From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Jun 07 2001 - 00:33:44 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> The words he ascribes to me as a direct quotation--and that's what quote
> marks *mean*, damn it!--are his own invention. I did not use any of those
> sentences or free-floating words in THE SPIKE. Indeed, the only time the
> word `wow' appears, without exclamation marks, is in a quote from Eliezer...
Now YOU'RE doing it! Is that "'wow' appearing in a quote from Eliezer" as
in "And I *deplore* those gosh-wow, unimaginative,
so-cloying-they-make-you-throw-up, and just plain *boring* and
unimaginative pictures of a future with unlimited resources and completely
unaltered mortals."? Because if so, you're being a bit misleading. I
know that my own reaction, the moment I read this, was "I used the term
'wow'? I would never use the term 'wow'. Maybe I used it ironically?"
Followed by my recollection of the quote in question.
Note, one and all, that - within *moments* of Damien saying that he had
quoted me as saying "wow" - I could easily remember, as exceptional, the
*one time in my entire career as a writer* in which I had used the term -
as part of the phrase "gosh-wow", sarcastically.
But you wouldn't get that impression from what Damien says. Oh, no, just
dump the blame for it all on Eliezer.
CCII,
Eliezer.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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