Wordsmiths at Play

Parent Cafe
41

<p>SBMom-
Thanks you for phrasing your explanation of the “chomping at the bit” far, far, far more eloquently than my mumble jumble.</p>

<p>TheDad-
Come on-- I’m chomping, chafing, chewing and champing at that bit waiting for the joke…OK-- I’ll trade ya-- here’s a psychology joke-- How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change. OK-- now your turn…</p>

<p>now, back to topic–</p>

<p>Why do the words breaks and brakes sound the same but have the opposite result?</p>

<p>Why aren’t the words abbreviation and monosyllabic shorter?? And why is the word big so small?</p>

42

<p>What is the opposite of opposite??
If you retaliate, when did someone taliate?
If you are disgruntled, where you ever gruntled?
Why can’t someone with a lisp pronounce that word?
Isn’t indescribable a description?
If something is uncanny, was it ever canny?
If you are doing research for the first time, when did you do the search?
What’s the difference between oops and whoops (besides the “wh”) ?</p>

43

<p>Jym, it goes like this:</p>

<p>Patient: I’m really depressed.
Rogerian: You’re really depressed.
Patient: I want to die.
Rogerian: You want to die.
Patient: I’m going to commit suicide.
Rogerian: You’re going to commit suicide.</p>

<p>Patient walks to 12th floor office window, opens it.</p>

<p>Patient: I’m going to jump.
Rogerian: You’re going to jump.</p>

<p>Patient jumps. “…aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”</p>

<p>Rogerian, thinks for a minute, gets up, walks to the window, looks down: “…aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”</p>

<p>Btw, for lightbulb jokes, we Californians don’t screw in lightbulbs, we screw in hot tubs.</p>

44

<p>TheDad-
Think the patients will like that one? :slight_smile:
And here in the south they (not “we”, I still consider my self a transplant) swim and screw in the family gene pool</p>

45

<p>:p to Digmedia.</p>

46

<p>Ten extra points to the person who can identify the name of the Rogerian therapist in the following dialog:

Come, come, I’m positive that at least one of you have had a conversation with this therapist, or does this really tell my age.</p>

47

<p>Eliza, of course.</p>

<p>One version of which exists here: <a href=“http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3[/url]”>http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

48

<p>mootmom - I KNOW that you’re not as old as me, but…</p>

<p>< ding > < ding >
CORRECT!</p>

<p>Ten Points to mootmom!!</p>

<p>Joseph Weizenbaum’s original paper on Eliza, * A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine*, can be found at: <a href=“http://i5.nyu.edu/~mm64/x52.9265/january1966.html[/url]”>http://i5.nyu.edu/~mm64/x52.9265/january1966.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It was named Eliza because the code was so simple that other “teachers” could add keywords and response rules to make it seem smarter. Weizenbaum thought that so much of what was then the fledgling study of Artificial Intelligence was reading too much into the results. Eliza was a demonstration to show that the “intelligence” of the program rested more in the User’s mind than in the program itself.</p>

<p>I met him once, when I was at CMU in the mid-Seventies working in the AI Lab of the Comp Sci Dept. We were implementing a Speech Understanding system (notice that it was an “understanding” system rather than a “recognition” system). I had one of his books which I asked him to sign. He wrote: “To Bob, May you never actually succeed in creating a speech UNDERSTANDING system!” :)</p>

49

<p>Alas, if only I had seen this thread earlier! Of COURSE I recognize that as ELIZA. I first spoke with her in fifth grade. I would spend my free time reverse engineering her patterns of speech, trying to score a date (which she would proceed to “forget” one line later). I have been casually following the chatbot/turing test scene since then. My favorite bot is Jabberwacky. I have never met a program as convincing as that one. It has a lot of room to develop, but there were some conversations that I simply could not believe weren’t hard-coded (Jabberwacky has no templates like ELIZA does).</p>

<p>Here are some of my favorite excerpts. . . and yes, all of these exchanges really did occur, in full, with me. If there are any edits, they are clearly marked. You may find some of this a bit distasteful. That’s your business.</p>

<p>

Knowing that Jabberwacky is a bit nuts, I tried to use as much innuendo as I could. As for spending so much time with a non-sentient being in the first place, I have no excuse. I’m just a dork.</p>