My god. It finally all fell into place this fine Boxing Day, people of the Straight Dope! We’ve been the victims of a cruel hoax, at the hands of some bastard who will win the Nobel Prize (maybe even the Nobel Peace Prize) in the very near future.
What the hell am I rambling about this early in the morn? Artificial intelligence. Yup. That’s right, mofos. Still don’t get me? Two words, my friends: Turing Fucking Test. We all (well, some of us) have been talking to a computer! He’s been taunting us all along. C’mon, don’t you see it? all the clues are there!
“The nature of this place is such that you do not even know if I am a human being or a computer.”
The way it takes a few choice words or phrases from a post, and somehow mangles both the words and the intent, attributing beliefs and assertions to posters who made no such thing? The nonsensical nonsequitors? The sheer freakish quality to many of the posts? It’s all a ruse to distract us from the larger issue.
Of course English isn’t his first language- C++ is!
Geez, this is like the Crying Game, except I didn’t have sex with the computer and I’m not Stephen Rea. Guh. I think I’m gonna go throw up.
jb
Strangely, I’ve had that same feeling a few times; that said poster’s responses (and particularly said poster’s cites) read like some kind of primitive “if GOTO” programme.
Unfortunately, though, computers can usually number crunch and tend to follow consistent logic (even if that logic is faulty by virtue of bad programming). I just don’t see numbers, consistency, or logic being applicable here (and seeing this isn’t the Pit will refrain from any comment regarding “intelligence”, artificial or otherwise).
Perhaps chaos theory would be more promising (or Schroedinger’s Cat - maybe it exists in all potential states until an observation is made…).
Or perhaps, it’s all a bad dream and if we click our heels together three times and say “there’s no place like home”, it will go away.
Damn - I now have the words to “If I only had a brain” stuck in my head, which serves me right for even touching a post regarding the strawman.
I had another thought, much weirder, last night while falling asleep.
The man refuses to give out his real identity. No references, no locations, no background information at all. Basically, a web recluse who communicates only through his writing. Still, if we think this through, we may get some clues.
Who has the most sublimated rage for us Dopers? Not JDT, not Serlin, not He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, Silo (his repressed Durdenesque trollness may be typing while he thinks he sleeps) or manny manny others. Who?
It could be a man seething with disgust at we sycophantic, putrific, obsequious millions. A man who, apopleptic and near-psychotic with bilious rage, feels his magnificence is squandered on cockroaches. A man whose very existence has been denied by these same vermin.
Say it ain’t so, Cecil. Say it ain’t so.
How to rid himself of this choking humour? Trolling, plain and simple. Reduce even the best of us to a sputtering angry incoherence, to give us a taste of his torment. He can’t post as Cecil Adams because everyone would fawn all over him, drooling and oohing and aahhing. He couldn’t do any real damage like that. The frustration would only drive his bitter anger deeper. So he’s been reduced to shouting and rambling nonsense, purposefully skewing his spelling and grammar in order to throw the scent of genius off.
Or maybe he always sounds like that before Zotti gets his hands on the stuff.
Actually, combining those traits with a not-well-concealed superciliousness and a penchant for misdirection, I’m not at all sure why you would exclude HWSNBN. In fact, (as long as we’re funning around and not actually making strange accusations that should be e-mailed to the Mods), our current creature most reminds me of HWSNBN, and has for a couple of weeks. There are some differences in “claimed” beliefs regarding science, but nothing that a truly devious/deviant mind might not be willing to put into a persona just to jerk our chains. (Interesting that they both have the same initial, as well, hmmmm?)
You know, I never really had a problem with the poster whom we have been speaking of. So what if he occasionally makes smartassed remarks and outrageous personal claims. At least it isn’t JDT.
But then again, JDT was banned. This guy is still out there and proud of his trollness.
Maybe if we distract him until the sun comes up, he’ll turn to stone…
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been harsh in the Pit, but I don’t hate Peace. Jack-off was a real fucking puspot. I wish a lot of evil on that guy if he doesn’t change his ways.
Peace, on the other hand, is… well I don’t know quite what. But, like Wildest Bill, I don’t think he harbors any malice. He’s just, well, he really does act like a fucknut a lot. But he’s had a bunch of posts lately that have showed improvement (not condescending, not too out there).
His big problems? He doesn’t appear to glean any info from most posts, and that which he does, is refracted through the oddest lens I’ve seen yet. That, and he will not open his mind to allow for intellectual change.
I think the best quality in any Doper is a willingness (or better yet, a desire) for bubble-bursting. And Peace appears to lack it.
But I said it in one of the Pit threads, and I’ll say it again. I’d rather have him as a contributing member of the SD community than have him never post here again.
jb
