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The Internet Doesn't Love Anything. It Is Not a Human Being.

7 points by yiedyie 12y ago

izietto 12y ago
Sophism; The Internet loves X implies People on Internet love X. Moreover, the Internet is for Cats [1] [1] http://theinternetisforcats.com/ http://theinternetisforcats.com/
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Internet is not a human being, but one might argue it is to some point alive; and that it even responds to irritations.
fit2rule 12y ago
It's not just the Internet. It's also "them". And "us". No such thing! "Everyone knows" is, like, a modern prayer. You just say it, and then everything else becomes true. Everyone knows you can just say 'everyone knows something' and you'll have described the Godhead, and/or thus God itself. Which, everyone knows, doesn't actually exist. The Internet is an electronic godhead. Did everyone not get that briefing at the entrance door?
waps 12y ago
Why not ? One of the main properties of neural networks, like the human one, is that many of them act just like a single one (provided they communicate), only smarter. In fact, your brain is not a single piece of brain matter. There are 3 "main" sections to your brain. That, and they're doubled up on 2 sides. Shoot all 3 on one side, and that human will respond almost as before, with very minimal loss of function (assuming the resulting bleeding doesn't kill the person of course). That's not where it ends, the cortex is further subdivided in ~300 regions, each of which is to some extent independent. For instance, they have their own separate connection to the spinal cord. That means you could shoot 299 of them, and the person would not die and still respond like a human being to some extent. There are caveats, like that only 4 of those regions are connected to the eye, only 4 are connected to the ear, so chances are if you kill off most of the brain, it'd be a blind and deaf human being, but ... So the internet should respond, in the other direction and only to some extent (because communication is very slow), like a human being.
okonomiyaki3000 12y ago
I disagree. Saying that the internet loves something is similar to saying that "information wants to be free" or that a certain material is "hydrophobic". None of these things are "sentient" and so can't have opinions, desires, or fears, right? Well, maybe but what gives us "sentient" beings opinions, desires, fears, etc? I reckon it's just some kind of emergent phenomena. Well, the internet's "love" of cat photos is similar to this. Probably.
noonespecial 12y ago
It does exhibit emergent behaviors that are arguably lifelike. Mostly its still human driven, like the worlds biggest Ouija board(1). It will get lots more interesting when it becomes mostly machines interacting (and effecting the physical world) thanks to the IoT. (1) And it seems to have spelled out "I can haz".
- yiedyie 12y ago
  Remindes me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...
xg15 12y ago
Good that we have cleared that up. So, after that, could anyone explain to me how Washington can keep making all those laws and far-reaching descisions about our lives? Isn't it just a collection of buildings?
cotwomey 12y ago
The internet is clearly very frustrated about being described as human.

7 points by yiedyie 12y ago

Sophism; The Internet loves X implies People on Internet love X. Moreover, the Internet is for Cats [1] [1] http://theinternetisforcats.com/ http://theinternetisforcats.com/

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Internet is not a human being, but one might argue it is to some point alive; and that it even responds to irritations.

fit2rule 12y ago

It's not just the Internet. It's also "them". And "us". No such thing! "Everyone knows" is, like, a modern prayer. You just say it, and then everything else becomes true. Everyone knows you can just say 'everyone knows something' and you'll have described the Godhead, and/or thus God itself. Which, everyone knows, doesn't actually exist. The Internet is an electronic godhead. Did everyone not get that briefing at the entrance door?

waps 12y ago

Why not ? One of the main properties of neural networks, like the human one, is that many of them act just like a single one (provided they communicate), only smarter. In fact, your brain is not a single piece of brain matter. There are 3 "main" sections to your brain. That, and they're doubled up on 2 sides. Shoot all 3 on one side, and that human will respond almost as before, with very minimal loss of function (assuming the resulting bleeding doesn't kill the person of course). That's not where it ends, the cortex is further subdivided in ~300 regions, each of which is to some extent independent. For instance, they have their own separate connection to the spinal cord. That means you could shoot 299 of them, and the person would not die and still respond like a human being to some extent. There are caveats, like that only 4 of those regions are connected to the eye, only 4 are connected to the ear, so chances are if you kill off most of the brain, it'd be a blind and deaf human being, but ... So the internet should respond, in the other direction and only to some extent (because communication is very slow), like a human being.

okonomiyaki3000 12y ago

I disagree. Saying that the internet loves something is similar to saying that "information wants to be free" or that a certain material is "hydrophobic". None of these things are "sentient" and so can't have opinions, desires, or fears, right? Well, maybe but what gives us "sentient" beings opinions, desires, fears, etc? I reckon it's just some kind of emergent phenomena. Well, the internet's "love" of cat photos is similar to this. Probably.

noonespecial 12y ago

It does exhibit emergent behaviors that are arguably lifelike. Mostly its still human driven, like the worlds biggest Ouija board(1). It will get lots more interesting when it becomes mostly machines interacting (and effecting the physical world) thanks to the IoT. (1) And it seems to have spelled out "I can haz".

yiedyie 12y ago
Remindes me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...

xg15 12y ago

Good that we have cleared that up. So, after that, could anyone explain to me how Washington can keep making all those laws and far-reaching descisions about our lives? Isn't it just a collection of buildings?

cotwomey 12y ago

The internet is clearly very frustrated about being described as human.