This is What I Learned About Humans! (interesting stats on Human Brain Cloud)
My just-for-fun side project Human Brain Cloud, (online game that gives you a word, you type in the first thing that comes to mind, and it builds a big network of connected words etc) has been up for almost two weeks now, and I’ve noticed some interesting trends. Quick perspective: nearly 800,000 associations have been submitted, connecting a little over 100,000 unique words (or phrases). So given that, here are some interesting stats/trends/etc:
- The Top 10 Most Submitted Words List. Here are the top 10 most submitted words EVER as of right now:
- sex (3254 times)
- me (3093 times)
- money (2283 times)
- car (2212 times)
- water (1903 times)
- dog (1844 times)
- food (1825 times)
- game (1744 times)
- man (1678 times)
- music (1589 times)
Go, sex, go! Woo! If this experiment had an scientific credibility, I’d say humans were more horny than narcissistic or greedy.
- Phrase Completion. I thought this would be a game just for associating words, but it looks like there is some phrase completion happening too. Some are funny. Some are heartbreaking:
- “I have…”
- “…no idea” (3 people)
- “…a penis” (2 people)
- “…crabs” (1 person)
- “…failed” (1 person)
- “I am a…”
- “…person” (3 people)
- “…badger” (2 people)
- “…miscreant” (1 person)
- “…hero” (1 person)
- “I have…”
- Numbers. An entire sub-cloud of NUMBERS has popped up. Try this: Start from the number 1 and see how high you can count. I got up to around 30 before the sequence broke down. I guess smallish numbers (<30) are generally seen as counting numbers, where larger numbers are seen more as quantities or have other meaning attached. ie. 1337 -> sp33k, 1984 -> Orwell, etc
- Marketing Messages in the Public Consciousness, leggo my brain eggo! It is scary how certain words appear to trigger loyal marketing message recitation / product related association or whatever:
- lego -> my eggo
- tiger -> tony
- have it -> your way
- snap -> crackle pop
- subway -> eat fresh
- this is -> SPARTA!
- (there were a bunch more I’m not remembering - anyone see any good ones?)
But we sure as hell aren’t gonna be happy about it!
- “Marketing Campaign…”
- “…money” (4 people)
- “…evil” (3 people)
- “…annoying (2 people)
- Women Totally PWNd Men. This is the first game I’ve made that I think actually appeals to both women and men. If we look at this game as a battle of the sexes, women have totally dominated in terms of both quantity and especially quality of submitted words. And ok - I don’t actually KNOW who’s a boy and who’s a girl, but browsing some of the names on the leaderboards, it is possible to make some good guesses. ie. Congrats to wandergrrl for being the first person to break 1000 words submitted in a single session (and having some of the highest quality connections too)
- Racism. Type in just about any racial slur you can think of, and you’re sure to find it. Even the plural spellings. I’ve gotten only one complaint - from someone who found a naughty word connected to his religion of choice - and I’m glad he alerted me to it, because it made me solidify my completely hands-off approach in letting the cloud grow and prune itself.
People do submit garbage - no question. Luckily, each word has “legitimacy points” attached to it. When a word is flagged by users, it’s legitimacy goes down. As people submit and make connections to and from a word, it’s legitimacy goes up. Racism, sexual insensitivity, etc do tend to go away on their own. I guess I’ll be highbrow here and concede that “just like in the real life Human Brain Cloud of life”, little pockets do keep bubbling up. It reprezents society!
Anyway, on that note, I’ll admit that the number one thing that surprised me right off the bat with this experiment is that people are, in general, overwhelmingly funny, friendly, articulate, and willing to play along. I don’t have a lot of restrictions in place in the game. It would have been very easy to turn Human Brain Cloud into a giant dumping grounds for spam and profanity (and of course there is some), but out of sometimes up to 10 words being submitted per second by players, almost ALL of them are high quality words and connections, firmly in the spirit of the game. So thanks, this experiment has been absolutely worth it, and my cold black heart has thawed just a little. :)
July 17th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Heya,
I stumbled on Human Brain Cloud and had a blast with it for some time before I came back the next day to find the site down. :( I thought I had gotten the address wrong, but couldn’t find a link to it anywhere. I had forgotten about it until now.
That game is pretty neat in its own right. It had be going a few hours that first night I found it. :)
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
[…] What’s the most commonly submitted word? “Sex”, of course. The second most common is “me”, while the third is “money”. Good to know the collective consciousness of the human race has its priorities straight. […]
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:48 am
Maybe I’m missing something, but how do you go about determining the quality of the responses, or of the connections?
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
You really need to move to a real hosting provider. It would be awesome if I could actually use it.
July 24th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
This game makes me laugh it allows you to see what others people’s sick mind’s can match with you own.
July 24th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Bonnie - Strength of connections is determined based on the number of people who independently connect the same words. Strength of a word grows as people independently submit that word (not necessarily for the same connection). A word is not considered legitimate at ALL until multiple people have submitted it. This helps reduce misspellings and spam. Words are not given out to players in the “play” mode if the word does not meet a minimum level of “legitimacy”. Hope that helps!
July 25th, 2007 at 12:32 am
I liked the game a lot, I have been watching your work since a while, because my deep belief is there’s an enormous artistic potential in video games, and we have not even scratched the top of it yet. I think it is a very interesting project, this, one, from a graphical, social, or video-game point of view.
One thing thought, about being surprised about the people playing the game…Well, your human sample is not representative of humans; The people who hear about the game are people, like me, wandering on a certain type of forum or newsblogs. I think it would be fair to assume these people have a certain level of education, and of interest in web-based games. If you could have this game as a header in google or youtube, then, my guess is it would be filled with crap. Just my opinion.
Sorry of the bad english
July 25th, 2007 at 8:25 am
This game is really really fun. It’s intresting that there is very little actual feed back by the game when in word entering mode, yet we still have heaps of fun.
July 28th, 2007 at 1:23 am
I was the one that ‘complained’. It was not a real complaint, just a… warning of sorts. Anyway, my point is that I’m really surprised that I’m the only one! And it had also been much better I have noticed. This is a really great idea!
July 28th, 2007 at 8:31 am
I’m really happy that people but some high-quality play into this thing. It makes me happy. Congrats Kyle.
July 28th, 2007 at 8:33 am
By the way, maybe you should put a text ad on there so you can afford a higher CPU quota?
July 28th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Thanks, yeah I know I need to change servers - this is the third one! Either that or optimize php with mad haxor skillz.
July 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
This is great fun! I’m a word person so I was very interested to see how others connected. Still don’t understand why more people didn’t submit “hot dogged” for the word “armoured.”
July 29th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Im a word, song, number plate, sign anything assosiation freak and this site just keeps me coming back for more. I love it :)
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Fascinating experiment. Thanks! Also, your little people look very Roman Dirge-like (ever read Lenore?). Kudos.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
One of the most interesting project I’ve come across so far. The result you find is even more interesting. Wonder how it will go in other languages : )
August 17th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Fun and addicting game.
August 18th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
awesome game(?) ! but i agree with the post above.
“If you could have this game as a header in google or youtube, then, my guess is it would be filled with crap.”
also may i ask how do you earn making indie games?
August 20th, 2007 at 7:52 am
But what’s the point?
August 21st, 2007 at 3:46 pm
wow.
there is so good that when people like me SUCK, there are still people like you to ROCK.
thank god for that.
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:14 pm
What a really neat experiment to see into the collective psyche of humanity!! Kind of like some of the other interesting things being done like allowing a machine emulate genetic processes to find the best solution to a problem given a set of rules.
Now for some lowbrow talk:
Rock on!! Very Cool!
August 25th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
What a wonderful idea. I’m French and don’t want to spoil the game with my very limited vocabulary. What can we do to have a french version of the game ? I can do all the translations for free, could we find an agreement ? Then we would just need a “seed”. Let’s try with “volcan” and watch the cloud grow…
And again, congratulations !
August 25th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Hey thanks!
Yeah it would be fun to run this in multiple languages, I think I could set that up when I get a little time. Would need some help translating etc though… ;)
August 26th, 2007 at 12:27 am
It’s okay for me, I can translate the package whenever you want me too. Don’t be afraid by my english, my french is good ;).
August 26th, 2007 at 6:42 am
You should at least have another leaderboard for originality. I try to be funny with my words, you know.
August 26th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Isn’t the point of this to type in the very first thing that comes to mind? If you are thinking of clever or funny things to enter, then it is is not necessarily the first thing that you think of.
August 28th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
i agree with corben. If it is the first thing one things of, it can be fairly nonsensical. I found myself doing that quite easily. And I am reasonably sane. I think it takes something away from the game if people try to be “high quality”.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:12 am
I LOVE this game! While I was raising my son we always played word association and rhyming games, it really helped when he got in school. Now my child is grown and I haven’t played this game in a while. I love “getting back in the groove”. Thanks!
August 29th, 2007 at 6:28 am
I find this playing with word associations a way to gain insight into myself–why am I thinking this way today. It scares me to see so many responses that I can’t begin to relate to!
August 29th, 2007 at 7:11 am
But it is. I really mean it. I have a knack to think of the weirdest things to say.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:17 pm
This has been utterly fascinating…
this coming from someone who is not easily amused.
Congratulations for coming up with such a unique concept, and for its success!
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:31 am
Yeah, I agree with some of the others, it can be hard to write the first thing that pops into your head, especially if it is a particularly abstract thought or idea.
Excellent work by the way, it is a great way to waste my life
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Interesting exercise. Wonder what the results would be by generations (age):
BabyBoomers
GenX
GenY
Millenials
September 5th, 2007 at 12:30 am
[…] Alhier wat statistiekjes. […]
September 5th, 2007 at 11:26 am
I never match anyone! Does my brain not work like everyone else’s does? What is going on?
September 12th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Ya know I’d love to see a single player version of this game. Obviously the brain cloud would take ages to fill, but it’d be fun anyway :)
Maybe one where you could invite only selected people. I’d play this with my family to see what evolved. I’m sure it would be rather barren, but with the right kind of incentive (comedy?) people would think of inventive ways to link back to previous clouds.
September 18th, 2007 at 10:03 am
[…] The game, the visualization, and interesting stats. […]
September 21st, 2007 at 4:10 pm
i guess i am confussed. i did this because I LIKE THINGS LIKE THIS…….but what does it tell me about myself?
I mean on some level i know about myself….but there were some words that made me think……..
GREAT IDEA…………
please keep us informed?????????????????????????
a little disappointed……………………………………………
because this was such a neat idea…i guess i wanted the answers before they are available……………………
does this make me unique or the same????
is one better than the other?
i would like to think that being unique is better…………but i am so very lonely………………….that i don’t know……………….
sometimes i just wish i just one of the crowd………
but i don’t really want that either………………………
i want to me.
and to love me
i am a good person.
peace
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:23 am
wow! i typed in “magic” for the word “wand” and got 70 matches! is that a new record?
September 27th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
[…] have been added by users over time. In its own way, it is completely user-designed. He recently posted a blog of the most popular words and phrases hat have been added to Human Brain Cloud (no surprise that […]
October 1st, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I’m glad someone has found a cool and somewhat compelling use for Thinkmap’s cool visualization technology. (Their demo thesaurus is interesting but not worth subscribing just to be able to bounce words around in orbital constellations….) Nice job, Kyle! I played for several minutes before I really looked at what you were doing. Fun. Thanks.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:20 am
I think you should strongly encourage people to use the ’skip’, ‘junk’ and ‘misspelling’ buttons. The Human Brain Cloud is really cool, and I spend a lot of time adding to it, but at least one entry in three shouldn’t be there, and it is very frustrating! You should probably put something on there asking contributors to only add something if they are sure of the spelling.
October 6th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
If HumanBrainCloud could accept double-bytes characters (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.), this would more than double the number of potential participants and as a matter of fact offer a more “universal” representation of human mind.
Long life to this original project.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:21 am
speaking of marketing in the public’s subconcious, there was even “Calgon, take me away” !
October 10th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Also, I would like to point the fact that it makes you feel something really special.
I get a feeling of freedom and relaxation as I just type whatever comes to my mind, doing no “quality filter” whatsoever.
amazing proyect.
October 15th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
great, i´m game!
October 31st, 2007 at 5:52 pm
[…] Building a media literacy curriculum seems taxing, among other things, but as the teachers interviewed by Hobbs reveal, their is a great payoff: gratification, pride, a sense of accomplishment. I tend to get bored with things pretty quickly, and honestly, one of my most pressing fears about student teaching in the spring concerns myself getting bored with teaching the same lesson four or five times per day possibly, especially if I’m required to teach my host teacher’s lesson. When the text studied remains the same and the possibilities for discussion are limited, to an extent, I can see myself getting bored. But, the idea of bringing media literacy into the curriculum and having students contribute media texts of many genres and many tastes about many subjects is invigorating and seems like it is likely to remain that way. Just today I came across this Human Brain Cloud, a site which has a word association game and plugs the words into a huge, searchable brain cloud for users to explore. It’s a social experiment, says the creator. The “game” is quite fun and interesting. You learn a good deal about the way your brain works in a short period of time, or at least you have the potential to. It’s very likely that many people play the game thoughtless of the associations they are making, but I’d love to create an environment where potentially a student could come in and show the Human Brain Cloud to the class and examine the way that mass media and, particularly, marketing iconography and slogans have taken over our consciousness. In fact, the creator of the cloud presented some of his own findings on the brain cloud blog: […]
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:54 am
Great work. Simple yet highly effective. This would be a fantastic way to build a social translation engine. One that would reflect real spoken language vs academically correct translations. Just a thought. Thanks again for entertaining us!
November 24th, 2007 at 5:56 am
Thank you, it’s really tripping experience!
December 1st, 2007 at 6:12 pm
That was excellent. Funny and interesting!
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 pm
This is too funny. And highly addictive
i see you can change your name at the bottom, but can you use that name again and again? like a kind of login?
You could give active members with a login rising credibility, according to how strong their words and connections are
December 11th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
[…] July, Gabler published some early statistics when the network was about one-fifth its current size. The Human Brain Cloud has the potential to […]
December 12th, 2007 at 7:43 am
[…] Multiplayer Word Association Game (MMWAG?). Macht Laune - probiert es aus. Hilft uns das weiter? Logo! […]
December 12th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
This game is doing dangerous things to my neurons! But, speaking as someone born in England who now lives in New Zealand, it would be interesting to know how the network differs according to the country of origin of the players. There are associations that come readily to my mind that might not occur to an American, and vice versa. I’d love to see how the networks created by different nationalities differed, if that was feasible. In any case, this is one of the best and most elegant web applications I’ve ever seen - well done!
December 19th, 2007 at 4:34 am
I’m a little surprised everyone is referring to this as an original, novel idea. The word association game has been on the web and IM for at least 5 years. I personally wrote an AIM/MSN version over 4 years ago after seeing other poorly implemented versions.
To the creator: there should be no need to flag wrong words or misspellings. The brain should be able to do that on its own, through the link strength mechanism you are describing. Junk works, spam, misspelling should all be filtered to the bottom and appear rarely.
Also, I have to say the brain isn’t very smart. From ‘fruit’, it came up with ‘imbibed’, from ‘drunk’, it came up with ‘430kmh’, from ’scientist, I get ‘cabbage patch’. Am I missing something? Neither of those make any sense. I can see that it is showing common matches on the right side, but is it actually trying to make smart replies or not, because it clearly isn’t.
Good try, the interface is simple and nice, but the game could use some “brains”.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Thanks guys, several people have requested I add support for other languages, so that will be the next big thing when I get some time.
William - Cool, how did the aim/msn version work out? Yeah, link strength alone is absolutely enough to filter the words. The flagging buttons simply help junk words move away faster, not to mention they act as a bit of an apology to players who might be offended when a naughty word pops up and they want revenge. Revenge in the form of a spam button. It works well for everyone. :) Hmm.. not sure where you are getting those connection results ie. for “fruit” - were you using the “view” page? Try this http://humanbraincloud.com/view.php?w=fruit
December 19th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Kyle, the aim/msn version worked great, but 90% of the time, I was in a battle with flooders and spammers. Spam was easy to deal with using token and link strength to weed out the junk. But flooders were difficult because, especially with the AIM version, you had to deal with message limits. Anyway, a web version is definitely the way to go. And now I understand the usefulness of your spam button. Revenge can be sweet. :)
The view page works great. I get words definitely associated with ‘fruit’, like ‘mango’, ‘kiwi’, etc. But with game play, I type in ‘fruit’ and get ‘figure skater’. Again and I get ‘eight nine ten’. I don’t know what’s up with that.
BTW, if you’re interested, I have a Lost (the tv show) themed version of my word association game at http://www.deepgorge.com/lost/ - it isn’t as clean and organized as yours, but it works pretty well. Give it a try if you can. Thanks.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
William - oh yeah, that’s because in the “play” mode, the words you receive are completely unrelated! :) If they were related, play sessions would follow a chain of consciousness, and I wanted to avoid that. My reasoning was that the network would grow wider and more reliably if input words were randomly selected.
Interesting Lost associator - I hope they are paying you!
December 19th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Kyle - aha, well that explains what’s going on. I can understand where you’re coming from with wanting a very broad dataset, but isn’t the point of the word association game to demonstrate a chain of consciousness between the user and the game? Obviously, most of the players here are having a good time with the game as is, but for me, if I’m going to be teaching the bot, I’d like to see him demonstrate some intelligence in return. And when I see random tokens come up, it goes against what I’d expect. Humbly, I don’t see the fun in the game unless it is trying to respond in a smart way.
One of the most interesting things I got out of the Lost association game and my earlier wide-open versions was watching them learn from an empty dataset. I gave it a dozen seed words and then let it learn. It was stupid at first, but depending on the number of players and the minimum token and link strength I required, it learned very fast. And to watch it reach the “tipping point” where it started acting smart was pretty exciting. Anyway, I’m rambling now. :)
Did you write the Flash link viewer yourself or is it open source? I’m interested in implementing something similar for my games, but I’m a humble programmer and don’t know flash.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
i got the new phrase
‘i like pie’
YAY
December 28th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I assocated “zag” with “zig” and “scoot” with “around the corner” and they’re ALL in the song “bop to the top!”
January 12th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
From what I’ve read about this experiment/game, it really sounds like people had a blast playing it. I just wish I found out about this mini-game sooner. =(
January 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
“The Internet is an elite organization. Most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.”
Something to keep in mind about the “human nature” question and the top ten. This isn’t the human race you’re sampling from, but narrower group with a strong background. The narcissism is disappointing as ever, but not surprising.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Hey Ive been following you for a while, and I love your style, both artistic and creative, Im a fellow EGPer and I was wondering if 2dboy is acepting interns? Now about the game, I had alot of fun playing with a couple of my friends over skype, and Id love to see multilingule support
January 21st, 2008 at 6:46 am
LOLest Game ever.. =)
January 28th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I made a new game,
1) think of a word
2) go to view cloud
3) try and find it using word association.
Excellent site, great fun.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I’ve always enjoyed words and language. This is a fun way to see how you ‘tick’. I’ll be spreading the uh…word :)
February 25th, 2008 at 1:28 am
[…] un calamar géant ! Il y a des statistiques d’utilisation de cette sympathique machine sur le blog de l’auteur mais aussi en cliquant sur l’onglet […]
March 6th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Ooh, this sounds great - I await the game’s reappearance with bated breath. :D
Until then I’ll mope around some.
March 22nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Strangely addictive - Damm you
April 1st, 2008 at 10:52 am
I love the work you do! I love the Zoners who get this far too!