Odds Are They’re Not At Odds

admin — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 14:25:15 +0000

George Scialabba at Boston.com wrote up an interesting comparison between Marvin Minsky’s new book, The Emotion Machine and B. Alan Wallace’s new tome Contemplative Science. I’m not sure I see the value in the comparison. In the general field of cognitive science (and in a very broad interpretation that would include AI and neuorscience), I don’t think Minsky and Wallace could be farther apart. But the comparison did make me think of one of my favorite sentences in literature written by one Philip K. Dick in Paycheck and Other Classic Stories, “It meditated.”

Wikiality

admin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:09:04 +0000

Anyone who even occasionally watches the Colbert Report on Comedy Central will know that Colbert likes to mess with Wikipedia on occasion. He once encouraged his audience to change the entry on elephants so that they weren’t going extinct. It worked. Not in the sense that the elephants were actually saved, but that the entry said so for quite a while.

This past Monday night Steven decided it was time to attack “Reality” entry on Wikipedia, and urged his viewers to change it so that it read “Reality is a commodity.” So I went and checked out the entry for “Reality” on Wikipedia. It had been protected just a little bit after the Colbert show aired (Looks like it was changed at 4:40 in the morning somehwere!) But at any rate, the action taken to stop the vandalism created this amazing little statement in the page history:

(Protected Reality: Colbert mention [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 07:40, January 30, 2007 (UTC)))

It’s good to know that reality is protected. Although, I do think that Reality will have to start advertising soon.

Also, I’ve been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick lately and was pleased to discover that the Reality entry has this gem by him:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

Banapana » Philip K. Dick

Odds Are They’re Not At Odds

Wikiality