On May 9, 2005, at 8:30 AM, Gary Denton wrote:
I have suspected "Erik" is actually an Eliza-type program that responds to my statements with non-specific phrases that accuse me of lacking understanding and and stringing together phrases like an Eliza program. The program will be triggered by the preceding sentence.
And sure enough, it was.
There is never any factual content he indicates he is disagreeing with and it can barely be called criticism. Just an insult program that states some people notably myself are putting phrases together in ways he is not familiar with or the reply had a certain proportion of words he uses in the response.
This explains something else. I've noticed he (it) doesn't seem to be capable of *maintaining* a discussion. Not only is there no factual basis given for the discord, but the program then claims that its "time" is being wasted, and it withdraws entirely from further correspondence.
An alternate theory is that there are two Eriks. One is the one that makes grandiose claims on his website about being tolerant and fostering discussion -- that Erik occasionally surfaces here -- and the other is the dominant personality (here anyway), which is threatened by the existence of the other and does everything he can to suppress any clues to that personality's existence. If that Erik is threatened by the ghost in his head it's hardly surprising he'd be so belligerent about (for instance) religion, which in some ways can be seen as ghosts in others' heads.
There's a much more parsimonious explanation (two, actually, but I already suggested one in another note) but it would be pretty damn vicious to air it, so I won't.
That is one reason I prefer wolfling languages to Galactic: If I understand correctly, such a statement as that (saying something clearly by pointedly not saying it) is one of the things would not be possible in Galactic.
(That was one thing which struck me right off about the Galactic languages: I love playing with language (obviously) and think I would find it very boring to try to communicate in a language which is set up where everything has a single clear interpretation . . . )
-- Ronn! :)
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