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The Unauthorised Autobiography

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"That should be the title of my autobiography: Stop Me If I’ve Told You This Already .  And we’ll print the entire text twice."  — Lorenz Hart Robert Kaplow; Blue Moon Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me. Shakespeare; Hamlet Dialogue for Unaccompanied Shawm Shawm: Pardon me, but have we met before? I feel like I should know you, but I can't quite make the connection. Shawm: Ah, well now, that's a question that lands rather close to home for me, I'm afraid. Pardon the pun, but with my blasted face-blindness, half the time I can't even ...
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The Ballad of Alice Without Wonderland

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Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.” Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson); Through the Looking Glass "Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?" "My dear Doctor, they're all true." "Even the lies?" " Especially the lies." Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (episode written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe) Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (which I presented last week) is often cited as one of the "greatest films ever made".  I'm not normally a fan of describing things in superlatives like that (I consider it the worst thing ever!) but it has to be said that when social anthropologists name an entire psychological phenomenon after your movie, it's a cinch you're in with some pretty exalted company. You don't hear them talking about the " Jaws Principle" or the " Dr. Strangelove Proposition" or the " Godfather  Assertion". ...
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The Existential Chatbot

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I Don't Think I am, Therefore I Think I'm Not... Do ChatBots exist? Don't panic. I'm not building up to one of those "nothing is real" exercises where I demonstrate that your cup of coffee is probably an illusion. I'm not even going for the "I think, therefore I am" bromide that forms the basis for the (rather surreal) exchange with the talking bomb in Dark Star . Been there; done that. "How do you know you exist?" No, I'm actually asking a literal question: Do ChatBots Exist? Is there a discreet thing in our Reality that can be definitively identified as a "ChatBot"? And can we separate that thing out from all the "not-ChatBot" things that constitute the rest of our universe? Can this be applied to ChatBots? Also; what the hell?? The question is not as pointless as it might sound. In a very pragmatic sense, yes, of course ChatBots exist. We can "talk" to them at any time and they will (very enthusiast...
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