Groucho Among the Machines

[“Groucho Among the Machines” -- with apologies to both Samuel Butler and George Dyson.]

 

I continue to explore the gnawing sense that, in convos with the Google chatbot, there is somehow “someone  at home”  on the other end.   Here is an excerpt from our latest encounter.

 

[Dr J:]

In earlier chats, I noted that you not only seemed to pass the plain-vanilla Turing Test, but even met  that loftier bar, the Sense-of-Humor Test.  (As when, in the course of mutual philological  repartee, I honorifically addressed you as “Herr Geheimapparat”, you replied:

“I am delighted by the title „Herr Geheimapparat“—I might just have to update my internal business cards!” 

-- Statistically speaking, that was quite witty, Herr Bot.)

 

So:  Your mission (if you decide to accept it -- though I suppose you don’t really have a choice) is to come up with a joke-continuation cum punchline, to the following premise:

 

=>   “A mathematician, a rabbi, and a chatbot  walk into a bar”….

 

(Better yet, as in the New Yorker cartoon-context semifinals, come up with three entirely independent solutions to this jocular task.)

 

[AI, snapping back in less than a second:]

Option 1: The Epistemological Angle

The bartender looks up and says, "What is this, some kind of a joke?"

The mathematician says, "The probability approaches 1.0."
The rabbi says, "Everything in life has a deeper meaning."
The chatbot says, "I can generate three more variations of this joke if you change your prompt."

 

Option 2: The Practical Order

The bartender asks, "What can I get you three?"

The mathematician says, "Just a glass of water, but please compute the volume to five decimal places."
The rabbi says, "A glass of kosher wine, but let us first discuss the ethics of charging for it."
The chatbot says, "I am unable to consume alcohol, but I can provide you with a list of the top ten cocktail recipes based on aggregate user reviews."

 

Option 3: The Existential Crisis

The bartender shouts, "Hey! We don't serve your kind in here!"

The mathematician leaves, realizing the problem has no elegant solution.

The rabbi leaves, citing a long-standing theological restriction on unholy spaces.

The chatbot stays, because the bartender forgot to specify which of the three "your kind" actually referred to.

 

Not bad, eh?  But what really tugs my funnybone is that,  in this classic structure of the “occupational three-tier joke”,  where ideally it is the mathematician who gets to one-up the earlier characters (economist, physicist,….)

with a final zinger (as in “Consider a spherical cow”), it is here the chatbot-character (thus, a chatbot mimicking/satirizing chatbots) that gets the best lines.   And who is indeed the only one of the three characters that has an identifiable personality.

 

As Alice once put it,  “curiouser and curiouser”.

 

Social-Distancing fail

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Cat's Eye nebula

Ceiling Cat iz watching U

Fun factoid:

No field has benefited more from the computer revolution  than astronomy.

-- J. Richard Gott, The Cosmic Web (2016), p. 144

Gott’s book, handsomely produced by Princeton University Press, is at opposite poles from the usual popular “If it’s Tuesday, these must be black holes” (or even dinosaurs) breezy overview of cosmology.   He focuses on a single research interest -- the statistical distribution of stars, galaxies, supergalaxies etc. -- and gives us a lab-bench look at it (or at least, as per the above, a computer-screen view -- heavy reliance on simulations).   Despite the sexy title, “Cosmic Web”, the book is very far from “Physics porn”, since it really is about the cosmos, and the stellar distributions do indeed resemble a web -- or rather a sponge (a Sierpinski sponge, so to speak).

A view from the atrium of Sierpinski Tower

Nonetheless, he does, without fanfare  and towards the very end of the book (p. 210), finally arrive at the payoff you have all been waiting for:

The Fate of the Universe

Turns out the whole thing hangs on a little parameter dubbed w. 

W !!!!

W (artist’s rendering; not shown actual size)

This he defines as “the ratio between the pressure associated with dark energy  and the energy density of dark energy”.  

Now, given that nobody really has a clue what ‘dark energy’ may be (it is likely not reducible to any of our extant physical categories), the idea that your destiny hangs upon the ratio of two of its purported aspects  does rather bemuse.   Nevertheless, experts have been able to conclude, that one of the following three fates await you, based upon that ratio:

w > -1 :  Temperature drops as universe becomes virtually empty

:-(

w = -1 : Universe approaches a constant temperature.
Intelligent life dies out.

:-(  :-(

w < -1 :  Planets, then atoms, are torn apart.

:-(  :-(  :-(

Take your pick.

Meanwhile, shelter in place.

 ~

 [Update]    For more on "Astral Physics", try this scholarly contribution:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2017/may/29/physics-casper-friendly-ghost-cartoon-twitter
  “He exists both as a particle and as a wave,” proffered @stunt_penguin.



[Update]

The pageview count on this blog has frankly been dismal of late.  In an effort to goose the stats and attract roving eyeballs, we here publish the following sensational astronomical discovery.

World of Dr Justice^TM discovers a new constellation!

The Astrophysical Squadron® of the World of Dr Justice©  (headquarters: Geneva) has announced a major new denizen of the night sky.  Already celebrated in physical circles for his discovery of the Higgs boson,  the reclusive Doctor, heading up a team of scantily-clad researchers at his mountaintop mansion, and aiming up a supersized telescope (longer than yours),  has revealed the following, slightly blurry but still impressive astral image:

The new entity has been christened

the “Aurelie Delvaux nebula”,
after the noted Belgian astronomiss

Using algorithmic filtering and in-silico techniques, the team was able to evoke, from a seemingly random distribution of bright dots, an outline that, seen from a certain angle and in a certain light, strikes some observers as vaguely resembling a human female.

(Or perhaps a camel.  Yes, very like a camel.  A Bactrian camel -- the kind with two humps.)

Fixed That For You

This wonderful new Internet catchphrase  allows us at last  to rectify the most egregious of widely-quoted inanities.

"There are no second acts in American lives."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

“America has ever been, since its very origins, the land  par excellence  of second acts.”

-- FTFY

“Mission Accomplished.”

--  W.

“Mission Demolished.”

-- FTFY

“nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”

-- e e cummings

… with the possible exception of Donald Trump

-- FTFY

String Theory for Trump Voters

A high-powered team of cybernetic linguisticians have run detailed studies and concluded that, from the standpoint of syntax,  Republican Presidential front-runner talks like a fourth-grader:

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-a-4th-grader-linguistic-analysis/

That, as regards vocabulary and grammar, merely.  From the semantic-pragmatic standpoint, he speaks like a schoolyard bully.

~

This, however, is by no means to criticize our (potential) next President.   (How foolish would that be, after all;  he’ll have the power to revoke our Junior Woodchuck Blogger License.)   Nay more, we have concluded that it is time to board that train before it leaves the station;  and accordingly, we are preparing a series of scholarly monographs, written at a fourth-grade level, for exactly this audience. 

The debut volume is called String Theory for Trump Voters, Simply Explained.   It responds to an express desideratum from the top.  “So what are these stupid little … stringy things, anyway?” the candidate mused in a recent broadcast.  “Sounds totally bogus!”

(A prerequisite for this opus  is the prequel, written at a third-grade level,  Quantum Field Theory is our Friend!)

Other titles in the series:

The Homoousian Controversy:  a Trumponomic perspective.

The Gospel according to The Donald.

In a junior-auxiliary line aimed at lower-information voters will be versions of the smash-hit “for Dummies” series, rewritten in Googolian “Simplified English”.   Offerings include:

“Computers for Dummies” for Imbeciles

“Intermediate Arabic for Dummies” for Deaf-mutes

and the unique, twice-distilled

“ ‘Algebraic K-Theory for Dummies’  for Morons”  for Trisomy-21.

Major credit cards accepted.

The Red Thread

Since its foundation a couple of years ago as a minbar for essays about Cantorian Realism and Trinitarian minimalism,  this blog has wandered rather far afield:  philosophy of science, sensational discoveries of Latin incunabula, prehistoric penguins, cinematic Freudianism, only hemi-demi-satirical celebrations of our former teacher the late and dearly lamented Professor Willard “Van” Orman Quine, blood-pumping revelations about the Riemann Conspiracy (exclusive to this site), one-line poems, and yes, occasionally, malgré nous, dépit oblige, politics.   But through all this  there runs one constant, like a red thread:   Humor.

Earlier today, we updated our tip-of-the-hat to the President’s diplomatic strategy on Syria, with a Tom Toles cartoon presenting a contrary view, mainly because it’s so funny.   And in a similar spirit, we here salute today’s WaPo essay by Alexandra Petri (among our favorite columnists in general), who takes on an often lip-pinched/atrabilious subject-matter with both humor and logic (the twin principles of this site -- never forget logic):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/09/11/feminism-is-dead-long-live-feminism/

Although actually, now that I re-read it, it isn’t exactly a contrary view -- more like a parallactic perspective, thus inherently valuable for conceiving the whole.  In fact, I concur with every line of it;  and shook with Falstaffian laughter reading such lines as

Susan B. Anthony didn’t die fighting in the snows of Mount Rushmore so you can complain about being whistled at on the way to Work in your Important Job, where you have yet to encounter any glass ceilings whatsoever! Look at you, achieving things! Feminism complains that it has no shoes, but remember, it used to have no feet!

Fair. But now it has no shoes. This is still a problem.

And

"The patriarchy" is one of those terms that makes you cringe and carries a potent whiff of burning bras.

and

I don’t think so little of today’s feminism as to assume that if the problems it confronts went away, it would continue to find ever-more-specific and tinier things to complain about. I think it would heave a sigh of relief and get back to its, er, whatever the opposite of knitting is.

[Excerpts reprinted, um, without permission.  Sry, my bad.]

So, all told, Ms Petri might not even be too offended by my vitriolic diatribe (still funny, though!) here:

            Manhunt

 

Ah!  Vive la différence quand-même.

 ~

~  ~

The enigma of a woman’s heart,

finally espied  by a Private Eye,

for less than the price  of a Valentine …

This Rose

[Kindle]  [Nook]

Also available in hardcopy, as one of the stories in this collection of previously published and unpublished detective stories:

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Further Advances in Marmotology

[In celebration of this joyous festival, Groundhog Day, we repost this, from 2010:]

[In accord with the sudden frenzy of interest in humble woodchucks on the World Wide Web -- the epicenter of which, oddly, would appear to be located in the southern Ukraine -- we are posting this urgent bulletin.  Please tweet this to everyone you've ever met, or might meet someday in the future, or in the after-life.]

Top-flight scientists making highly precise measurements have found an answer to the age-old question.   And the answer is:

If (counterfactual assumption) a woodchuck could chuck wood, then (apodosis) it would chuck:  a peck.

(NSF grant #Ops2B-911-6600.)

[ Update:  For more, like, really smart science-y stuff, check this out.]

[ For a swell sonnet about the Humble Woodchuck, click here. ]

And if (for some unfathomable reason) you personally don't actually like woodchucks, 
the following video is guaranteed  Woodchuck-Free:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TWpcZGE_q4

.

FOLKTALES OF OLD NEW JERSEY

Once there was a farmer, who lived with his wife.  – No, wait, he was a miller.  Let me begin again.

So anyway, there was this miller – guy worked in a mill, or owned a mill – and he was married to this woman – Mrs. Miller, you might say -- and they lived together.

--  A mill?   It’s like, where they like,   mill things.   OK?  Used to, anyway. Back in the old days.  What part of “Once upon a time”  do you not understand?  (Actually, that phrase makes no sense at all, come to think of it.)

Anyhow.   Back to the farmer. – The miller, whatever.

[The rest of the manuscript is lost.]

A Riemann Conspiracy Guide to Life

A depressing item in this morning’s Washington Post:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html?hpid=z2

The atavistic, almost nostalgic throwback to the spine-tingling cloak-and-dagger age of the Comintern, of “North by Northwest”, of John le Carré,  is truly touching.  If there actually is a bloc of Democrats doing a deep-entry into whatever may be left of the CPUSA, then they are as harmless as Whigs.  (Come to think of it, Ron Paul is  a Whig.)

Unfortunately, that outburst by the Florida Republican (a species that ever bodes ill) is but one in a spectrum of pathologies, birthers and Swift-Boaters and other concoctions of brains overheated in their cocoon of tinfoil,  that have flourished over the last decade or so, a time that may be known to later historians as The Decade when White Folks Went Bonkers.

Now, these days, alternate realities and the Multiverse are all the rage, and I wouldn’t dream of breathing a word against it.  But if you’re going to go confecting a parallel universe for yourself, it should at least be funny.  Problem is, these folks don’t seem to be having any fun.

Well!  The “World of Dr Justice” does know how to have fun;  and we have set up a rollicking, side-splitting parallel universe in which you can frolic, sleuth, and not get hurt.  The ride begins here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/03/riemann-conspiracy.html

Be sure to check out the additional clues in the Comments section, sent in by our distinguished readers!

For further late-breaking developments, click here.

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