LW - DandD.Sci Long War: Defender of Data-mocracy by aphyer

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: D&D.Sci Long War: Defender of Data-mocracy, published by aphyer on April 27, 2024 on LessWrong. This is an entry in the 'Dungeons & Data Science' series, a set of puzzles where players are given a dataset to analyze and an objective to pursue using information from that dataset. STORY (skippable) You have the excellent fortune to live under the governance of The People's Glorious Free Democratic Republic of Earth, giving you a Glorious life of Freedom and Democracy. Sadly, your cherished values of Democracy and Freedom are under attack by...THE ALIEN MENACE! Faced with the desperate need to defend Freedom and Democracy from The Alien Menace, The People's Glorious Free Democratic Republic of Earth has been forced to redirect most of its resources into the Glorious Free People's Democratic War Against The Alien Menace. You haven't really paid much attention to the war, to be honest. Yes, you're sure it's Glorious and Free - oh, and Democratic too! - but mostly you've been studying Data Science and employing it in your Assigned Occupation as a Category Four Data Drone. But you've grown tired of the Class Eight Habitation Module that you've been Democratically Allocated, and of your life as a Category Four Data Drone. And in order to have a voice in civic affairs (not to mention the chance to live somewhere nicer), you've enlisted with the Democratic People's Glorious Free Army in their Free Glorious People's Democratic War Against The Alien Menace. You enlisted with the Tenth Democratic Free Glorious People's Mobilization, and were assigned to a training battalion under Sergeant Rico. He's taught you a great deal about armed combat, unarmed combat, and how many pushups you can be forced to do before your arms give out. You're sure the People's Glorious Free Democratic Army knows more than you about war in general. But you feel like the logistical and troop-deployment decisions being made are suboptimal, and you've been on the lookout for ways to employ your knowledge of Data Science to improve them. So when you got your hands on a dataset of past deployments against the Alien Menace, you brought up with Sgt. Rico that you think you can use that to improve outcomes by selecting the right weapons loadout for each squad to bring. In retrospect, when he leaned into your face and screamed: 'So you think you can do better, recruit?', that might have been intended as a rhetorical question, and you probably shouldn't have said yes. Now you've been assigned to join a squad defending against an attack by the Alien Menace. At least he's agreed to let you choose how many soldiers to bring and how to equip them based on the data you collated (though you do rather suspect he's hoping the Alien Menace will eat you). But with Data Science on your side, you're sure you can select a team that'll win the engagement, and hopefully he'll be more willing to listen to you after that. (Especially if you demonstrate that you can do it reliably and efficiently, without sending too large a squad that would draw manpower from other engagements). For Glory! For The People! For Freedom! For Democracy! For The People's Glorious Free Democratic Republic of Earth! And for being allocated a larger and more pleasant Habitation Module and a higher-quality Nutrition Allotment! DATA & OBJECTIVES You've been assigned to repel an alien attack. The alien attack contains: 3 Arachnoid Abominations 2 Chitinous Crawlers 7 Swarming Scarabs 3 Towering Tyrants 1 Voracious Venompede You need to select a squad of soldiers to bring with you. You may bring up to 10 soldiers, with any combination of the following weapons: Antimatter Artillery Fusion Flamethrower Gluon Grenades Laser Lance Macross Minigun Pulse Phaser Rail Rifle Thermo-Torpedos So you could bring 10 soldiers all with Antimatter Artillery. Or you could brin...