Comments on: Patrick Herron's Lecture

I thought today's lecture by Patrick Herron on Serious Games was very interesting. Not only did he clear up the irony I stated about Virtual Heroes by saying that they are looking to apply their technology to peaceful, not warlike, things, but he also defined simulation and how it is being used in the real world. He discussed flight simulators, network simulators, weather simulators, MMORPGs as simulations, and even the real world as a simulation. I really liked his point about how the real world could just be a simulation, like in the Matrix, and in reality we are simply "brains in the vat." Thinking of the real world as a possible simulation makes it even clearer how useful simulations can be. He even talked about how we learn faster through imitating/doing rather than simply being instructed on how to do something, and how becuase of this, using simulations lead to faster learning.