From: markbr%radian@natinst.com (markbr)
Subject: Re: Native, was Witches and death
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 19:14:02 GMT
Organization: n.o.y.b

In article <-1364866766snx@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au> gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>
>In article <1992Nov3.193347.3681@radian.uucp> markbr%radian@natinst.com writes:
>
> > I give up, Gil. Have you managed to develop such a marvelous forcefield,
> > I don't know, but I describe something, and the description just slides 
> > right around you and hits the wall behind you. You respond with what
> > are along your same track, which is somewhere off to one side of what
> > I'm talking about, and the issues I'm speaking to. I just hope you don't
> > have the same problem with the folks you work with; you seem to have the
> > same problem with Corum.
>
>Well, my classic repost here is that I have to live with myself 24
>hours a day, in person. You should be so lucky!
>
>Same problem with who? All I do is repond to text printed to a computer
>screen. You too could be another bit of software adding random phrases
>to key words you select from what I sit here typing into the Cybervoid.
>
> > What makes you think my bitterness about what's happened in this country 
> > is the sole causal reason of my desire to leave the planet, physically, in a 
> > spaceship, to find the glories of the universe? You haven't even considered
> > that I might have said that I've been wanting to leave since I was < 10. 
>
>I simply do not know what you want. Should I?
>
>I do not know you at all, for that matter, yet you appear to expect that
>I will simply anticipate so much about you without reference to any
>factual information. Until I get something in the order of the issues
>you write that you are addressing, it is all just pinning jelly to the
>wall, isn't it?
>
>Given that, I might just as well have some fun with it.
<munch>
>I don't "find a need to find a lack" in you. I really don't give that
>much of a shit about you at all, and I don't see any of this as of
>any meaning or relevance to anything beyond typing words to this void
>before me. If I disconnect it, there you go, POOF! Gone! While I
>continue to sit here at the very epicentre of the entire cosmos!
<munch>
>have been pursuing a science fiction all along for want of glory in
>the terrestrial lifecycle I assume again binds you to this domain?

Gil,
I thought some of your post were interesting. I thought you wanted to
add to our conversation. Instead, after reading the above, I get the
following interpretation of the above:
	"you all are nothing out there but a bunch of words on a screen.
	 I don't really care about them, they mean as much to me as the
	 actors in a commercial on tv, so I'll throw a few words in, when
	 I've nothing better to do, nothing that means anything, and if
	 I feel in the mood, I'll play mindfuck games with these words,
	 that may be nothing more that a fancy eliza program. There's
	 nothing out there that has feelings to get hurt, or minds to
	 get screwed over, and if there are, they should feel the way *I*
	 do about these words on a screen."

Does the gil program have feelings? Or genuine opinions? Naaah, it's
just trying to pass a Turing test. Maybe it'll do better than Dan Quayle
(who flunked...)

	mark