2600
03-18-2005, 07:52 AM
...in person. You could consider this possibility in any forum, or even any interaction with people in real life (this does work with those who have actually met people face to face here, but you must extend the concept to an uncomfortable level).
When we interact with other "people" here, we assign in our minds one conscious being attached to each screen name, though we know this is not always the case. Many posters here DO HAVE multiple screen names, for various reasons. Most of which are innocuous, for getting back into a chat room, or if you wanted someone to leave you alone. But it is the guise of anonymity that makes the very nature of web forums conducive to "trollers," who can get creative, and often do use multiple screen names to cause controversy, or elicit responses from a group.
So, since you know that more than one "member" here can be operated by one person, then you really never know how many different people you are actually interacting with. You might perceive hundreds or more, when in fact it could be as few as just a handfull; or maybe just a couple of cops trying to bust the one unsuspecting person who happens in and reads the fabricated logs of the board; or maybe even just one person, working frantically to maintain the facade of all these different people.
Then is it too much of a stretch to think if that guy worked so diligently to keep you fooled with a few hundred fake screen names and photos, he couldn't just write a program to do it all? Not too far fetched. That means you are talking to no one, outside of artificial intelligence. This means even what I type is generated by a subroutine of the program, as a peripheral character. Maybe intentionally; surely the appearance of someone questioning the validity of the program would better instill it's authenticity to the user (or mark!).
It;s not as pure of an application, but fOr those of you who know, or think you know other posters in real life, the handiwork of Descartes' "Evil Genius" can be extended outside the Eworld just as easily (the methods of trickery are just more far fetched). Either matrix style, or OrangeHairs' "Is Life a Video Game?" thread. (Notwithstanding the concept that orangehairs presented where we were all controlled in the players vid game. There is only ONE truth for everyone reading this- and that is the "reality" of our OWN consciousness. This is the only self evident truth, outside of formal systems (like math). We (each individual for him/herself) know that while everyone and everything else we perceive could be an illusion, our consciousness' (in whatever form it takes, whether actually housed in a flesh machine like we think or free flowing energy waves in deep space dreaming of this life for a little while) independence cannot be denied; moreover, it is the only truth that cannot be denied.
When we interact with other "people" here, we assign in our minds one conscious being attached to each screen name, though we know this is not always the case. Many posters here DO HAVE multiple screen names, for various reasons. Most of which are innocuous, for getting back into a chat room, or if you wanted someone to leave you alone. But it is the guise of anonymity that makes the very nature of web forums conducive to "trollers," who can get creative, and often do use multiple screen names to cause controversy, or elicit responses from a group.
So, since you know that more than one "member" here can be operated by one person, then you really never know how many different people you are actually interacting with. You might perceive hundreds or more, when in fact it could be as few as just a handfull; or maybe just a couple of cops trying to bust the one unsuspecting person who happens in and reads the fabricated logs of the board; or maybe even just one person, working frantically to maintain the facade of all these different people.
Then is it too much of a stretch to think if that guy worked so diligently to keep you fooled with a few hundred fake screen names and photos, he couldn't just write a program to do it all? Not too far fetched. That means you are talking to no one, outside of artificial intelligence. This means even what I type is generated by a subroutine of the program, as a peripheral character. Maybe intentionally; surely the appearance of someone questioning the validity of the program would better instill it's authenticity to the user (or mark!).
It;s not as pure of an application, but fOr those of you who know, or think you know other posters in real life, the handiwork of Descartes' "Evil Genius" can be extended outside the Eworld just as easily (the methods of trickery are just more far fetched). Either matrix style, or OrangeHairs' "Is Life a Video Game?" thread. (Notwithstanding the concept that orangehairs presented where we were all controlled in the players vid game. There is only ONE truth for everyone reading this- and that is the "reality" of our OWN consciousness. This is the only self evident truth, outside of formal systems (like math). We (each individual for him/herself) know that while everyone and everything else we perceive could be an illusion, our consciousness' (in whatever form it takes, whether actually housed in a flesh machine like we think or free flowing energy waves in deep space dreaming of this life for a little while) independence cannot be denied; moreover, it is the only truth that cannot be denied.