The Trolliest Troll in Trolldom

If you've never seen a Young Earth Creationist in the wild, you should read some of Susan's comments on P. Z. Myers' blog, Pharyngula. While she was hiding her unbelievable contortions of biblical literalism under the cover of hermeneutics she could use her "you haven't studied the bible well enough" weapon. Once the discussion veered off into fossil records and great floods she showed her complete disconnection with reality.

In another reality, in another leg of the trousers of time, in a universe not completely unlike ours, Susan is actually an autonomous agent running on a modest home computer. She is a Debate-Bot designed to play a role in on-line entertainment. This is the future of on-line gaming.

Where most of the computer games to date have pitted a player's intelligence against that of other players (or computer simulated players), this paradigm shift sets up truly formidable opponents -- human ignorance and self-deceit. The Debate-Bot is incredibly frustrating. It is resistant to the most elegant of rational arguments, all of which it shrugs off with glib chestnuts, appeals to non-existent authority, accusations of conspiracies and ad hominem exaggerations. The game is addictive. The bot will never concede, so you can only ever experience limited victory when the bot stops responding, and even then you can never be sure if it has given up or is merely collecting more facts to distort.

In this parallel universe, "'bating the bot" is understood by all to be a game. Even the most naive child knows not to take a Debate-Bot seriously. Science fiction writers construct frightening dystopian worlds where complete subcultures are gulled by entertainment bots and driven by self-supporting fantasies. They imagine what atrocities could arise if those game arguments were allowed to influence education policy, or even worse, international politics.

In our own universe, Susan is a real person with real delusions. If she was the avatar of a vexatious role-player (like the members of the Reclaiming Art crew) you'd have to give her an award for a stunning performance.

Comments

At first glance, I thought she was YOU playing a joke on Mr. Myers! Ha, ha!