybe it will help you too. I'm curious to see how far we can take this analogy, and I'll be grateful if anyone can point out areas where the analogy fails, as all analogies must do eventually.

Just a quick introduction for the uninitiated. Dozens of people play Wordy every day. The first three winners receive a badge.

Obviously, the way things stand right now, we see no evolution in Wordy. The same players return day after day regardless of whether or not they won a badge the previous day. This is the first change we need to fit our analogy. Consider that badge to be a hot chick/stud - a mating partner.

What we see now, then, is a situation of limited resources, a struggle for existence and reproduction. Well, if we have 100 players, say, and only three badges, clearly not all players will prevail. The vast majority will perish in the struggle without ever having claimed a badge. Who wins then? Who SURVIVES?

That's a no-brainer, innit. Why, the best players (the "fittest" ) survive .

Well, what makes for a good player? What advantages must a player be endowed with in order to stand a chance of lasting long enough to shag that badge? Let's look at a few candidates:-


1. Miss Cheetah - Miss Cheetah, who is not very bright, uses a word generation program which unfailingly yields the longest word that can be made using the available letters. This confers a HUGE advantage (cf. organisms with eyes? ). Looks like the rest of us are all screwed .

Not so fast...

CoIin: .
2. Miss Magpie - Miss Magpie likes shiny things. She isn't as good as Miss Cheetah at finding the longest words, but she excels at making optimal use of the "multiplier" tiles. The longest word, after all, is not necessarily the highest scoring word.

3. Miss Swap ( ) - Miss Swap excels at finding long words which are almost, but not quite there, words which Miss Cheetah is utterly blind to. The board just needs to be tweaked a little. (Note : Miss Swap is not well liked among the other animals )

4. Miss Foxy - Miss Foxy understands the different values of the various letters, another skill which Miss Cheetah lacks. Cunning Miss Foxy knows that an "I" with nothing shiny on it is still better than an "A" with a "X2" and just as good as an "E" with a "X4".

5. Miss Sloth - Miss Sloth lacks the attributes of her rivals above, but makes up with determination. Miss Sloth has been known to play 23 hours in one day.

Game on!

So the less fit players are eliminated and some combination of the five ladies above win the badges. If this was all there is to Darwinism, the theory, just like its slogan "Survival of the Fittest", would be viciously circular and entirely unenlightening; the best players win and that's that.

Fortunately for us, Mrs Darwin raised no fools. There is more to Charles' idea than this.

We must now add to the above struggle for existence the notion of heritability. Let's now imagine all Wordy players live for only one day. The losers and their particular disadvantageous traits are eliminated. The winners shag their badges, die, and a new generation emerges for battle on Day 2. This new generation are ALL endowed with advantageous traits such as the ones described above. There are 25 little Miss Foxy's and 20 little Miss Magpie's, among others, in the room now.

Well, if there are 20 of them, which one of them is more likely to eclipse her siblings? Ans: None of them. They are all equally likely to win.

Enter natural variation, as CD would say, or what we might call random Wordy mutation. These 20 little Mr and Miss Magpie's are not perfect copies of their Mum. They each have tiny, yet significant variations. Most of these variations will be unhelpful, or even detrimental, to their Wordy prowess. But one jammy li'l tyke, Billy, was born with something special - a proto-Treasure-Box .

We're all gonna die!!!

Now, and here's the crux, THIS is where Darwin escapes the charge of circularity. His theory does not simply say that the best players survive, which would be to say nothing all. Rather his theory offers a naturalistic explanation of why li'l Billy plays so darn well, why he could easily be mistaken as having been DESIGNED to play Wordy. He is, after all, a veritable Wordy machine.

The reason he plays so well, the reason he is so "fit", is not due to any supernatural engineering, but rather because he is the progeny of a long line of Wordy maestros who (on the whole) outdid the competition, shagged their badges, and passed on their advantageous traits.

So finally, will Billy win today's race? Not necessarily. He stands a better chance than the rest of the Wordy animals. But then again he could get struck by lightning halfway through the day.

Ok guys. How does this analogy hold up? Yes, I realize that the scenario has been over-simplified for convenience (Wordy players do not only possess one trait, etc). Have I gone wrong anywhere? Can we push it any further?

MercuryDragon: Lmao, you've been thinking about Wordy far too much, my friend. It is beginning to dominate your brain.

duncan124:
..along with Miss Cheetah!

near50ohoh: i can think of another cagey miss, or two maybe? Miss Flirt or maybe Miss Mata Hari? the sexy girl who catches the boys in their genes (er jeans) and chats and seduces them to mad distraction so she can win!! smart girl, using her assets to get what she wants. some of this miss prototype lay their tatas on the line so the boys will buy them endless hours of fun. only to be reduced to playthings and the butt of their friends' jokes .reducing legitimate leader board candidates to mediocre players. if that.
hmmmmmm is that a working character for your analysis colin?
B B and B Y
(please forget i said this when next we play and shhhhh dont tell anyone, huh?)

near50ohoh: er she may lure her prey in with cute, sexy pix, non comprende angles or arent i the ditsy critter stuff while on the main board.

CoIin: Hmm, the tactic of distraction, eh? Does anyone know of examples in the animal kingdom?

This would be like the devious Delia bee ( ) who, upon return to the hive, performs a pollen dance for her comrades, supposedly wiggling her butt in the direction of a food discovery, but in fact pointing them in the direction of a notorious bee exterminator.

The other bees buzz off (sorry ) to get some grub.

Delia, meanwhile, flies away in the other direction.

Instant and undisturbed gratification. But who do I shag now?


Hmm, or perhaps a more felicitous analogy would be the Mae West magpie who says to the magboys, "Come up and see my badges sometime, big boy."

And when he does... Whack! And removes his gold teeth.

AussieOi: Evolution dictates colins genes will stop due to non-selective inactivity due to playing too much wordy.

lori100: Very creative analogy! I would be a blend of Miss Magpie and Miss Foxy. Of course, those who never win badges are not losers, we were just happy to be competitors....when you try you are always a winner....or....umm....something like that......

lori100: .....And what about the Wordy Black Hole, which definitely still exists.....every day at least a few players have been swallowed by the voraciously hungry Black Hole. What part does it play in Wordy evolution? Do those who disappear still exist in another Wordy dimension?? I need to know.....it's starting to make me depressed......

near50ohoh: of course this particular discussion or analogy could be rendered moot because with all the wordy playing, sexting and PMing going on, and the er um product making its way into tissue instead of receptive females, it may be a very effective method of birth control. that the govt has helped create to reduce the population in a few generations. a conspiracy? hmmmmmm

near50ohoh: but there should be a wordy survey to make ur science more empirical, dont you think? i propose the following:: a psychosocial question.
at the end of the day, the following should be tabulated so over time analysis can be made.
1) how many players; show an innocuous or unspecific body parts' image versus their own picture? do they play more or less often? with same or other sex when they play? is it one game or multiples? do they win more often than those with pictures?
2) out of these innocuous images how many make friends of same or other sex? is it just for wordy playing or do they travel the room with other interests?
THEN compare to unvarified pictures that are sexually interesting, ie men with shirts off who are "fit" and women who show more cleavage than smiles VS the pictures that have been sighted in motive content such as face to face chat ie) facebook or skype
3) do the winners show other confirmable risk taking and/or aggressive patterns? to build a winner profile
4) and as per ur characters as proposed, a questionnaire should be developed to establish if these persona profiles are valid hypotheses
HUH? do you think admin would go for it? : can it be done?

CoIin: The Prisoner's Dilemma revisited

Wordy has a lot to interest the student of Game Theory as well as the evolutionary biologist, doncha think? The way we would play alone (if there was a one-player game) is quite different from the way we play against a thinking, scheming, intelligent opponent.

Consider the following situation:- (and I KNOW you've been there )

It's halfway through the game. It's your turn. The board isn't particularly nice. You can make "TEASES" which might score 100 points or so and is probably the highest score you could get.

The problem is though, a sexy "I" with a "X4" has just appeared in the top right corner . Alas, it's surrounded by other vowels and can't be incorporated into a word of more than two letters.

So what do you do?

If you submit your TEASES, you just know that your opponent, Miss Hyena, will snap up that "I" with gusto and vim, perhaps making a word worth two or three hundred points.

Consequently, you submit "IO" and score 56 points. You "defect", as they say. Meanwhile Miss Hyena tears her hair out in a paroxysm of frustrated scavenging.

Now, if we could only learn to cooperate, we'd both end up with better scores.

Perhaps that's why God invented the co-op version.

CoIin: @ Lori

re the Wordy black hole. From my experience, the hapless victims tend not to disappear forever, and most return the next day apparently no less the worse for wear.

In our evolutionary example,this would be more analogous to sleeping than a black hole.

As Occam would say, don't posit more entities than are necessary. Or as Einstein would say, an explanation should be as simple as possible - but no simpler.

Or else you'll get shaved.

lori100: Ohhh......so it's some type of Wordy-induced narcolepsy....? Good to know! I'll have to keep a list of the sleeping victims to see if they do return.... ty Wordy Scientist.....

CoIin: a brief apostrophe...

While I was in the race for Gold a couple of days ago, one of my rivals PMed me and said "You've won it before. Give someone else a chance."

My first thought was "Tell that to your local football team, pal."

My second thought was, this poor lamb will be torn apart by wolves.

I didn't respond

O' death, where is thy sting?

lori100: Yikes. ....Wordy Scientists can be scary.....

near50ohoh: o grave where is thy victory? uh i woke up in bible class again? pls tell me i'm confused and really soon?

Draigo: Personally I don't think this situation is best suited to Darwin's theory. In my opinion it portrays more so the different types of intelligence. Everyone exhibit varying types of intelligence to different extent . 50% or more of which is attributed to inheritance (Genetics) and the rest is attributed to the environment and other factors. For instance Miss Cheetah has the intellect to use an app to generate better scores in wordy. The motive behind that may be to look after her self-esteem, appear fearless and intimidate her fellow competitors, all the while giving her the advantage to be most likely to win the trophy badge. Hence we could say she was intelligent to use her environment to increase her chances to be successful.
On the other hand we have Miss magpie, through reading the wordy instructions thoroughly or through trial and error she came to know multipliers to enhance her chances of being successful. Yet again through trial and error or reading the instructions thoroughly Miss magpie should also notice that all letters are of different values.
Measure of intelligence is always against time not that I completely agree with it, However depending on how long Miss Magpie took to grasp sufficiently the knowledge that will will aid her success, we could say to whatever extent depending on her grasp time (so to speak), that she is naturally intelligent (Linguistic intelligent).
I WOULD CONTINUE BUT I HAVE TO GO lol
Moral of my story lol Play the game have fun. If you lose it does not mean you're dumb your strengths may lie elsewhere like music or sports etc. If you win be a gracious and humble.

CoIin: Pssssttt. To those who live on Neptune or are incarcerated in a Pyongyang re-education camp, that was the king of the jungle just talking.

CoIin: I suppose if we were pushing the Darwinian analogy, we wouldn't necessarily speak of the various animals in the Wordy game "learning" their particular skills, although this is certainly the case in, say, the tiger cub learning to hunt from its mother.

Nature could do the job just as well by endowing the particular animal with an "instinct" which is hardwired and therefore does not need to be learned anew in each successive generation. Think of birds building nests, for example.

Which begs the question, why are some behaviours instinctive while others have to be learned?

CoIin: One difference that comes to mind is that an instinctive behaviour can be deployed earlier in the organism's life.

If Mrs Swap abandons her kids as soon as they're born, without an innate Swap instinct it seems they'd be in some DEEPHSIT.

Draigo: I think of it this way: All organisms have genes, blue print etc. These genes are not activated unless an external stimulus
(environment) activates it. This way chances for survival is greater. However the environment is constantly changing so therefore I think its safe to say we are also required to learn so to adapt to the changing environment thereby increasing the prevalence for living longer.

near50ohoh: so if there had never been a "wordy" (God forbid), these profiles of Colin's would never have arisen? or would they have found another way to play out, ie scrabble?

near50ohoh: lions eat cheetahs?