The Reading Room - 2017-04-30

« first day (2090 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2554 days later) »

1:08 AM

@Mithrandir Ooh, I know someone who's a big fan of le Guin. I'll come up with something to post about Earthsea, maybe.

4 hours later…

5:27 AM

Anybody here read The Man in the High Castle?

3 hours later…

8:08 AM

-1

Q: Why is the Turing Test really a test about gender?

NOTE: this question is about an academic article, which some may consider not literature. However, this question asks answers to analyze an academic article using literary methods, which is why I think it should be on-topic. Alan Turing's article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (which yo...

@Bookworm if this gets closed, I think it would fit on Artificial Intelligence...

@BESW I did.

8:56 AM

Oh, I just noticed that my rep is at 4848.

9:32 AM

@Gallifreyan Would "Who or what wrote The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? be a sensible question?

@BESW I think it's been asked on SFF... Lemme check

Hmm. It wasn't.

But it is implied heavily that the Oracle wrote the book.

38

Q: What is the meaning of the ending of "The Man in the High Castle"?

The end of The Man in the High Castle consists of: Understanding all that (and I'm assuming I'm interpreting it correctly), what did Dick want the reader to get out of this? What's he saying? My initial thought was that Germany and Japan failed to conquer the US because the arts and culture re...

philip-k-dick man-in-the-high-castle

From Wikipedia:

> Juliana infers then that "Truth" itself wrote the book

Nothing I've read says anything conclusive, which means that it's up to analysis to infer, and support speculation with evidence or discredit speculation with same.

If I remember correctly, it is very heavily implied in the book.

What's implied? That the Oracle wrote it? That the Oracle was merely a conduit for Truth?

That the Oracle wrote it; the guy who is credited as the author says he merely rolled the dice and wrote what the book said.

1 hour later…

11:03 AM

The topic challenge for May 2017 is Icelandic sagas - stock up on reading and get ready to ask and answer questions!

3

Can someone pin that?

11:22 AM

I though I'd post some statistics about the answers posted during this challenge - does anyone mind, or have anything particular they want included?

@Gallifreyan what kind of stats?

How many answers, most upvoted answers, the question with most answers, most active answerers - that's what I have so far.

April isn't over yet ...

> Questions asked in the scope of this topic challenge should be tagged with [scandinavian-literature] or [finnish-literature], as appropriate.

Um, what?

Icelandic sagas aren't Finnish.

Fixed.

11:59 AM

@Randal'Thor Hehe :) Oops!

12:51 PM

Bounty offered: Was Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum at all inspired by A Predicament? #EdgarAllanPoe #Literature https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/970/481

Tweeted by StackLiterature on April 30, 2017 at 12:20 PM

1:06 PM

@JillBearup https://t.co/yGVothntn8

Tweeted by Ms_Donkey on April 29, 2017 at 8:17 PM

user image

(So that people don't have to go to Twitter :D)

3 hours later…

3:52 PM

@Bookworm surprised it only got downvoted twice

@Hamlet Me too.

@Randal'Thor I'm certainly not posting the answer today, but I would like our challenges to have this sort of recap - after all, answers are just as important as questions.

4:06 PM

Check out our selection of 40+ questions about #ShortStories! #Literature http://ow.ly/FX8m30bf2n1

Tweeted by StackLiterature on April 30, 2017 at 3:25 PM

4:32 PM

@Feeds I posted this manually, but from now on there will be a feed (in dlvr.it) that takes care of this automatically.

@Shokhet Cool :)

...and I think the messages will start with "Bounty offered: " ...I hope I set it correctly so it retains the space

...haven't been here in a little while. Confused why this message has three stars.

Does nobody have time to read, or does everyone think it's somehow important that I don't have time to read? :P

:D

5:32 PM

You know what - I should nominate Roadside Picnic next year or so.

5:52 PM

I think it would have attracted more attention, due to not being politically-charged.

And it's not connected to Russia in any sense.

1 hour later…

7:11 PM

This answer is yet another example of why this site needs to move away from authorial intent, at least until people learn to distinguish between intent and meaning. I'm not asking about intent, I'm asking about meaning. Whether there is "no historical evidence that Turing would think a computer "only" had to clear the hurdle of "being as good as a mere woman" to fool a man." has nothing to do with what Turing actually said. — Hamlet ♦ 1 min ago

Really disappointed that the answer got four upvotes, mainly because the question is really interesting, and deserves answers that engage with the text.

7:33 PM

We do more than just stories. Check out https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/2444/111

Tweeted by StackLiterature on April 30, 2017 at 6:53 PM

7:50 PM

> If you answer with the first thing that pops into your head, you're probably going to get it wrong.

@Gallifreyan I am definitely not limiting this question to answers about authorial intent. (Although if an answer talks about authorial intent and does it well, then I may upvote it). — Hamlet ♦ 4 hours ago

@Hamlet If the question is not about authorial intent, how can you rule a reasonable-looking answer as objectively wrong?

> using gender dramatically changes the meaning of this passage

@Hamlet Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Gender was a simple way to distinguish two categories of humans who cannot be easily told apart by the way they communicate in writing. Why do you claim that choosing gender rather than some other characteristic is so important?

@Gilles by any standard, that answer does a horrible job of talking about authorial intent. I'm fine with authorial intent in this case if (1) it's used to answer the question, and (2) there is a clear distinction between intent and meaning. That answer does neither.

And finally, this answer's analysis of Turing's life essentially is "I read a book about Turing, and as far as I remember there wasn't any evidence of misogyny." I would hope for at least slightly more evidence supporting such a claim. — Hamlet ♦ 36 mins ago

@Gilles (1) because out of all the possible ways to word the passage, Turing went with the wording that involved gender

@Gilles OK, fine, I'll bite.

@Hamlet ??? I'm not referring to an answer, I'm refering to your question and a comment under the question

The Turing test breaks down the category between machine and human.

If a machine passes the Turing test, then it is indistinguishable between humans. This is very scary to a lot of people.

@Hamlet so what? It's an easy didactic choice. Why to you think that picking the seemingly easiest choice is so significant?

No conversation about the Turing Test can go without this picture:

Hit Turing right in the test-ees.

8:02 PM

@Gilles What the wording of the Turing test says is that the rise of machines will dissolve a second category: the difference between male and female.

BTW @Hamlet I should clarify that I'm familiar with the Turing test as a computer science and philosophy concept (I'm a computer scientist — well I was even if I'm an engineer now) but I've never read Turing's writings.

Because if a machine passes the Turing test as Turing actually describes it, then it won't just be indistinguishable from a human, it will prevent humans who identifying male and female.

@Hamlet ??? Where do you see that?

It isn't in the passage you quoted.

@Gilles so shouldn't it be interesting that the actual wording is different from how people typically describe it

@Gilles the test is: two terminals, can a human identify which terminal is controlled by a man and which is controlled by a woman?

@Hamlet that's a … a … I don't know the name but it's a classic fallacy

8:04 PM

Then, at the very end of his introduction, Turing introduces a twist: the male terminal may or may not be controlled by a human

you're attacking the “widely accepted opinion” without clarifying what you mean by that, without specifying what precise opinion you're attacking, and without giving any evidence that the widely accepted opinion is widely accepted out of ignorance or stupidity rather than for good reasons

And the question he asks is essentially: does that change the experiment?

@Gilles that's the job of answers, not of the question.

I'm just asking: why does Turing write the test this way?

@Hamlet and the point is that if they are indistinguishable, then as gender is a categorization that has no impact on what is sought (intelligence or more), so is human vs machine

@Hamlet without having researched authorial intent, it seems to me that it's an unremarkable didactic device

@Gilles ?

One of the interpretations of the passage is that the use of gender makes no sense

@Hamlet If you directly present the experiment as human vs machine, with an audience who firmly believes that machine can't equal human, then there will be a natural rejection of the idea.

8:09 PM

Another interpretation of the passage is that the develop of machines will break down categories other than human/machine.

So instead you present the experiment as man vs woman, and there's no such cognitive blockage.

@Gilles write an answer then, I'll upvote it

Then you go “oh btw it's actually human vs machine, and we haven't changed the experiment”

so the conclusion from man vs woman generalizes to human vs machine

But what is beyond belief is that someone would just say "Turing wasn't a misogynist (based on a book that I may or not be remembering correctly), therefor interpret the passage this way."

And that five people would upvote that answer.

@Gilles of course, I think this answer doesn't consider fully the fact that Turing uses gender out of all the possible things he could use, but at least it's properly argued. I would upvote it.

@Hamlet I also have trouble believing that you would frame the question by insulting people who might answers. Yet you did so (“If you answer with the first thing that pops into your head, you're probably going to get it wrong.”)

@Hamlet I repeat, what makes you think that there is such significance in the choice of gender?

8:13 PM

@Gilles fair point, edited

@Gilles because if a machine successfully passes the test, it means not that people can't distinguish between human/machine, but that people can't distinguish between machine/male/female.

There's a long literary history of using artificial intelligence to talk about reproduction without sex (think Pinocchio), so anytime gender gets mentioned I'm interested.

The fact that Turing is talking about how AI destabilizes the category of gender is very interesting. I don't know what it means--otherwise I would have answered the question--but it's worth thinking about.

1 hour later…

9:21 PM

Today was pretty uneventful.

I may actually have to start asking questions.

9:36 PM

@DVK-on-Ahch-To This question could benefit from some insight from the whole Noon Universe (particularly the parts about all countries working together, etc).

HNQ, @Hamlet. Hopefully your question can draw attention from the CS/CS Theory and related sites.

10:04 PM

0

Q: How to indicate what kind of answer you're looking for?

This is something that I personally struggle with, and I've seen other people have problems with it too. Let's say that I ask a question on the main site, and I have certain preferences about how answers should be written. Maybe I only want answers that discuss authorial intent, maybe I was answ...

discussion answers

10:23 PM

Ray Bradbury’s hometown is crowdfunding a statue in his honor http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/29/15486326/ray-bradbury-waukegan-illnois-statue-zachary-oxman https://t.co/KxJe2mIM5Y

Tweeted by evankirstel on April 30, 2017 at 4:45 PM

#OTD 1844 Henry David Thoreau accidentally sets fire to the woods during a fishing trip, burning 300 acres and caus… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/858785297739390977

Tweeted by OWC_Oxford on April 30, 2017 at 8:49 PM

11:30 PM

@Shokhet In case you couldn't tell, the question got 200 more views since I noticed that it hit the HNQ. That's about 3x what it was when I wrote that message :)

11:53 PM

Ooh, an argument between Gilles and Hamlet? grabs popcorn :-P

@Gilles - yes, you're absolutely correct (confirming from Russian text) - he is addressing the imaginary inhabitants of future Communist Arkanar — DVK 1 hour ago

@DVK I couldn't quite parse that paragraph. In my crappy translation, it says:

> "... At the end of the year of the Great Water - in the year X of the new era - the centrifugal processes rapidly gained ground in the old empire. By taking advantage of this future, the Holy Order which represented the interests of the most reactionary groups of the feudal society who tried with every means to bring to a halt the general decay ..."
But are you familiar with the stench of smouldering corpses at the stake? Do you know what it is like? Have you ever seen a naked woman, her belly slit open, wallow in the dusty road? Have you ever seen cities where human beings are silent an…

What's this supposed to mean? Who's addressing whom? What's the bit in quotes supposed to be?

cc @Gall since you're online and probably also have the Russian text to hand

@Randal'Thor Supposedly, those operatives are leading the planet they're on to the same future as Earth - communism won, peace and love, etc.

So he's addressing the future generations, and "quoting" a (yet to be written) history textbook.

« first day (2090 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2554 days later) »

Transcript for

Apr '1730

The Reading Room

Welcome to chat for literature.stackexchange.com — Read any go...

authors stories these-aren't-real-tags 💧🚢⬇️🐇

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile