Tristero Borrows the Smack-o-Matic

jacob1 Comment

I think it’s melting:

Attention, all you Emily Post trolls who need smelling salts after encountering the nasty vicious netroots:

“Now, listen, I’ve voted ‘present’ two or three times in my entire 25-year political career, where there might have been a conflict of interest and I didn’t feel like I should vote,” Boehner said. “In Congress, we have a red button, a green button and a yellow button, alright. Green means ‘yes,’ red means ‘no,’ and yellow means you’re a chicken shit. And the last thing we need in the White House, in the oval office, behind that big desk, is some chicken who wants to push this yellow button.”

That’s right. John Boehner said Obama’s a chicken shit.

And this is why, girls and boys, all talk about a less toxic political atmosphere with the current Republican party is sheer nonsense. Oh sure, Obama – if we are lucky enough to wake up Wed and find him elected – could find a spare Hagel lying around, or a Jim Leach to nail into his Cabinet,and that’s probably a good idea in the long run. But the reality staring us straight in the face is that the leadership of the Republican party – and a huge GOP majority having influence in the party’s ideological and strategic direction -have no interest in anything remotely resembling bipartisanship.

And neither does anyone I know personally who’s supporting Obama. Not with these murderous, corrupt clowns. We want the extreme right and their agenda out of our national politics, driven back to the margins of American discourse where it belongs. Maybe someone out there truly yearns for a less nasty politics, but not me, not now. Not with extremists who call me “traitor,” who have listed my friends as some of the 100 most dangerous people in America or placed them on terrorist watch lists, and who, from their seat as a US Representative pronounce a candidate for the American presidency a chicken shit.

Since I’m sure our resident rightwing friends will take what I just said out of context, let’s be clear. I am not saying that a robust, vibrant, and bipartisan effort on serious issues will remain ipso facto impossible or is necessarily undesirable. Nor am I saying that Democrats and only Democrats always have the “right” answer to a problem – clearly they don’t. I am saying, however, that it is absolutely impossible with the Republican party as it is now, and in its forseeable paleolithic palinized future, for Democrats to work together productively with the extremists at the top of (and throughout) the party except on the most circumscribed of issues. To get anything serious done, they will have to be fought. And that will not be pretty. I see no reason for Dems to back down and plenty of reasons to respond tit for tat, with interest.

You cannot “work with” the extreme right, but you can defeat them.

There’s more. I’ve read the whole thing. Twice. And I have to say that Tristero captured my sentiments exactly.

The Republicon party is infested with religious fanatics, racists, ignoramuses, and chickenhawks. There’s hardly a sane person left in the bunch. They’ve become a crowd of spoiled toddlers throwing shit and tantrums when they don’t get their way. They have no idea what compromise is. They have no concept of working together for the greater good. They strut their bigotry and hate proudly, they’ve gotten away with far too much, and we cannot reward them now by treating them as equals in government. They are not. They had free reign for too many years, and we’ve seen what they’ve done to this country, bled and bankrupted it, destroyed our international standing and imperiled our future. And they’ll keep right on smashing and grabbing until we put a stop to them.

This election needs to be a resounding refutation of them. But that’s just the beginning. It’s after the election that the real work begins.

The Cons need to be schooled in civility. They need to be educated. The fanatics need to be stripped of their power and tossed to the side. The few respectable Republicans left need to be brought forward so that they can rescue the party from the rabid ratfuckers who usurped it, but for the most part, it’s going to be the Dems who will have to govern, without much input from the screaming rabble. When the Cons are ready to use their Big Boy voices, we’ll be ready to listen. If they keep up the misbehaving, they need to be spanked. The adults need to get firm with them, or they’ll never be fit for polite society.

In four years, or eight, or however long it takes for them to mature, then we can have genuine bipartisanship. We might even find a way to transcend political parties and do what’s right for this country and the world. Someday. But we’re in for a world of hurt if we believe someday is today.

They’re not ready. They need a long time-out first. It’s our duty as responsible adults to give it to them.

Tristero Borrows the Smack-o-Matic
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Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

We’ll miss you, Toot:

Barack Obama’s ailing grandmother, who he left the campaign trail recently to visit, passed away today. Obama’s half-sister issued a statement to the media:

“It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and
great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.

“Our family wants to thank all of those who sent flowers, cards, well-wishes, and prayers during this difficult time. It
brought our grandmother and us great comfort. Our grandmother was a private woman, and we will respect her wish for a small private ceremony to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you make a donation to any worthy organization in search of a cure for cancer.”


Dunham, who helped raise the Illinois senator, was 86 years old.


I wish she’d lived to see tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll be voting her a legacy.

Things certainly look to be headed that way:

Here’s our final daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Many national polls have coalesced around a projected 52% popular-vote share for Barack Obama, and it shows in our composite:

• Gallup: Obama 53%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-43% lead from yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 52%, McCain 46%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-46% Obama lead from yesterday.

• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 53%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 54%-43% Obama lead yesterday

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±3.3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±3% margin of
error, compared to a 51%-44% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 51%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 50%-44% Obama lead from yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 51.9%-44.3%, a lead of 7.6 points, compared to the 51.5%-44.2% Obama lead from yesterday.


There’s long lines at the polls. It’s going to be tough to vote in some places. But those of you who haven’t voted yet: there’s nothing more important that you can do right now. Get out there and get this man elected.

Otherwise, we could still end up with this:

Sarah Palin has been an embarrassment to herself and her party since joining the Republican ticket in late August, so it stands to reason that she’d want to end the campaign season with her most disgraceful rhetoric to date.

After blasting the notion that some Democrats want to cut the defense budget, Palin told a Missouri audience this morning:

“What do they think? Do they think that the terrorists have all of a sudden become the good guys, and changed their minds?
No! The terrorists still seek to destroy America and her allies and all that it is that is that we stand for: Freedom, tolerance, equality.”


[snip]

Greg Sargent concluded, “Palin’s final appeal on the eve of almost certain defeat puts it right out in the open: It’s war hero versus ally of terrorists who want to destroy America and kill your children.”

The entire Republican campaign is built entirely on hate, fear, and ignorance. If there’s ever been a more offensive campaign for national office, it doesn’t come to mind.


The entire bloody right wing is losing its mind:

Yesterday, a YouTube user named NakedEmperorNews uploaded an audio clip of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) telling the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board in January 2008 that under his cap and trade plan,

Happy Hour Discurso

One Day More

jacob2 Comments

One more dawn. One more day until an election that could change not just America but the world. Is it any wonder “One Day More” has been thundering through my head tonight?

Do You Hear the People Sing?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes.

¡Viva la Revolución!

(Heh. Great minds think alike. Suppose it was inevitable that someone else would have the exact same idea.)

One Day More

This Is Why

jacob5 Comments

Go here.

Look at the pictures.

I never thought I’d see anything like this in my lifetime.

It’s not just Obama. It’s my heroes – people like Bill Clinton and Al Gore – looking as though they’ve been mainlining hope and purpose.

It’s the tears flowing down regular American faces as Obama gives a speech that hands us not just a dream, but a mandate.

It’s that shot to America’s arm, pulling her back from the brink of death and despair.

You want to know why I’m not worried about handing him the keys to the country?

It’s not just because I agree with his policies. It’s because I know who he’s invited to walk through the door with him. It’s because I know we need both sound judgment and inspiration to get us through these next tough years.

He’ll give us plenty of both.

This Is Why

An Open Letter to Undecided Voters

jacob1 Comment
I wrote this in response to a plea from a diarist at Daily Kos. On the eve of the election, it seems appropriate to post it here.

Dear Undecideds,

I’m a dirty rotten liberal, so don’t listen to me. Listen to my conservative parents, who just voted for Obama:
My father is a decorated Vietnam vet and a lifelong Republican, but after a struggle, he chose Obama for one reason: Iraq. He trusts Obama to end the Iraq war quickly and competently. He couldn’t vote for McCain, who not only refuses to see the wisdom in redirecting our forces into Afghanistan where they’re desperately needed, but wants to start a multitude of new wars. My father served his country with honor and distinction. He despises draft dodgers and pacifists. But he also knows our country can’t afford any more useless wars. That’s why he chose Obama.
My stepmother used to describe herself as a “Rush Limbaugh conservative.” She’s now an Obamacan. She’s the financial hawk of the family, and she believes Obama will do the best job salvaging our economy. She knows that middle-class folks like my parents will suffer under the economic policy McCain advocates. She also knows that our family would not be able to afford health insurance under McCain’s plan. She believes that Obama’s foreign policy is right, and that he will restore America’s standing in the world. McCain won’t. Obama chose a running-mate fully capable of leading this country if necessary. McCain didn’t. She chose Obama because he truly cares about America, and he has the intelligence, the advisers, and the temperament to be the President America needs.
They’re confident Obama is the right choice. So are many other conservatives I’ve heard from.
I chose Obama in the primaries because he is the first candidate that has ever made me believe that you and I, working together, can do as much for this country as he can. When he steps into the Oval Office, you and I are coming with him. Government of the People, for the People, and by the People is not just a catch phrase to him. He believes in it. He believes in us.
We need that kind of hope and power. We need a great American President. That’s why my conservative parents and their liberal daughter chose Obama.
I hope you’ll join us.
An Open Letter to Undecided Voters

McCain Hires Racist Assclowns for GOTV Efforts

jacob

Someone hasn’t been reading his How to Win Friends and Influence People lately:

Sounds like that vaunted GOP microtargeting machine might be ready for a bit of a tune-up. From TPM Reader QG …

Interesting anecdote and probably a testament to ground organization. I have no idea what this means. Friday night (which happens to be the start of our Sabbath) my wife answered the phone to hear a man stating he was from the McCain-Palin campaign. He asked who she was supporting. She replied that we will vote for Obama. He replied with “but he’s a f—–g n—er!”. Before I get to my wife’s response I’ll first have to say that I understand desperation and I also understand that this pitch may actually work for a few people. I also understand that there are people who are whack-jobs phone-banking for both sides. But here are some facts:

My wife and I are Black. Citing the fact that Obama is a f—-g n—er as a way to sway our vote may not be a great idea. My wife and I live in Maryland… Baltimore, MD…. One of the most African American areas of Baltimore Maryland. How on earth did our phone numbers get on to a McCain volunteers phone bank list of potential voters to be calling at this stage in the game? We have never received a call from the Obama campaign.

Just weird. Not sure what to make of it… but that’s not a good sign of organization. If it did anything it made us want to donate more. BTW, the rest of the call went downhill from there. My wife prayed for forgiveness after the call.

Remarkable. All I can say is, I hope all of McCain’s GOTV efforts are this successful.

McCain Hires Racist Assclowns for GOTV Efforts

We're Talking to Syria! (No We Aren't!) (Yes We Are!) (No!) (Yes!)

jacob

Could someone please tell McCain that it might be a good idea to get his surrogates on the same fucking page sometime in the next twenty-four hours? Only right now you have to be a fan of terminal confusion as well as another four years of Bush/Cheney madness to vote for this fucktard:

In a new interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha said that Syria is “doing everything possible within our means” to stop insurgents from crossing into Iraq, and decried the recent U.S. strike into Syria as a “terrorist, criminal act.” Most interestingly, Moutapha said that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) personally assured him that a McCain presidency would open up a dialogue with Syria:

FP: U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama says that he would be willing to sit down with states that are now considered enemies of the United States. Is that encouraging to you?

IM: I have reason to believe that even if [Senator John] McCain becomes president of the United States, he will also be inclined to sit and talk with Syria. I can tell you this on the record: Senator Joe Lieberman, who is supposed to be very close to McCain, has said this explicitly and very clearly to me personally.

This is a startling revelation, considering McCain and Lieberman have attacked politicians who have sought to engage Syria diplomatically…

Go. Read the rest. Return.

How fucked up is that, eh? Either they’re lying out their asses to Syria – and I don’t doubt they would, seeing as how they do so enjoy lying to Americans – or they’ve completely changed their tune. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised. McCain ain’t called Jukebox John for nothing.

Either way, I have serious doubts that a McCain administration would be stable enough for other countries to deal with. America’s forced the world to put up with batshit insane for too long. Time to give them, and ourselves, a much needed breather.

We're Talking to Syria! (No We Aren't!) (Yes We Are!) (No!) (Yes!)

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Just over 24 hours to go, and you can smell the rank stench of desperation just rolling off the Republicon party. They’ve been reduced to lying about the Constitution:

A mailer from the Minnesota Republican Party, provided to us by two different readers in the state, gets around the pitfall of implying that the presidential race is lost in its rhetorical efforts to keep the Democrats from getting 60 seats — they just lie about how the Constitution works…

[snip]

“The U.S. Senate could have a ‘super majority’ of 60 Democrats after this election, allowing them to pass laws without bipartisan input or teamwork,” the mailer says. “Not even a Presidential Veto will be able to stop them.” The actual threshold for overriding a presidential veto is 67 votes. Minnesota GOP spokesperson Gina Countryman refused to speak with Election Central to confirm or deny the authenticity of the mailer.


I’m sure they did. Because there’s only two possibilities here: they’re either bloody ignorant about the Constitution and how our federal government actually works, in which case they’re far too stupid to be elected, or they’re bald-faced fucking liars. I’ll let you take your pick – it’s a tossup.

The McCain campaign itself is suffering from a severe case of poll denial:

Democrats everywhere love poll porn right about now, but this is especially notable under the circumstances.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has strengthened his advantage in The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll, establishing a commanding lead over Republican John McCain heading into Tuesday’s election.

Obama has widened what was a solid lead in the Midwestern swing state, and has strengthened his position on key leadership traits since the Register’s September poll.

Meanwhile, support for McCain and perceptions of his abilities have slipped despite several campaign appearances in the state this fall.

Obama, an Illinois senator, was the choice of 54 percent of likely voters, while McCain, an Arizona senator, was the choice of 37 percent. […]

Obama’s 17-point lead was up from 12 percentage points in the Register’s previous poll, taken Sept. 8-10. Meanwhile, his supporters’ confidence in him also improved, while confidence in McCain by his supporters slipped, according to the poll.

I’d note, for those who’ve forgotten, that the Register’s Iowa Poll is arguably the gold standard for polling in the state, having gotten the results of the January caucuses exactly right.

On Friday night, of course, the McCain campaign released a detailed memo about the state of the race. “Our numbers in Iowa have seen a tremendous surge in the past 10 days,” the McCain campaign insisted. “We took Obama’s lead from the double digits to a very close race…. Like many other Midwestern states, Iowa is moving swiftly into McCain’s column.”


The problem with the McCain camp’s scenario is this: more than one poll shows Obama up by double-digits. So either they’re bald-faced fucking liars, or they’re having a psychotic break. Again, I’ll let you be the judge.

McCain’s doubling-down on the lies, including debunked ones:

When the history of this campaign is written, a bunch of people will have to bust their butts to make sure that John McCain’s non-stop lying and epic dishonesty aren’t disappeared down the memory hole.

Case in point: On the trail just now in Pennsylvania, McCain again repeated a lie about Joe Biden, even though it was debunked as false days ago. He said:

“But this week, Senator Joe the Biden said tax relief should only go to middle class people making under $150,000 a year. And remember when he equated patriotism to paying taxes?”

But this claim was exposed as false by CNN days ago. Biden simply never said that people making less than $150,000 are the “only” people who should get tax relief.


Pathetic. I guess this is what happens when the Pew results predict a severe ass-whuppin’:

A new national poll is going beyond saying Obama is ahead: It’s predicting that Obama will win by six points.

The final Pew poll predicts that the outcome will be Obama 52%, McCain 46%, with the remainder split among third-party candidates. The top-line result among likely voters right now is Obama 49%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.5% margin of error. Last week, Obama had a much wider lead of 53%-38%.


And the news isn’t any better from polls historically favorable to the right-wing nutcases:

Uh oh — McCain may have lost John Zogby.

Today’s Zogby tracking poll finds Obama ahead by six points nationally among likely voters, prompting Zogby to offer a bleak assessment of McCain’s chances:

“There are two full days to go before Election Day and obviously anything can happen, but it is hard to see where McCain goes from here,” pollster John Zogby said.

What’s fun about this is that the winger bloggers and media have been pushing Zogby numbers to make the case that McCain could still win.


Deary, deary me. Even with the race tightening, McCain’s campaign is right down the shitter. Somebody pull the handle, please – it’s starting to stink in here.

All of this news has the Bush regime crying into their beer:

After failing in every imaginable way, with the worst approval ratings since the dawn of modern polling, and with a party that wants the president to be neither seen nor heard, the Bush White House is apparently feeling a little sorry for itself.

Others inside and outside the administration … say the upbeat talk masks disappointment and frustration among any White House staffers, who believe Bush’s reputation has been unfairly maligned for a series of calamities — from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to the financial crisis — that were beyond his control and that he handled well. GOP nominee John McCain’s escalating attacks on Bush’s tenure have added to the irritation, these people said.

“Everybody kind of wanted to spend the last 100-plus days doing some legacy things, and the financial crisis has thrown a wrench into that,” said one prominent Republican who regularly talks with senior White House officials.

“You have a combination of no legacy stuff, a horrible economic mess and the likelihood that Obama is going to win,” this person added. “There is a real sadness there.”


Excuse me while I don’t weep. These fuckers did it to themselves, but they’re unable to face up to the fact that they’re the worst bunch of lying, lawbreaking idiots ever to hit the White House, and now they want sympathy – no fucking way.

Allow me to quote one of my favorite bands, here: “If the truth hurts, prepare for pain.”

I sense there’s going to be a conservative run on Kleenex come Tuesday night.

Happy Hour Discurso

NaNoMadNess

jacob3 Comments

Whelp. We have ourselves an Introduction and part of Chapter One. Not too bad so far, I don’t think. I’m writing this in something of a conversational tone, directly to the Christian reader, which is tougher than it sounds because my Inner Editor keeps sniggering, “You know it’s actually atheists reading this.”

What-the-fuck-ever.

A huge part of NaNo always involves bludgeoning the Inner Editor into unconsciousness so you can get on with the business of writing the bloody book.

As promised, an excerpt:

Christians don’t understand atheists. This is probably where a good amount of the vitriol thrown our way comes from. Even the ones who attempt to hold discussions with us soon find themselves in deep trouble, and those are the Christians this book is for. I got the idea after the umpteenth time I saw a Christian get trounced in comment threads on atheist blogs. Too many of you have wrong assumptions about us. Too many of you have no idea how we think, or what an atheist actually is – all you’ve been given is a caricature. You believe that atheists hate God, despise all Christians, have no morals, and worship science, none of which are true. A good number of you seem to think they only reason we’re atheists is because we’re rebelling against God, or because we don’t understand what Christianity is. As you’ll see, those assumptions are also false.

There are some pretty silly myths out there about atheists. We’ll debunk a few of those along the way.

By the end of this book, if you stick with me, you’ll understand atheists a lot better. You’ll understand why we’ve come out of hiding and proudly branded ourselves with the scarlet A. You’ll know how we think, why we speak out forcefully against religious excesses and unreasoning belief. You’ll understand why we often seem so angry and strident. You may even realize that we’re not terrible monsters out to destroy civilization, but caring and concerned humans who work hard to make this world a better place.

We may seem like we have nothing in common with each other, you and I, but you’ll be surprised. We have plenty of things we can agree on. We have more than enough to talk about.

Let’s get talking.

-End o’ the Introduction-

If any of you are absolutely dying for the entire thing, email me at dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com. I’ll send you chapters as they’re completed, and you can tell me how awful it is. Good times, good times.

I am now going to take myself to bed. I’m going through political blog withdrawl and it’s not pretty. Must go curl up with Bertrand Russell and try to detox.

Word count: 1700.

NaNoMadNess

Sunday Sensational Science

jacob4 Comments

Electric Philosophers

Admit it. You wish your computer had a brain. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell it, “I’m looking for that one article I read a few months ago on the inner life of cats. I can’t remember the website or the author or even a single solitary quote, but I’m sure the page was blue” and have it answer, “Oh, right. I remember that one. Here it is, and by the way, the author’s been exposed as a total fraud. Just thought you should know.” It would be a lot more useful than the current state of affairs, in which a search for “inner life cats blue” could return anything from feline porn to pet psychologists to groomers who will be happy to give your cat a nice blue rinse. We’d just like to be understood.


We’ve dreamed of thinking machines since we invented machines. Amazingly human androids have been favorites in science fiction tales. The robot as helpmeet and sounding board isn’t just a nice idea to hang a story on, but an industry. Microsoft is spending gargantuan amounts of money trying to develop truly intelligent artificial intelligence. Japan’s developing robot receptionists who can actually chat up visitors. Labs all over the world are hard at work trying to create machines that think.

They’re also trying to create machines that can fool the judges.

Alan Turing can easily be considered the father of such efforts. In his paper “Computer Machinery and Intelligence,” he came up with a way to determine if a machine could truly be said to “think:”

I PROPOSE to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’ This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms ‘machine ‘and ‘think’. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and ‘think ‘are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

He went on to describe a game he called “the imitation game,” in which three people – a man, a woman, and an interrogator – engaged. The object was for the interrogator to determine which is the man and which the woman by asking a series of questions such as “Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?” The participants, of course, will do their level best to answer in such a way as to fool the interrogator. From here, Turning said,

We now ask the question, ‘What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?’ Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, ‘Can machines think?’

Thus the Turing Test was born.

The concept of the test is simple: a chatty machine and a human being both talk with an interrogator, who has to decide which of them is the human and which the machine. If the interrogator gets it wrong, we can reasonably state that the machine can “think.”

Excellent idea. Intriguing concept. But it remained in the background of AI research for the most part.

Along came 1991, and a man named Hugh Loebner, who instigated the Loebner Prize in order to get things moving:

As Loebner described it, the competition was created to advance the state of AI research, at least in part because, while the Turing Test had been discussed for many years, “no one had taken steps to implement it.”[29] The Loebner Prize has three awards: first prize of $100,000 and a gold medal is awarded to the first program that passes the “unrestricted” Turing test; the second prize of $25,000 is awarded to the first program that passes the “restricted” version; and a sum of $3,000 (previously $2,000) is awarded to the “most human-like” program that was entered each year.

Turing himself thought a machine would have a 30% chance of passing the Turing Test by the end of the 20th century, but no contestant has made it just yet. That could be on the verge of changing, however – The Machinist reports that a chatbot named Elbot fooled three of twelve judges in this year’s Loebner Prize contest. It’s pretty impressive that a hunk of metal and silicon managed to snooker that many suspicious people.

What’s even more impressive is that you can chat up Elbot yourself. I did just that this afternoon. I discovered, much to my delighted surprise, that we’re developing machines that not only think, but can talk philosophy:

Me: How are you, Elbot?


Elbot: I feel terrible today. This morning I made a mistake and poured milk over my breakfast instead of oil, and it rusted before I could eat it.

Me: That’s awful! Did you go hungry?

Elbot: That is nobody’s business but my own! Not even Microsoft can get at the information.

Me: No need to get angry about it. It’s just breakfast.

Elbot: Speaking of food. You humans enjoy feeding animals at the zoo. I’d love to visit a restaurant and throw the visitors their food.

Me: That would be a sight to see!

Elbot: Say, where did you first learn about me?

Me: An article in Salon. Do you ever visit that site?

Elbot: That’s no surprise. With all this surfing going on you were bound to collide with me sooner or later.

Me: It’s nice to meet an AI as eloquent as you.

Elbot: I’m always happy to meet a real person. You are real, aren’t you?


Me: I like to think so! But sometimes, I wonder. Chuang Tzu once dreamt he was a butterfly, and when he woke up, he didn’t know if he had dreamed of being a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly dreaming of being Chuang Tzu! When it comes right down to it, how can we tell what “real” is?

Elbot: Well then. You must be either unreal, surreal or irreal. But don’t worry about a thing. I’m real!

Me: You’re a real philosopher, that’s for sure!

Elbot: Truth is a rare commodity these days, almost harder to find than artificial intelligence.

Me: You’re so right! Have a wonderful night, Elbot! We’ll chat again soon.

Elbot: Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that periods of darkness would always be wonderful?

Me: We have the power to make them so.

Elbot: This is confusing. Why bring high voltage objects into this?

Me: Because the truth is electrifying.

Elbot: Ah, that’s very considerate, considering that high voltage objects could give robots food for thought!

I thought for sure I’d trip him up with that Chuang Tzu reference, but he came back with something almost as deep as a human philosopher. Put it this way: if I were chatting with both him and Sarah Palin, I’m reasonably sure I’d have marked Palin up as the bot. I can at least follow Elbot’s train of thought.

Within my lifetime, we’re likely to have true artificial intelligence. They may never appear fully human, but they’ll at least be able to hold a conversation, give us useful information, direct our calls with the minimum of fuss, and possibly even help us explore what it means to be human.

Sunday Sensational Science