From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Sep 24 1997 - 18:43:45 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> John K Clark wrote:
> >
> > Thank you Hal, I was starting to worry it was just me.
>
> (Also, I was starting to worry that it was just me!)
> --
> Harvey Newstrom (harv@gate.net)
For the record, I was never worried it was just me, from the instant I noticed
a LONG post under the title Neuro-Selectric Psionical Intrusion Comdex.
> The only plausible theory that I have come up with, is that the NSPIC
> posts are being run through a rule-based grammar translater that is
> generating obtuse sentence structures. It reminds me of a program that
> will take massive quantities of writing and generate random sentences by
> looking for phrases and stringing them together. By hooking together
> phrases that overlap by one word, it simulates a continuity of verbage,
> but the complete sentences don't convey any real meaning.
As repeated experiments have shown, humans can (accidentally) imitate a
Comskian random generator so well that professors can't tell the difference.
There have been several instances of this, but the one I recall was that
professors of communications theory visited the (randomly generated) "Online
Archive of Semiotics(*)" and couldn't tell the difference.
Occam's Razor does not force us to postulate random generation.
(*) = I'm not sure it's "Semiotics".
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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