Defense against basilisks

[Hraxmeim]

I've previously posted this elsewhere but got a disappointing response. If you do better maybe I won't show you the Parrot. Maybe.

For basic information, here's the comp.basilisk FAQ and the related short story BLIT

So, how would you go about defending yourself and others from BLIT terrorist attack?

[TwoDifferentSox]

Counter them with the funniest joke ever written ( (TM) Monthy Phyton).

[ZOMBIE USER 7262]

I read that article three times before I figured out that it was fictional hypothesis.

I thought the Windows 2005 thing was a joke, and the rest was completely serious. The only thing that really threw me off was, I'd never heard of this before, and I wasn't sure how urban terrorists (a term I'd never heard used) could spraypaint basilisks...how accurate can spraypainting be?

Now, what if you could WRITE a sentence that created a mental image that was a basilisk?

The article reminded me of the Kate Bush song, Experiment IV. It's about an actual experiment during the Cold War, trying to find a way to kill enemy soldiers using sound. (They told us all they wanted / was a sound that could kill someone / from a distance, so we go ahead / and the meters are over in the red / It's a mistake in the making)

[TwoDifferentSox]

I actually read a book aout something smilar lately (science fiction though, no worries ).
It's called "Snowcrash" and about a computer program, that displays a message in some kind of universal code, where you're aware of nothing else but data-trash, but ones subconcious works with the data and makes your brain malfunction. A computer virus going directly to your brain, you could say.
It's been an interesting concept, claiming that it worked with a "universal language" that existed before all the other languages developed we know today. Had some obscure believes mixed in too, so it sounded all in all a bit very weird. But was entertaining nonetheless.

I also recall that it is a theme that shows up every now and then in the X-files, Outer limits, and similar TV series...
Interesting, never noticed until I I thought about it now.

[W.M.Y.L.G. Joe]

Yeah, if you believe that, it's important you go get a dictionary and look up the word "gullible."

how accurate can spraypainting be

Don't know about accurate enough to create what they're talking about, but you'd be darned surprised what artists can do with it.

[Gloria]

.... I think I KINDA understand what this is about.... I've never heard of it, either.

Obviously a joke, but... with what purpose?

[W.M.Y.L.G. Joe]

So, how would you go about defending yourself and others from BLIT terrorist attack?

Option 1: Print a shirt with the image on it, blindfold yourself and run around like mad in public.

Option 2: Become an absolute recluse and never contact civil society ever again.

Option 3: Gouge out your eyes.

Option 4: Kill yourself.

Obviously a joke, but... with what purpose?

Either to take advantage of the weak minded, or inspire someone to try and create such a godforsaken thing.

That or just maybe to indulge in a little fantasy? Novel concept.

(sorry, I'm in another sardonic mood)

[LAGtheNoggin]

It's been an interesting concept, claiming that it worked with a "universal language" that existed before all the other languages developed we know today. Had some obscure believes mixed in too, so it sounded all in all a bit very weird. But was entertaining nonetheless.

Heh, the exact same book I was thinking about. And those are actually true beliefs depicted in that book. But drawing out fictional theorys of course, the Egyptians and people before really were that weird. At the British Museum in the Victorian times they used plaques to cover all the stone todgers. Yes. They have hyroglyphs of said strange beliefs 9.9

I liked SnowCrash, great book methinks ^.^

And the concept is quite interesting, it seems quite feesable, we are afterall just sophisticated computers, why can't we crash? [simple questions should elict complicated responses and I'm up way too early to answer myself]

[ZOMBIE USER 7262]

Scientific speculation, I think. It's possible that this could very well be discovered in the future and in fact be a brain-rebooting epidemic. This of course would be terrible, because it's on the same we-never-should-have-done-this scale as the atomic bomb, but several orders of magnitude higher.

Imagine if you could in fact kill someone with just a picture, because you figured out how to give the human brain a signal that broke it.

[W.M.Y.L.G. Joe]

And the concept is quite interesting, it seems quite feesable, we are afterall just sophisticated computers, why can't we crash?

We do. Why do you think we have psychiatrists and mental institutions?

Imagine if you could in fact kill someone with just a picture, because you figured out how to give the human brain a signal that broke it.

Yes, but the brain is INCREDIBLY complex. It takes something a little more than just a simple picture to universally achieve one task. People see things in their lifetime that greatly affects them and even though it may not cause a "crash" like this story implies, it causes geat emotional and mental scars that alter the way the brain works for a long time. Sometimes enough that people kill themselves. I'd call that a system failure if there ever was one. Basically, yes there are images that could shut down a person, but there couldn't be ONE single picture that could have the same effect on every person. We ain't just unique on the outside, people.

[ZOMBIE USER 10925]

Scientific speculation, I think. It's possible that this could very well be discovered in the future and in fact be a brain-rebooting epidemic. This of course would be terrible, because it's on the same we-never-should-have-done-this scale as the atomic bomb, but several orders of magnitude higher.

http://www.sjgames.com/transhuman/toxicmemes.html

Imagine if you could in fact kill someone with just a picture, because you figured out how to give the human brain a signal that broke it.

TNG season 5, "I, Borg"

[Gloria]

Yes, but the "basilisk" is a mathemathical thing as much as it is a visual one.

And I'm sure many of us would agree that sometimes too much math makes you feel like your brain is going to implode....

[W.M.Y.L.G. Joe]

And that, my friend, is why math is the work of the devil.

[Gloria]

*whines*

Man, you don't know how much I wish I were a math genius.
Seriously!

[W.M.Y.L.G. Joe]

I don't. I like being artsy. Or philisophical.

[Dave g]

how to defend onself against basilisks... hm, probably super glue mirrors all over my body and run around screaming about the apocolypse... no, no, thats what i did for thanksgiving.

[Crash]

Hm. I've been away, or I would have weighed in on this long ago... this is tangential to the current tangent, but... I don't know if such a "program", be it visual info or not, could really affect a large mass of people... if you want to compare the human brain to a computer, then our "logic circuits" are different in every person... our central processing units, as it were, may be similar, but virii (in this case, the BLITs) don't attack hardware, they attack data (Software is organized data that contains instructions for hardware). However, even between people, there can be a vast difference between the function of particular parts of our brains, such as the cerebellum, the medulla, and the other gray bits I can't recall.

Anyway, the "data" that would have to be corrupted is contained in the patterns of our neuronal connections, which are shaped by our experiences. Learned behaviors, like hitting a tennis ball or using a mouse, are in effect "programs"...Since everyone has different experiences, our data (and programs) would be different, and the virus, or "Godelian shock input" or BLIT would have a different effect on each person. Some would be affected more, some less, some not at all. And because of the chaotic and unordered patterns of connections and intelinkages, there may not be any way to predict what the final effect would be, or ways to search for more broadly effective BLITs... at least to my mind.

but it's an excellent story... very inventive, and I love the ending.

And how would I defend against it? By having unconventional experiences, seeking out unfamiliar points of view... find ways to make my brain function differently from the mass of people for which such an attack is designed... Recall that in the FAQ, the writer refers to the particular susceptibility of native English speakers. It may be possible that if a native Farsi speaker sought to create a BLIT, he may create one that would affect native Farsi speakers, but leave an English-speaker unharmed, or at least unsettled...

Hmmmm... and someone earlier touched on a "universal language", I think it was Tobi... What about the Jungian theory of the collective unconscious? I've never read much about it, but do you think it would apply in this case?

[W.M.Y.L.G. Joe]

Ah, thank you Crash. You explained what I was trying to say much more effectively.

*points to Crash's post*

What he said!

[Crash]

... Okay, this post has run away from me, and gotten to be far too large, just to warn you.

Ah, thank you Crash. You explained what I was trying to say much more effectively.

I did? Eh, I probably stole it from you then, Joey... he hehe. Well, lemme see if I can add something original.

I find concept of the effect being language-related very interesting... Lanugae is a logical construct, and is processed differently by the brain than is pure graphical information... so theoretically, an illiterate person SHOULD be immune, or have much greater resistance. The question then would be where the cutoff lies.

Also, consider this: The BLIT is supposed to work by introducing information that cannot be processed because it contradicts itself and cannot be resolved using accepted rules of logic, as the "report" in the story says, the equivalent of the statement "This sentence is false.", which is something like the logical statement "If A is true, then A is false" or "A=not A". Now, if that were entered into a computer as part of a program, a part that HAS to be computed before anything else can go on, one of two things happens: The computer stops, "crashes" on that statement, or if it is equpped for error detection and resolution, it will go into a recursive loop, attempting to recalculate for the proper solution. But for most humans, the "A=not A" gets thrown out because it obviously does not fit within our rules of logic... try it, and see what happens. I know my mind just sort of drifts off the subject when I try to think about it. That's a defense mechanism, and an indication of how MOST human minds differ from computers: We process in parallel, and we are not locked into rigid rules of logic. And that last is very important: Logic is not one overarching set of rules, laws, axioms, or whatnot: there are an infinite number of logical systems. All logic boils down to a set of assumptions or conditions that govern how information is treated, how data is processed. But there ARE different ways, and it is possible to learn new ones. So, BLIT defense could be as simple as an intensive philosophy course

And the concept of parallel processing is important, too. We can continue to operate even when essential data is missing or held up, whereas most computers and programs cannot, except under rigid predetermined and foreseen conditions. But our minds operate under constantly changing conditions, where stimuli and inputs frequently change and are often misunderstood, ignored, or imagined. That, and the way we think is more like asymmetrical processing, where all inputs don't necessarily have to be present for some computations to take place... it's called "resiliency", and refers to the ability of a system to continue to operate despite damage to portions of it, kind of like how the internet was built so that in case of nuclear war, data could be rerouted through surviving links rather than being locked into rigid transmission systems where the destruction of a single hub could disrupt communications. Part of the tradeoff of resiliency is loss of speed, and that's one of the reasons that, despite our vast computational capacity, we are much, much slower than silicon computers...

In the FAQ, it's said that Berryman theorized that the human mind was a "formal, determinisitic computational system", but I would disagree. Formal would assume that the mind is unchanging and all the computational functions are known and mapped, but since each mind is different, you would have to create a BLIT for each person. Furthermore, the deterministic component would assume that you get a predictable response to stimuli from the mind, every time... but it is impossible to correctly predict or control all the stimuli affecting the mind at any point in time. So the BLIT would only work if it could cause your mind to ignore all other stimuli, because that extraneous data would result in your brain receiving unpredicted inputs.... and it doesn't allow for random, unpredictable responses, which I firmly believe in.

Ummm, yeah. I wonder if there are literary BLITs? Looking at how much I'm thinking about this, I wonder if I could be caught in one right now? I mean, according to the story, the BLITs are language related, so could textual input, the purest form of language communication, be a valid way to transmit a BLIT? (Probably not, because the data transmission rate is so slow.)


Oh, and as for basilisk defense, so far everyone has missed the easiest possible solution: Always carry a bottle of vodka with you, and drink from it constantly to maintain an elevated blood alcohol content. Not necessarily the BEST solution, but it would be effective.

[Gloria]

*thinks*

But.... from what I understood, it sounded like the basilisk was a portion of an infinitely complex fractal image. Fractals are based on mathematics, not language.

Those are some good thoughts, though, Crash.

Apparently, Berryman, like many other scientists nowadays, was going off the assumption that humans are merely organic machines. Which is not completely true, as you pointed out.

Perhaps the effect on English speakers is not because of the LANGUAGE, but some other aspect of the environment in which most english-speakers live?
And I'd like to know what percentages and whatnot of other language speakers was affected.


Hmm....