King James Programming 184
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "What do you get when you train a Markov chain on the King James Bible and a copy of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs? King James Programming — a tumblr of auto-generated pseudo-scripture (or pseudo-compsci lessons). Some examples: -- 'The LORD is the beginning (or prefix) of the code for the body of the procedure.' -- 'More precisely, if P and Q are polynomials, let O1 be the order of blessed.' -- ''In APL all data are represented as arrays, and there shall they see the Son of man, in whose sight I brought them out.'"
Hey!!! (Score:5, Funny)
It actually makes more sense!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It actually makes more sense!
Which book?
Re:Hey!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Blessed be the Lisp makers, for they shall inherit the special forms.
Re:Hey!!! (Score:4, Funny)
"the lisp makers?"
"well, I think he was referring to makers of all nested paren languages."
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hey!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I love my new signature...
Re:Hey!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
That stuff totally needs to go into a fortune file. And then be included in the default fortune files of all major distros.
Re: (Score:2)
"help! I'm being held prisoner in a markov chain gang!"
Jesix (Score:5, Funny)
They should use this to develop Jesix, or whatever it was called. You know, that Linux distro where they changed potentially offensive commands like "mount".
Re:Jesix (Score:5, Funny)
What about the Sermon on the /mnt?
or /mnt/sermon?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
So mount is bad but what about "dicked" as in, "I got dicked around by that asshole."
http://pudge.net/jesux/ [pudge.net]
Man, these guys are total fucktards:
The one positive piece of information I could find on the site was
Re: (Score:3)
It is a joke. [pudge.net] Relax.
Re: (Score:2)
It takes a certain Je ne sais quoi to get whooshed by a 14-year-old parody. I salute you, Sir|Ma'am|Fido.
Re: (Score:2)
Man, these guys are total fucktards: ...
Before you start throwing incendiary names at people, perhaps you should consider reading the About page [pudge.net] ... It makes you out to be the type of person whose only exercise is jumping to conclusions. (I don't know if you really are or not; that's not my business, nor is it any of my concern.)
Re: (Score:2)
Poe's Law in action.
It's impossible to recognise satire like that accurately because there really are some extreme Christians who go to such lengths. Pensacola Christian College, for example, has been known to suspend students for making excessively long eye contact with someone of the opposite sex and has official rules (not just informal, they are written down in the rulebook) prohibiting such sinful activities as visiting the home of an unmarried person, dancing, visiting a cinema or being present in a m
Re: (Score:3)
And he called the people to him and said to them, âoeHear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.â -- Matthew 15:10-11.
Or maybe that's saying that you have to swallow, not spit. The Bible can be cryptic sometimes.
But that's my whole point. The Bible doesn't say words like "mount" are offensive. PEOPLE decide that. And most commonly, people who preach from pulpits.
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure if youre aware, but theres an entire book of the bible dedicated to how sex is a beautiful thing.
Still strawmen are always fun i guess.
Re: (Score:2)
We are nefesh chaya, the implications of which I won't get into here, as you won't be interested and evolution will inevitably sort you out anyway.
Sorry if you have a different interpretation here, but doesn't "nefesh chaya" translate as something like "living beast" (alternatively, "living soul", but passages that mention it specifically allude to the fact that all animals posess this quality)? Aren't all animals nefesh chaya (or possessing nefesh chaya, depending on your definition), making your distinction meaningless in this context?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1. Living beings.
1.1 animals (in no particular order)
1.1.1 mammals, marsupials etc all things that live, breath, eat, shit, breed
1.1.2 birds
1.1.3 fish
1.2. plants i.e. trees flowers etc
1.3 bacteria/viruses etc
Humans are only "dominate" because we evolved a little further than others i.e chimpanzees and humans share 98% DNA ( I think we share about 40% with cauliflower). BUT we are still
Re: (Score:2)
There is not a single thing anywhere in existence that makes the first form objectively preferable, much less mandatory.
There is such a thing; it's called scientific biology.
Re: (Score:2)
i think your mind is closed to reality and need a superiority complex to try and justify "we are not animals".
If you haven't noticed yet, Empiric is the local religious loony. Oftentimes I wonder if he's real, or just a very clever troll. But then again, I've seen sad cases like that in real life (very few, fortunately, due to me residing in very much an atheistic country), he's probably real.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nice navel-gazing ad hominem with a little psychic projection.
Move on to an argument whenever you are ready.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm amazed you cannot see this as an arbitrary categorical construct.
These can be organized innumerable ways, none of which would have exclusive metaphysical "correctness".
Well, as I said, I am perfectly willing to respect your demand that you be considered an animal. There is simply no actual reason you can expand that to what "we" are. That is a freely-chosen and arbitrary preference you've made for yourself, by acceding to a practically-useful categorical system as the exclusively valid one.
I suggest r
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then, the specific "ties to reality", so we can evaluate their objective weight for a given domain. You are assuming one domain of applicability, which you have no reason to do other than, I suggest, conceptual laziness.
I'm quite well aware of the practical usefulness of the categorical system for given domains, and its status as "common sense". Neither of these is the question at hand.
Re: (Score:2)
The characterization of humans as animals is, indeed, arbitrary, just as the heliocentric solar system is arbitrary. Ptlomeics CAN handle the same information.
I would be interested in the definition that you use for animal that includes all other animals, and does not include humans.
Re: (Score:2)
Finally, a reasonable and pertinent response.
Though I could probably refine it, "living beings not possessing the attribute of an immortal soul" would probably do. This could be open to scientific objections, but not definitional ones.
Note that there could be bipedal, clothes-wearing hominids included by this definition, particularly if their self-reported possession of a soul is negative. I am well aware of that.
Re: (Score:2)
What test is used for the presence of a soul? Please note that self reporting is not a valid test, as it's easy to program such an assertion in a loop.
Also, on what basis do you assert that my dog doesn't have a soul?
Re: (Score:2)
I've replied elsewhere, but I think this would be another good place to point this out. "Nefesh Shaya" appears in Genesis 1:20-21:
20: And God said: "Let the waters teem with crawling beings of living soul (Nefesh Chaya) and birds that fly over the earth across the expanse of the heavens."
21: And God created the great sea giants and every living soul (nefesh hachaya) which creeps that the waters teemed with their kinds; and all winged bird to its kind. And God saw that it was good
So, based on that, your original claim that "nefesh shaya" is what differentiates us from animals is nonsense since, by some translations, it literally means "animal". By other translations, it still means something that, at the very least, definitely applies to some sea life. So, is it that humans and lobsters are special and unique and apart from all other living things, or are
Re: (Score:2)
I made no such claim. The term is not an attribute, it is a descriptor.
It is best translated as "living soul", which does indeed include humans and animals. Note that this term does not imply "immortal soul".
As I later explicitly used English for in an elaborating argument, categorizing both humans and animals as "living souls" (or "living beings") is not synonymous with stating that humans are a subcategory of ani
Re: (Score:2)
You are simply declaring it "not a valid test" on the basis of... nothing. It may not conform to your epistemological preferences, but that hardly matters.
Self-reporting is a valid indicator for phenomena of consciousness that are not easily subjected to quantification by scientific instruments. I can certainly ask for someone's self-reported stance on whether Mondays make
Re: (Score:2)
Recounting events that happened from the perspective of being "outside the body" while comatose is such evidence. Perceiving "from outside oneself" could arguably be a hallucination, recounting actual events requiring visual and auditory perception to know, that occurred while one was in a comatose state, could not.
Here's one source. [altervista.org]
Re: (Score:2)
"...your original claim that 'nefesh shaya' is what differentiates us from animals..."
I made no such claim. The term is not an attribute, it is a descriptor.
First, it seems to me that you did make such a claim when you replied to an AC near the start of this thread:
In spite of that, a lot of Christians - I hesitate to claim the majority - hate to be reminded that they are animals.
I decline your category offer.
We are nefesh chaya, the implications of which I won't get into here, as you won't be interested and evolution will inevitably sort you out anyway.
Then you went on to try to be snarky and insulting and holier-than-thou by saying that the AC was an animal, but that you personally were something better. Anyway, unless there's invisible extra text in there that I need magic diamond glasses to read, you're saying that you reject the AC's categorization of humans as animals and claim that humans are nefesh chaya instead. This makes no sense since hu
Re: (Score:2)
Testimony is evidence. You can argue about the relative strength of that evidence, but not whether it is evidence per se. You have the entire history of the judicial system constraining you from equivocating/weaseling out of accurate definitions.
What possible mechanism allows for copying software onto a thumb drive, executing it on another machine, then copying its "state" back? You simply need a substrate for this, and although such things as dark matter could suffice to maintain state, we do not need a
Re: (Score:2)
As you might guess, I reject that this is a "debunking" at all. Looks like mainly a tautological argument that "consciousness is only the brain, therefore any claims of consciousness apart from the brain are false".
With some Appeal to Authority and non-germane claims about "anecdotal evidence". Peer-reviewed studies are not anecdotes.
If you think you can debunk it, do so here. Handwaving a link, isn't it.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you are talking about scientific evidence, because you are compelled to go to a more restrictive criteria that isn't germane, and if provided with scientific evidence, you will find something to restrict it further, as far as is necessary to exclude it as "evidence". Fortunately, your restrictions don't actually matter in any way.
We can do a Philosophy of Science definitional dance here as to whether peer-reviewed studies are "science", but it doesn't appear it will be particularly constructive.
Re: (Score:2)
Not the least of which is the whole range of everyday phenomena within the scope of the Mind-Body Problem. [sprynet.com]
The paper says precisely what I say it does. Phenomena suggestive of an "immaterial soul" are
Re: (Score:2)
No, the -germane- question is whether or not there is -evidence-. That is what you are persistently evading by claims of dissatisfaction regarding whether the evidence provided is meeting what you feel like having as the criteria in your brain at the moment.
The question is whether there is evidence.
If there is quantified self-reported experience, there is evidence.
If there is scientific ("testable") evidence, there is evidence.
I submit that in this case, consciousness outside the brain is the hypothesis, d
Re: (Score:2)
Stop directly lying.
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough.
I'm a little puzzled though. Why would I consider your position "rude" to me? You're the animal.
Since we both agree on that point, I'm not entirely sure what your fundamental motivation is to attempting to enforce on me a category you yourself say would be "artificial".
Do you?
Re: (Score:2)
So, essentially, -you personally- feel the categorization is insufficient, and therefore wish to drag me to it.
Considering myself best categorized as "human" makes a claim for unique superiority?
What nonsense. Your metaphysics is incoherent. Deal with it.
Re: (Score:2)
That was code for 'orgy' back in the day ;-) /ducks
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Some of the marketing crap my company produces is worse than the quotes generated in TFA. ...I wonder if I could make a business out of outsourcing our marketing team with this algorithm...I'll suggest to my boss and see what he says.
Update: It didn't go over so well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because the marketing team does visuals?
oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Man, I sure hope so. This thing is pure gold.
Markov Chains (Score:1, Flamebait)
Wow, a series of probabilistic transitions between words has given us a mishmash of programming and bible gibberish. This is the expected result, but isn't even novel. You could do this with any N texts and get out gibberish. I much prefer markov chains as a way to produce music.
Re:Markov Chains (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not supposed to be novel, it's supposed to be funny.
In that, it succeeds quite well.
Re: Markov Chains (Score:2)
Not novel indeed, I saw this more than twenty years ago on The Practice of Computer programming by Kernighan and Pike. Still funny, though.
Re: (Score:2)
It's okay, the light creates the clouds too.
Blasphemy (Score:1, Funny)
The word of the Lord is not to be altered or trivialized like this
May He have mercy on your pathetic souls
Re:Blasphemy (Score:5, Funny)
SICP is popular right now, but I'd hardly call it divinely inspired.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"right now"? SICP has been popular since the 70s, and with good reason.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you read the unaltered bible or are you using one of the many translations?
Languages do not map 1:1 (otherwise, machine translation would be easy and perfect), so any translation inevitably alters the meaning of the original text.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you read the unaltered bible or are you using one of the many translations?
Languages do not map 1:1 (otherwise, machine translation would be easy and perfect), so any translation inevitably alters the meaning of the original text.
Uhm, what exactly is this "unaltered bible". Even the King James verison, which is the closest there is to a "standard" bible for the English language, contains more than a few translations errors (when compared to much older Greek texts from which it was translated), as well as some deliberate alterations.
Re: (Score:3)
"You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."
Re: (Score:2)
Uhm, what exactly is this "unaltered bible". Even the King James verison, which is the closest there is to a "standard" bible for the English language...
Um, I'm pretty sure that the Bible was not written in English and that the King James version is a translation.
Re: (Score:2)
And the greek texts are themselves a translation. Jesus and his contempories would have spoken in aramaic (With a little hebrew mixed in when debating religious matters) - their words were translated before being recorded. Exactly what they said is now lost to history.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Show me a case in the bible, or any competent translation of any text, where the translation meaningfully changes the conclusions you would draw as to its overall meaning from reading it.
And please don't tell me you've never even thought about applying this first step to intellectual honesty on this issue, given all those other texts (which, oddly, seem to get a pass based on the sole criterion that they are non-religious) surrounding you.
Re: (Score:3)
How about the "virgin Mary" which can just as well be translated as the "young woman Mary" from the (known) original? I give you that the same error is in the Septuaginta (the Greek "original" most translations draw from) and that due to this it has been elevated to dogma level, but the case stands: The Hebrew ha-almah (which appears in the prophecies of Isaiah that predict the arrival of Jesus) means just "young woman" and makes no claims about the sexual experience of said woman.
Not to mention that Isaiah
Re: (Score:2)
Given the cultural norms of the time, we can assume she was a virgin, or at minimum, the text was presenting someone who would in fact have a virgin for such a significant religious role, even if we stipulated your contention it referred to a different event. Yes, I've been over this many times. "Behold, a young woman shall conceive!" makes no sense in terms of an extraordinary event being presented, and the text is clearly intended to convey an exceptional event. To claim otherwise is just being pointle
Re: (Score:3)
It most likely would not change anything about the life of Jesus or how he is seen as some kind of "special" person. But it would change a lot on how religious people perceive virginity as something special. And no, "Behold a young woman shall conceive" is nothing special. And I somehow doubt that it was meant to be. Considering the value of women back in those days, I'd be very surprised if he wanted to draw much attention to Jesus' mother. It's actually a rather insignificant part of the prophecy, if anyt
Re: (Score:2)
Your analysis is based on the notion that you can viably change the interpretation of one verse and the content of the rest of the bible turns on that. This is false.
As is the case for every other text, there are reiterations of meaning throughout the text. There are "parity bits" throughout the text, by analogy. You cannot change the meaning of one word merely because it is a word with multiple possible definitional meaning, and thus alter every other reference within the text to have the entirety now s
Re:Blasphemy (Score:4, Informative)
My point is that with every translation a change of meaning becomes a possibility. A translation is by its very definition entail an interpretation of the text, which invariably will lead to a change of pace and meaning, at the very least the emphasis changes. It's a bit like playing telephone. You can actually try it yourself provided you find a few friends who happen to speak a few different languages, let the first one draft a short text and have the others translate it. Now add the temporal difference between the original draft in Hebrew and the KJB which is literally millennia and you're dealing not only with different languages but different interpreters that have a very different world view and mindset, a completely different background and probably their own agenda in mind, too.
You want to rely on such a translation of a translation of a translation to be the verbatim word of God? After at the very least three humans had meddled with it (provided the original author had some divine inspiration), in three very different time periods with a very different outlook on the world?
Re: (Score:2)
Lot of sheer unbacked conjecture here. Probably of the kind you prefer that can always be narrowed in its scope to infinitesimal differences, which you will then present as probably differences overturning the entirety of the content, and given that possibility of individual-verse nuance, the actual overall content could be any imaginable thing.
I'll suggest two things here:
1. Read the actual methodology translators use. They are generally given in the preface to any given translation. None do a "transla
Re: (Score:2)
Loss of virginity would have greatly lowered the value of a woman as a bride. But Mary was already betrothed to Joseph, and there was no real formalisation of marriage at the time, so there was no real obligation for her to be a virgin at that point.
A lot of modern Christian ideas of sexual 'purity' aren't anywhere in the bible - they are adapted from roman or medieval teachings. A very clear example of this can be seen in Samson, Judges 16. He visits and sleeps with a prostitute. Following which... nothing
Re: (Score:2)
--Thomas
Relevance is left as an exercise for the appropriate reader.
Re: (Score:2)
It's fairly clear what you're saying. You're saying: "nyah, nyah, you claim to know the music of Jimmy Hendrix, but you don't really, because you can't actually hear Jimmy. Only I can hear Jimmy."
Re: (Score:2)
"And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times?" - Numbers 22:32
Re: (Score:2)
How so?
See above.
Re: (Score:2)
No, because you can't remove that, and have a viable translation. You can remove it for the purposes of saying the bible is inconsistent, thus form an argument that it is invalid, but you cannot remove it to form an alternate functional translation.
This is quite simply a case of your translation being wrong, in the light of the context of the rest of the bible. The bible reiterates its core points quite consistently. Don't equivocate on this, you have no intention of, nor ability to, form what you are cl
I've seen someone code this way (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
The code (assembly) would then have 'goto john', 'goto paul', etc spread about. It was pointed out to her that this made maintenance more difficult, and she needed to use more meaningful, informative tags.
goto yoko?
Re: (Score:2)
goto dengo
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon (Score:2, Informative)
Awesome (Score:2)
Oh man this a special kind of awesome right here!
Funny Algorithms (Score:4, Informative)
This has always been one of my favorite algorithms. Saw it the first time many years ago on The Practice of Programming, by Kernighan and Pike. Always makes me laugh. You can use it to generate phrases or even psuedo-words that "sound like" any given real language. I use it to generate passwords that are easy to remember but cannot be found in any dictionary, of "fantasy names" for games. Have fun and plose some stilture on your cince! http://www.ploodood.net/ [ploodood.net]
Nice, but is it better than a pseudo random? (Score:4, Funny)
As a scientist I always test the null hypothesis to quantify usefulness of my research. They did a bunch of work, but is it any better than a simple randomized selection of text?
As a quick test of the null hypothesis, below I have selected a random bible verse and inserted into the middle a random statement from SICP after the nearest to center semicolon, comma, period, and or or:
God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, this takes two arguments, a symbol and a list, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
And we have seen and, evaluating this combination involves three subproblems, testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, However, if we allow mutators on list structure, sharing becomes significant, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me the machine repeatedly executes a controller loop, changing the contents of the registers, until some termination condition is satisfied, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Verses from: Random Bible Verse [sandersweb.net]. I scrolled around the TOC with my eyes closed, clicked a link, then repeated the process waggling my mouse erratically to select sentences from SICP. [mit.edu] YMMV.
Re: (Score:2)
You may want to review the term "null hypothesis".
Re: (Score:2)
So GP is claiming there were other plausible implementations of the same diabolically clever idea. So what.
IMO, testing the null hypothesis shows that it is the idea of combining the religious text with the technical text that is the primary source of interest. To me, the Markov Chains seem to produce more lexically valid outputs, but does not seem to be the prime influence of the humor or revelation in unexpected aptness distribution. One use of the null hypothesis is to show the degree to which the researcher's methods are responsible for the results by providing different methods or explanations for the sam
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of a classic from The Daily WTF: (Score:2)
The Neural Network that creates prose! [thedailywtf.com]
The pig go.
Go is to the fountain.
The pig put foot. Grunt.
Foot in what? ketchup.
The dove fly.
Fly is in sky.
The dove drop something.
The something on the pig.
The pig disgusting. The pig rattle.
Rattle with dove.
The dove angry.
The pig leave.
The dove produce.
Produce is chicken wing.
With wing bark.
No Quack.
*cough* (Score:2)
From the dedication of SICP:
"[...] I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. [...]"
Mark V Shaney was decades ago (Score:2)
For crying out loud don't they teach kids any history these days?
See http://glenda.cat-v.org/friends/mark-v-shaney/classics [cat-v.org]
My personal favourite:
I would like to be present everywhere
Grace is the âoeupdateâ program, which simply issues a sync system call.
Iâ(TM)ve received two pieces of email that imply that somebody recently posted the entire world with a flood, to remove all rational obstacles to believing something revealed by God.
I have to pass a tuple containing the existing Unix technolo
Re: Mark V Shaney was decades ago (Score:2)
FFS it's bad enough that slashcode seems to be 7-bit ASCII only but it can't even do punctuation.... and they call themselves geeks/nerds what a load of old cobblers
Quaint (Score:2)
In the beginning ... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Updating the database is trivial. The annoyance for me is that people keep clicking 'reply' on emails, so you can never, ever close down the old address. You need to leave it redirecting forever, just in case someone outside the organisation isn't aware of the change. It's just ugly. Worse, the users tend to insist upon changing their usernames - something that tends to make Windows misbehave in weird and horrible ways, when registry keys that refer to usernames no longer refer correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
Having just read through the New Testament and the first half-ish of the Old (to Ruth), I'm now left wondering what color the sky is on the biblical-literalist world.