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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 079
AIList Digest Sunday, 15 Mar 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 79
Today's Topics:
Philosophy - Consciousness,
Review - Eliza/Parry/Ractor,
Humor - Humor Interface Project
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 9 Mar 87 09:23:00 EST
From: "WHITE::PSOTKA" <psotka%white.decnet@ari-hq1.ARPA>
Reply-to: "WHITE::PSOTKA" <psotka%white.decnet@ari-hq1.ARPA>
Subject: RE: AIList Digest V5 #71
Consciousness and memory appear to be connected: but
what is the connection? Davis in a posting on March
7, 1987 offers the opinion that consciousness allows
us to be good psychologists; to understand other
humans in ways that a Turing machine could not. It
seems an interesting suggestion. If consicousness is
tied into memory, it is to personalize the memory and
make it distinguishable from external events; the
environment; the reality that exists continuously
outside and that we use so intensively to support our
mental apparatus. The external world helps us to
think in so many ways; cues for arithmetic in
supermarkets; support for troubleshooting complex
equipment (What would we do if we could not see the
instruments?); questions raised implicitly by
mystifying situations, etc. etc. How can we tell what
is our own input (memory) from what comes naturally:
we are "conscious" of the real world and this
consciousness becomes part of the record of the world.
So consciousness is functional; we could not separate
our memories from outside reality without it.
At least, that appeasrs to be an interesting clue to
add to the puzzle.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 87 08:03 EST
From: Seth Steinberg <sas@bfly-vax.bbn.com>
Subject: Historical Perspective on the Consciousness Debate
I couldn't help noticing that this debate has its antecedants:
"Whatever does this, reasons: and if a machine produces the effects of
reason, I see no more ground for denying it the reasoning power,
because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing Mr. Babbage's engine
the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds."
>From T.H. Huxley's 1871 essay Mr. Darwin's Critics - discussing whether
a hunting dog reasons. While this essay is largely concerned with the
origins of the species, it examines the arguments for the necessity of
the special creation of human consciousness (one of Wallace's key
reservations). Examining some of the anti-evolutionary arguments shows
just how shocking Freud's emphasis on the subconscious would be.
Seth
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 87 11:31 CDT
From: "Alan McDonley M/S 3719 (303) 593-5356"
Subject: Minds are a terrible thing to explain
While contemplating about methods of measuring conciousness, I was asked
a *WHO* question. Before I could say the name of the person as an
answer, another thought stream began. I knew the name of the person, I
knew which person I was thinking of, but for some reason I could not say
or bring to *mind* the name of the person. In fact the recognition of
the inability to recall the words flooded my thoughts. I contemplated on
the subject of inferences rapidly happening but not yet creating the
path to the name in my memory. I wondered if I should stop *worrying*
about remembering so that more processing resources would be available
to connect to the name I was attempting to retrieve, when the name burst
into my thoughts. Now after reading the AILIST for some time, I am humbled
to have had what some have called first and second order conciousness
experiences and wonder if there are separate processors for each level
or are thoughts the postings of time sliced knowledge sources on some
blackboard?
Ps. Since Clyde is an elephant, Clyde is a Republican.
------------------------------
Date: 12 Mar 87 15:07:15 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!its63b!dougie@seismo.css.gov (D Nisbet)
Subject: Eliza/Parry - A summary
I have had a fair response concerning my Ractor/eliza query. Here follows
a summary of the e-mail I received.
Thanks to all who replied.
From: "BARNETTE,JAMES RICHARD JR"
<gt5951b%gitpyr%edu.gatech.gatech@net.cs.relay>
Message-Id: <8703051751.AA00500@gitpyr.gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: Eliza, Doctor, Parry, Ractor, etc, ...
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
"The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" is published by
Warner Brothers. When I bought it it was about eleven dollars.
The author of the book is Racter, a program which writes English
prose. The program itself is by William Chamberlain (he also wrote
the introduction.) There was an article a few years ago in Scientific
American describing Racter. It was in the regular feature "Computer
Recreations" by A.K. Dewdney. Sorry, but I don't remember more.
The book is really just a collection of various short writings:
short (two paragraph) essays, free verse poetry (which might be called
structured prose), and even two pages of (horribly bad) limericks.
There is also one short story, "Soft Ions", which was originally
published in Omni magazine. (Sorry, no idea of what issue). The book
is very interesting; I would recommend it if you want to see what kind
of prose computers can write.
Although Racter writes grammatically correct English, the meaning
of his (its?) writing is usually quite bizarre. For instance, in one
of the first short essays of the book, an essay on love, Racter asks
"...does steak love lettuce?". Racter is good enough that his writing
might be mistaken for a human's, but a psychiatrist would probably
diagnose him as very psychotic.
Richard Barnette
Georgia Tech P.O. Box 35951
Atlanta, GA 30332
USA
--
BARNETTE,JAMES RICHARD JR
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!gt5951b
ARPA: gt5951b@pyr.ocs.gatech.edu
====================
>From copp@bellcore.UUCP Mon Mar 9 16:43:10 GMT 1987
From: copp@bellcore.UUCP (David H. Copp)
Subject: Re: Eliza, Doctor, Parry, Ractor, etc, ...
Message-ID: <231@bellcore.UUCP>
Reply-To: copp@bellcore.UUCP (David H. Copp)
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Keywords: Eliza, Ractor, Parry, Doctor, software, literature.
"The Policeman's Beard is Half Contructed,"
authored by Racter (with a little help from
William Chamberlain), Warner Books Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10103, USA. First printing Oct 1984.
This is a new publisher. You may have to write directly to
Warner Books, P.O. Box 690, New York, NY 10019, USA.
$0.75 per order and $0.50 per copy.
This is not a technical book. It tells you very little about
Racter. It is an amusing addition to your coffee table.
Martin Gardner (or was it Hofstedder?) devoted two or
three pages to Racter about three years ago (Scientific American).
Good article. The program itself can be purchased, IBM PC format,
for about $75--see the SA article.)
--
David H. Copp
(201) 829-4337
bellcore!copp
=================
Subject: police mans beard is half constucted
The policemans beard is half constructed was written by
Ractor. Its pres ently being released on micros by Hayden i belive.
Ive seen it for the mac and i bm pc. it an excelent program.
S.David Streiff
Univ of Hartford
W Hartford CT
BitNet: STREIFF@HARTFORD.BITNET
====================
From: Robert Farrell <farrell-robert@arpa.yale>
Subject: Eliza
I have a small but interesting Eliza that I wrote in T (a dialect of
Scheme). I could put it in the public domain if you want it. It
emulates a car mechanic and is a lot of fun. It would be easy to add
more rules or convert it to another lisp, since it is written clearly
and is pretty well documented. Why do you want an Eliza - just for fun
or for something you are doing (e.g. teaching pattern-matching)? I
have included a transcript and a few notes about the program below.
Just send me a note and I will give you the whole program ... it is
only about 700 lines long. If you don't have some sort of LISP to
convert it to, or don't want to do any work converting the program,
then this isn't the Eliza for you.
E E
D D --> "Rob calling"
C C
G--G
Farrell@YALE.ARPA *** decvax!yale!Farrell.UUCP *** BITNET:
Farrell@yalecs.BITNET
====================
From: Chris Price <cjp@uk.ac.aber.cs>
Subject: Re: Eliza...
Eliza should be easily available at Edinburgh.
I can think of two places where it is free:
1) In Poplog as a library, you do pop11 -eliza
2) In GNU emacs - a free version of emacs widely distributed.
Cheers,
Chris Price.
=======================
From: Mike Urban <uucp@uucp.sdcrdcf>
Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA
In article <310@its63b.ed.ac.uk> you write:
>
>I have heard about the various "chatty" programs which have been written
>to imitate Psychiatrists (sp?), Doctors, Scribe's, etc, but have never
>had the opportunity to play (play?!) use any of these programs. This kind
>of software interests me a lot and would like to know if any of them
>(or similar type) are freely available.
>
>There is a book, I believe, titled "The Policeman's Beard is
>Half-Constructed" which chronicles the 'works' of one of these
>programs (I can't remember which).
I have ported a version of "DOCTOR" (a.k.a. Eliza) to run with David Betz's
Xlisp 1.6. Xlisp is a public-domain version of LISP and has been posted
to the net in its Unix incarnation. My version includes an Esperanto
translation of DOCTOR's "script", intended to provide language practice.
"The Policeman's Beard" is based on Racter. I don't know about its
availability.
--
Dougie Nisbet
University of Edinburgh | <UUCP> ...seismo!mcvax!ukc!its63b!dougie
Medical Statistics Unit | <JANET> dougie@uk.ac.ed.its63b
Medical School
Teviot Place
Edinburgh
Scotland
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 87 16:01:37 CST
From: Will Hill <hill%hi.mcc.com@mcc.com>
Subject: Humor Interface Project
For the AIlist.
Remember the Viet Cong? Well, I'll get back to them in a minute.
This memo announces the formation of a new project, the Humor
Interface Project, sometimes known in revolutionary circles as the
Interface-esE liberation Army, or, IEA, (pronounced at the top of
your lungs, as EYEEE-EEEEE-AHHHHH... while drumming your chest).
The members seek no official status whatsoever and will accept none
when they succeed.
I am not a member of this group but have been retained by them as
their publicist for an indecent sum of money. They have requested
that I set before the public their noble raisin d'etre [sic],
their altruistic intentions, their anti-establishment methods, and
of course, their consulting fee scale and answering service number.
This project formed at a recent conference during the "HCI and
All Possible Universes" session. Or was it the "HCI and All Possible
Universes Containing Alcohol" session? Anyway, the group intends to
implement, study, reflect and publish about humorous interface
techniques.
The idea started with the question, "Suppose we tried to make a
computer act like Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters? Not staged
humor, not joke telling, not static cartoons but interactive...
contextual humor, adlibbing on material provided by the combination
of user and system programmer?" From there things went straight down
or straight up depending upon your perspective.
The group shared their favorites. Windows that crack or melt into a
slag heap. The MacIntosh IBM DOS emulator that, when fired up,
begins to put up a zippy MacIntosh screen, stops halfway down the
screen to declare, "Oops? Sorry. You wanted 195Os technology." It
then goes into command line mode. The supposed unused ROM hook in
the Mac that would have caused a monkey to dance across the screen
ONCE upon the 7698th (or whatever) boot of the machine. Insects
crawling around the screen.
As you read this, project programmers in ski-masks are already coding
up:
ELUSIVE MENU: When the mouse cursor enters such menus, the menus
dodge away while insulting the user with appropriate language and
gestures. Somebody informed us, this is just like the Mac Bomb
program.
CRASHING WINDOWS: You begin to move a window. Suddenly it
accelerates out of your control up toward the corner of the screen.
When it reaches the corner, it smashes to pieces, falling to the
bottom of the screen. Appropriate sounds effects are heard. Email
is sent to the site manager blaming you for the broken window.
AEROBIC WINDOWS: You begin to move a window and suddenly it
accelerates out of your control bouncing around the screen faster
and faster. It finally slows down an sits on your screen off in the
direction you were moving it, but huffing and puffing, sort of
expanding in and out. You begin working again, it's breathing slows
and stops after a few moments.
FONTS: that scream, melt, sigh or beg as you delete them. Giggle as
you transpose characters. Yawn when you come back to them in the
morning. Burp when you edit them after lunch.
PEOPLE INSIDE THE MONITOR: You get an error. A large face leans in
from the left, gives you a "Lettermanesque look", like he's got a
horrible flavor on his tongue, and then leans back out of the
monitor.
ENCRYPTION WAVES undulate through your current text buffer
occasionally stopping at your cursor to make stupid demands. They
go away for a while when you give in.
GIGANTIC SCREEN-FILLING BODY PART MOUSE CURSOR ICONS: You can move
them no more than a half inch in each direction. Need the
Interface-esE liberation Army say more?
The group suspects that a lot could learned about the un-obvious
communication possibilities of computational media by analyzing
successful and failed humor attempts. At least unspoken
expectations of interface experience should stand out in bold relief
as humor violates them. Misunderstandings of those same
expectations and experiences should stand out as humor fails.
Back to the Viet Cong. Remember that a large percentage of the South
Vietnamese Government was V.C.? Its the same way with the Humorous
Interface Project. You're part of it. We're collecting examples
of humorous interface techniques. They might be implemented or not If
you know of some, please send them along to will@mcc.com . We'd much
appreciate it. At sometime, somehow, we'll publish the best of what
you send in back out into the community. Send code if you like.
I'll end with a quote from the HIP group.
"The project is putting together a macro, With-Humorous-Interface.
Dare you run inside it? Who knows what you'll see and hear next
time you cycle through text called back from the kill ring. Text
YOU killed."
will@mcc.com
publicist for The Humor Interface Project,
Alias "Humor In Your Face", "Humid Interface" And "Interface-Ese
liberation Army (EYEEE-EEE-AHHH...)
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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