Re: virus: The Root of All Unhappiness Lies in Yourself.

Alexander Williams (thantos@alf.dec.com)
Tue, 24 Dec 1996 16:08:28 -0500


John P. Schneider wrote:
> > Nuclear bomb. Harmful or non-harmful? Let's ask the Bikini Islanders
> > or the ex-inhabitants of Hiroshima.
>
> The theory of relativity did not cause us to build a bomb and drop it.
> The war had nothing to do with the atomic bomb. However, wars have been
> based on Chrisitanity, communism, and dictatorships, (which were
> mentioned
> in the previous post.)

Without the memes for the construction of nuclear weapons would have
been impossible. That doesn't keep us out of wars, thankfully, but
without the tool you can't execute the task. Wars have been based on
anything and everything. Does this suggest that we should stop thinking
and acting altogether?

[Bumpersticker: Save the Planet! Kill Yourself!]

> I agree with this; I just don't think the analogy fits perfectly with
> the above. The usage of a the tool was based on belief in some meme or
> another. That meme, whatever it is, is the real culprit, not the tool.
> (e.g. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people.")

I don't think we can assign culprits at all, aside from the actor
themselves. Catholicism is also responsible for the Cistine Chapel and
David. People kill people, religions don't kill people.

> The question would need to be directed at some system 'running on' the
> net. I stupidly did not consider that setting up such a NNet would be
> a pretty challenging task, to say the least. (Er, oops!)

Systems do not `run on' a NNet. NNets encode responses; they're not
like generalized Turing Systems, they take input and convert it to
output without `computation.' All they have are sets of input neurones
and output neurones.

-- 
   Alexander Williams {thantos@alf.dec.com / zander@photobooks.com}
  Prefect of the 8,000,000th Terran Overlord Government Experimental
      Strike Legion, Primary Transport TOG "Bellatores Inquieti"
======================================================================
   You ride in 250 tons of molecularly aligned crystalline titanium
wedded to a ceramic ablative matrix.  You carry a 200mm Gauss
cannon, two massive 10-gigawatt lasers, two SMLM fire-and-forget
missiles, a Vulcan IV point defense anti-missile system, and a
deadly assortment of other equally lethal weapons.
   Your vehicle is the ultimate product of 4,000 years of armored
warfare.
   Your life expectancy is less than two minutes.
					-- RENEGADE LEGION:
					   CENTURION