so, I say I must focus on the brains. how do I do that when I can't even
decide on hte topology of the world? :P

well, at least I can try. cleared up a few things about senses: it's probably
too complicated to do anything but provide object id's directly. norns' sense
of space can come from somewhere else. maybe a distance as part of a sense,
maybe something more subtle. not only do I want the little rugrats to learn
what objects are edible, fun, dangerous, etc- I want them to generalise that
learning so they're not acting randomly or just on instict when they see
something new. and I want to see more complex behaviour... I want them to
surprise me :)

I was thinking about a sense-ray sort of idea where the nron's senses affect
what direction it 'looks' in and then hte first object in that direction is
what it sees. but that could be too complicated. the other way would be for
the engine to report object id's to the senses, so something making noise
would be noticed by ears and the norn might choose to look at that thing. hten
the object it 'looked' at would return data for other senses - colour, size,
etc.

ignoring for now the problem of wiring up a brain to process and identify that
sort of stuff - what about the distraction problem? we don't want the norn to
be at the mercy of whatever object is making the most noise or moving the
most. I wouldn't want to solve this completely as it's something humans can
have trouble with too- noises can be very distracting - but they should be
able to 'tune out' senses to a certain extent, either to filter out background
noise in a busy environment, or to adjust their focus to things that are
imoportant to them - the smell of food becoming much more of a distraction
when hungry, for example.

the basic de-sensitising seems like it should be a simple problem. just have
some other part of the brain capable of inhibiting signals from that sense,
and have the sense part itself go numb to repetitive signals - the way our
eyes stop seeing if we don't move them at all. as for focuing on objects that
are most interesting to that particular norn... hrm. that's a lot tied in with
learning.

say a norn has already learnt that cheese (small yellow soft thing - they
don't have a capacity for symbols yet. side note: symbols = pointers?) ...say
cheese makes them less hungry. the hunger would alreay be making more
instinctive changes like enhancing food-smells... if cheese was in the room,
how would norn notice it more than other things? if cheese was not in the room
could he learn to go look for it? I often get restless when hungry even if my
mind isn't on the planet - I start wandering to the kitchen and back more and
more often until I realise I should eat :)

so... a norn's various senses are firing, showing him lots of objects. the
objects' properties combined with his knowledge and drives should somehow
affect the importance of each. hrm, I'm a little confused as to whether the
properties should be available before focusing. ah! our senses are more
specialised - eyes are made up of red/green/blue detectors. the nose has lots
of little things that detect different chemicals. but... for norns, having
senses that detect specific properties like that seems too complicated, we
just have one colour sense, one smell, etc that only varies along a small
range of numbers... maybe that has to be rethought...

see, let's assume that yellow things are always food. now when a norn is
hungry it'd be useful for yellow things to be noticed more. but it just has
one 'colour' sense. yellow is just a specific name I give to one specific
colour value. how do the norns' senses emphasize that? something has to get
excited when it sees a value close to that... that something also has to be
affected by how interested the norn should be in food. so hunger would make it
more sensitive, being full would dampen it. that'd probably give the norn no
memory of where food is once he *does* get hungry, but that's a totally
different problem.

I could rename 'colour' to 'brightness'; that would probably make it easier to
think about. norns would be colour-blind (unless separate colour sense were
added) but that's okay. these are all human-names for hte senses, anyways;
they mean nothing to the norn.

urk. big problem I seem to have overlooked. how do these senses actually deal
with multiple objects? how are they actualyl selected? if there's only one
object in the room it's easy, each sense just needs one neuron thingy to
report the strength of that sense for that object. but what if there are two
in the room? does the norn only get to focus on the brightest one? does the
engine pick one to show it? can hte senses not pick what value is most
interesting to them and report the one with the closest match? can the senses
report on both of them? if they can report on both then what decides which one
the norn looks at? what about hte other senses having a say? how does the
engine make the relation between a specific neuron winning out and directing
focus, and the object id it wants to focus on? what if there are too many
objects in hte room?

several good things about our senses: if there are too many objects they all
become a blur, and we just see groups of them. our field of vision is rather
limited, so there usually isn't an insane number of things. we don't actually
'see' all hte objects; we get olts of pictures and our brains map them out and
separate them into objects and often ignore the boring ones- leaving us with
just a few objects to choose from. also, our eyes flit around a lot, briefly
looking at things and then moving on unless there's something interesting.

maybe that's how it could be- each object briefly gets looked at, and has its
chance to win more focused attention. this would also make constant noises
very annoying to the norns - seems realistic. and then comes the need for
filters - if the same object keeps doing hte same thing and we really don't
care, it should be pushed back and only lower level should see it - levels!
that's it, that's somethign important Iwas forgetting. levels of
consciousness. the lower levels take care of all hte drudgery of checking on
hte senses and doing routine stuff. new or interesting things get passed up a
level, where the norn actually looks at the object making a fuss and decides
whether it cares. perhaps more levels above that... but somewhere at the top
there's links to forming new memories somehow - things that get al the way up
to the top are new and interesting and should be remembered. but eventually
that memory system should affect the lower layers so that htey don't bother
talking to higher ones, they just do stuff automatically.

so once something has been learnt strongly, and the norn is quite certain it's
always going to be the same, that gets seen by lower levels and they act on
it. of course if things *don't* go as expected, this shock should be sent
straight to the top to be dealt with. or they could be like humans and try
doing it again a few times before staring blankly and calling tech support :P
or just hitting it. actually, that could be handled at the top anyways, it
would sound like a sensible reaction- it didn't work but the brain is telling
us it's what we should do so let's try again until the brain isn't so sure any
more.

aanyways. getting way too complicated here.
I want to keep brain design flexible - diffrent breeds should be able to react
differently. of course there should be some instincts - food should smell nice
- but all that is details to go in the dna. :) norn babies should be weak
  little things that have to learn or die. there's going to be a lot for them
  to learn though - in such a complex world those brains are going to take up
  lots of space and power. they'll have to be limited, so they'll probably get
  forgetful... but I need to make sure they don't get OHSS. I forget what
  caused that, though... heh, but it's neat to think that c2 norns had what
  was essentially a genetic mental disorder :)

hrmm, and with more than one sense their brains will have to be able to
integrate all that data, too. and I still haven't truly solved the focus
problem - hte senses can't just report evrey object and have the norn brain
cycle through them. it'll have to be conneted to object id's somehow. norns
will need some way of telling the engine whether they're interested in
whatever new object is presented to them. senses will have to be some weird
interface between engine and brain...

also, yet another thing I'm unsure about for the world: should there be
animals with limited intelligence? or plants with genes? and if so how should
they be done?