Errors-To: owner-ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #561 ecto, Number 561 Thursday, 6 May 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Olivier olivieri + film endings replies that sex thread... Take three, no periods mutiny in heaven ai, sociology, androids, objective reality and etc. Machines/Life/Intelligence/Humans ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 5 May 93 14:20:06 EDT From: kosky@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Anthony Kosky) Subject: Olivier olivieri + film endings > >Go see it! It's wonderful, like all Agneszka Holland films, so far! > >Angelos >'it's going to be a long hot summer from now on'-TRB > I think I'd have to disagree with this one. The film struck me as overly melodramitic and in parts over acted. In addition it had quite a few plot inconsistencies, and the ending was silly and went a long way towards spoiling the film. Actually alot of films I've seem recently have been let down by their endings. Like Water For Chocolate, which would otherwise have been an excellent film, was also spoiled by it's ending. The problem is that, even though they shouldn't be that significant a part of a film, the ending has a disproportionately large effect on the lasting impression you're left with. A poor begining, or poor parts in the body of a film can be compensated for, but a film with a bad ending seems ultimately unsatisfying. I'd vote for Stolen Children (Ladro Di Bambini I think) as being the best new film I've seen in a long time. The children in it act wonderfully and it's a very moving film indeed. Perhaps Agneszka Holland could take some lessons from this: you can take an emotional subject and make it much more involving and moving by treating it with a certain amount of compassion and humour, instead of by piling on melodrama and impressive photography. In a somewhat different vain, I saw Splitting Heirs this weekend and it was alot of fun. John Cleese's part was quite small but especially good. On the other hand I should probably be careful about recommending comedy, since I'm never sure whether it's going to turn out to be one of those British humour things that no one else understands or thinks is funny. I remember talking some friends (who liked Python in general) to rent Jaberwocky once. I was falling out of my chair laughing while they didn't even give a twitch of amusement, and ended up stopping watching it half way through. Ah well. -Anthony ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 05 May 93 11:02:22 EDT From: der ubergoth Subject: replies hello all. since my network connection was hosed for the weekend by an over-zealous bitnet administrator who was on vacation, i had to ask jess to resend me the digests from friday till yesterday. yow. you folks sure are productive.... lusky@sol.hc.ti.com (Steve Lusky) sez: >It is a very complimentary review by SMU English >department chairman of Cecilia Bartoli's American operatic debut. Was >she a singer with Bel Canto, hah! you was fooled too! in march, i heard about rumors that bel canto was playing in (of all places) poughkeepsie, new york. further research revealed this performance to a performance of the opera style. fortu- nately, i had not already ordered tickets since that certainly would have been embarrassing to appear dressed like a ragamuffin to an opera (even in poughkeepsie!). robert@deepspace.nj00802.sai.com (Robert Lovejoy) sez: > I'm glad most of you have minimal problems with C-100s. I always >seem to have something going on. Last one in, the pack was so heavy >the hub wouldn't turn. i've only had trouble with one batch of c-100s that i've bought - unfor- tunately, they are the same kind that dbx uyses for the dubbing project. i had a similar problem to the one that robert described. these tapes generaelly are longer than the advertised time so instead of c100s, you are actually getting c102sa or thereabouts. for some reason, the last batch i ordered were actually c104s and the additional tape on the spool caused the pack to rub against the lower portion of the cassette shell. i'd say about half of the order was problematic (though only about five tapes were actually unusable. i usually stick to c90s anyways, but it is some- thing to keep in mind - especially when you are buying non-name brands. woj ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 05 May 93 15:23:43 EDT From: der ubergoth Subject: that sex thread... WretchAwry sez: >M7T will be in Chicago Thursday, May 13. pout! *when* are they going to come out here to the east coast?!? wah!!! Mike Mendelson sez: {story of person migrating from hetero to homo to hetero tendencies} >So now you say that clearly they are at least bisexual, since they've >now had both gay and non-gay liaisons. "at least" bisexual? is there anything more? ;) i've been avoiding this discussion for a while, but since it's about died down, i figure i'll toss in my two pfennig. my feeling is that the terms heterosexual, homosexual and even bisexual are purely constructs. human beings are *sexual* creatures who possess the urges, desires and capabilty to have sex with a member of either gender (note: "to have sex" does not imply intercourse, rather i use it to mean "to bring to orgasm"). granted, some folks may have less of a desire for one gender than the other, but, as mjm pointed out, i can't believe that a person will have fantasies about and desires for only one gender exclu- sively. the labels are there so you can identify specific instances of sexual be- havior. however, a person's sexuality can not be generalized from those actions -- it's just too complex an issue to simplify to an on/off switch. i'm not going to quibble with anyone who chooses to use a label to des- cribe themself -- it's a matter of comfort -- but i am certainly uncom- fortable calling myself anything other than sexual. (or ambisexual ;) woj ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 05 May 1993 16:33:29 EDT From: Chris Sampson Subject: Take three, no periods --------------------------------------------------------------------------- WARNING: You've seen some of this before....this is the third time I'm trying to post the ENTIRE message...Here goes... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, all, mostly kibbitzing (i.e., nothing of real substance, but excessive in its cuteness 8) >mojzes@monet.rutgers.edu (Who?)...(brni) (Oh....:>) says.... >Subject: re: the queen and the soldier ...that Dennis says.... ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 5 May 93 23:16:35 EDT From: mojzes@monet.rutgers.edu (brni) Subject: mutiny in heaven > >> By the Kate calendar I was born in the year 5 AD >> Ack! should be 5 AK > > Just to settle this point: AD means "in the year of our lord" >since Kate and Happy can be considered divine, the AD usage is more >than appropriate. > lord? that word always brings images from the movie "excalibur" to mind... >> By the Happy calendar I was born in year 2 BC >> Bah! should be 2 BH > > BC means "before Christ" Christ is actually a title meaning >"annointed" and though commonly used to denote Jesus as part of his >name does not refer specifically to him. Kate and Happy definitely >fall in this category too. > so, kate and happy are oily, eh? well, certainly Christ comes from a greek word meaning anointed, but in english it pretty definitely means "the Messiah, whose coming was prophesied by the Jews" (webster's), even when it doesn't refer to jesus himself. i'm really not sure why we would want to cast kate & co. into a judeo-christian mold. there are really far more interesting forms of divinity for them to assume. and as far as i'm concerned, they would be *most* interesting if they turned out to be human, after all... :) > So I used the terms correctly! :-P (nya nya!) :-) > > - Michael B. > i just want to tell whoever >> is that i liked the AK/Ack! and the BH/Bah! puns. :) brni "Puns are the highest form of humor." - C. Wright. ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 6 May 93 00:14:56 EDT From: mojzes@monet.rutgers.edu (brni) Subject: ai, sociology, androids, objective reality and etc. well, this is a long one. i hope you don't mind. mitch says: > >Brni writes: > >>sociologists (i forget who; i loaned the book out years ago to someone >>who is now in utah) have extended this analysis to practitioners of >>the "hard" sciences, where personal preferences, political structures, >>"fads" and etc all had subtle effects on what was considered "true" >>at the time. this, they claim, is a necessary condition of being >>human. > >As a sociologist, I would counsel against attributing this, or indeed any, >conclusion to "sociologists" as an allegedly homogeneous group. The natural >sciences have, of course, never been invulnerable to the influences of social >exigencies in the way they look at the world--nor have they been at the mercy >of those exigencies. The validity or invalidity of this particular sociologis- >t's conclusions would be easier to evaluate were his identity available; but >they remain just that--his conclusions, not automatically an indicator of the >prevailing way of thinking in this very heterogeneous discipline as a whole. > very true. unfortunately it has been years since i had that class, and the text went its way shortly thereafter. i remember that it was written by 2 guys, and they studied some highly specialized group of bio-chemists, or something like that. i never meant to represent sociologists as a homogenous group (hell, i've learned that you can't even do that with frat boys!), and was hoping that that would be clear from my pathetic attempt at attribution. >As for the more global question being engaged in this thread--whether object- >ive reality has an existence independent of its perception--I speak from the >perspective of a set of disciplines whose prevailing style is reasoning is >probabilistic rather than deterministic. In other words, rather than a propo- >sition being invalidated by any deviant case, as is typically the case in the >natural sciences, a theory is considered valid if it explains the behavior of >enough of the people enough of the time to allow generalization on a large >scale, such generalizations not necessarily being mutually exclusive with >others about the same social phenomenon. That said, the perspective I find >the most sympatico is that the universe is knowable, that regularities can be >observed empirically and sound generalizations formulated about them; but that >given the fallibilities of human perception, these generalizations are likely >to be imperfect, and subject to being outmoded by the products of better obser- >vation in the future. Natural phenomena, in short, do have their own reality, >which empirical science generally can, but is not necessarily guaranteed to, >capture accurately. > and i would propose that the universe is not knowable, that regularities can be observed empirically and *useful* generalizations formulated about them. i would also want to propose that perception itself is a highly dubious thing, subject not only to the inadequacies of our bodies as measuring devices, but also to the complexities of psycho-social forces that filter the "raw" data and create meaningful constructs. >WRT to Drewcifer on AI: I recommend Randall Collins' essay in his reader >_Sociological Insight: A Guide to Non-Obvious Sociology_ (2nd edition, Oxford >University Press, 1992), in which he concludes that a "live" artificial intel- >ligence would have to be able to anticipate the feelings and reactions of oth- >ers in order to qualify as "human"--essentially the same as the symbolic inter- >actionist perspective on the development of the self. > could you be more specific about what you/he means both by "live" and "human"? philip k. dick, the science fiction novelist, was very interested in this very question, and wrote numerous books on it. probably the most popular was _do androids dream of electric sheep_ which was turned into an excellent but not nearly as good as the book film "bladerunner". dick was less interested in whether something was biologically human or inhuman than whether it was psychologically human or not. in his novel _we can build you_, the android of abraham lincoln is the real human, and one of the human characters turns out to be the "reflex machine." > Mitch ok, now >> is me and > is jens. > >> in pomo talk, we say "the only truth is that there is no Truth," and > ^^^^??? >Que? > post modernist. >> stuff that is currently going on chaos theory also indicates some >> of this. > >Even more important, in 1931 Goedel demonstrated that the most basic >mathematics (number theory) contains similar unknowns. By then it was >pretty much accepted that physics were ultimately unknowable (due to >quantum mechanics and relativity), but at least the pure mathematics >were safe. Not so! ;-) > thanks. someday i'm going to read that _goedel/escher/bach_ book. >> sociologists (i forget who; i loaned the book out years ago to someone >> who is now in utah) have extended this analysis to practitioners of >> the "hard" sciences, where personal preferences, political structures, >> "fads" and etc all had subtle effects on what was considered "true" >> at the time. this, they claim, is a necessary condition of being >> human. > >Yes, this sounds reasonable, too. Not very nice, perhaps, as we would >like to believe that (barring direct misunderstandings of Nature) our >observations/models represents global and lasting truth; but very >human... > again, note the apology to mitch above. :) instead, the world we live in is not a world of "Truth" and "Substance", but rather (as nietzsche would say) a "human, all-too-human" world. > Jens P. Brage | No time gives us reasons for why it just goes by >brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk | And no man can stop the seasons > /\ | But so many men will try > \SphereSoft | - Jefferson Airplane, "Common Market Madrigal" oh oh. i've lost track of who >> is now. i think its mathew? drewcifer is represented by > >> >> Drewcifer writes: >> >> It all depends on how you look at it, actually. When it comes down to >> it, human beings are a form of machine. We're carbon based. We've got >> *really* complex DNA "programs" in us. Our brain is a complex network >> of neurons and chemicals. > >Oh, sure. The difference that I see is our extensive ability to alter our >own software...and, to an extent, our hardware. That's why I found this >semester's study of genetic algorithms so fascinating. > how much of our "software" are we really able to alter? in a sense we can, but isn't this really largely dictated by the forces that surround us? (for example, i can decide that i need to be more aggressive in order to succeed in life, and then go about taking EST courses or something, but is the decision really being made by me, or by a culture, an environment that puts a premium on monetary wealth, the accumulation of goods, and exerting power over others? fortunately, i've many influences that overpower those... :) :) :) saying this is like wearing a pomo armband (we are the Foucault Youth!!!) but i see consciousness more as a surface upon which innumerable forces interact, some internal (dna, upset stomach from the not quite good mayo on that cheese sandwich this afternoon, etc) and some external (parents, the church, who one is dating, the news media, etc etc etc). >> I'm a little confused by your statement that "...intelligence would reach >> a point where it's no longer any closer to human intelligence than >> animal intelligence." Do you mean it'll evolve into something Monty >> Python-ish (completely different)? > >I sure hope so. Wouldn't that be absolutely enthralling? > maybe. depends. it could be terrifying. two really good books (sf, again) that play with this are william gibson's _neuromancer_ and _mona lisa overdrive_, and another that gives a different perspective is roger zelazny's _home is the hangman_. >Drewcifer > brni mojzes@monet.vill.edu ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 6 May 93 02:17:05 MET From: brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk (Jens P. Brage) Subject: Machines/Life/Intelligence/Humans Hi! Wow, this discussion has really taken off! ;-) I'm going to do some heavy editing in the following, hope you won't feel misrepresented: Drewcifer said: > People rebel at the idea of an Intelligent machine, when what they > really dislike is the idea of a Live machine. I, too, rebel at the > idea of a Live machine, and I don't think it's something we can truly > accomplish yet. But what is life? In some ways we're much closer to creating artificial life than artificial intelligence: Simulated lifeforms or worlds have come some way, whereas the AIs are pretty dumb... :-) And as Michael points out: From a mechanical point of view, We are machines, too, just evolved (presumably! ;-)) rather than designed. > An Intelligent machine is possible, but the intelligence would reach a > point where it's no longer any closer to human intelligence than > animal intelligence...it would be of a comparable level, but it > wouldn't be of the same nature. I would agreed with this (and your criticism of the Turing test): To insist that AI must be like our own is far too anthropocentric. Such an AI would have two advantages though: First, it would (might) shut up those who refuse to accept intelligence in anything but humans and, second, we might find it much easier to interact with such an AI. Later Drewcifer said: > Oh, sure. The difference that I see is our extensive ability to alter > our own software...and, to an extent, our hardware. Please! ;-) Don't judge the potential of artificial life/intelligence by the stone axes we make today! Mitch took another tack: > That said, the perspective I find the most sympatico is that the > universe is knowable, that regularities can be observed empirically > and sound generalizations formulated about them; but that given the > fallibilities of human perception, these generalizations are likely to > be imperfect, and subject to being outmoded by the products of better > observation in the future. Natural phenomena, in short, do have > their own reality, which empirical science generally can, but is not > necessarily guaranteed to, capture accurately. I agree that this would be a nice universe, but it just doesn't seem to fit with our observations/reasonings. In particular, the Goedel theorem I mentioned earlier make *mathematics* unobservable (in a sense). And that is after all a matter of pure reasoning, beyond any problems of empirical science... Steve talks about mathematics: > [...] but it seems to me that many > mathematicians are no longer particularly worried about whether their > investigations have much correspondence to real-world phenomena. Such > correspondences are usually found later, if at all. Hmm, I think quite a lot of new mathematical theories are developed in response to the need for modeling of some phenomenon. Just think of the quite odd mathematics being developed for the new cosmological theories. But then again, I am an engineer... ;-) > Perhaps it is simply that I have a strong mathematical background, but > I find most mathematical statements to be fairly simple in meaning, > even if they do depend on understanding many other things about > mathematics. I agree with this: A mathematical model of something may seem a hurdle, but once you reach the other side, you'll gain a clarity of vision other models doesn't afford you... A nice example is denotational semantics for formal languages: Once you understand the mathematical model, you know *exactly* what the language means. Ob[well, not really Happy, but at least another Ecto topic. But -as it turns out- with a link to the stuff above]: I saw "The Crying Game" tonight (the following should be sufficiently cryptic not to spoil anything :-)). Great film! I wasn't surprised at "the secret", partly because of various hints from Ecto (so I had more-or-less guessed the secret in advance), but also because I found it fairly obvious. But, as various others have remarked, knowing the secret in no way spoils the movie (in fact, knowing the secret, you spend a lot of time wondering how it can be fit into the plot...). There were a few things I didn't like: The helicopter attack seemed rather non-sequitur (IMHO), and Jude(sp?) could perhaps have had a bit more diversified character (Miranda Richardson acted well but the role didn't permit her much freedom...). Though I liked both "themes" of the movie, I think the situation at the IRA base would have been sufficient to last an entire movie. Does anybody know of a movie which examines the psychologies of prisoner/guard, killer/victim, fanatic/military and leader/follower? I can think of lots of films about wars, both for and against, lots of film focusing on guerrilla groups etc, but none that examines the down-side of the "small, heroic bands": The loss of morality in the name of a cause, desensitizing of human responses and the games of leaders and pawns. Finally, I found one thing extremely unsettling: To my eye, there was an uncanny resemblance between Dil and the replicant Rachel from "Blade Runner"! Apart from looks, I think it also had something to do with the slightly "remote" aspect of both characters. For an extreme in this direction, I'd recommend a film with Isabelle Adjani in the lead role: Translated from Danish, it's title would be "The Deadly/Mortal Summer", and I think the French title was somewhat the same. Adjani's character in this movie is one of the most chilling I've ever seen... Jens P. Brage | No time gives us reasons for why it just goes by brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk | And no man can stop the seasons /\ | But so many men will try \SphereSoft | - Jefferson Airplane, "Common Market Madrigal" ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is an INDEX file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)