First there was the person who built a computer inside of Minecraft and programmed it to play Minecraft. 

Now Frederic Besse built a usable linux terminal in GPTchat — usable in that it can perform systems operations on a virtual computer that’s also been invoked in (by? with?) GPTchat. For example, you can tell the terminal to create a file and where to store it in a file system that did not exist until you asked, and under most definitions of “exist” doesn’t exist anywhere.

I feel like I need to get a bigger mind in order for it to be sufficiently blown.

(PS: I could do without the casual anthropomorphizing in the GPT article.)

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I’ve been on Twitter for a long time. A very long time. In fact, I was introduced to it as a way for a bunch of friends to let one another know what bar they were about to go to. It seems to have strayed from that vision a bit.

I have not yet decided to leave it, although I’m starting to check in at Mastodon. Here’s what I use it for, in no particular order, and not without embarrassment:

• Quick check on breaking news. It’s by no means comprehensive, and what trends is by no means always important. But I find some of it worth a click even as a distraction.
• Quick commentary on issues of the day by people I follow because they’re good at that.
• Issues worth knowing about raised by strangers who know about them.
• Keeping up with fields I’m interested in by following people who I don’t know, as well as some I do.
• Engaging with people I otherwise wouldn’t have kept up with.
• There are people I know just barely in real life who I feel quite close to after many years on Twitter together. 
• Engaging with a low bar of social inhibition/anxiety with people I don’t know, sometimes leading to friendships. 
• An outlet for my stray thoughts and, well, jokes.
• A medium by which I can publicize stuff I write.
• A number I can cite to publishers as if people automatically read the stuff of mine I’m publicizing on Twitter.
• The Twitter I’m on is often very funny.

Switching social platforms is hard.

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While I’m waiting for Western Digital to replace my external backup drive — it lasted for 9 months, so that’s pretty good, right? — I’ve been finding comfort in using borg (free) (documentation) , wrapped in the LaunchControl UI ($18) to do hourly incremental backups to my flush Transcend SD card.

LaunchControl is still a little too techy for me, but I got it working pretty quickly. Recommended! And the Transcend is fast enough that I my Mac doesn’t hiccup when it’s being backed up to.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein said “If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand him.” (Philosophical Investigations, Part 2)

But lions already speak, and we do understand them: When one roars at us, we generally know exactly what it means.

If a lion could say more than that, presumably (= I dunno) it would be about the biological needs we share with all living creatures for evolutionary reasons: hunger, threat, opportunity, reproduction, and — only in higher species — “Hey, look at that, not me!” (= sociality).

But that rests on a pyramid version of language in which the foundation consists of a vocabulary born of biological necessity. That well might be the case (= I dunno), but by now our language’s evolutionary vocabulary is no longer bound to its evolutionary value.

If a lion could speak, it would speak about what matters to it, for that seems (= I dunno) essential to language. If so, we might be able to understand it … or at least understand it better than what clouds, rust, and the surface of a pond would say if they could speak.

I dunno.

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I recently had occasion to remember my proudest moment as a contender for national Poet Laureate. I know we’re not supposed to reveal such things, but enough time has passed that I think I can speak of the grave injustice that was served to me on a platter of shame. (It’s writing like that that got me onto the short list.)

It was in the late 1980s or early 1990s when I was working in the marketing department at Interleaf, the creator of the first fully WYSIWYG electronic publishing package. At that point, being WYSIWYG — “What you see is why you get” — was novel because it was damn hard to put text and graphics on the same page in real-time editing mode. Plus, Interleaf’s text and graphics editors were ahead of their time, providing near typeset quality text, and integrated raster and vector graphics, all elements adjusting their layout as you typed. And much more. It was truly amazing software, and included functionality — including an extension language — that has still not been fully matched.

I spent eight years there learning about technology, including tech that presaged the Web, and about tech businesses. It was a great experience.

Then one day as I sat in my office, a poem flowed from me as if I were a teapot and the keyboard was a cup. (Again with the great analogies!) It turned out to be the poem that brought me to the attention of the Federal Department of Poetry, and I present it to you as best I remember it:

FuzzyWuzzy the Bear

FuzzyWuzzy was a bear.
FuzzyWuzzy had no hair.
FuzzyWuzzy wore a fuzzy wig.
FuzzyWuzzy wasn’t WYSIWYG, was he?

Or possibly the bear’s name was WhizzyWhizzyWig. Or maybe just WhizzyWig. Either way, it is a reference back to Ovid’s immortal “FuzzyWuzzy,” which was later stolen from the commons by the CoolTime Kids, with the copyright assigned to “Music Sales Corporation” which is clearly a cover for SMERSH, as exposed in the 1963 James Bond movie, “1 800 Kars for Kruschev.”

But I digress.

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There’s a new version of Wordle called Semantle — not one that I “predicted” — that wants you to find the target word by looking not for a chain of spellings but a chain of semantics. For example, if you started with the word “child” you might get to the answer as follows:

1. Child
2. Play
3. game
4. Chess
5. Square
6. Circle
7. Donut
8. Homer

In short, you’re playing word associations except the associations can be very loose. It’s not like Twenty Questions where, once you get down a track (say “animals”), you’re narrowing the scope until there’s only one thing left. In Semantle, the associations can take a sudden turn in any of a thousand directions at any moment.

Which means it’s basically impossible to win.

It is, however, a good introduction to how machine learning “thinks” about words. Or at least one of the ways. Semantle is based on word2vec, which creates text embeddings derived from an analysis of some large — sometimes very very large — set of texts. Text embeddings map the statistical relationships among words based on their proximities in those texts.

In a typical example, word2vec may well figure out that “queen” and “king” are semantically close, which also might well let it figure out that “king” is to “prince” as “queen” is to “princess.”

But there are, of course, many ways that words can be related — different axes of similarity, different dimensions. Those are called “vectors” (as in “word2vec“). When playing Semantle, you’re looking for the vectors in which a word might be embedded. There are many, many of those, some stronger than others. For example, “king” and “queen” share a dimension, but so do “king” and “chess”, “king” and “bed size”, and “king” and “elvis.” Words branch off in many more ways than in Wordle.

For example, in my first game of Semantle, after 45 attempts to find a word that is even a little bit close to the answer, I found that “city” is vaguely related to it. But now I have to guess at the vector “city” and the target share. The target could be “village”, “busy”, “taxi”, “diverse”, “noisy”, “siege”, or a bazillion other words that tend to appear relatively close to “city” but that are related in different ways.

In fact, I did not stumble across the relevant vector. The answer was “newspaper.”

I think Semantle would be more fun if they started you with a word that was at some reasonable distance from the answer, rather than making you guess what a reasonable starting word might be. Otherwise, you can spend a long time — 45 tries to get “city” — just generating random words. But if we knew a starting word was, say, “foot”, we could start thinking of vectors that that word is on: measure, toe, body, shoe, soccer, etc. That might be fun, and would stretch our minds.

As it is, Semantle is a game the unplayability of which teaches us an important lesson.

And now I shall wait to hear from the many people who are actually able to solve Semantles. I hate you all with a white hot and completely unreasonable passion.[1]

[1] I’ve heard from people who are solving it. I no longer hate them.

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Planted four days ago.

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There’s Wordle for Jews: Jewdle. There’s Wordle for Star Wars enthusiasts: SWordle. And lord knows how many variants are now online or are being developed by anyone who knows how to edit a word list.

So let’s just get it over with. Here are upcoming versions, some of which probably already exist but I am too lazy to check.

Aordle: Wordle for cardiologists

Boardle: Wordle for millennials taking a break from playing Settlers of Catan

Boredle: Wordle for people playing Wordle

Cawdle: Wordle for crows

Chordle: Wordle rhythm guitarists

Clawdle: Wordle for manicurists

Cordle: Wordle for electricians

Coredle: Wordle for people taking Antarctic ice samples

Corridordle: Wordle for people hanging out in hallways

Crawdle: Wordle for eyes, ear, and throat doctors

Dawdle: Wordle for dillydallyers

Depordle: Wordle for ICE

Doordle: Wordle for doormen/doorpeople

Drawdle: Wordle for gunslingers

Eeyordle: Wordle for depressed people

Floordle: Wordle for linoleum salespeople

Flourdle: Wordle for bakers

Fordle: Wordle for F-150 owners

Fodordle: Wordle for travel advisors

Frodordle: Wordle for hairy-footed denizens of Middle Earth

Glowdle: Wordle for nuclear power plant employees

Growdle: Wordle for people who are cultivating marijuana for personal use

Hoardle: Wordle for hoarders

IOrdle: Wordle for computer engineers

Ignordle: Wordle for people who don’t do Wordle puzzles

Jordle: Wordle for kingdoms bordering Israel

KOrdle: Wordle for boxers

Lordle: Wordle for evangelical Christians

Majordle: Wordle for Army officers

Maordle: Wordle for Chinese Communists

Mayordle: Wordle for leaders of cities

Mayordle: Wordle for lovers of fatty white sandwich condiments

Minordle: Wordle for underrepresented populations

Mordordle: Wordle for the inhabitants of the Dark Kingdom of Middle Earth

Motordle: Wordle for car mechanics

Murdordle: Wordle for serial killers

Nordle: Wordle for Scandinavians

Nordle: Wordle for naysayers

Oordle: Wordle for the over-enthusiastic

Phylordle: Wordle for biological taxonomists

Poordle: Wordle for those who cannot afford a NY Times subscription to do a stupid word game

Pourdle: Wordle for sommeliers

Psuedordle: Wordle for people with imposter syndrome

Repordle: Wordle for journalists

Rappordle: Wordle for empathists

Rupordle: Wordle for the Murdochs

Rumordle: Wordle for gossips

Sawdle: Wordle for carpenters

Slaudle: Wordle for merciless mass killers

Sordle: Wordle for first-time horseback riders

Sprawdle: Wordle for suburban real estate developers

Strawdle: Wordle for scarecrows

Tordle: Wordle for turtle and turtle relatives

Thordle: Wordle for Asgardians

Vaulde: Wordle for gymnasts

Worldle: Wordle for geographers

XORdle: Wordle for machine language programmers

Yordle: Wordle for turtle monarchs

Zoordle: Wordle for imprisoned animals

Zorrordle: Wordle for fencers

The comments are open for your additions. (Note: Keep ’em unhurtful.)

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Notes for a post:

Plato said (Phaedrus, 265e) that we should “carve nature at its joints,” which assumes of course that nature has joints, i.e., that it comes divided in natural and (for the Greeks) rational ways. (“Rational” here means something like in ways that we can discover, and that divide up the things neatly, without overlap.)

For Aristotle, at least in the natural world those joints consist of the categories that make a thing what it is, and that make things knowable as those things.

To know a thing was to see how it’s different from other things, particularly (as per Aristotle) from other things that they share important similarities with: humans are the rational animals because we share essential properties with other animals, but are different from them in our rationality.

The overall order of the universe was knowable and formed a hierarchy (e.g. beings -> animals -> vertebrates -> upright -> rational) that makes the differences essential. It’s also quite efficient since anything clustered under a concept, no matter how many levels down, inherits the properties of the higher level concepts.

We no longer believe that there is a perfect, economical order of things. “We no longer believe that there is a single, perfect, economical order of things. ”We want to be able to categorize under many categories, to draw as many similarities and differences as we need for our current project. We see this in our general preference for search over browsing through hierarchies, the continued use of tags as a way of cutting across categories, and in the rise of knowledge graphs and high-dimensional language models that connect everything every way they can even if the connections are very weak.

Why do we care about weak connections? 1. Because they are still connections. 2. The Internet’s economy of abundance has disinclined us to throw out any information. 3. Our new technologies (esp. machine learning) can make hay (and sometimes errors) out of rich combinations of connections including those that are weak.

If Plato believed that to understand the world we need to divide it properly — carve it at its joints — knowledge graphs and machine learning assume that knowledge consists of joining things as many different ways as we can.

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