h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Be fair Blues, you have indicated recently that agressive debates in general interest you less than they used to.


I don't think you've changed Hoo- but I do think that recently you've been involved in threads with people you haven't encountered very often, and so are less enured- no, that's spelt wrong- to your style than the people you've debated with in the past were/are.

I'm relatively new on here (less than 4 months) and I've come across Hoo & Blues & Justin & a great many other people on this thread. Mainly because I started from the front page and picked busiest conversations. Now I've found that some people are very quick to take offense, and that, generally speaking, they are the quickest to sling it out.

I am not going to name names but there are people who have got up my nose, and so I spend more time in peer review now, and people describe that as harsh to new-comers.

There are people who consider themselves liberal and decry the likes of Justin for his narrow-mindedness, yet they insist on attacking anyone whose views don't agree with their own. As a Christian I find Justin difficult to deal with, because he obviously is able to extract a totally different meaning from a verse than I am. However as someone once said - "I despise his point of view, but will defend with my dying breath his right to hold it."

Nyssabird - The Aussies reckon they're the barbie kings - barbied road-kill is a staple part of their diet - allegedly.

Hoo - Your survey ? - Justin DOES offend me, but that is mainly because he manages to take something I believe to be true and express it in such a way I begin to doubt myself.

I know what you mean McKay- once I could call myself 'Christian'- I don't think that description has been right for the past year- but nontheless, Justin's interpretation of passages I have found solance in are so different to my own, I can't help thinking that my take on those same words could be totally 'wrong'- but he can;t take my thoughts and beliefs away- they are *mine*. Don't let him take yours.

Frogbit:

Don't be downhearted. The fruit-throwing is very isolated, being done (as someone else pointed out) *almost* exclusively by one person and almost exclusively at me (only a little bit at Justin) and I don't mind at all. The *vast* majority of people here are not throwing fruit, they're just enjoying the spectacle, and why not? Overall, even now, this thread taken as a whole still shows the best of h2g2. So there's a small percentage of bad feeling... don't let it get to you.

H.

I realize it's offtopic (and selfish), but....

There are people on this thread who've had a lot more interaction with JtP than I have. I wonder whether any of his "fan-club" members think my babbling about him in post 159 made any sense or not. I fancy that I understand the guy pretty well, but I'm not so arrogant to think that I mightn't be wrong. (I am, however, so arrogant as to ask people to comment on my thoughts, when I think those people will have something interesting to say.)

Not that the Blues Shark/Hoovooloo dynamic isn't also very interesting, and worth further discussion, I'm sure...


GTB

Hi GTB .

Sorry not to reply to your posting before but I have re-read it now and am ready to go .

It is my general view that you are quite right in much that you have stated. One of the reasons that I am a member of his 'fan club' is that unless people discuss his views with him rationally and courteously he will get away with the sort of excesses that got him slung off the BBCi Religion Message Boards. Banning him does not really help those he is taken away from, nor him.

I also believe that the man is carrying around a lot of pain, doubt and confusion, and that he needs friends. I am not one to allow pain to walk past without at least offering the hand of friendship. I am not forcing him to speak to me or accept my friendship, but neither am I going to ignore him and close the door. Thus I turn up to all his debates, open-minded and open-hearted.

One day he might turn around and realise that he has friends here. I am enough of a realist though to understand the odds of that.....

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

"I also believe that the man is carrying around a lot of pain, doubt and confusion, and that he needs friends."

I have to admit, that's an angle I wasn't even considering. Fortunately for all of us, h2g2 is a much better place to find friends than to find persecution. Good on you, anyway, for seeing him as a human first, rather than a nuisance or a cuiosity.


GTB

I suppose I classify as one of the "fan club". I've got a lot of background with the kind of people Justin represents, and he's very blinkered and strident even by their standards. I started off just suggesting that he tone down his presentation; alas, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions (as he wouldn't say because that's not scriptural. I'm just being contrary with him now simply because he irritates me worse than a social infection with his misplaced quotes and grand manner. My perogative, I'm afraid.

I repeat my earlier statement; I find Justin perfectly acceptable in the H2G2 realm; whether the perverse pleasure I get from baiting him is acceptable is another question, is it not?

Please, don't bait him! I admit that I feel tempted sometimes to shout out precisely how wrong he is, or to hide his posts, or to chuck a large rock in his general direction. But it's wrong, and I'm trying my darndest to be nice to the guy. He must hurt so much, his 'God' seems to torture his every waking thought. Matholwch is trying to help him, and I wonder if he leaves conversation threads because I have subscribed. Why does he put up with this?

I'm too tired to think coherently, so see y'all later.

- Jordan

I *HAVE* to bait him. The devil makes me do it...

*pokes McKay in the nose*

Hope I'm not up there!!!

And I think Hoo and Blues Shark have some unresolved sexual issues...

Eugh!

Though it must be said, they're both blue...

- Jordan

What's *eugh* Jordan? *bemused*

- or 'ick' - or 'gross'.

- Jordan

ok, i wasn't going to bother with this, as i'm not sure what to make of it all, but as the thread just appeared under my nose...

This w/end i stumbled across this user-page:

U197974 - Steve, programmer of Justin the Preacher

linked to this:

U195767 - Justin the Preacher

now, the most surprising thing here was the creation dates, several months back...

so figured it could be a gag, ie someone reacting to JtP's predictability with a spoof, 'It's ok folks, it's just my little joke' ID.

or, it could be for real

So then i'm wondering who of the people who have been in discussions with our allegedly artificially intellegent friend over recent weeks have a) seen that user-page and b) think Justin is a legit user.

Any offers? Or should i post a separate qu in AskHootoo, or should i just let it lie?

I guess the last option, and as i said earlier, that's what i had already decided... but i had second thoughts when i saw this in my convs, so...

any thoughts?
spiff

Having said all that, the threads on that page look as though everyone assumed at that stage that it was the gag option.

I'm claiming ignorance of the state of the art of AI if the above query really just makes me look , .

Besides, i can think of it as sharing the joke, .

Most of us have heard of it, I believe - it was quite widely circulated! Though we all accept your magnanimous gesture, and there are probably some people here who haven't heard the joke.
The consensus seems to be that Justin is not, in fact, a computer. Though it's fun to characterise him as one.

- Jordan

Hi Spiff,

Hoovooloo and I were joking around that Justins apparent lack of any intelligence made him look like a bot, an AI program. Then, a day after we were joking around SOME researcher ( you can own up now, whoever it is) decided to play a joke. 'Steve the Programmer' butted into several conversations (this was a good few months ago) and apologised for his 'creations' behaviour in the threads.

The truly funny thing was that many, many people (yes, me too) fell for this totally. They could easily believe that the person that they were interacting with was a computer, devoid of consciousness and intelligence. It took a week or two for people to work out that they'd been duped.

I'd let it lie Spiff, we can always discuss it here. Justin has too much publicity as it is.

Someone look up the Jargon File's definition of 'pseudo' and see if they see any relation to Justin. Or use kdict.

What, no one? OK, fine:

pseudo /soo'doh/ n. [Usenet: truncation of `pseudonym'] 1. An
electronic-mail or Usenet persona adopted by a human for amusement
value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of one's
net.behavior; a `nom de Usenet', often associated with forged postings
designed to conceal message origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest
hoax of this type is B1FF. See also tentacle. 2. Notionally, a
flamage-generating AI program simulating a Usenet user. Many flamers
have been accused of actually being such entities, despite the fact that
no AI program of the required sophistication yet exists. However, in
1989 there was a famous series of forged postings that used a
phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to simulate the styles of
several well-known flamers; it was based on large samples of their back
postings (compare Dissociated Press). A significant number of people
were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over their authenticity was
settled only when the perpetrator came forward to publicly admit the
hoax.

Amusing, no?

I have absented myself from any contact with JtP after one mistaken attempt - I have always felt that some people attempting to 'help' him came across as being passive-aggressive. (No one likes being psychoanalysed and *helped*, or is that just me? Being 'analysed' scares me silly!)Be that as it may,it never crossed my mind that JtP was an AI! As far as I kew, the technology hasn't advanced that far - but back in 1984, there was a story that Ronald Reagan was a rogue Disney animatronic, so who knows?

Well...if we are throwing anamatronic accusations around - who saw the guy from the Beach Boys at the Jubilee......scary stuff.

And only one person has claimed we are all helping him. And it wasn't we. Ste forced me to express a politically correct statement, just so that I was making it clear I wasn't breaking House Rules.

Pah. House Rules.

Jordan - What was the *eugh* referring to though?