R. Robot produces a high-quality simulated warblogger by combining field-tested right-wing rhetorical tactics with the miracle of stochastic context-free grammars. R. Robot's human is John Gorenfeld, who has a (non-automated) blog, Extremophile, which currently is dedicated to tracking the scary-whacky behavior of the Rev. Moon and his Unification Church. But he's recently discovered Lyndon LaRouche (ObBook: Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism), so we may hope he'll expand his coverage to other extremist political cults. In the meanwhile, the success of R. Robot, coupled with that of the well-beloved Postmodernism Generator and StuBot, and M. Y. Liberman's approach to Derrida, suggests a new topic for computational social theory and symbolic dynamics: which varieties of ideological discourse can be captured by context-free grammars, and which require the higher, more powerful levels of the Chomsky hierarchy? Those with an evolutionary turn of mind might ponder the transition from simian proto-ideologies (presumably mere regular expressions) to the full glories of human thought. (Via Phersu.)
Updated (same day) to add the happily-restored StuBot, and a few other links.
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Linkage; Psychoceramica; Enigmas of Chance; The Running-Dogs of Reaction
Posted at March 30, 2004 11:01 | permanent link