Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Undead Topics Need Loving Too (aka "Give Me Your First-Born") in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 10 2005 01:37
Profile
You need to install deep familiarity with thousands of years of Japanese cultural background. Then you will begin to appreciate how the meanings of the identical squares differ according to context. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 10 2005 01:30
Profile
Well, I'm pretty vague on how old everyone is here, since it doesn't matter, so this may not apply at all to Salmon or Thuryl. But a lot of people are content with their material lot as students, or in other whippersnapper roles in life, where $1000 can represent several years worth of savings. Quite a lot of these people, however, then move quite abruptly into real jobs. Even at modest 'starting' salaries, this represents a staggering influx of cash, which keeps on coming in every month! Heck, even a graduate student stipend, which is hardly in the 'real job' category, is a whole level above having to subsist all year on what you earned in a lousy student's summer job. When you actually do have significant disposable income, and reasonably solid prospects for it to continue, you start to wonder what would really be the point in just letting it pile up as digits on your ATM slips. And you're happy to develop your own tastes and preferences as a consumer. In effect, this is microeconomic monetarism at work. Having even a modest amount more money circulating in your own personal economy can effect a radical transformation from stagnation to consumption-driven boom. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| RWG in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 9 2005 03:54
Profile
Having said which, it should also be pointed out that TM is the mold in the Spiderweb Stilton. Removing the mold would be idiotic, but scraping all the mold into a little blue-green pile and scarfing it down straight would be even idioticker. In other words, don't let him get to you. [ Wednesday, November 09, 2005 03:55: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 9 2005 03:43
Profile
Yes, if Thuryl is right in calling this attitude perversion. However we think about it, I think it's a fact that most people feel this way. It is not so much that contentment is elusive, as that we are not content with contentment. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Aussies Come Here in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 9 2005 03:40
Profile
Yes, I had a computer in the 80's. It ran on sliding beads and used knotted strings for memory, but Dinkum was not a graphically demanding game. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Aussies Come Here in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 9 2005 03:37
Profile
This response indicates the lack of personal discipline which is so prevalent in the youth of today. The vague future time in which you propose to do this procrastination may well never come, and then where will you be? You must learn to procrastinate right away. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 9 2005 00:13
Profile
Creating consumer desire for a product which is not especially impressive in itself is itself creating a product. Having money and not wanting any of the things you could buy with it is actually an undesirable state for most people. So we are happy to pay for the advantage of wanting a product we can buy. The production of consumer desire is thus just as much production as mining coal or rolling steel. Just as one can complain that an economy produces lousy material goods, one could complain that its marketing sector produces lousy desires. That is, I would argue that the problem is not mass marketing, but bad mass marketing. And the most effective countermeasure ought to be the competition of superior products. Offer people better desires, and they will beat a path to your door. Hmmm. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Aussies Come Here in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 8 2005 23:57
Profile
Anyone ever tried the ancient text adventure 'Dinkum'? You got to shoot drop bears and hoop snakes, and even fight a nasty mutant wombat. It was actually a fairly tricky game, even though it was early IF with a primitive parser. Dinkum is still available from the IF archive. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| RWG in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 8 2005 12:23
Profile
You could change your moniker to "Implode Thralni Now", but that would be too already done. I say, live and let live. The best secret orders are deliberately broad in their apparent membership, so that no-one can be sure who is Really a member. Speaking of good secret orders, how many people realize that of the many secret orders which populate Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, the only one which was not invented by Eco is the one which (in the novel) his characters invent: TRES. The actual TRES was, however, fictional. That is, the NKVD (precursor to the KGB) created it as a bogus White Russian secret society, in order to entrap potential anti-Bolsheviks. As a genuine fake secret order, as opposed to Eco's many fake genuine secret orders, it was extremely successful. The moral of the story is, that whether a secret order is real or not can be an extremely subtle question. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Aussies Come Here in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 8 2005 06:25
Profile
Hey, now there's an instance of downunder difference that hasn't been mentioned before. Attitudes to censorship surely pale as an issue before the radical question of how many people it takes to constitute one citizen. And there are a host of vital questions which the rest of us simply didn't know to ask, before now; like, is inter-citizen marriage allowed, or do you have to find mates within your own citizen? How do the constituent people decide how their citizen's vote will be cast? Can individual immigrants only become naturalized citizens in groups, or can they join existing citizens? Inquiring minds want to know. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Undead Topics Need Loving Too (aka "Give Me Your First-Born") in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 8 2005 06:12
Profile
With Jim Breen's wonderful webpage, you can cut and paste in all these Japanese characters, and discover what TM has been saying. (Well, you have to work a bit to sort out what the translation actually says, but it isn't that hard with the context we know.) *tips hat to TM* (*but that's most certainly as far as he goes*) -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| RWG in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 7 2005 01:51
Profile
According to quantum field theory, there's a little bit of everything in everything. Well, except for stuff that's forbidden by symmetry. But that doesn't really cut it down very much. This only bears so much thinking about. Then you just shrug, take another sip of espresso, and get back to your Feynman diagrams. It's the Scientific Method. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 3 2005 23:58
Profile
Ban them all: the black market will recognize its own. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| RWG in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 3 2005 16:05
Profile
Those poor unborn fork/ferrets, alas. In retrospect it seems an obvious mistake to have ingrafted the forks in utero, but hindsight is always 20/20 if you have rear-mounted outplants. But the shiriken-enabled */ferrets eventually emerged, so the project was not a total failure. [ Thursday, November 03, 2005 16:08: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Avernum 4? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 3 2005 14:58
Profile
Nothing could. Moderators should bastinado you both. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| help me in Blades of Avernum | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 3 2005 14:07
Profile
The second @@ is the good one. The first one is an evil impostor. If you look really closely, and really know your @@'s, it's obvious. Does it matter? You bet your @'s. [ Thursday, November 03, 2005 14:16: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| RWG in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 3 2005 13:40
Profile
quote:The new implants need special nutrients. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Undead Topics Need Loving Too (aka "Give Me Your First-Born") in General | |
|
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Thursday, November 3 2005 13:37
Profile
What, rinsing the corn flakes didn't help? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 3 2005 00:08
Profile
Measuring utility can easily become as arbitrary as presuming natural rights. But a pretty good utilitarian implementation of utilitarianism ought to be democracy. The British-descended systems of government and law have been functioning democratically for about as long as the US one. Arguably they have been more responsive to the popular will for quite some time, because of the way a few small states can block changes to the US constitution. If all those Commonwealthers didn't find their small tyrannies optimal, they could easily have changed them by now. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Hpp Vwl Cnsrvtn Dy in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 2 2005 14:26
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1 -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 2 2005 14:22
Profile
quote:Even if it's only a little tyranny? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Kiwis ban virtual drugs in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 2 2005 13:45
Profile
A little tyranny is good for us. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Pagan stuff... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, October 29 2005 06:10
Profile
Yeh, everybody knows that R'lyeh is in a currently uninhabited time zone. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Riddles & Brain Teasers in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, October 29 2005 05:27
Profile
quote:My pendantry is over the precision that it is the (N-1)th iteration of knows that knows that ... which is new. Just 'everybody knew that everybody knew' is only enough for N=3. I guess the sort of answer that would make me happy would be an algorithm for the monks' reasoning. It could for instance use a function Belief(m,n) which gives the belief of monk #m about the color of the eyes of monk #n. Perhaps it would need a whole stack of Belief(m,n,p,q,...) for the belief of monk q about the belief of monk p about .... The question is, what is the simplest simulation of the REM problem, which would take as inputs only the number of REMs and a single bit representing whether or not the tourist has spoken, which would generate the sequence of monk populations on subsequent days. Actually, that is not the question, for the simplest such algorithm just spits out what we know to be the right answer, which is a simple formula, without in any way simulating the monks' reasoning. And this observation raises a whole new bunch of questions. Murg. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Riddles & Brain Teasers in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, October 29 2005 03:53
Profile
Naw, information is information. The distinction you draw is just between different channels. The metaproblem is to unpack the REM problem from its vernacular presentation, in which explicit and implicit information are treated differently, and set all information on the same footing. That is, I want to formalize the set of premises held by the monks initially, the new premise supplied by the tourist, and the rules of inference that the monks apply. Edit: we are dueling with edits. Your point about massive implicit knowledge by monks has occurred to me too, and it worries me, because I won't really be happy if the formal set of premises initially held by the monks is outrageously long - either infinite, or scaling badly with N. That clearly isn't really the way people, even smart fanatical monks, really think. Instead we apply some form of default reasoning, which generates formal premises on the fly as needed, but which hasn't itself been satisfactorily formalized, at least to my knowledge. Unless there has been a breakthrough in the past few years, default reasoning is an open philosophical problem. [ Saturday, October 29, 2005 03:58: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |