2 ms·

Racter (1984)

34 points by buescher 1mo ago

josefritzishere 1mo ago
I've never heard of this before. This is wild. More here: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3351 https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3351
- quuxplusone 1mo ago
  And that book is (naturally enough) borrowable on archive.org. :) https://archive.org/details/policemansbeardi0000unse/page/n21 https://archive.org/details/policemansbeardi0000unse/page/n2...
- buescher 1mo ago
  I first learned of it in Douglas Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas, I think. You can run it here: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Racter_1984 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Racter_1984
gxd 1mo ago
A relative had a Mac running Racter back in the day. I was a child but I played with it quite a bit. I found it magical. I thought I was looking at ChatGPT, but obviously it was a trick. A few years later I realized that Racter wasn't that good, but I've always wanted a "Racter that actually works"... It was a long wait, but we got it for better or worse!
nom 1mo ago
fun fact, there was a shareware clone of Racter released in 1991, called Claude https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/classics/racter/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas...
- Caracas288 1mo ago
  There's no way the connection isn't intentional!
  - cma 1mo ago
    I could easily see Anthropic picking it independently, Claude Shannon studied entropy of human text and measured the loss a human could achieve in predicting the next character of text given preceding context.
    - Caracas288 1mo ago
      Ah yes, now that you point it out that sounds reasonable. They missed a trick with their typeface, which could have made another nomative connection. Maybe Garamond just isn't web-safe enough.
roywiggins 1mo ago
Constructing the Other Half of The Policeman’s Beard (2021) https://electronicbookreview.com/publications/constructing-the-other-half-of-the-policemans-beard/ https://electronicbookreview.com/publications/constructing-t...
kstrauser 1mo ago
I wanted this so badly on my Amiga. I didn’t understand how limited it was, and fully expected conversational computing to be right around the corner.

Racter (1984)

34 points by buescher 1mo ago

I've never heard of this before. This is wild. More here: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3351 https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3351

quuxplusone 1mo ago
And that book is (naturally enough) borrowable on archive.org. :) https://archive.org/details/policemansbeardi0000unse/page/n21 https://archive.org/details/policemansbeardi0000unse/page/n2...
buescher 1mo ago
I first learned of it in Douglas Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas, I think. You can run it here: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Racter_1984 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Racter_1984

gxd 1mo ago

A relative had a Mac running Racter back in the day. I was a child but I played with it quite a bit. I found it magical. I thought I was looking at ChatGPT, but obviously it was a trick. A few years later I realized that Racter wasn't that good, but I've always wanted a "Racter that actually works"... It was a long wait, but we got it for better or worse!

nom 1mo ago

fun fact, there was a shareware clone of Racter released in 1991, called Claude https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/classics/racter/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas...

Caracas288 1mo ago
There's no way the connection isn't intentional!
- cma 1mo ago
  I could easily see Anthropic picking it independently, Claude Shannon studied entropy of human text and measured the loss a human could achieve in predicting the next character of text given preceding context.
  - Caracas288 1mo ago
    Ah yes, now that you point it out that sounds reasonable. They missed a trick with their typeface, which could have made another nomative connection. Maybe Garamond just isn't web-safe enough.

roywiggins 1mo ago

Constructing the Other Half of The Policeman’s Beard (2021) https://electronicbookreview.com/publications/constructing-the-other-half-of-the-policemans-beard/ https://electronicbookreview.com/publications/constructing-t...

kstrauser 1mo ago

I wanted this so badly on my Amiga. I didn’t understand how limited it was, and fully expected conversational computing to be right around the corner.