Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 04:42:59 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Jordan exists Message-ID: <37A0AEC3.26237FB0@newsguy.com> References: <199907281524.LAA61875@dean.pc.sas.com> <199907281539.LAA09614@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <379F4390.950D08FA@newsguy.com> <xzp4sin4xk7.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <19990729125245.A224@whizkidtech.net> <37A09679.88910EFD@newsguy.com> <19990729140837.A223@whizkidtech.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
"G. Adam Stanislav" wrote: > > Jordan's existence is beyond reasonable doubt, which means legally he exists. > I can present two arguments for his existence: > > 1. I once received personal email from Jordan. That would not mean much as > of itself. But the *contents* of that email could not have been conjured > up by any software except that running inside a human brain. So you say... but unless you show the contents as proof, this cannot be considered an "argument". > 2. The mere lack of existence of Jordan's Witnesses, or any other > proselytizing group, shows that anyone who claims he/she has actually > met Jordan in person is telling the truth, as they, obviously, have > no psychological need to prove it to themselves first. (I never met > him personally.) Aha! But you forget that Jordan employs avatars! It seems he usually prefer an unbearded one (of all things!), but one Karen (responsible for the daemonatrix) has photos of a bearded one. > So, why do I go beyond *reasonable* doubt rather than having *absolute* > certainty? Because there is one tiny detail that may raise small doubts: > Any photograph I have ever seen that purported to be of Jordan, was > actually a picture of Keanu Reeves, just touched up to make him look > younger. When you factor in that these are just avatars, it all makes sense. :-) > BUT! The pictures were touched up under FreeBSD, therefore Jordan exists. Ah, but the question is much more complicated than that. Does Jordan exists only while it is running, or it's physical representation on the disk (or maybe even listings!) is enough for him to "exist"? I mean, suppose freefall crashed (or wherever Jordan is running on nowadays), but the source to Jordan still existed, would you say Jordan itself still existed? And, in this case, what if there are multiple copies of Jordan? What if it's stored over RAID5? What if it has been mmapped() with MAP_PRIVATE, and then dirtied and stored in swap? These and other Jordan questions have busied the minds of many Jesuits for years! -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "Is it true that you're a millionaire's son who never worked a day in your life?" "Yeah, I guess so." "Lemme tell you, son, you ain't missed a thing." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?37A0AEC3.26237FB0>