tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3413308198974932470.post2936540181331335247..comments2023-03-23T07:40:52.029-04:00Comments on idleprimate: The Joy of Spamidleprimatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10287702981119643646noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3413308198974932470.post-7331868537698258102009-10-31T15:05:51.121-04:002009-10-31T15:05:51.121-04:002 points on "cognitive science geniuses with ...2 points on "cognitive science geniuses with 180 IQ's devising ways to market Viagra knockoffs":<br /><br />1. In the same way that sunset sometimes looks beautiful through air pollution, having the smartest people do the most useless things is just one of the sublime tones in the apocalyptic orchestra.<br /><br />2. this image was actually cited as one of the factors leading to a nightmare future in the passably watchable film, "Idiocracy". I could write an entire column on how that movie struck me as more of a horror film than comedy. I won't though, because I find it kind of traumatic.idleprimatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10287702981119643646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3413308198974932470.post-40146461399846214802009-10-31T02:30:19.937-04:002009-10-31T02:30:19.937-04:00It makes me imagine that there's some techie c...It makes me imagine that there's some techie campus out there where the spam industry is refining itself, sort of a Bletchley Park or Manhattan Project or maybe a cold-war arms race analogy is better... armies of code writers and cognitive scientists working day and night to develop algorithms to circumvent spam filters. Well-thumbed copies of articles on Turing machines, how to write a program that will fool someone into thinking they are dealing with an actual human being through the interface... linguistic textbooks by Chomsky, learning the structures of language that allow you to program a random generator to produce complex compound sentences that make grammatical sense.<br /><br />I don't know how I feel about the idea that there are cognitive science geniuses with 180 IQ's devising ways to market Viagra knockoffs.<br /><br />Oh, wait, I do--it actually sums up the spirit of our time completely. I don't know if there's a word for that feeling--something so absurdly bad, and yet absolutely consistent with the logic of the global game currently being played, so you feel that you've seen the essence of your time summed up in one line that you thought was a joke...Tim J. Moermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13029034123245749231noreply@blogger.com