Inquiries of the Lackadaisical!
Moderators: Commodore, Zenith Nadir
This is nothing short of inspired genius.
Quantum, you are a true man among men.
P.S. http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
Quantum, you are a true man among men.
P.S. http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
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Quantum P.
- Level 17 Accordion Thief
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nps is Lenin and Nadir is Stalin.
I'm going to make a long post here because you've inadvertently touched on a subject of intense interest to me personally.
I linked to the Moby Dick thing, because your cartoons reminded me of the Bible Code hype from a few years back. (That's part of the reason I considered it so brilliant.) The whole thing was rather implausible from the start, but it was hyped so much by the media that it seemed pretty convincing at the time.
Drosnin's argument included an argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) saying that Isaac Newton had also believed there were codes in the bible but couldn't find them because the computer had not yet been invented, and also made the timeworn error of appealing to scripture and saying that certain Bible verses like one in Daniel were concordant with the later discovery of codes in the book.
Various statistical and religious colleges all over the world sent in submissions to the media imploring them to ignore it, with articles like that. The same guys who did that article also found a prediction of Michael Drosnin's own death in Moby Dick, crossed with words like 'liar' and 'treasure hunter'.
I did a little research into it in my own field and it seems the reason it works is because people grossly underestimate just how much information you can actually search for in it. When you read Drosnin's book, you're assuming they picked out names at random to check them and found shocking results, when in actual fact what they did was run a full database of these names through. Think about it: how many assassinated leaders have there been through the history of democracy in all of the civilized world? Quite a few, and Moby Dick is a long book.
In only one case does Drosnin claim that he knew about something before it happened, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the circumstances surrounding that were pretty dubious and, of course, completely unverifiable.
What amazes me is this part:
"OMG GUYZ THE BIBLE PREDICTED DIANA'S DEATH AND SO DID MOBY DICK!!! OMG OMG!!" That people can be this stupid is mind-boggling.
What I'm trying to say is that finding 'secret messages' in Town of ZZT is in fact not as unfeasible an idea as one might think! As a matter of fact, that would make for an intensely interesting project. I can't imagine the algorithm would be phenomenally difficult to write.
Picture it - discovering that Frost 1; Power predicted that Ando would be autistic! Or Evil Sorcerors' Party predicting Quantum's comic!
I'm going to make a long post here because you've inadvertently touched on a subject of intense interest to me personally.
I linked to the Moby Dick thing, because your cartoons reminded me of the Bible Code hype from a few years back. (That's part of the reason I considered it so brilliant.) The whole thing was rather implausible from the start, but it was hyped so much by the media that it seemed pretty convincing at the time.
Drosnin's argument included an argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) saying that Isaac Newton had also believed there were codes in the bible but couldn't find them because the computer had not yet been invented, and also made the timeworn error of appealing to scripture and saying that certain Bible verses like one in Daniel were concordant with the later discovery of codes in the book.
Various statistical and religious colleges all over the world sent in submissions to the media imploring them to ignore it, with articles like that. The same guys who did that article also found a prediction of Michael Drosnin's own death in Moby Dick, crossed with words like 'liar' and 'treasure hunter'.
I did a little research into it in my own field and it seems the reason it works is because people grossly underestimate just how much information you can actually search for in it. When you read Drosnin's book, you're assuming they picked out names at random to check them and found shocking results, when in actual fact what they did was run a full database of these names through. Think about it: how many assassinated leaders have there been through the history of democracy in all of the civilized world? Quite a few, and Moby Dick is a long book.
In only one case does Drosnin claim that he knew about something before it happened, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the circumstances surrounding that were pretty dubious and, of course, completely unverifiable.
What amazes me is this part:
Brendan McKay wrote:It has come to my attention that some people have taken this page as claiming that Moby Dick really predicted the assassinations of famous people. Please be assured that none of these patterns happened by other than pure random chance.
"OMG GUYZ THE BIBLE PREDICTED DIANA'S DEATH AND SO DID MOBY DICK!!! OMG OMG!!" That people can be this stupid is mind-boggling.
What I'm trying to say is that finding 'secret messages' in Town of ZZT is in fact not as unfeasible an idea as one might think! As a matter of fact, that would make for an intensely interesting project. I can't imagine the algorithm would be phenomenally difficult to write.
Picture it - discovering that Frost 1; Power predicted that Ando would be autistic! Or Evil Sorcerors' Party predicting Quantum's comic!
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Zenith Nadir
- this is my hammer
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Dr. Dos
- OH YES! USE VINE WHIP! <3
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Town predicted Gorth's coming to the community to share with us the wonder that is Led Zeppelin.
Visit the Museum of ZZT
Follow Worlds of ZZT on Twitter
Apologies for the old post you may have just read.
Follow Worlds of ZZT on Twitter
Apologies for the old post you may have just read.
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Zenith Nadir
- this is my hammer
- Posts: 2767
- Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:40 am
- Location: between the black and white spiders
