From: Erin (macavity11@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Dec 02 2004 - 02:21:31 GMT
Scott Roberts wrote:
Unicorns are known not to exist empirically. Do you really want to do away
with this distinction?
DH comments:
Actually Unicorns Are known to exist empirically. They certainly don't
exist empirically objectively but i can describe to you(subjectively) a
white horse with a horn out it's nose quite comfortably.
ERIN: interesting question, I'm curious to where the line is drawn for what is accepted as empirical. Because I "experienced" a unicorn when I watched Blade Runner. If that is not accepted as an experience because it wasn't "real", then how is "experiencing" the Mona Lisa and other art accepted?
Actually somewhat related I was just reading this by RAW awhile ago, would like to put it out.
Maybe" is a thin reed to hang your life on but it's all we've got.
--Woody Allen
This may not seem startling to gamers, but it sure woke me up; I learned about it on Law and Order last Sunday.
A type of program called a"bot " can play a computer game "just like a human" and in the style of any chosen human, given enough skill on the part of the bot-maker.
It seems to me this surpasses virtual reality and approaches electronic cloning. After all, the bot can go on playing after the human has "died."
A bot can also exist which, like an art forgery, seems to have the style and habits of a certain human but actually emerged from the brain of a clever faker.
This seems to me like virtual virtual reality and electronic immortality of a sort. If a bot plays chess like Alekhine, in what sense can we call Alekhine totally "dead"?
More: computer tech in general as brought us to the stage where producing a photo of a crime or even a moving picture of it does not prove a damned thing anymore. "I saw it with my own eyes" has become a bad joke.
I begin to feel that Maybe Logic will soon replace the Aristotelian either/or, not because of my books or Korzybski's or von Neumann's. but because virtual reality and artificial intelligence have destroyed certitude and left us with only degrees of probability.
BTW, do you feel absolutely sure "Robert Anton Wilson" wrote this and not some gol-danged bot?
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