The dazzling array of angles -- a celebration!

I don't know how it happened ; I have a suspicion as to why, but I shan't delveⁱ -- yet the fact remains : the discussion meanwhile became interesting again. Let's thus once more look at things, perhaps even think of things. So :

The "doer of great deeds" angle.

The boy says : what I do, I will do anyway. Not every boy ; it takes a certain kind of boy for this kind of folly to appeal, but then again the follies are but few, new boys are born each year... each folly "finds" its cohort, it is inevitable.

Yet... if he is lying, why talk to him ? And if he is not lying, but telling the truth, why talk to him ? He will do "anyway", which is to say like a woman doesⁱⁱ, by force of natural necessity, in the dark, in the folded, incomprehensible dark where words do not reach. You may, of course, talk in the general direction of a woman pushing out ; but it's a little odd to imagine she pushes because you're telling her to. Talking at a birth is not particularly Northern a use of language, but rather African. It's what comrade Vyshinsky does at a trial, "helping it along".

I am not even proposing there's some kind of interdict on parties, or festivals, or chanting. I am just saying that while people certainly do make noises at each other, like chickens cluck, to hear each other's noises and out of this mutual hurr durr construct their passerine notions of safety and well being, it is nevertheless not what talking is. At least -- it isn't the talking I can be bothered to waste my time with.

The "failure of management" angle.

If the boy doesn't benefit from being told what to do, then why should he be ? Management obviously has a cost associated with it. In fact, management's one of the more expensive human activities owing to the peculiarities of its field. Rare and expensive as it well is, why should it then be wasted ? Coinceivably there's no use for it, at a time or at another -- this is fine and no great trouble, let it then sit unused! Who runs his mill on hay when there's no grain to grind the great millstones with ?! And if they did, how long did they stay masters of a mill ? Who eats the pills in his medicine cabinet at a steady pace, whether in need of any or not at all ?

The boy who is not helped by management has in common with the boy who is not helped by antibiotics the fundamental characteristic that they shouldn't fucking take any. Let them go on their way and be happy, there's no positive requirement boyhood must ripen into manhood whatsoever. There's neither need nor properly speaking space for all that many men in the first place, while the barns are indeed ample and all of them dedicated to some "alternative" path to some supposed "greatness". There's a barn for the boys who would be women, there's a barn for the boys who would be bulls, there's a barn for everything.

The "poisonous offering" angle.

If there's no relation between what the boy says and what the boy does, the utility of the boy's deeds will have to be evaluated without recourse to the boy. This is the problem with birth : that interrogating the mother as to the output is neither useful nor productive. She doesn't know what she shat out any better than you do! Maybe it's great for some intended usage, maybe it's perfect in some specific context ; or maybe it's terrible, monstruous. As the earlier morons befouling computing painstakingly insist to point out, "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE."

This nonsense is simply to say that the matter will have to be established, on its own merits (if, importantly, anyone for some reason can be arsed to), independently of the object that produced it.

The "cryptoanalytical break" angle.

If the relationship between phenomena and the boy's audible output is of the nature of a hash function, whereby the boy forever cycles through a pre-ordained list of possible outputsⁱⁱⁱ, it is entirely possible someone might, after paying good enough attention for long enough, actually break it, thereby obtaining proof of the difference between person and machinery.

This is the fundamental problem with circlers^iv : that someone will, given enough output material, eventually analyze the underlying RNG and break through the pretense. This risk is obviously mitigated by a) using a circle with a radius as large as possible and b) keeping as quiet as possible -- which is why engineers tend to be voracious readers and (as they age and thereby discover that the pains of increasing the radius grow faster than the difficulty therefore imposed on analysts) keep to themselves.

One possible angle is to say "we've lost a great many things we never had" ; the other possible angle, however, is to point out that the infrastructure of the republic as extant is indomitable, a truth readily exemplified by the shocking ease and impressive efortlessness with which it has produced a thing no moron prior even thought possible (outside of their deepest nightmares) : plain, self-evidently complete and direct description of the "engineer"s idiocy, with unassailable evidentiary body in support. The ease of breaking future circlers' "oh so clever" (by their own infantile lights) spun nonsense gained by the degree of magnitude, and, eminently, I do not expect we shall have this problem again in the future.

Which, in the end, is the point and the function of a state and a working legal theory : to prevent the recurrence of past problems. Mazel tov.

1. Bimbo's nowadays in a phase where she has invented things -- such things as dancing, growing beards and wiring insulation. She doesn't "really" mean it, or "she's just teasing" as she ritually formalizes the ambiguity of gnoseological imanence, but...

   It's hard, you must appreciate. Living is hard ; hardest alone, which is the worst, but harder still with others who are above you, which is even worse. Is one to be the worst of all ? Could one not at the very least lay claim to not being the worst of all ? Even momentarily, as a stated (even if in the very statement rescinded) claim to personal projection into the realm of reality, which is to say imagination ?

   It may strike you as mightily strange a concept, yet because reality is not immediately accessible to the mind, but only mediately, through thought, it then follows that imagination is on the subjective merits even more real than reality itself -- it doesn't have that pesky counterpart of ontology to whiplash it into unexpected form at unpredicted borders, phase transitions an' dark corners. Imagination, flowing as it does from the psyche, is not liable to surprise it ; even the worst nightmares come with their leper's bell of "I always knew this would happen". Of course you "did" so know -- which is rather the point.

   She may. Let her live, let her survive, she may indeed "just kidding" it ; and so may you. For which reason, indeed, we shan't look at the source of things too closely. In the words of that poet, Tu esti, Mircea ?! oops I mean

   Nu cerceta aceste legi, caci esti nebun de le-ntelegi.

   I might've got the poet wrong ; but then again... aren't all the poets the same poet ? [↩]

2. Fecit, in Latin in the original, "dar a luz" if you prefer the Western Military Vulgar.

   Oh, what's the matter ? You had no idea these articles are mere translations, of originals written in a different, divine language ? Aww.

   Majesty is, specifically, the characteristic of the few of not being fully apprehensible by the many -- not on first pass, perhaps not ever. A man looks at a barrista and sees her all and everything there, directly ; but when the barrista looks back at the man she sees a portion, but also misses a portion. That's majesty. [↩]

3. Which is eminently what's going on, hence the "runaway spam script" comment : there's a list of things you might possibly be interested to hear, here it is, listed, feel free to pick one of the elements to latch on to and the script will happily proceed from there on, "talking" to you in the systematic manner of scripts (while all the while the business end of whatever it's attached to keeps plodding on regardless, as it does).

   The whole thing works exactly like any other phone tree or equivalent : press the number of your choice for more of the same more or less taylored in the respective vein. It's talking, right ? The female voice attached to the phone tree is talking to you, is she ? [↩]

4. For posterity :

   * hanbot_abroad wonders how anyone would propose to get the salt back out of the bread they've baked.
   mp_en_viaje hanbot_abroad, throwing out the bread works if that's what happened.
   mp_en_viaje i will do it, too.

   hanbot_abroad i thought what's here is basically a line drawn in the sand, 'will stand no further than this'.
   mp_en_viaje hm ?

   hanbot_abroad it was withstood, consciously, as long as it was, for good reason that remains good reason, no?
   mp_en_viaje hanbot_abroad, no. let me explain this clearly :
   mp_en_viaje hanbot_abroad, to use the geometric terminology you introduced : alf never in his life walked a line. what he does is, he spins a circle.
   mp_en_viaje at any given point, if ~you~ draw a line, he'll translate over the place, such that your line is a tangent. and you think, naively, "oh, this man's line and my line are clearly, look, colinear"

   * diana_coman sadly recognizes that line+circle from bitter experience (and not even just asciilifeform ).
   mp_en_viaje then he starts moving down his circle. and you notice there's a difference ; if you attempt to discuss it, he'll make the cost of measuring the infinitesimal difference (which nevertheless keeps growing, and at an ever faster pace) infinitely large
   mp_en_viaje by insanely elaborate sophistry.
   mp_en_viaje then, at some point, his circular motion actually takes him to diametrically opposed pole to the original tangent point
   mp_en_viaje at which juncture you might even point the situation out : look, you moron, you are DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED, what the fuck bs you're talking.
   mp_en_viaje but, see, it's a circle. past the perihelion he's coming back, so it'll ~seem~ like that "woke him up"
   mp_en_viaje he's now moving towards you, and at an increasingly faster rate
   mp_en_viaje except, of course, once he reaches midway. then he starts decelerating ; and he decelerates even faster.
   mp_en_viaje and if you've got the time, and the money, "1-1.5 bitcoin (today, of course ; the fuckface doesn't happen to think he DID NOT say 1-1.5 bitcoin back when he took the quote from) he'll take you for another spin.
   mp_en_viaje and for as many spins as you'd like.
   mp_en_viaje i don't think it's intentional, in the sense that i don't think alf has the capacity for intentional activity. he's an object, like any chair, or compass, or whatever.
   mp_en_viaje so no, there wasn't any line drawn in the sand on the basis of trying to quadrate the circle and throwing tangents at a dangerous idiot.
   mp_en_viaje aite ?

   hanbot_abroad mp_en_viaje: digesting

   [↩]