"Did computer generated 'high-entropy essays' have a life after 1968?"
Brent MacGregor, 2002.
ESSAY:
in crystals functions electrons form bloch waves in the alkali metals
in crystals functions electrons occupy all energies in the alkali metals
effectively functions electrons form bloch waves using the Mathieus equation
however atomic vibrations are transported along lattice directions
on the contrary atomic vibrations can be considered as Einstein spectra
on the contrary quantized waves are conserved like Planck oscillators
therefore lattice waves interact via perturbations
hence electrons suffer energy discontinuities
therefore lattice waves produce periodic potentials
a long time ago Rayleigh and Jeans made poor assumptions on Holtzman statistics
before Planck Maxwell tried to deal with the balmer serixes
in the 19th century J. J. Thomson incorrectly interpreted electrical conduction
in the 20th century Born and Von Karman found a solution by quantization
in the 20th century Einstein worked out the free electron theory
recently Einstein tackled the problem with this in mind
High-Entropy Essays were part
of Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA, London, 1968 along with
COMPUTERIZED HAIKU. They are frankly bogus physics essays.
Hardly anyone remembers High-Entropy Essays now. This is a sad thing.
They are the forerunner of all the computer
texts
that have tried to pass as human-authored. However, Mendoza's
subterfuge was quickly discovered. This happened about 1962.
Professor
Mendoza tells the
story:
"You
might also be interested to know the origin of this work.
Professor Flowers (no less) had a theory
that
students never actually learned any real ideas; all they learned
was a vocabulary of okay words which they strung
together
in arbitrary order, relying on the fact that an examiner
pressed for time would not actually read what they had written
but
would scan down the pages looking
for those words...The end point was when a colleague from another
university secretly
sent
me some first year examination papers
a week or so before the exam, and I wrote suitable vocabularies
(without cheating)
and
copied down what the computer emitted... the script was slipped in
among the genuine ones. Unfortunately it was marked
by
a very conscientious man who eventually
stormed into the Director's office shouting "Who the hell is this man,
why did we ever
admit
him? So perhaps Professor Flowers' hypothesis was incorrect."
The original program is lost. Mendoza published some of the
High-Entropy Essays. He also published a flow chart of the program.
This is what I used when I came to program my version. However, these two (mine and his) groups of
essays differ slightly.
When I have time I'll try to reverse-engineer Mendoza's essays to work
back to how he made them.
Wayne Clements
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