Deepday Madness

an introduction to turing

Boy Meets Living Statue, taken in Rome, Italy in the summer of 2010

The Turing Test is supposedly a measure of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The breakdown: if a human holds a conversation with a hidden machine and is unable to distinguish it from a conversation with a hidden human, the machine has passed the test. Really, the test just looks for imitation, for a mechanical version of human response. If a human teases out the math in behavior, calculates the input and output, conjures the code and wires it in, the machine will pass. That’s the catch – the Turing Test is also a measure of a human’s ability to break down intelligent behavior into the simplest of patterns, the ones easiest to write down and offer forth.

 A machine has yet to pass the test. (A human has yet to code a machine that will pass the test.)

 The opposite of a Turing Test, I suppose, would judge a human’s ability to exhibit machine-like behavior – the ability to run on a set path, conform to an algorithmic lifestyle, to buzz and hum along in predictable ways and perform endless iterations. I often believe we’ve passed that test already.

 The ground between the two is where the issue grows foggy, more difficult to work into letter-strings and digits – the times when machines or objects seem to sprout personalities and memory, become animate or intimate, seemingly spontaneous in a uniquely sentient manner; the times when humans recall their consciousness, or venture to control it, fall out of form, question the code/coding/coder. These are the times when I think of the Turing Test and its version of ‘human’, wonder whether we’re aiming for the code or for the consciousness; wonder which one has to be pierced first to reach the other.

winged victory of samothrace (at the louvre)

They’ve been recovering her bits and pieces for years – finding her palm and puzzling out that, yes, this was her forefinger and that her thumb, this is what her wing must have looked like, her arm, her open mouth. They have a mental picture, now, of all the pieces that were left in rubble when she first found her way to the head of the staircase; they see each phantom limb like they had fully crafted her prostheses, just failed to weld the joints together, had chosen to leave that step to imagination.

I, for one, preferred her headless. My mother thought I was being morbid, stop that, let’s go to the Mona Lisa. She didn’t realize that it wasn’t the missing chunks of would-be flesh that I found captivating, but the way the remnants looked in their wake. The fact that she still held her expression, despite the lack of facial twitches or limby gestures, held it in the folds of a seabreezed cloth and weary feathers. It wasn’t the headlessness, but the way her frame looked headless – still conscious, still moving, as though muscle memory truly lived in her stone muscles and not the phantom brain.

DATE A GIRL WHO READS
by Rosemarie Urquico
(In response to Charles Warnke’s You Should Date an Illiterate Girl)

_______________

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. 

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow. 

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. 

Buy her another cup of coffee. 

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. 

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. 

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. 

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. 

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. 

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

(via xjesca)

theworldwelivein:

Kensington Gardens, London, UK, Europe
© G!L

Dear Prague,
Let’s get married.

(via papertissue)

This may or may not be who I aspire to be.

more orchids, more Thailand :-)

Orchid buds in an orchid farm in Thailand

More photographic evidence of Quebec’s utter coolness.
WHO ELSE HAS AN OUTDOOR ELEVATOR?!
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
This one connects the Old Town to the New Town for just a few Canadian dollars and a couple minutes of your time.

Dear Quebec,
Lezzbefriends.
<3
An Adoring Fan