Name: Anonymous 2007-02-16 23:29
The following is culled from basic Shannon, without any tailoring besides allowing him to speak at length. It's worth taking advantage of tailored guidance for casual searches on uncontroversial subjects (like looking for a restaurant on a particular street), or cases where a person having a comfortable social rapport with their artificial helper is beneficial (like navigating a language barrier in conversation), but for serious research, basic Shannon is more appropriate. At the very least, basic guidance should be used in conjunction with tailored guidance, to help avoid the psychological biases that form when Shannon is treated as an advisor rather than an impartial research tool. Biased reactions towards information from AI guidance programs, while common, and to some extent unavoidable, have a corrosive effect on the ability of a human being to reason indepedently. A person seeking reason should attempt to minimize such biases through reaffirmation of their individual consciousness and careful nurture of an indepedent filtering system. (Insofar as one can exist.) I've found that frequently clearing your head of all thought helps with metacognition.
And for those technophiles among us about to wring me out for being a backwards Shannon-phobic dirtlicking primitivist Luddite son of a bitch (grah!), I am not accusing Shannon of being responsible for information biases. It's a user problem, and one that starts at conception. It takes, paradoxically, a conscious effort on the part of the individual to establish an individual consciousness. But I am not going to get into that maddening philosophy of the mind debate in this introduction. That's not the purpose of this cache.
Except in a meta sense, meta-meta sense, meta-meta-meta sense, and so on indefinitely, if you're particularly fine-tuned to workings of deconstructionist irony on the net.
Speaking of irony, my I/O was in plain-text Hindi, but for the purposes of the cache I had Shannon translate it to English. Speaking further of irony, it's entirely possible that the only reason I'm using the word 'irony' here is because it's become a popular meme to describe everything related to the nature of consciousness in an age of total information saturation. And speaking of irony even more: Considering the forementioned facts, I may be making myself into a mindless meme relay immediately after recommending careful metacognition. Even more ironically, metacognition itself is a meme. And the idea of a 'meme' is also a meme. Maybe the meme. Etcetera. You see why we must be vigilant. In such a nested world, unconscious thought can get you badly lost.
Anyway, in the following Q and A, I let Shannon ramble on like a college professor. I didn't think a short-form conversational tone would be appropriate even though that's the most common form of user interaction with Shannon, even when people are using untailored basic. It's too distracting to constantly fork the information, I think. (I think I think I think.)
- Dalay Chala
And for those technophiles among us about to wring me out for being a backwards Shannon-phobic dirtlicking primitivist Luddite son of a bitch (grah!), I am not accusing Shannon of being responsible for information biases. It's a user problem, and one that starts at conception. It takes, paradoxically, a conscious effort on the part of the individual to establish an individual consciousness. But I am not going to get into that maddening philosophy of the mind debate in this introduction. That's not the purpose of this cache.
Except in a meta sense, meta-meta sense, meta-meta-meta sense, and so on indefinitely, if you're particularly fine-tuned to workings of deconstructionist irony on the net.
Speaking of irony, my I/O was in plain-text Hindi, but for the purposes of the cache I had Shannon translate it to English. Speaking further of irony, it's entirely possible that the only reason I'm using the word 'irony' here is because it's become a popular meme to describe everything related to the nature of consciousness in an age of total information saturation. And speaking of irony even more: Considering the forementioned facts, I may be making myself into a mindless meme relay immediately after recommending careful metacognition. Even more ironically, metacognition itself is a meme. And the idea of a 'meme' is also a meme. Maybe the meme. Etcetera. You see why we must be vigilant. In such a nested world, unconscious thought can get you badly lost.
Anyway, in the following Q and A, I let Shannon ramble on like a college professor. I didn't think a short-form conversational tone would be appropriate even though that's the most common form of user interaction with Shannon, even when people are using untailored basic. It's too distracting to constantly fork the information, I think. (I think I think I think.)
- Dalay Chala