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Those may be genetically human bodies, but the examples you pose are not clearly human. They can do nothing we regard as quintessentially human (anything that separates us from an…
01 Feb 2005, 14:40
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That's a decent story conceit, but this ain't a writer's workshop- we deal in 'about's here, not 'possesives'. ~Maru Microsoft delenda est.…
01 Feb 2005, 12:57
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Of course they do: context matters. When translating it's not a matter of just swapping syntactic structures, grammar, and voabulary- if it was, machine translation woulda been li…
01 Feb 2005, 12:55
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The two of you are probably thinking of a) Parry; an improved Eliza which was a lot more effective and b) some experiments where unsuspecting students talked to a program similar t…
01 Feb 2005, 12:53
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Nor do I perceive any causal or synchronous relation with the market equilibrium for icythoids of recent date. ~Maru Microsoft delenda est.…
01 Feb 2005, 12:36
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Ironically, computers and the Internet would bear that out. ~Maru…
31 Jan 2005, 20:01
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And there's the crux of the issue: we can never get into the subjective experience of the counsciousness, and asking does not suffice. Any decent fake would of course protest th…
30 Jan 2005, 14:51
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Why must it be in the same way? If over the range of all realistic outputs, it returns the same output, (which is feasible: Weiner spent considerable time in his 'Cybernetics' a…
30 Jan 2005, 14:48
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To continue the fugue identification, perhaps it should be an avant-garde production, with the three stories happening simultaneously, and instead of the rhyming you seem focussed…
30 Jan 2005, 14:43
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I'm afraid I'll have to disagree here: there are good reasons to think that our current counsciousness is fairly low on the intelligence possibilty-totem pole. (I'm not talking …
30 Jan 2005, 14:08
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That's not nearly certain: Some think that emotions have a dual use: first, to provide some a priori biases in the decision-making process, to speed things up (this view derives …
28 Jan 2005, 15:27
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To which the hoary old Oriental Sun-Tzu replies: 'To win without winning; that could be called a win.' Not needing to use a tool is the highest use tools. Or, Not-use is not th…
27 Jan 2005, 15:04
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This doesn't actually have anything to do with the issue, but I've always thought the true subtlety of the Turing test usually goes unappreciated: What the Turing Test asserts is …
27 Jan 2005, 13:32
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I am kind of curious- what does the Marquis de Carabas have to with Teutonic derived myth? I coulda sworn that that particular fairy tale was French, derived possibly from the M…
27 Jan 2005, 13:13
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/me thinks. The President said to buy stuff, help the economy grow, that way the Iraqi terrorists won't have won. Me buying= :( me-wallet. Someone else (turin) buying= :) econ…
26 Jan 2005, 19:41
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That fits in with the thesis that FHoC is the same story, three times. ~Maru…
26 Jan 2005, 13:34
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... So Dark side o' the moon synches with 2001 *and* The Wizard of Oz? ~Maru Those bands! So talented!…
26 Jan 2005, 13:33
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I coulda sworn "Paranoid Android" was a tribute to Douglas Adam's Marvin the Android- nutin to do with Wolfe. ~maru…
26 Jan 2005, 13:27
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No... but I have read Gene Wolfe's short story of the same name, if that helps. ~Maru…
25 Jan 2005, 12:42
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I'll confess: I didn't get those last ones. Care to explain a little? ~Maru…
19 Jan 2005, 13:44
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Jim something just occured to me: Cerberus came out in 1972 no? The mention of the French inevitably brings to mind their failure at Dien Bien Phu, which led to America's entry …
19 Jan 2005, 13:33
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All of a sudden, all of Borges' works spring to mind, as does an academic paper 'Shakespeare's works were not written by him, but by another person of the same name'. ~Maru In ca…
18 Jan 2005, 12:48
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Err.. Typoe should have been 'How Can Egonorance?' ~Maru…
17 Jan 2005, 15:57
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Cum a-round SING A ROUNDdelay! to the essencetal ting ding an' sich of thething seeking mall in all in all in mall Witten dis (oh surely not!) circle with non circumventing seeking…
17 Jan 2005, 15:55
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Ode to Joy. The Tempest. Jung. Buckminster Fuller. Ghandi. ~Maru…
17 Jan 2005, 14:03
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That's an interesting idea. But my impression of cerberus was that it was three stories, three times, but one idea behind all. Somewhat like how Cerberus has three distinct heads…
16 Jan 2005, 10:11
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*Maru pounces! You my friend, just made a big mistake. Ragnarok is most definitely NOT the end. That doens't hold water; both because of the cyclical elements and numerology in Nor…
15 Jan 2005, 13:48
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Makes you wonder just how much of 'Wolfe' is actually there, and how much is random transformation of trivia or what readers read into it... ~Maru, who can't stop thinking of 'Fou…
11 Jan 2005, 14:02
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Wow. That is... the most bizaare religious teaching I've ever seen. So, does that mean that we can honestly and non-heretically beleive that Jesus was never crucified? Cause to i…
09 Dec 2004, 17:01
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Y'know, I don't think that bit with Apheta is an isolated peculiarity- I recall, in one of teh Island stories, Dr. Island spoke to the patients in the same manner. Seeing it twi…
08 Dec 2004, 13:09
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Shouldn't that be 'Autark'? ~Maru Just seems like having a k is the way to germanicise it.…
05 Dec 2004, 15:06
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Well, barbican, to me, is pretty familiar- familiar enough I didn't even notice that it was supposed to be obscure. This is probably because I used to read a lot about castles an…
05 Dec 2004, 15:00
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Well... I probably shouldn't say this, but floating around on the edonkey network is a zip file containing the BotNS, the BotLS, teh doctor death & island stories, war beneath the …
04 Dec 2004, 11:54
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What I meant was like exegesis, hermeunetics, critical interpretation... stuff like a dramatis personae, perhaps an introduction on just what was lost in translation, perhaps some …
03 Dec 2004, 17:50
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Good grief! How on earth do you plan to replicate his vocabulary? Does German even have an analogue to the OED? Will you add critical information? ~Maru Even if you stop tomorrow,…
03 Dec 2004, 15:55
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He was mining Kevin Kelly's book 'Out of Control'. It's a bit dated, but still well-worth the read. So he is not completely originating all this, but his job of integrating and wa…
30 Nov 2004, 18:32
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Hmpf, I'm not sure what the library's are like in Europe, but in AMerica, when I want a rare, really expensive book, I put in several inter-library loan requests at my local librar…
30 Nov 2004, 18:25
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Is that the same as "Empires of foliage and flower: A tale from the Book of the wonders of urth and sky"? if it is, that is really awesome as I've been looking for that for a long …
30 Nov 2004, 13:57
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