665: Solo Hand-Folding Diversification Puzzle

Closed since about 13 years ago

Summary

• Created: January 03, 2013
• Expires: January 10, 2013 at 23:00 UTC
• Max points: 100

Description

This puzzle is the first in a series that we are running to observe how script use and sharing affect diversification. In this puzzle, only GUI scripts are allowed, and sharing has been disabled. After this puzzle expires, the puzzle will be re-posted and LUA scripts and sharing will be allowed. You will be able to load in your solutions from the first puzzle and refine them with scripting and sharing.

Top groups

• 31. Argentina 1 pt. 9,404
• 32. DSN @ Home 1 pt. 9,349
• 33. Window Group 1 pt. 952
• 34. Piratenpartei Deutschland 1 pt. 952
• 35. null pointer exception 1 pt. 952
• 36. test_group1 1 pt. 952

Top soloists

• 1. jamiexq 100 pts. 10,331
• 2. doug.ehlert 99 pts. 10,316
• 3. auntdeen 97 pts. 10,300
• 4. Aubade00 96 pts. 10,295
• 5. decbin 94 pts. 10,288
• 6. Sadler 93 pts. 10,280
• 7. nemo7731 91 pts. 10,279
• 8. Ch Garnier 90 pts. 10,270
• 9. gmn 89 pts. 10,270
• 10. steveB 87 pts. 10,263

Comments

[marie_s]

Our theory with this puzzle is that sharing and scripting lead to convergence early, before people try to actually give the puzzle a try themselves
so the idea is to delay the scripts and sharing a bit so that people will each get their own reasonable solution, which they can then run scripts and share with their groups
we left GUI scripts open so that simple things like the shake/wiggle combo wouldn't have to be manually done every time
gui bug : it looks like that has been fixed in the upcoming devprev release, though . we're having a few issues with the devprev release, but that should go out fairly soon
the starting structure starts out at around .6 GDT from the native (1.0 means it matches the native perfectly) so there is quite a bit of room for improvement

[Timo van der Laan]

It is not a real exploration puzzle, there is no contact map.

[bendbob]

Whoever thinks forcing users to participate in an experiment that is broken from the start, is not worthy. Please, end this disaster ASAP and let the users have fun again. Please.

[jflat06]

I'll change the title to diversification instead

[marie_s]

There are now 2 ED, 2 QTTn, 1 design, some contests, I think you can have fun seeing your computer running.
You can also run boinc with rosetta.
Bug are irritating and list of feedback is very very long but this is not a disaster to play a puzzle without recipe.

[bendbob]

I prefer to use Fold It in the puzzles that are 'vanilla' for lack of a better word, or like the CASP sytle. I do not prefer to participate in the ED/QTTN/Design puzzles. So, I asked for something I prefer.

I am not familiar with "boinc with rosetta."

Thanks for your input.

[Deleted user]

This puzzle is about as "regular" as you can get, back to the roots of Foldit.

Hand folding to get the best score, no gimmicks.

[tamirh]

The fix should go out on Monday to devprev and then we will push it out to main as soon as possible.

We would like to encourage hand folding as much as possible so we're leaving the puzzle up in the mean time.

[doug.ehlert]

So here's how I understand the reason for this puzzle: fold.it is all about the power of hand folding and the importance of human insight, and the users are just all running the same scripts and converging on the same solutions without doing any hand folding, so we're not getting good results and need to be forced to hand fold.

OK, that's one theory, and I agree that the greatest potential of fold.it is about applying human insight and crowd sourcing the folding problem. Personally, though, I believe that applying human insight to the scripts is more important than hand folding, and there is room for dramatic improvement to the script environment, simply by adding a batch mode. That alone would enable a level of automation and analysis that simply isn't feasible today. And yes, I believe it would lead to dramatically improved results.

There's no way to know if the scripts can get good enough to always do better than hand folding. I do know the majority of my wins were without hand folding but none without scripts. Who knows, there was a time not that long ago when most of us would have said that a computer would never beat a grand master at chess.

I'm sure there will always be a need for the excellent GUI, not only for hand folding but for visualization, but can we please get batch mode at least on the list of things to add?

[jakbinimbol]

Maybe we need a puzzle like this from time to time.
It is fun. Though it takes too much time.