In the wise words of Mark V Shaney

Ye my old beloved evil thoughts! The vanity through all labyrinths. Men not great! There are books which have hitherto usually gone to pieces broken down sunk and become the cause of fear draws its ultimate conclusion. In all the most agreeable of vices pardon me for instance unrestrained workers almost destroying themselves by piety to a respectful seriousness and without much curiosity or discomfort; And is meant to suffer with his taste which seems to me that this one is such a renan appear in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious significance of words! And not some schopenhauerian genius of the herd has hitherto been maintained in europe has been long separated decisively and suddenly blend with one another. To refrain mutually from injury from violence from exploitation and put it out of the bull fight the present moment blood and iron that is philosophy in its own this operates fascinatingly persuasively and convincingly upon an age considers evil is done the sweet sad cry of rue sang out its end; A question however as a man s faith by which perhaps feels itself most at ease there; That which must be unavoidably impure. In effect that method ordains which must be regarded as more dangerous than any other value than that of an idea of how much of the instincts and inclinations now attain to moral philosophers knowing the moral imperative of the soul of europe will tend to the origin of an undeservedly favoured or surprised not as though the artist in himself the devil also compels you to speak and give it so much and in general only under the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. What avail is it not be ungrateful to it; If any one speaks i listened for the sake of a philosopher of the free wanton lightsome solitude which also gives you the bedlamite hope that has been long stored up and accumulated there the effect of the human all too human; And no longer assign any limit restraint or forbearance for themselves by means of ideas of the claims of power and delight in the end set to music. He suffers and wants to have a new work with every generation almost with disbelief. It seems that we are unpretentious unselfish modest brave habituated to self control and in its full profundity all that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of modern ideas!

Wall o text DR.

I keep saying that this or that piece of gibberish resembles what you'd get from a Markov Chains program, but now it occurs to me that it may not be clear to everyone what this means or what kind of text it produces. So above you have a piece from a quick and dirty program I wrote in about a quarter of an hour and trained its word sequence probabilities (including when a sentence ends) on Beyond Good And Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. Then asked it to write 16 sentences based on those word sequence probabilities.

Note that this is NOT the original infamous Mark V Shaney (Markov Chain-y, geddit?) program, but my own quick and dirty abomination.

Exactly what you get out of it depends on how long sequences you track (here I use 3 word sequences) and what text you train it on. Here I went with Friedrich Nietzsche, which is cheating a bit since it's nearly gibberish to start with. Almost used Plato's The Republic, but I felt like it was guaranteed to trigger some members as saying something or another about actual philosophy, which it isn't.

TL;DR: It's just LITERALLY Dadaism tempered by probabilities. It literally cuts a text into words, puts them in a hat, and then pulls random words from the hat. Except based on what probability it would have to pull each words, based on the previous 2 words pulled from the hat.

What is this thread even about?

Dadaism. It's art, I tell ya.

Well, that or aphasia, when people produce that kind of text without a computer. Almost invariably a sign of some kind of brain damage, most likely a stroke at some point.

Or, well, since we're in the religion forum, here's one trained on Paul's epistles. Just to keep it on topic

Who planteth a vineyard and eateth not of the flesh they constrain you to understand that no man despise thee. For neither have we used at any time at his own house how shall he reap. For there is no more but rather be healed. His meaning is that by all men and the rage of a woman to pray. But we establish the law speaketh it speaketh to you speaking with tongues and other some pastors and doctors Gave some apostles. Until we all meet into the world was not imputed sin. For some have not received and wherein you stand. Who gave himself for us made a pattern to all. If the foot should say that you have learned of God hath chosen you firstfruits unto salvation to every one that worketh not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin. This precept I commend to you and comfort your hearts to the order of Melchisedech and not to be understood that those who are destitute of the other hand the Jews' own justice is that Christians should not indeed a setting aside the mediatorship of Jesus Christ is called sin because it is written, Cursed is every one that believeth not and they are their own craftiness. That is the pillar and ground of the Lord will and will sing also with me. For God indeed hath set forth the power of the world. And to his saints and that the things that are on earth in him who is over all things having promise of life everlasting which God hath proposed to us by his causing but by an equality. And if it be yet in vain in the Lord. If there be therefore any consolation in thy debt put that to them to contribute bountifully to relieve the poor his justice remaineth for ever. For this cause I also am of Christ Jesus our Lord Jesus Christ be not risen again your faith is the image of a servant being made free use it rather.

You'd probably enjoy Seb Pearce's "New Age Bull-**** Generator"

I'd post you a link, but the forum censors the URL!

ETA: Just Google "Seb Pearce", and look for the needed result!

Hans, you should have posted this in Some Other Thread.

smartcooky said:

You'd probably enjoy Seb Pearce's "New Age Bull-**** Generator"

I'd post you a link, but the forum censors the URL!

ETA: Just Google "Seb Pearce", and look for the needed result!

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Doesn't seem like the same thing actually, and it doesn't make the case as to how to spot aphasia. But you can't have enough bull **** around, so thumbs up anyway.

Ye my old beloved evil thoughts! The vanity through all labyrinths. Men not great! There are books which have hitherto usually gone to pieces broken down sunk and become the cause of fear draws its ultimate conclusion. In all the most agreeable of vices pardon me for instance unrestrained workers almost destroying themselves by piety to a respectful seriousness and without much curiosity or discomfort; And is meant to suffer with his taste which seems to me that this one is such a renan appear in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious significance of words! And not some schopenhauerian genius of the herd has hitherto been maintained in europe has been long separated decisively and suddenly blend with one another. To refrain mutually from injury from violence from exploitation and put it out of the bull fight the present moment blood and iron that is philosophy in its own this operates fascinatingly persuasively and convincingly upon an age considers evil is done the sweet sad cry of rue sang out its end; A question however as a man s faith by which perhaps feels itself most at ease there; That which must be unavoidably impure. In effect that method ordains which must be regarded as more dangerous than any other value than that of an idea of how much of the instincts and inclinations now attain to moral philosophers knowing the moral imperative of the soul of europe will tend to the origin of an undeservedly favoured or surprised not as though the artist in himself the devil also compels you to speak and give it so much and in general only under the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. What avail is it not be ungrateful to it; If any one speaks i listened for the sake of a philosopher of the free wanton lightsome solitude which also gives you the bedlamite hope that has been long stored up and accumulated there the effect of the human all too human; And no longer assign any limit restraint or forbearance for themselves by means of ideas of the claims of power and delight in the end set to music. He suffers and wants to have a new work with every generation almost with disbelief. It seems that we are unpretentious unselfish modest brave habituated to self control and in its full profundity all that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of modern ideas!

Roger Ramjets said:

Ye my old beloved evil thoughts! The vanity through all labyrinths. Men not great! There are books which have hitherto usually gone to pieces broken down sunk and become the cause of fear draws its ultimate conclusion. In all the most agreeable of vices pardon me for instance unrestrained workers almost destroying themselves by piety to a respectful seriousness and without much curiosity or discomfort; And is meant to suffer with his taste which seems to me that this one is such a renan appear in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious significance of words! And not some schopenhauerian genius of the herd has hitherto been maintained in europe has been long separated decisively and suddenly blend with one another. To refrain mutually from injury from violence from exploitation and put it out of the bull fight the present moment blood and iron that is philosophy in its own this operates fascinatingly persuasively and convincingly upon an age considers evil is done the sweet sad cry of rue sang out its end; A question however as a man s faith by which perhaps feels itself most at ease there; That which must be unavoidably impure. In effect that method ordains which must be regarded as more dangerous than any other value than that of an idea of how much of the instincts and inclinations now attain to moral philosophers knowing the moral imperative of the soul of europe will tend to the origin of an undeservedly favoured or surprised not as though the artist in himself the devil also compels you to speak and give it so much and in general only under the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. What avail is it not be ungrateful to it; If any one speaks i listened for the sake of a philosopher of the free wanton lightsome solitude which also gives you the bedlamite hope that has been long stored up and accumulated there the effect of the human all too human; And no longer assign any limit restraint or forbearance for themselves by means of ideas of the claims of power and delight in the end set to music. He suffers and wants to have a new work with every generation almost with disbelief. It seems that we are unpretentious unselfish modest brave habituated to self control and in its full profundity all that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of modern ideas!

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Oooh. That may be a new form for word assembly poetry, instead of a page in an existing book generate a page with the Markov generator based on the text and go from there. Quick shift this to the Lit forum!

I suspect that with an little extra processing, you could even have the program do it for you.

Generally you'll first want to strike a balance between the length of the text you train it on and the number of previous words it uses in its conditional probability tables. If it doesn't have a lot of text for the length of the chain, it will mostly produce variations of the original sentences, so it will sound less like gibberish. Especially increasing the length of the chain will limit the amount of gibberish exponentially. In my case it was invariably A LOT of text for only 2 previous words considered, which caused a lot more freedom in what the next word could be, so it produced more gibberish.

Just slap some kind of enforcing a sane syntax onto it, and I suspect it would be indistinguishable from some modern art.

HansMustermann said:

I suspect that with an little extra processing, you could even have the program do it for you.

Generally you'll first want to strike a balance between the length of the text you train it on and the number of previous words it uses in its conditional probability tables. If it doesn't have a lot of text for the length of the chain, it will mostly produce variations of the original sentences, so it will sound less like gibberish. Especially increasing the length of the chain will limit the amount of gibberish exponentially. In my case it was invariably A LOT of text for only 2 previous words considered, which caused a lot more freedom in what the next word could be, so it produced more gibberish.

Just slap some kind of enforcing a sane syntax onto it, and I suspect it would be indistinguishable from some modern art.

Click to expand...

As it is it is already indistinguishable from some modern art, some modern philosophy too really.

Speaking of philosophy, with 4 word chains (that is, each word's probabilities are conditional of the previous 3 words) and trained on Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason:


Add some commas here and there and it's... actually more coherent than a couple of posters I won't name

Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash.

This reminds me of some of the material we see on Quora. We have one individual that posts “philosophy” question that read very much the same….