Anon OpinPeople like to think Asimov predicted the current technology known as "artificial intelligence". They are wrong. It was Douglas Adams when a computer spent untold resources just to return an answer which is both irrelevant and poses further questions.
Mans R@anon_opin Adams' Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is a pretty good representation of all things "smart" too.
Robin Adams@anon_opin Ran by mice no less. A lot more energy efficient though.
The Sleight Doctor ππ@anon_opin 42 is the ASCII code for an asterisk, which is a "wild card" character that can mean anything, hence a search for "*.doc" returning all files ending with the doc extension.
The computer in Hitchhiker's Guide was saying the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is essentially "whatever". π€·ββοΈ
Edit: Douglas Adams himself has apparently contradicted this theory (which I've believed for 30 years!), stating in an interview that he randomly picked the number. Oh well.
Ozzelot 
Daniel Keys Moran@ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin unfortunately no. We have Adams's own words:
"The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story."
@fatsam @anon_opin Ah that's a shame, the version I was told is more fun!
@fatsam @ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin We have
to go deeper. Why was 42 the number that arose in his subconscious, in this context? Had he been thinking of numbers, monks, ....?
to go deeper. Why was 42 the number that arose in his subconscious, in this context? Had he been thinking of numbers, monks, ....?
@arne_d_h @fatsam @anon_opin Well, Mr. Adams *was* a coder, so it's just possible that he landed on 42 subconsciously, given that he would certainly have known his ASCII codes.
Sadly, we'll never know. But it is a compelling explanation for that being the number! I was told it authoritatively by a fellow Guide fan many, many years ago, but the internet wasn't really a thing for most people back then so I've just...never checked it. π€·ββοΈ
@ApostateEnglishman @arne_d_h @fatsam @anon_opin Douglas Adams wasn't a coder in 1978 - he said he had "seen" a computer (a Commodore PET), but the first home computer he bought was a Nexu word processor in 1982. It's very unlikely he knew ASCII by heart then or had used an OS where * is a wildcard.
But yeah, the idea that if you ask a computer a philosophical question you'll get an answer like "42" was only ever intended to be a joke, not something profound. The joke doesn't work if 42 actually means something.
ΔΈurth@fatsam @ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin
but then β¦ what a coincidence!
@kurth @fatsam @anon_opin It's a delicious idea that I've believed to be fact for decades.
I'm a little sad to have to let it go! Someone in this thread suggested, given that Adams was a competent programmer who would have known his ASCII codes very well, he may have *subconsciously* landed on 42 precisely because it doesn't mean anything in particular, like the Joker in a deck of cards.
That sounds compelling to me, but probably won't ever be proved. π€·ββοΈ
Ray N. Franklin πΊπΈ@fatsam @ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin
This '42' situation is very similar to what The Beatles endured with "turn me on dead man", the words supposedly audible by playing a certain song backwards.
I seriously doubt The Beatles planned that. However, David Lynch did make actors move and speak backwards for scenes in the Red Room. That's why the scenes looked and sounded so surreal.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/strange-dialogue-twin-peaks-red-room/
Crowd-sourcing false explanations for almost any creative work, generally has a 100% success rate!
David π³οΈβππ³οΈββ§οΈNB they/them@ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin That wasnβt his intent but itβs one hell of a coincidence that it works. What an author says about their work is one thing, how readers interpret it is another.
Χ€ΦΌΦ°Χ¨Φ΄Χ@peribotsarah @anon_opin Apparently Mr. Adams was interviewed and said it was just a random number with no significance at all. Quoted in this thread.
@ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin
Yea, but trusting the Talented Mr. Adams on stuff like that is its own kind of faith. Are we also supposed to believe that calling it a "trilogy" was random too? I think he said it best:
βThe Guide has had a complex and circuitous evolution. Every time I tell it, I make up something new β so much so that I no longer remember what the real story is.β
Plus I really like base 13. it's almost as fun as base -13.
@peribotsarah @anon_opin Fair point! The best artists don't even know their own minds, and that 42 is so interesting in base 13, binary, ASCII, etc. may not have been any coincidence. Perhaps Douglas was so brilliant, his mind just honed in on the perfect number to keep people talking long after his death.
Wait...perhaps the answer really is 42?! π
@ApostateEnglishman @anon_opin
And if he was drunk at the time, he could potentially not even recall.
I think it's important to remember another quote from Adams: To lose track of the meaning of life is to lose track of what it is to live.
In summary, it is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Zack Weinberg@anon_opin I think it was also Douglas Adams β if my memory is correct, in one of the Dirk Gently novels β who had someone working on a computer system that would take in a bunch of data and a predetermined conclusion and spit out a plausible-sounding argument for why the data supported that conclusion.
@zwol @anon_opin sounds like some scientists cherry picking data to prove a theory- then they get caught :-).
ChloΓ© Raccoon@zwol @anon_opin @patterfloof Reason, the software that enabled the owner of the company to buy a sports car, despite having no money or being able to drive...
Tim Ward βπͺπΊπΆ #FBPE@zwol @anon_opin I saw a couple of kids doing that in the 1970s, using SPSS. (In the Cambridge University computing service.)
They'd got some data, they knew what they wanted to prove, so they were going through every statistical test in SPSS until they found one that agreed with the answer they wanted.
Yes, these days that process could be automated.
BeeCycling has moved@zwol @anon_opin Bought up entirely and exclusively by the American military.
@beecycling @anon_opin oh yeah I forgot that little detail
Garrett Wollman@anon_opin I'm not sure why people think Asimov predicted this. Asimov certainly believed (contra Searle) that intelligence was not inherently biological. He knew Marvin Minsky and other leading lights of the symbolic AI tradition (he was after all a professor at BU when they were professors at MIT and Harvard). Asimov died a decade before the statistical turn in AI research; he undoubtedly would not have believed that intelligence would arise from doing statistics on every text ever published.
@anon_opin (See "More Thinking About Thinking", reprinted in THE SUBATOMIC MONSTER (1985), and in the same collection, see also "What Truck?" for a disquisition on eminent science-fiction writers of their day completely failing to predict something that seems obvious in retrospect.)
Raven667@anon_opin terry Gilliam also faithfully described our current moment in Brazil.
`Da Elf
Alexander The 1st@anon_opin And when asked how it came to that conclusion, prescribes a method that has nothing to do with the question.
If people implement the solution, it looks like it works for a bit until someone asks for a change, then it breaks drastically.
And if they actually try to get the replication from part of it, it is a perceivably correct number to anyone who doesn't know the calculations...and then some people argue that the math is correct, and that they're just not using the computer right.
Shadow Heart
Allen but one of the good ones@anon_opin and also everything ever made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation: friendly and helpful to the point of being obnoxious and obstructive (locking up the ship by consuming all resources just to make a cup of tea. Every single door and elevator forcing you to interact in friendly small talk before letting you through.)
@anon_opin I think the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation doors might be the more obvious example.
#42 is worth knowing, even if it is rather baptismal.
#42 is worth knowing, even if it is rather baptismal.
Heliograph@anon_opin still my favourite number
WylieCoyoteUK 
@anon_opin There was a clue towards the end, that the Golgafrinchans crash landing corrupted the computer that was the Earth.
The question was "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9".
I prefer Arthur C Clarke's "Nine billion Names of God" for a parable on the pointlessness of existence and how Computers will hasten the end.
The question was "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9".
I prefer Arthur C Clarke's "Nine billion Names of God" for a parable on the pointlessness of existence and how Computers will hasten the end.
SufferForMe πand no way to know if the answer is correct...
Curioso π πΊπ¦ (jgg)At least it was the right answer (allegedly).
Juho MΓ€ntysaloAsimov had planet-sized computers too, though I recall they were in general competent.
(Though I feel the original joke with Adams was misunderstood too: the whole "you have to understand the question to understand 42" that has been repeated to banality was that by outsourcing the question the answer itself becomes meaningless. It's the journey that's important, not the pop-answer created for the media. Outside engineering, no answer without context is meaningful.)
frank87@anon_opin I think most people confuse the Adam's story with this one "the last question". I remember some familiarity when I read the Douglas Adams story.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
jiub 
@anon_opin also, he predicted the smug, self-satisfied faux personalities of chat gpt and other LLMs
(genuine people personalities by sirius cybernetics)
(genuine people personalities by sirius cybernetics)
Andrew Zonenberg@anon_opin I think we're headed more for the world of Omni Consumer Products. I've had an OCP sticker on my laptop for a while as a darkly humorous reference to the current state of affairs.
Jason Young
sleepy62ππ οΈ π₯οΈ π¬ πYes!!
Ever since Chat GPT became a thing I have been thinking about Marvin. The deeply depressed elevator control computer with human-like consciousness.
I can totally see how he would fall into deep anxiety and existential dread when all there is to life is going up and down.
Chris Ahchay
Thad@anon_opin And the constant spying for purposes of advertising and constantly nickel-and-diming us for everything smells like Dick.
Karen E. Lund ππ@anon_opin Several years ago, when Twitter was still tolerable, I changed my avatar to the number 42 in white on a field of blue on April 15. Perhaps it says something about my followers at the time that an almost equal number of people remarked on it being Jackie Robinson Day and asked if it was related to Douglas Adams.
So I am here to tell you that tha answer to "life, the universe and everything" is Jackie Robinson.