4 ms·

I don't know if they mention it in the article, but those BS quotes are eerily similar to those generated by http://wisdomofchopra.com/ http://wisdomofchopra.co

by c3534l 8y ago

I don't know if they mention it in the article, but those BS quotes are eerily similar to those generated by http://wisdomofchopra.com/ http://wisdomofchopra.com/ and I think that might have been what they used.

xg15 8y ago
There might be a reason for that. I think a lot the "bullshitness" of the sentences comes from the way the individual words do have meaning - however, the combinations of words used do not have an unambiguous meaning. E.g., you know what an observation is, what "universal" means and what a transformation is - but it's far less clear what an "universal observation" is or what it means if one is transformed. If this were a programming language, the sentences would produce valid ASTs but would be riddled with type errors. I think output from markov chains or other generators have the same property: They easily produce valid individual words and correct grammatical structures but they don't care at all that those structures don't have a well-defined higher-level meaning. Couriously though, we seem to validate a sentence mostly on those lower levels - which has the effect that you might not realize a sentence has no meaning but just have a vague feeling of not understanding it. The effect also reminds me of some badly-writtem math papers, where an auther uses a familiar notation from one domain and applies it to objects of a different domain without clearly defining what he wants to do. It can take surprisingly long until you even realize you have no idea what it means.
- c3534l 8y ago
  Yeah, but the words and sentence structures are similar. I got from the website: > Hidden meaning depends on great neural networks and the paper has > The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty. The website has > Your heart belongs to total acceptance of observations and the paper has > Your movement transforms universal observations The website has > Information transforms mortal knowledge. which is similar to > Your movement transforms universal observations and > The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

by c3534l 8y ago

xg15 8y ago

There might be a reason for that. I think a lot the "bullshitness" of the sentences comes from the way the individual words do have meaning - however, the combinations of words used do not have an unambiguous meaning. E.g., you know what an observation is, what "universal" means and what a transformation is - but it's far less clear what an "universal observation" is or what it means if one is transformed. If this were a programming language, the sentences would produce valid ASTs but would be riddled with type errors. I think output from markov chains or other generators have the same property: They easily produce valid individual words and correct grammatical structures but they don't care at all that those structures don't have a well-defined higher-level meaning. Couriously though, we seem to validate a sentence mostly on those lower levels - which has the effect that you might not realize a sentence has no meaning but just have a vague feeling of not understanding it. The effect also reminds me of some badly-writtem math papers, where an auther uses a familiar notation from one domain and applies it to objects of a different domain without clearly defining what he wants to do. It can take surprisingly long until you even realize you have no idea what it means.

c3534l 8y ago
Yeah, but the words and sentence structures are similar. I got from the website: > Hidden meaning depends on great neural networks and the paper has > The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty. The website has > Your heart belongs to total acceptance of observations and the paper has > Your movement transforms universal observations The website has > Information transforms mortal knowledge. which is similar to > Your movement transforms universal observations and > The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.