I don't know what the hell I said. I gave her an ultimatum and there's nothing I can do. It's a machine. The little light is blinking right now: 'Come and listen to the idiot. Hey everybody, the idiot's on!'

mircea_popescu

It follows that he cannot know that certain people at certain times do not understand in Parry-or Eliza-like ways. That is to say, he has no way of knowing that we do not ourselves sometimes function by means of "clever tricks".

Actually, I will go as far as to say that it is always certainly the case understanding happens through "clever tricks". It was NEVER the case anyone ever understood anything whatsoever in any case at any point in human history, [self]delusion to the contrary notwithstanding.

asciilifeform He is thinking of another variety of clever tricks.

mircea_popescu Is he ?

asciilifeform The mechanized stage magic of Eliza.i

mircea_popescu That's exactly what I mean.

asciilifeform I'd have to disagree that 'understand' is a null-word.

mircea_popescu Go right ahead, but what else do you bring ?

asciilifeform People have never been seen to, e.g., rotate themselves in the 4th dimension and end up rechiralled. But they do occasionally understand things. At least, beyond 'Eliza' level.

mircea_popescu Let us not discuss this in terms of understanding, something we care about. Let us instead discuss in terms of love, something we don't care about.

asciilifeform ?

mircea_popescu So : your idea of understanding would be in fact "transformative love". Ie, it'd give you the ability to turn, if not marble into virgin, at least whore into housewife. Dja think this was ever displayed ?

* asciilifeform must confess he is rather puzzled at this point.

mircea_popescu Whyssat ?

asciilifeform Well, if I had to give an example of 'understanding', involving 'transformation', I'd offer the transformation of pebbles on a beach (original 'calculation') into well, calculation, and mathematics, and, ..., nukes. Wide net, but somewhere in it there flops a fish, 'understanding'.

mircea_popescu Nah.

undata One of you is using understand in a much stricter sense than the other.

mircea_popescu The sort of understanding you propose is a relationship between mind and object that's transcendental. The ready comparison is the supposed transcendental relation between man and woman. Outside of this, all that's left is Eliza-understanding. And, obviously, fucking. Ie, a manipulation of the subject according to the rules of the reality it inhabits. What Eliza does, what no strings attached sex is. If you recognise a naive romanticism in one field, the other should also be obvious. All women are whores and all thinkers are Eliza. The ability of whores to distinguish themselves from "those cheap streetwalkers" is not that important globally, having more to do with ego and stress than anything.

asciilifeform All microscopes are hammers.

nubbins` All scarves are farts.

undata "Modeling is by definition incomplete" ?

mircea_popescu undata if you will. asciilifeform yes, essentially, which is why the microscope hammer thing never persuaded me.ii

* asciilifeform is firmly persuaded that every microscope is a hammer. However, not every hammer is a microscope, demonstrably. And therein lies the boojum.

mircea_popescu Not every hammer is a microscope to you. Not every whore is a partner you'd entertain, either, but that has little to do with the principles involved.iii

asciilifeform The principle involved, i must confess, escapes me. And I'm not altogether certain that I'd profit from grasping it.

mircea_popescu Let's approach on a different tack. What is the method through which I could write software that distinguishes between actual science and global-warming-science ?

asciilifeform Even the elixir of distinguishing cat from dog by mechanical means, so far escapes programmers. Who would even dare to ask about sciences.

mircea_popescu Well, the reason might be that there couldn't be such a thing. There's nothing that makes "good science" better than a pile of shanonized papers. You can test them, of course, but this is practically speaking aesthetics.

asciilifeform Aha I see where this is going.

mircea_popescu So, yeah. All thinkers are Eliza, the distinguishing among Elizas, like among whores, purely an application of one's own aesthetic preference.

nubbins` No true Eliza would offer such an argument.

asciilifeform 'Don't worry, sizzling in electric chair, Ohm's law is a lie'. The difference between the flesh before and after, 'aesthetic preference'.

mircea_popescu Are you a current dreaming it's frying a butterfly etc.

nubbins` And somewhere, somewhen, the sound of keys clacking on a keyboard was heard.

asciilifeform l0l

nubbins` ha

undata "Gravity" holds the Moon to the Earth.

nubbins` _/ -_- _/

mircea_popescu undata the argument mind, isn't that some Eliza-trees don't make much better looking reality-clothes than others. The argument is whether they're actually different. If one function returns rnd(0,15) and the other rnd(20,42) it is easy to establish which returns the larger number, but that doesn't mean they're not the same damned function.

asciilifeform Afaik Western traditions of sophistry are not even the most die-hard adherents of this idea. In some variants of Islam, they actually believe that 'if the circuit works, it was will of Allah' and nothing more.iv And today perhaps the allmighty favours Ohm's law, tomorrow - not.v

mircea_popescu And the brain is in no sense and to no degree a logic processing machine. Nor, ironically, are actual logic processing machines all that intelligent. To us at least.

nubbins` "[...] the argument is whether they're actually different."

Saturday, 15 November, Year 6 d.Tr.