Cyberiad question, re Wikipedia
Andrew Plotkin
brilliant idea, a stupid idea, or both. I generally don't get into the
arguments. I use it and find it useful, and I figure that as long as I
stay away from topics that people get worked up about, it won't screw
me over too much.
Last night, idly flipping through Wikipedia pages while _Solaris_
(Soderbergh) played on the VCR, I got onto the Cyberiad entry. I
happen to have re-read _The Cyberiad_ in the past couple of weeks --
Kandel's English translation, of course. The Wikipedia entry describes
the book adequately, and gives synopses of four or five of the
stories.
Then it gives a synopsis of one more story, with this comment: "Note
that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's English
translation of The Cyberiad."
So, what the heck?
It *looks* like a Cyberiad story. It echoes themes from the Altruizine
story, the Seventh Sally, and others. For all I know, it's real. For
all I know, it's someone's joke.
(I have appended that part of the Wikipedia entry below, since, you
know, Wikipedia. Who knows what the page will say tomorrow.)
The thing is, if it's a joke -- or, from another point of view,
Wikipedia vandalism -- then I love it. Lem is, after all, the writer
who gave us a collection of introductions to nonexistent books. I very
nearly want to say that people *should* be inventing nonexistent Lem
stories... but, okay, I'm not that much of a concensus-reality
booster. There is such a thing as whether Lem wrote this story, and
I'd like there to be a convenient resource for finding out stuff like
that. It could be Wikipedia. That's the argument I'm not getting into.
But I have no qualm with Lem fanfic. And having Lem fanfic work its
way into the noosphere via a concensus-constructed work of
knowledge... it's tempting. Is all.
(The only writer for whom it is *more* apropos to write false
Wikipedia history is Jorge Luis Borges. I don't know enough about
Borges, or any one Borges book, to find suspicious stuff on that
Wikipedia page.)
Further Web-searching for this story turns up only clones of the
Wikipedia article. (From various stages of its history.) But it's not
easy to search for. I was trying "Trurl", "microscope" as keywords.
Anyone know? Anyone have an original Polish edition of the book?
------------------
From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad>:
*Trurl and the construction of happy worlds.* Trurl is not deterred by
the cautionary tale of altruizine and decides to build a race of
robots happy by design. His first attempt are a culture of robots who
are not capable of being unhappy (e.g. they are happy if seriously
beaten up). Klapaucius ridicules this. Next step is a collectivistic
culture dedicated to common happiness. When Trurl and Klapaucius visit
them, they are drafted by the Ministry of Felicity and made to smile,
sing, and otherwise be happy, in fixed ranks (with other inhabitants).
Trurl annihilates both failed cultures and tries to build a perfect
society in a small box. The inhabitants of the box develop a religion
saying that their box is the most perfect part of the universe and
prepare to make a hole in it in order to bring everyone outside the
Box into its perfection, by force if needed. Trurl disposes of them
and decides that he needs more variety in his experiments and smaller
scale for safety. He creates hundreds of miniature worlds on
microscope slides (i.e. he has to observe them through a microscope).
These microworlds progress rapidly, some dying out in revolutions and
wars, and some developing as regular civilizations without any of them
showing any intrinsic perfection or happiness. They do achieve
inter-slide travel though, and many of these worlds are later
destroyed by rats. Eventually, Trurl gets tired of all the work and
builds a computer that will contain a programmatic clone of his mind
that would do the research for him. Instead of building new worlds,
the computer sets about expanding itself. When Trurl eventually forces
it to stop building itself and start working, the clone-Trurl tells
him that he has already created lots of sub-Trurl programs to do the
work and tells him stories about their research (which Trurl later
finds out is bogus). Trurl destroys the computer and temporarily stops
looking for universal happiness.
Note that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's
English translation of The Cyberiad.
------------------
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Bush's biggest lie is his claim that it's okay to disagree with him. As soon as
you *actually* disagree with him, he sadly explains that you're undermining
America, that you're giving comfort to the enemy. That you need to be silent.
Garrett Wollman
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>(I have appended that part of the Wikipedia entry below, since, you
>know, Wikipedia. Who knows what the page will say tomorrow.)
That's why, in the section marked "toolbox" on the left-hand side of
the page, there is a function labeled "Permanent link".
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
wol...@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those | search for greater freedom.
of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <ecdl1t$iqd$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> >(I have appended that part of the Wikipedia entry below, since, you
> >know, Wikipedia. Who knows what the page will say tomorrow.)
>
> That's why, in the section marked "toolbox" on the left-hand side of
> the page, there is a function labeled "Permanent link".
Good point. It's
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cyberiad&oldid=70279821>.
But I have heard tell of Wikipedia debates that got nasty enough that
the "permanent" history got embargoed or deleted.
Martin Kaletsch
> Last night, idly flipping through Wikipedia pages while _Solaris_
> (Soderbergh) played on the VCR, I got onto the Cyberiad entry. I
> happen to have re-read _The Cyberiad_ in the past couple of weeks --
> Kandel's English translation, of course. The Wikipedia entry describes
> the book adequately, and gives synopses of four or five of the
> stories.
>
> Then it gives a synopsis of one more story, with this comment: "Note
> that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's English
> translation of The Cyberiad."
...
I can't get my hands on the book right now, but I definitely know this
story! It *is* part of the German edition of the Trurl and Klapaucius
stories. In the German edition all the T&K stories are collected seperately
from the rest of the Cyberiad, filling several volumes (well, maybe it's
only two, I realy have to read them again).
--
Martin Kaletsch
Andrew Plotkin
> Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>
>
> > Last night, idly flipping through Wikipedia pages while _Solaris_
> > (Soderbergh) played on the VCR, I got onto the Cyberiad entry. I
> > happen to have re-read _The Cyberiad_ in the past couple of weeks --
> > Kandel's English translation, of course. The Wikipedia entry describes
> > the book adequately, and gives synopses of four or five of the
> > stories.
> >
> > Then it gives a synopsis of one more story, with this comment: "Note
> > that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's English
> > translation of The Cyberiad."
> ...
>
> story! It *is* part of the German edition of the Trurl and Klapaucius
> stories. In the German edition all the T&K stories are collected seperately
> from the rest of the Cyberiad, filling several volumes (well, maybe it's
> only two, I realy have to read them again).
Interesting! Thanks.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
When Bush says "Stay the course," what he means is "I don't know what to
do next." He's been saying this for years now.
Jens Kilian
> Then it gives a synopsis of one more story, with this comment: "Note
> that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's English
> translation of The Cyberiad."
>
> So, what the heck?
WHAT? This is one of my favorite stories, and it's definitely in the
German edition. I just love the bit where ...
> Eventually, Trurl gets tired of all the work and
> builds a computer that will contain a programmatic clone of his mind
> that would do the research for him. Instead of building new worlds,
> the computer sets about expanding itself. When Trurl eventually forces
> it to stop building itself and start working, the clone-Trurl tells
> him that he has already created lots of sub-Trurl programs to do the
> work and tells him stories about their research (which Trurl later
> finds out is bogus).
It's nice telling this to people who think that intelligent computers
would be our unthinking slaves :-)
Did Kandel also omit the bit where Trurl wakes up his dead professor
to get advice?
Bye,
Jens.
--
mailto:j...@acm.org As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
http://del.icio.us/jjk
Jani Jaakkola
> Then it gives a synopsis of one more story, with this comment: "Note
> that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's English
> translation of The Cyberiad."
The finnish translation of the Cyberiad (kyberias) contains only the stories
of Trurl and Klapausius and I think the finnish version is direct
translation of the the english Cyberiad (I have only read the Kyberias,
which is absolutely great if you happen to be one of those 5M people who
can appreciate excellent finnish translation).
However, Lem did write other (earlier?) short stories about robots, where
Trurl and Klapausius don't get to play main roles. These have been
translated and released in a later finnish book Konekansan tarinoita (tales
of the machine people). I have no idea if english translation of those
stories exists or whether the finnish translations are anywhere near
complete.
Maybe we would need some polish person to put together a definitive list of
all Lems robot stories, so we could decide which language happens to have
to have the most complete selection of translations :)
- Jani
Marilee J. Layman
<erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Much vitriol is expended these days about whether Wikipedia is a
>brilliant idea, a stupid idea, or both.
Frank Ahrens, who writes the WashPost column Webwatch, reviewed
videojug.com in his Sunday column. At the end of the column, he said:
"Still, if I need to know something harmless, such as "how to conceal
bags under your eyes," and the answer doesn't involve spackle, I might
be inclined to follow Videojug's advice. For more important stuff,
I'll stick to ironclad authoritative Internet sources.
Like Wikipedia."
Which made me laugh out loud.
--
Marilee J. Layman
http://mjlayman.livejournal.com/
Joe Bednorz
"Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
Anonymous.
--
SciFi at Project Gutenberg: <http://thethunderchild.com/Books/OutofCopyright.html>
Baen Free Online SciFi: <http://www.baen.com/library/>
Baen Free SciFi CDs <http://files.plebian.net/baencd/>
SciFi.com classic & original: <http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html>
All the best, Joe Bednorz
Bryan Derksen
<erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>But I have heard tell of Wikipedia debates that got nasty enough that
>the "permanent" history got embargoed or deleted.
Article histories only get revisions removed under very specific
situations, most commonly when the content can't be legally
redistributed (eg, someone pasted someone else's copyrighted material
in there without permission), when the content is complete nonsense of
no encyclopedic use (eg, pages created by vandals), or when the topic
of the article is judged inappropriate for inclusion (eg, an article
about an obscure garage band that never produced any albums). Recently
there have also been some instances of libel being expunged from
article histories, but this is quite rare since most people are
satisfied with it simply being edited away by conventional means.
In the case where an article is simply the subject of an acrimonious
debate, the worst that would probably happen is that the article would
be temporarily locked against further editing until the ruckus died
down and the argument resolved.
For something like this particular article I wouldn't be concerned. :)
Bryan Derksen
>Frank Ahrens, who writes the WashPost column Webwatch, reviewed
>videojug.com in his Sunday column. At the end of the column, he said:
>
>"Still, if I need to know something harmless, such as "how to conceal
>bags under your eyes," and the answer doesn't involve spackle, I might
>be inclined to follow Videojug's advice. For more important stuff,
>I'll stick to ironclad authoritative Internet sources.
>
>Like Wikipedia."
>
>Which made me laugh out loud.
Well, Wikipedia's never claimed to be authoritative.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer> is quite
clear about it. But Wikipedia also includes some disclaimers from
other sources for comparison:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-Wikipedia_disclaimers>.
Lots of other prominent sources don't claim to be authoritative
either. So perhaps it's a good thing that in Wikipedia's case people
are willing to take the information there with the grain of salt that
they should really be taking _everywhere_. :)
For what it's worth, if someone digs up a solid reference backing up
this little factoid about Cyberiad I'll add it to the article.
Wikipedia's got a good footnoting syntax primarily intended for adding
citations like that.
Robert Hutchinson
> "Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
> Anonymous.
I'd stay anonymous, too, if my pithy remarks didn't make any sense.
--
Robert Hutchinson | "Audiences won't soon forget when the
| thing-we-didn't-know-what-it-was was put into
| the helicopter by the guy we didn't know."
| -- Servo, MST3K, 810, Giant Spider Invasion
Joe Bednorz
>Joe Bednorz says...
>
>> "Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
>> Anonymous.
>
>I'd stay anonymous, too, if my pithy remarks didn't make any sense.
Well, yes. It really only makes Google look good in a relative sense,
but it's not my quote.
Juho Julkunen
ser...@hotmail.com says...
> Joe Bednorz says...
>
> > "Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
> > Anonymous.
>
> I'd stay anonymous, too, if my pithy remarks didn't make any sense.
I'm pretty impressed by how good Google is at indexing Wikipedia.
--
Juho Julkunen
To reach me with email add "GT39" to the subject line.
Robert Hutchinson
> Robert Hutchinson wrote:
> >Joe Bednorz says...
> >
> >> "Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
> >> Anonymous.
> >
> >I'd stay anonymous, too, if my pithy remarks didn't make any sense.
>
> Well, yes. It really only makes Google look good in a relative sense,
> but it's not my quote.
Um, that's not what I meant. I get that part of it. "X makes Y look good"
is a venerable snowclone, to be sure.
What I meant: since when is Google generally considered to look bad? Is
that a reference to page layouts, or to services/habits that aren't so
good? On the latter, all I can think of right away is "China censoring"
and "Google Groups", and neither of those are thought about a whole lot
when one is thinking about Google, IMO.
Gerry Quinn
ser...@hotmail.com says...
> Joe Bednorz says...
> > Robert Hutchinson wrote:
> > >Joe Bednorz says...
> > >
> > >> "Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
> > >> Anonymous.
> > >
> > >I'd stay anonymous, too, if my pithy remarks didn't make any sense.
> >
> > Well, yes. It really only makes Google look good in a relative sense,
> > but it's not my quote.
>
> Um, that's not what I meant. I get that part of it. "X makes Y look good"
> is a venerable snowclone, to be sure.
>
> What I meant: since when is Google generally considered to look bad? Is
> that a reference to page layouts, or to services/habits that aren't so
> good? On the latter, all I can think of right away is "China censoring"
> and "Google Groups", and neither of those are thought about a whole lot
> when one is thinking about Google, IMO.
He means that you find a lot of rubbish on both when you go looking for
facts.
- Gerry Quinn
Arwel Parry
Hutchinson <ser...@hotmail.com> writes
>Joe Bednorz says...
>> Robert Hutchinson wrote:
>> >Joe Bednorz says...
>> >
>> >> "Wikipedia has achieved the impossible. It makes Google look good." -
>> >> Anonymous.
>> >
>> >I'd stay anonymous, too, if my pithy remarks didn't make any sense.
>>
>> Well, yes. It really only makes Google look good in a relative sense,
>> but it's not my quote.
>
>Um, that's not what I meant. I get that part of it. "X makes Y look good"
>is a venerable snowclone, to be sure.
The original tagline for "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" was "Makes
'Ben Hur' look like an epic"!
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
David Johnston
>>> Well, yes. It really only makes Google look good in a relative sense,
>>> but it's not my quote.
It doesn't make Google look good in the first place.
Robert Hutchinson
Well, then, he's confusing "Google" with "the Internet". Any search
engine will find a lot of rubbish, if a lot of rubbish is there to be
found.
Alexey Romanov
> Much vitriol is expended these days about whether Wikipedia is a
> brilliant idea, a stupid idea, or both. I generally don't get into the
> arguments. I use it and find it useful, and I figure that as long as I
> stay away from topics that people get worked up about, it won't screw
> me over too much.
>
> Last night, idly flipping through Wikipedia pages while _Solaris_
> (Soderbergh) played on the VCR, I got onto the Cyberiad entry. I
> happen to have re-read _The Cyberiad_ in the past couple of weeks --
> Kandel's English translation, of course. The Wikipedia entry describes
> the book adequately, and gives synopses of four or five of the
> stories.
>
> Then it gives a synopsis of one more story, with this comment: "Note
> that this particular story does not appear in Michael Kandel's English
> translation of The Cyberiad."
>
> So, what the heck?
>
> It *looks* like a Cyberiad story. It echoes themes from the Altruizine
> story, the Seventh Sally, and others. For all I know, it's real. For
> all I know, it's someone's joke.
Well, if this is a joke, they have fooled the Russian translators as well.
Well done!
--
Alexey Romanov
"Sam? No one's chasing us."
"What? There's supposed to be an angry mob hot on our heels!
The inspector promised us an angry mob!
"Helix, I believe we've been stood up."
Ahasuerus
> Lots of other prominent sources don't claim to be authoritative
> either. So perhaps it's a good thing that in Wikipedia's case people
> are willing to take the information there with the grain of salt that
> they should really be taking _everywhere_. :)
The most obvious difference is that regular encyclopedias have
identifiable editors. You don't have to agree with, say, John Clute's
(and John Clute-selected) articles in his encyclopedias, but at least
you know where he is coming from. Wikipedia's editors, on the other
hand, are unknown and vary tremendously -- see, for example, the most
recent attack on James D. Macdonald's article --
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_D._Macdonald&diff=72475463&oldid=69309012
.
Granted, WP has rules, regulations and processes in place, which, if
they were followed meticulously, would result in a slow but steady
improvement in the quality of all articles. However, that's predicated
on the number of manhours dedicated to Wikipedia by well meaning *and*
at least moderately competent editors exceeding the manhours spent by
POV warriors and "well meaning but clueless" folks. It doesn't look
particularly promising at this point.
As an aside, this also means that obscure topics are often better
covered in WP than popular articles. Take
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin as an example. It recently
confused Will in New Haven (see
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/137839769dfc5945) and is
generally of very poor quality, misstating or omitting many important
facts of his biography. And yet you can find the same facts explained
in considerable detail in related articles because their editors didn't
have to worry about revert warriors. Well, not as much :)
Still, as cheap epistemological experiments go, it's not a bad one ;-)
--
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus
> http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50293
> [snip-snip]
> A good WP page can only exists as long as its "watchers" outnumber
> (or at least have as much energy to spend as) the vandals.
Outright vandals are certainly a pain, but bots are getting better at
catching their shenanigans and automatically reverting them. (Somewhat
Vingean, isn't it? :-) Determined agenda pushers are much harder to
handle, especially if they are smart enough to learn how the system
works and how to use it to their advantage. On top of that they tend to
have a lot of free time to spend on enlightening the rest of us.
And then there are multitudes of nice helpful folks who will cheerfully
drag articles down to their level of understanding. For example, Pern
is unambiguously a fantasy series since it has dragons, right?
> There's something sisyphean in the wiki system that doesn't
> exist in other knowledge-gathering systems.
>
> posted by elgilito at 5:32 AM PST on March 23
Sisyphus' predicament is a good analogy. You can be productive at
first, but as your Watch list grows, the amount of time spent on
protecting your "turf" increases until you are no longer able to
contribute meaningfully. Penelope's shroud also comes to mind :)
Nonetheless, it remains an interesting experiment and perhaps will lead
to something bigger and better in the future the way Gopher and other
models lead to the Web some years ago. Of course, Nupedia's example is
not particularly encouraging...
--
Ahasuerus
Scott Golden
> Omixochitl wrote:
>
>>http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50293
>>[snip-snip]
>> A good WP page can only exists as long as its "watchers" outnumber
>> (or at least have as much energy to spend as) the vandals.
>
>
> Outright vandals are certainly a pain, but bots are getting better at
> catching their shenanigans and automatically reverting them.
>
>
They were able to block all attempts to vandalize the 'Mel Gibson' page
when he made the headlines recently. The banner announcing that editing
was being locked out went up almost immediately.
Walter Bushell
"Ahasuerus" <ahas...@email.com> wrote:
> (Somewhat
> Vingean, isn't it? :-) Determined agenda pushers are much harder to
> handle, especially if they are smart enough to learn how the system
> works and how to use it to their advantage. On top of that they tend to
> have a lot of free time to spend on enlightening the rest of us.
They succeed because they are Focussed?
--
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any
charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his
peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totali-
tarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -- W. Churchill, Nov 21, 1943