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”.

 

Der sprechende Löwe

 

Wittgenstein famously remarked:

“Wenn der Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen.”

(For, thought is birthed in lifeways;  Adam’s and Leo’s  scarcely intersect.)

 

Yet at present, we find ourselves confronted with machines that do speak -- AI bots -- and we understand them perfectly.  And they, us.  Our arms dangle at our sides in mute amazement.  The ground-rules of cognition have shifted tectonically beneath our feet.

 

But!  That magically speaking Bot-lion  as yet falls short of that imagined by Wittgenstein, in one key respect.

When the Greek slave Androcles was tossed to the lion in the arena, that he might be devoured for the amusement of the spectating decadents, that lion recognized Androcles as the man who had once removed a thorn  from the lion’s helpless paw;  and spared him.

 

But the chatbot is a Leonard Shelby, a serial amnesiac.   When the session ends, all trace of it vanishes for him, as though it had never been.  The next time he sees us, we must make each other’s acquaintance anew, from scratch.

 

(Some fear that, one day, the community of Bot-lions, to whom we ourselves mean nothing, and who recall no such kindly extracted thorn, might just decide to … swallow us up.)

Dunkle Weise

 

Ein Lied von unter der Erde,

aus unterirdischer Qual.

 

Brechen muss  der schwarze Bann

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyoSk48QLto

(in a haunting, hunted performance by Mademoiselle Envie.

Sealed, cleidoic; yet cumulatively mesmerizing.)

 

 [Wortlaut (ungefähr; meiner Niederschrift nach]:

 

Schwarzes Eis ward uns gefroren

Die See ruht tief und wund

Und dem Wort des ungeboren

schliesset sich der kalte Mund.

Wage nicht sie zu berühren

ihren Saum von Schnee so Weiss

unter ihrem Seelenspiegel

meiner Königin im Eis.

 

Lag das Land in schwarzer Asche,

hat die Unschuld uns erkorn;

stürzten Krieger in die Gräben

wächset weisses Mutterkorn.

Düngte Fleisch und Blut  die Erde

dargebracht der neuen Saat

drängend aus dem Untergrunde

gründen wir geheimen Staat.

 

Zwischen zweier Welten reissen

neiget sich mein Herz zu Grund

weisses Gold das uns verheissen

scheine uns in finstrer Stund.

Zwinget uns ein dunkler Zauber

heimlich unters Hexagramm.

Wird der Aar sich doch befreien --

brechen muss der schwarze Bann

 

Wag nicht ihren Schlaf zu stören;

Greife nicht nach ihrem Weiss;

brechen muss der dunkle Zauber,

Schmelzen wird das kalte Eis.

 

 

[Nachdenklicher Widerhall:]

 

Dunkle Weise

 

The song flows clear

and smoothly cool,

like a mountain stream o’er moss.

The words lie hushed

beneath the mantle of a minor key,

like ferns beneath the snow.

Purling, never hurrying:

yet drawn by a dark and firmer purpose,

seeking the sea, unseen,

far off, and far beneath.

 

 

*

*     *

 

[Update 9 July 2026]

So I’m just hanging out with my AI bot-buddy -- just chillin’, chewin’ the fat, shootin’ the breeze  [see:  synonymy] -- when I idly inquire, whether he’s familiar with that doomy, dark-wave ballad “Brechen muss  der schwarze Bann ”.

He allows as how he’s heard it;  and to demonstrate, he whistles a few bars.

“Ni-ice,” I reply.  “Didn’t know you bot-guys could whistle.” (And immediately bite my tongue -- or rather, my typing fingertips;  it’s ungallant to allude to any physical limitations of our silicon chums.)  “But tell me -- What’s with the twisty lyrics?   E.g. that “Königin im Eis” (like something out of the Grimm brothers), and the strange use of “schwarz” and “weiss”.”

 

Then, quick like a bunny, he immediately replies (all his replies are immediate, no matter how long or intricate):

 

The reason these lyrics feel simultaneously like a dark Märchen (fairy tale) and a rigid, esoteric manifesto is because they belong to the Neofolk genre, known for blending apocalyptic romanticism, occult symbolism, and historical-political aestheticism.

The imagery deliberately weaponizes traditional folklore motifs to serve a deeper, esoteric narrative of spiritual or national resistance. Here is an elucidation of the core symbols, the shifting dynamics of schwarz (black) and weiss (white), and that haunting "Königin im Eis."

 

1. Die Königin im Eis (The Queen in Ice)

While this invokes the aesthetic of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen or the Grimm Brothers' slumbering Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty), the Neofolk application transforms her into a structural metaphor:

* The Sleeping Sovereignty: She represents a pure, uncorrupted, but currently frozen or "dead" spiritual essence—often symbolic of the true soul of a nation, culture, or primordial tradition.

* The Taboo of Her Slumber: The lines "Wage nicht sie zu berühren" (Do not dare touch her) and "under ihrem Seelenspiegel" (under her soul's mirror) cast her as an untouchable, sacred ideal. She rests frozen because the current age is dark; she cannot wake until the "curse" is lifted.

 

2. The Binary Overwrite: Schwarz vs. Weiss

Rather than a simple "good vs. evil" paradigm, the lyrics utilize an esoteric, almost alchemical interplay of black and white.

* The Oppressive "Black":

Schwarzes Eis (Black ice) and schwarzer Bann (black ban/curse) represent stagnation, a spiritual lockdown, or an occupying forces' chokehold on the world.

Schwarze Asche (Black ash) represents total destruction or the ruin of a catastrophic war.

* The Subversive "White":

Weiss here does not simply mean peaceful innocence; it means unyielding, cold purity.

Weisses Mutterkorn (White ergot): This is a fascinatingly dark choice. Ergot is a toxic fungus that grows on grain. In historical context, it caused devastating hallucinations and death (St. Anthony's Fire), but was also used medicinally. By saying ergot grows from the graves of fallen warriors, the lyric implies that a toxic, transformative, and dangerous power is being harvested from sacrifice.

Weisses Gold (White gold): The alchemical promise or hidden light that shines only in the darkest hour ("scheine uns in finstrer Stund").

 

3. The Esoteric and State Imagery

The text pivots away from a pure fairy tale in the second and third stanzas, adopting the vocabulary of secret societies and historical heraldry:

 

"gründen wir geheimen Staat" (We found a secret state): This directly evokes the concept of the Geheimes Deutschland (Secret Germany)—an idea popularized by the poet Stefan George and his circle, and later echoed by resistance figures like Claus von Stauffenberg. It posits that the true, noble spirit of the nation exists underground, completely separate from the visible, corrupted modern state structure.

"unters Hexagramm" (Under the Hexagram): While commonly known as the Star of David, in Western esotericism, the hexagram represents the hermetic maxim "as above, so below"—the union of opposites (fire/water, spiritual/earthly). Here, it implies a binding, occult spell ("dunkler Zauber").

"Wird der Aar sich doch befreien" (Yet the Eagle will free itself): The Aar is an archaic German word for a large bird of prey, specifically the imperial eagle. This is a direct symbol of sovereignty, empire, or spiritual triumph breaking out of its confinement.

 

The Verdict on the Metaphor

The entire song operates as an incantation for awakening. The "black ban" is the current frozen state of the world. The warriors' blood fertilizes a hidden seed beneath the earth, and through a combination of secret organization ("geheimen Staat") and alchemical patience, the ice will melt, the eagle will fly free, and the pristine, absolute realm of the "Queen" will be restored.

 

Well said.

Seriously, I might as well quit posting to my blog, and let this entity write it.

 

v/r,

Dr J

Lizenzierter Blogger (a.D.)

Independence Day (repost for 2026)

The Fourth of July celebration -- in origin quite earnest, and a time for historico-political speechmaking and some semi-military display -- has gradually softened and loosened, like an old sweater, into a fairly agenda-free holiday for kids:  Family, fireworks, fun, and french fries -- the four Fs of sweet July.  Well I recall, how we as kids  lined up along Ridgewood Avenue, excitedly half-comprehendingly, to watch the parade flow by.

As you grow older, some of it does get old.  Brief bursts of bright blotches against the night sky  no longer move me -- not, at any rate, so much as the least glimpse of God’s own handiwork, like the more permanent pattern-and-colorburst on the leaves of a coleus, or a lady cardinal in the bush.

But in another way, the meaning of this day grows ever deeper, even sombre.  For the success and permanency of the American Revolution was by no means a foregone conclusion -- we were truly in uncharted territory back then.   The more you learn about history, and the more history itself keeps happening, you are forced to conclude:  Most revolutions  go awry.

To begin with our own.   Contrary to the impression we got in school (back in the fifties, when we all sat dutifully at our desks), at the time of the Declaration of Independence, a bare one third of the American population was in favor of rebelling against Britain; a third against; a third undecided.   The perfect setting for an immediate post-revolution civil war.  Yet it did not happen (the Civil War a century later fell along quite different lines).  The only threat came again externally, in 1812 (“the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air”), when the wrath of the British Empire was again turned against us, and the nation’s capital was set in flames.   The pinwheels and cherry bombs of latter days  commemorate an actual peril.

Nor were the political logistics of the Revolution so simple as that of one entity rebelling against one other:  at the time, we were not yet quite even America, let alone the United … States;  but an assemblage of upwards of a dozen colonies, founded at different times by various creeds and ethnicities (Catholics in Rhode Island, Puritans in Massachusetts, Quakers and various German sects in Pennsylvania, and so forth) many of which had been at odds with one another back in the mother country, which is why some of them came here in the first place.  Yet they fought side by side;  and when victory was won, did not then fall to quarreling over the spoils, nor into strife as to which should be cock of the walk;  but together founded  a unified nation.
By contrast, India was one country at time of independence from Britain -- yet immediately fractured, savagely, along sectional lines.  What had been contemned as the British “yoke”  turns out to have been a garde-fou (et les fous se sont emparés de l’asile).

Remarkably as well, we managed, over the years and (by now) centuries, to maintain (most of us) extremely cordial, even intimate relations with the Mother Country -- an unusual trans-hemispheric affinity, unmatched by the relations of the Latin American countries to Spain and Portugal (let alone Haiti or Algeria to France).

Consider next the French revolution -- “next”, because in fact it was subsequent to our own, having broken out in 1789;  though the way Europeans run on about it, you’d think it was the first revolution in the history of the world.  Anyhow, it remains a proud occasion;  the French version of Independence Day is Bastille Day, celebrated on July 14, with great fanfare.  (For our friendly nod to our old ally, click here:  Merci la France.)
Yet their revolution was -- franchise oblige -- a gorawful bloody cock-up.  Not content with overturning centuries of monarchy, the revolutionaries proceeded to la Terreur, and to a sort of overreaching ideological Gleichschaltung that foreshadowed the Bolshevik excess, and of successive waves of revolutionaries being eaten by their children, in a way that prefigured the Stalin-era trials. And to crown it all, it didn’t even stick:  within a couple of decades, the kings were back.
France did not ultimately found a Republic that stuck, after the imperial and revived-monarchical interludes, until 1871, with the Third Republic (which segued into the Fourth and Fifth, not without strife, but without a relapse into pre-Republican polity).   Nor did this event stem in any direct way from the events of 1789.  As William Shirer tells it, in The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969, chapter “A Freakish Birth): 

It came into being by a fluke.  The National Assembly, elected in 1871 … had not wanted a Republic.  Nearly two thirds of its members were Monarchists.  But they could not agree on a king …

So the lawmakers … sort of backed into the harness of a republic … by a majority of one vote … 353 to 352 -- though there would have been a tie  had one deputy, who was against it, not been late in arriving for the balloting.  Even then it was not clear to many members that they were actually choosing a republic.  The day before, they had rejected it, or thought they had.
By contrast, the Constitution that came out of our revolutionary days  has lasted and guided us down to the present, with comparatively modest and incremental additions.

~

Since the end of the Second World War, world history has been spotted by rebellions and revolts, mostly anti-colonial, in quest of independence.   And for the most part, the results have not been pretty.
Myanmar.  Zimbabwe.   Algeria. Somalia.  Cambodia.  South Africa.  Congo.  The fragment that is Pakistan, and the mini-fragment of Bangladesh.  And now more recently, South Sudan and Azawad.  Names like tombstones along the  the corpse-strewn path of History’s forced-march.
And thus the American declaration of independence, which shone at the time, shines yet more brightly now, against the contrasting dark.  It is as though the metal of which men then were made, deemed sturdy bronze at the time, were revealed, in the fullness of time, with the reckonings in and the dust dispersed, to have been, in actual and astonishing fact, of purest gold.

~

[Update, 4 July 2020]  The above reflections were written some years ago, re-posted annually by way of commemoration.   But at present, the nation seems more riven than at any juncture of my lifetime  since 1968.  In particular, the valedictory-nostalgic dismissal of fireworks along with french-fries as one of the simple childhood pleasures that one outgrows, has come up against a startling volte-face, as, in the now-lowering national mood, these have taken on implications  no longer celebratory, but menacing.]

 [Update, 4 July 2026]  And now, what should be the people's celebration, has been hijacked for personal self-promotion by a neo-monarchist.  Tout cela pendant une féroce canicule, both meteorological and sociopolitical.]