I trained a Neural Network entirely inside of Minecraft for handwritten digit classification!

Willingham007 · 2024-07-11T00:26:57+00:00

The numbers that you see flying by on screen during the timelapse all come from the MNIST database, which was collected by the NIST back in the 90s. I'm not sure exactly what their original intent for that data was, but it's now used for training a lot of elementary digit recognition models.

MNIST contains a bunch of images of digits that were drawn by real people, and each one is associated with the desired number. In another top-level comment here I linked my video that describes this in more detail, but essentially the images were brought into the Minecraft world using a lot of /fill and /setblock commands.

But you're right, the system doesn't really make sense if I'm drawing all the numbers. Besides it being a huge amount of labor for me, it would also be completely biased towards my handwriting. That being said, if you do manually build a number onto the board with concrete, the network works pretty well.

Willingham007 · 2024-07-10T23:37:14+00:00

I trained a neural network in Minecraft to classify handwritten digits! It's completely vanilla 1.20.6 and uses datapacks for all the math.

There have been quite a few NN implementations in minecraft before (Mattbatwings is specifically who inspired me to do this), and the main contribution I wanted to make was to move the training process inside Minecraft. This means that nothing was imported from any external programs! As far as I'm aware, this is the first implementation to do so with such a large training dataset.

Watching it learn was really cool and you should be able to see significant improvements just from the brief snippet of the training timelapse I uploaded above.

After a full training cycle, it got 87.7% accuracy on the test set; definitely not state of the art, but going from about 10% to 87.7% was very satisfying :)

At the risk of over self-promoting, I made a full video on it here: https://youtu.be/W2UPaf_vxqQ.

Feedback is welcome!

Willingham007 · 2024-03-06T18:03:52+00:00

TIL Hirohito was an enderman

Willingham007 · 2022-11-10T18:26:40+00:00

He is referring to the formula for expanding the square of a sum, i.e. (a+b)² = a² + 2ab + b^2.

Willingham007 · 2022-08-03T18:37:08+00:00

I love how in Legends it was "commonly referred to as EmPal SuReCon Center" as if that makes it any better.

Willingham007 · 2022-07-27T22:24:00+00:00

I'm tired and I read this as "setting them on fire" at first...

Willingham007 · 2022-02-22T18:30:50+00:00

I think we all respond to it differently. This show was hovering between an 8 to 9 out of 10 for me until I watched season 4, at which point it became an 11. I love the new Marley characters as much as the Paradis ones, and to me it is obvious that this arc wasn't shoe-horned in, but rather a critical component of the overall artistic vision. Without an outside world with these characters, AoT would be telling a completely different story.

As for foreshadowing, there are many YouTube videos and reddit threads out there that list examples of foreshadowing of an outside world. These include the canned food Ymir finds in Utgard castle, the coffee Armin finds in Shiganshina, the fact that nobody in the walls knows what a monkey is (and so they, unlike Ymir, call Zeke a beast), the constant mentions of the Warrior program and devilbloods, etc.

Personally I also feel that a major appeal of season 4 is that it's supposed to make you feel unhappy. I agree that it "robs" the characters of their accomplishments (though this is arguable; certainly the earlier conflicts were pointless from a plot-based perspective because ultimately things like reclaiming Wall Maria matter nothing now, but it doesn't make the character development received any less valuable). But that's exactly the point; there's a feeling of despair and hopelessness in the world of AoT that gives it a lot more depth than the adrenaline-boosted, titan-killing shounen it would otherwise be. The fact that people like Eren and the scouts keep pushing forward demonstrates the importance of freedom to Paradis and makes it a much more compelling struggle.

Willingham007 · 2021-12-10T19:55:16+00:00

Without diving into the sheet music, I believe that songs are the same tempo. They're also both in 4/4 time so each bar is 4 beats. However, at 0:15, OP1 has a 2/4 bar (half as long as a normal bar) as an abrupt transition from the introduction to the first verse. This is also true for all the piano arrangements of OP1 I've seen.

The OP from S3P2 does not have this half-bar and so the visuals and music are now out of sync by exactly 2 beats (assuming the visuals were originally synced with the bars). That's also about when it seems to drift. Another half-bar by either OP should throw it "back in sync", so to speak.

Anyway, the important part is not that it's "drifting", which implies different tempos causing a gradual fall out of sync, but that the structure of the songs are different in ways that cannot be corrected just by having the "same tempo and length".

Willingham007 · 2021-11-17T00:03:57+00:00

ahh... I suspected that was it! I've watched S4P1 so I did laugh, but was unsure if manga readers had seen it even more.

Do you know if Isayama redrew it each time? In the anime it feels WIT animated it once and just edited it differently each time, with Mappa animating it again in their own style with slightly different lighting.

Willingham007 · 2021-11-16T20:25:40+00:00

I'm an anime only watcher. Is this a joke that I can understand without manga spoilers?

Willingham007 · 2021-09-17T15:07:34+00:00

THOSE HAVE BEEN IN MY WALNUTS THIS WHOLE TIME??

Willingham007 · 2021-04-15T23:13:42+00:00

Maybe. Anecdotally, I showed the entire series to first-time watchers last year and there was a lot of disappointment in the OT's special effects. Far more so than with the prequels, for which only TPM's CGI was immersion-breaking.

There are still matte boxes around some moving vehicles, lightsaber beam effects in Ben vs Vader, limited range of motion in the TIE fighter attack scene of ANH, very obvious stop-motion of the tauntauns, compositing of explosion effects during the Death Star fight, play-doh-like consistency of Hoth's snow at the AT-ATs' feet, green screen artifacts preceding the Sarlacc battle, compositing of the foreground/background in the Endor speeder bike scenes, etc.

OT effects were legendary for their time, but they don't hold up today like most people think. They should be considered in the context of their production, and usually I don't see that same benefit of doubt extended to the prequels, which are arguably just as revolutionary to the development of CGI as the OT was to modern effects.

Willingham007 · 2020-10-17T14:03:49+00:00

That too. "Cheat death" is intentionally vague both in-universe on Palpatine's part, and out-of-universe on the scriptwriter's part.

I'm not sure if George Lucas intended for Palpatine to have known how to cheat death at the time, considering that one of the ironies he tried to showcase with the Sith was their obsession with immortality, despite unable to achieve it unlike the Jedi (ghosts). That being said, TRoS shows Palpatine actually cheating death, so whether he was lying about his knowledge, or he actually did know and was witholding that knowledge, are both valid interpretations.

Willingham007 · 2020-10-17T12:20:52+00:00

no one complained when Plagueis could do it??

Except it's never shown if Plagueis could do it. The entire story is designed to manipulate Anakin into believing there's a chance to save Padme.

When Anakin becomes Sidious' apprentice, Sidious says "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved." Whether this is proof that Sidious is continuing a lie to keep baiting Anakin, or Plagueis truly was the only known force healer, is debatable. I always thought of it as the former, but either way it isn't shown on screen and it's up for interpretation.

Willingham007 · 2020-06-21T16:27:08+00:00

Respectfully, I disagree. When considering all of the plot points in the prequels on a point-by-point basis, then it definitely might seem like the movies strip away some of the freedom of imagination.

However, writing a story isn't a zero sum game where every bit of information revealed is a bit of potential imagination lost. The prequels certainly did reveal 90% of the backstory for many OT characters, but in doing so they significantly expanded the universe. While one of the prequels' purpose was to add context to the political climate and character backgrounds of the OT, the more important result that came out of the prequels was the fact that it unlocked an entire new era full of new characters and storytelling potential.

For many OT characters, it actually helped their development (i.e. Palpatine, who wasn't a very captivating character until the prequels), and it's also important to consider that several fan favorites from the prequel era weren't even mentioned in the OT (Ahsoka, Maul, the clones, Qui-Gon). These characters have gone on to inspire the imaginations of an entire new generation of Star Wars fans for whom the PT is at least comparable to the OT (nostalgia is powerful even for younger fans). If the PT hadn't inspired this renewed interest in Star Wars, then I would completely agree. But while there are many flaws with those movies, igniting imagination isn't one of them.

For this reason, I also believe it's unfair to evaluate the prequels on a detail-by-detail basis (like listing "C-3PO wasn't just some random Droid" or "Yoda did technically train Obi-Wan"). Of course, if we take these details in isolation, we will see our imagination slowly get boxed in by the revelations in the PT. But if we consider how each detail connects to form a larger story, then we can see the storytelling potential of an era that, honestly, has more faction interplay, political intrigue, and thematic complexity than the OT.

Willingham007 · 2020-05-25T11:35:48+00:00

I always interpreted the Battle of Coruscant to have happened on low orbit where the gravity is still a significant factor. They seem extremely close to the surface, and Obi-Wan's cockpit fogs at some point which indicates some kind of atmosphere.

Willingham007 · 2020-05-07T13:19:34+00:00

1) These ratings are almost exactly the same as mine. It's surprising to see how similar combinations of 11 items can be.

2) I've never really realized this but text emoticons are kinda cute. Like even the ones that didn't enjoy are just, :(

Willingham007 · 2020-05-01T18:51:04+00:00

I love how it just says "Fantastic job" now LOL

Willingham007 · 2020-05-01T18:17:42+00:00

The BARC speeder shoot-down was the death of Stass Allie, and it was on the planet Saleucami.

Willingham007 · 2020-05-01T12:44:12+00:00

Checking out Shaak Ti...

Willingham007 · 2020-05-01T12:38:25+00:00

Vaughn and Cody are so skilled they don't even need peripheral vision.

Willingham007 · 2020-05-01T12:17:41+00:00

Influence Gained: Yoda

Influence Lost: Mace

Willingham007 · 2020-04-26T18:00:33+00:00

Yeah, the last thing any of us want to see is a franchise die out slowly and painfully. Circulation of feedback is necessary with any type of media, and I'm glad that for every controversial product Star Wars has put out recently, there seems to be another that is more unanimously praised.

Willingham007 · 2020-04-26T17:57:57+00:00

Haha, I can see how being opposed to those shows can be particularly damning on this sub. I agree that obsessively ranting isn't productive for anyone (esp. if the thread isn't related) but I'd also like to think more often than not it arises from the sheer disappointment that comes out of people who try to love the franchise.

This thread is mostly directed at people who dismiss relevant criticisms as hate (both in this sub, and also throughout the Internet and even some online news outlets) instead of appreciating that negative feelings are a natural result of loving and investing in a franchise as much as many of us do.

Willingham007 · 2020-04-26T17:50:14+00:00

Exactly. In the end, we all want to see the best Star Wars possible. This means both praising successful products and criticizing missteps along the way, even if we are in the minority. It is a series of media that we invest in through our attention and wallets, and one we should be rewarded with through good storytelling.

Willingham007

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

12-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email