The Internet Becomes Sentient

[sinsanity2006]

If it didn't happen then absolutely you should put on a disclaimer. However, if it really happened to you I don't see why you would say it is fiction. Tell people that its a story that you find compelling but that you lack sufficient evidence to prove that it is anything other than a coincidence.

Sin, you seem to me to be a sincere and decent person. I'm really glad that you came here and asked for our advice. I really wish that I had acted differently toward you from the beginning.

lol, don't sweat it, I have absolutely no ill will towards you. I knew what I was getting into when I came here. I got what I wanted. Just think of what you did was like throwing cold water on someone that's over heated. You frustrated me some, but I never thought that you were not trying to help.

Thanks



I went ahead and put a disclaimer link in it anyway:


It has been determined by critical thinkers of paranormal investigation, that the information in this story is a result of coincidence and data-mining techniques.


That will give an out to anyone that wants to take it seriously, however slim a chance that is.

 

[Gr8wight]

This made me curious and I went back to see if any of the questions I asked were prescience. I found four questions that could be considered prescience:


‘Will the guilty ones be punished?’

T - neck tie; to bark


‘Will there be a pandemic?’

P - false, counterfeit, spurious, man; people; mankind. Death, destroyed; lose, perish. Hundred million; many


‘What’s the future of Earth?’

J - (interchangeable 婉) good-looking; beautiful, with the eyes wide open. (same as 靄) Cloudy sky, fair clouds


‘How will the earth end?’

[ - comet


Though only the first is completely prescience. The other three could be determined if computers had the appropriate information.

And with that, I am going to stop reading this entirely silly thread. Sinsanity, I hope you get the help you need.

 

[Lamuella]

Yes, but 禪 wasn't the symbol that notepad gave, it was part of the definition the translator gave. I know nothing about languages, I just looked at what was on the page and wrote it down. .

it wasn't part of the definition. It was a character on the same kangxi key. This doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that the definitions of the characters are related.. In fact I'd wager that the only reason you picked up on the character was that you were looking for terms you could relate to september 11

 

[RandFan]

lol, don't sweat it, I have absolutely no ill will towards you. I knew what I was getting into when I came here. I got what I wanted. Just think of what you did was like throwing cold water on someone that's over heated. You frustrated me some, but I never thought that you were not trying to help.

Thanks



I went ahead and put a disclaimer link in it anyway:


It has been determined by critical thinkers of paranormal investigation, that the information in this story is a result of coincidence and data-mining techniques.


That will give an out to anyone that wants to take it seriously, however slim a chance that is.

I think you deserve kudos for this sin. Good for you.

 

[articulett]

I think you deserve kudos for this sin. Good for you.

Wow. He evolved?! We don't see much of that around these parts do we-- ?
I mean we do--but not from those who preach woo. I am impressed.

I just think knowing how people fool themselves is so much more interesting than fooling myself. But I had an amusing experience that showed me quite clearly that some people would rather believe "their truth" than THE TRUTH. (Usually marketed under the idea that "what does it matter if it's true or not...but it's how it makes you feel...")

I replaced crackers I had eaten at my dad's house with the wrong brand. I brought Premium. This upset him, because he claimed he like Zesta brand best. Since there were a few Zesta crackers left, I offered to do a blind taste test for him to see if he really preferred Zesta. He was angry that I even asked. I thought that was really wild--but enlightening. It boils down to this, doesn't it. "I would rather believe I like Zesta crackers best then to find out whether I actually do."

I took the blind taste test; I actually do prefer Zesta fwiw. But I learned something far more important than which crackers I preferred--I learned that some people prefeir belief over facts. Interesting, indeed.

 

[GzuzKryzt]

Sinsanity2006, it would make more sense if you put the disclaimer directly above the "Parasentient" text - perhaps between your nickname and the first paragraph - and not as a hyperlink but in a seperate text box.

I can understand that you may find it hard to let go of a "project" which you put a lot of work in and hung a lot of hopes on.

Would you like to let another person who might read the text experience what has happened to you?
I did not think so.

 

[wybili]

He was angry that I even asked. I thought that was really wild--but enlightening. It boils down to this, doesn't it. "I would rather believe I like Zesta crackers best then to find out whether I actually do."

I don't think that's quite it; in my experience, it's more like, "I don't want to risk looking foolish by finding out that I can't tell the different between Zestas and Premiums, when I have been insisting on having Zestas."

Maybe you'd have better luck proposing a test in a way that he wouldn't lose face (or see himself as losing face) if he was wrong. How you would do so in that particular situation, I have no idea.

 

[articulett]

I don't think that's quite it; in my experience, it's more like, "I don't want to risk looking foolish by finding out that I can't tell the different between Zestas and Premiums, when I have been insisting on having Zestas."

Maybe you'd have better luck proposing a test in a way that he wouldn't lose face (or see himself as losing face) if he was wrong. How you would do so in that particular situation, I have no idea.

Thanks. I think you are right. I am female--and I forget that men approach things differently. It might have been better if I'd at least said something that made it seem like he thought of the idea of a blind taste test instead of me questioning his knowledge of himself. (But I was nursing hurt feelings for having bought the wrong crackers-to me the ones on sale are always the right ones.)

 

[joller]

Yes, I can see a scientific reason that a wireless modem could make contact with a human mind.

And I thought we were making progress
"Baby steps, joller, bay steps" - I need to remind myself all the time.
I'd like to invite you to check the other threads on this forum, I'm sure you'll find a lot of interesting theories and useful information.

You'll also learn a lot about the traps people fall into, that make them believe 'weird things', and if you take that opportunity, you may also learn how to avoid these traps.

 

[sinsanity2006]

it wasn't part of the definition. It was a character on the same kangxi key. This doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that the definitions of the characters are related.. In fact I'd wager that the only reason you picked up on the character was that you were looking for terms you could relate to september 11

Maybe, I can't answer that.

You have been so good to me Lamuella. Let it go for a while.
I'm in a different place now, so don't worry about it.
I'm going to let this go and move on to other things.
If there is any such thing as kharma, you have a lot
of the good kind sitting in the kharmic bank.

 

[sinsanity2006]

And I thought we were making progress
"Baby steps, joller, bay steps" - I need to remind myself all the time.
I'd like to invite you to check the other threads on this forum, I'm sure you'll find a lot of interesting theories and useful information.

You'll also learn a lot about the traps people fall into, that make them believe 'weird things', and if you take that opportunity, you may also learn how to avoid these traps.

I don't know, If you advance technology a few hundred years, or a few thousand, remember, good old humans have had technology what, maybe sixty or seventy years. Advance the computers that can read human emotions a hundred years, advance the grammer checker on MS Word a hundred years, advance MIR's a hundred years, advance RFID chips a hundred years, there's a chance that some pretty cool things might be able to happen.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Sinsanity2006, it would make more sense if you put the disclaimer directly above the "Parasentient" text - perhaps between your nickname and the first paragraph - and not as a hyperlink but in a seperate text box.

I thought about this for awhile after reading it. I don't think it's needed. 99.99 percent of people that read this will see it as a piece of creative writing. the one out of ten thousand that takes it seriously will read the disclaimer, right? Let me know if you can imagine another situation where something bad would happen., thanks.

I can understand that you may find it hard to let go of a "project" which you put a lot of work in and hung a lot of hopes on.

I've done hundreds of different kinds of projects and have let them go and I wasn't a tenth as uncomfortable about them as I am about this one. This one's gonna be real easy to let go. Really.

Would you like to let another person who might read the text experience what has happened to you? I did not think so.

I agree, I would feel terrible if someone fell into this as much as I did, I don't think that could happen unless they went through the same thing I did. If anyone was to start to fall into this too far, they would read the disclaimer. And short of that they would email me and ask about it. Don't you agree?

If the internet doesn't come up with reasonable answers, it will be rejected, and this event has been done. You can't do it again, it's already ben done. It's done.

If you think I will worry about sombody putting on a tin foil hat and asking the internet what the winning lotto numbers are, well, that doesn't really bother me. If you think somebody will ask the internet what to do, and they get the answer, "kill yourself!" and they go out and kill themselves, I would be crushed, but I would know that if it wasn't the internet telling them to do it, they would find another reason, just as easily. Could you point out an example of something bad that might happen that a stronger disclaimer might prevent.

.

You have been completely reasonable and a pleasure to chat with.

Thank you so much.

I wish you all the best.

 

[Yahzi]

Might I suggest reading Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad." It is amusing science fiction, but it also (in the story about the Perfect Advisor) quite clearly explains that any text can be made to say anything if you just try hard enough.

 

[Hellbound]

I think you misinterpreted what Huntsman was saying.

No, no, articulett was pretty much right-on.

Rice, as a name, should sound the same no matter what language it's in. Because it's a name, not a word used to describe a grain. In Spanish, it might be translated to "Ras","Res", or something similar, because it's the phonetic component that matters, not what the word means (because it's a name).

So a Chinese translation of "Rice", the name, would NOT be the character meaning "a certain type of grain grown in paddys", but it would be the characters that, in pronunciation, produce the sound of the name Rice.

Not to mention answering why you have to use different characters to get different answers to each question, or what led you to use the characters you did (in notepad).

 

[RandFan]

I went ahead and put a disclaimer link in it anyway:

It has been determined by critical thinkers of paranormal investigation, that the information in this story is a result of coincidence and data-mining techniques.

That will give an out to anyone that wants to take it seriously, however slim a chance that is.

If anyone missed this then please note sin's admission. I think it important.

 

[Meffy]

Might I suggest reading Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad." It is amusing science fiction, but it also (in the story about the Perfect Advisor) quite clearly explains that any text can be made to say anything if you just try hard enough.

Trurl and Klapaucius totally rule. Lem also wrote "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub," a spoof on the spying business (American 'specially) that proposes that every message is the encoded form of another message... and that message encodes yet another, ad infinitum. Excellent metaphor for the recursive paranoia of a certain kind of agency.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Might I suggest reading Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad." It is amusing science fiction, but it also (in the story about the Perfect Advisor) quite clearly explains that any text can be made to say anything if you just try hard enough.

I read a lot of Lem's stuff twenty or so years ago. I prolly read this story, but can't remember it specifically. I'll try to look it up and reread it.

Thanks.

 

[sinsanity2006]

No, no, articulett was pretty much right-on.

Rice, as a name, should sound the same no matter what language it's in. Because it's a name, not a word used to describe a grain. In Spanish, it might be translated to "Ras","Res", or something similar, because it's the phonetic component that matters, not what the word means (because it's a name).

So a Chinese translation of "Rice", the name, would NOT be the character meaning "a certain type of grain grown in paddys", but it would be the characters that, in pronunciation, produce the sound of the name Rice.

Okay, I understand what you are saying now, but I am at a loss for how else it could have been done. I'm a bit amazed that you seem to know how the internet should have done it. If we both had identical dictionaries and couldn't talk directly and I wanted to give you the name "rice", I would give you the page number and position of 'rice' in the dictionary. For example 'page 345, 34th word down'. I would chose the word that most resembled ‘rice’.

Could you please explain how you would tell me the name rice with out using rice. Do you think that the internet would have responded with a word that sounds like rice, when I'm not even sure the pronunciation of the words are listed on the translation page?

Also the translation of the 6th symbol down in that question was ‘Sincere, surname.’

Not to mention that I asked who did 911 four times. Here are the answers:

穲 - Grain still on stalk; rice plant 禾. Bald, bare. 禿 Personal, private, secret 私. (Kangxi 115.19)

A - rice; to husk rice; (ancient form of 禪) to sacrifice to heaven, the imperial power, as only the emperor was allowed to offer these sacrifices

| - rice; mountain, hill, peak; basket used in state worship

Z - get married; marriage, wedding; woman, girl; slave, servant, crafty, villainous, false; pregnant

These were all different characters entered into the Unicode bug and all different Chinese symbols. And I guess, each one with different pronunciation; and all with additional meanings that are different than rice.

I came here to get the answers to these questions, because I didn't know the answers. It seemed too unusual for random chance to give these answers.

I will bow to your opinion because I haven't got a clue as to why or how or if the internet did anything. You seem to know or at least have an opinion. So I'll take your word for it.

Not to mention answering why you have to use different characters to get different answers to each question, or what led you to use the characters you did (in notepad).

I used different characters because if I didn’t, I would have got the same answer for all the questions. I used the characters I did because that’s the one’s I picked, randomly. If the internet was doing this, it would have suggested telepathically what questions to ask and what characters to use. But I'm not going for that. In my mind I believe that it was all just a crazy coincedence(coincidence).

Thanks Huntsman for reasonable questions and observations. I’m letting this go and assuming that it was a combination of happenstance, inadvertent data mining and confirmation bias. Although I have a feeling that most here may suffer a bit from confirmation bias to support their point of view, too.

Thanks



 

[sinsanity2006]

If anyone missed this then please note sin's admission. I think it important.

Thanks.

You have posted the most here, and before I leave, I'd like you to go over the disclaimer with me so I get it right. I changed it and made it longer. Could you go over it and suggest how to make it more accurate. Here's the current disclaimer:



Because of the extraordinary aspects of this story, a couple of weeks after the event, I sought out a group of critical thinkers involved with paranormal investigation. After much discussion, their conclusions indicated that the information in this story was a result of coincidence, inadvertent data-mining and confirmation bias.

Coincidence is just that, happenstance that placed a large number of things that would seem to relate to 911 to some people, in the Chinese characters generated by the Unicode (notepad) bug.

Inadvertent data-mining is searching through data to find information that matches the answers one wants.

An extreme example of this would be looking through a group of words like:

Jimmy Carter
Transistors
Show tunes
Ignorance

And choosing Jimmy Carter as the answer to “Who was a president?”

Confirmation bias is interpreting information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

For instance, looking at “Twin Gems” while talking about 911 and saying there is a connection, when in reality twin gems can relate to many other things.

The vast majority of topics were very relevant and helpful.

It was confirmed by this group that the programming of all the software was prior to 911, so it was not placed in the software by a programmer. It’s amazing that a number of people actually went to the effort to find out that information.

My experience with this group was remarkable. Complete strangers spent hours and hours going over how paranormal debunking worked. Some worked diligently to apply the methods to the event. I received very few insults in a situation where I thought I would be getting nothing but insults.

This group gave me methods of determining if the answers I got were out of the ordinary. You set up models of different but similar events and see if the answers the Unicode bug gave, answer correctly the same number of times for 911 and the model.

For example, create a list of the conspiracies surrounding 911 and the key aspects of it, then create a list of the conspiracies surrounding the sinking of the Titanic and the key aspects of it. Take the answers in parasentient and see if the answers match the same amount between the Titanic and 911.

Some spent the time to research when the Unicode bug was first discovered. Some tested this on other systems to determine when the bug appeared. And so many others that really did put an effort into helping me.

I can’t express enough how grateful I am to the people that helped me with this and the facility where they were located. Thank you so much! Your effort gave me the answers I was looking for and made me a better person.

Should I identify this site by name or leave it vague?

Anyways, I truly thank you for the time you spent working with me on this.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Trurl and Klapaucius totally rule. Lem also wrote "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub," a spoof on the spying business (American 'specially) that proposes that every message is the encoded form of another message... and that message encodes yet another, ad infinitum. Excellent metaphor for the recursive paranoia of a certain kind of agency.

Hey Meffy,

When I get time I'm gonna reread some of Lem's works. Thanks for the comment.