RE: virus: MS Weapon

Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Wed, 8 Oct 1997 09:48:35 +0100


> From: Richard Brodie[SMTP:RBrodie@brodietech.com]
>
> On Tuesday, October 7, 1997 2:12 AM, Robin Faichney
> [SMTP:r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk] wrote:
> > That doesn't show that patterns exist only in the mind of
> > the beholder. It shows merely that different people
> > match different patterns. I content that these patterns
> > people see, e.g. in clouds and Rorschach (sp.?) ink blots,
> > are *all* there. To quote myself (for what that's worth):
> > nothing comes from nothing. People don't invent, they
> > select.
>
> If they're ALL there, how is that different from NONE of them being
> there?
>
Your question *might* make sense if I had been talking about
*absolutely* all patterns, but in fact it was all "these patterns
people see". Say two people look at a photograph of a cloud,
and one sees a similarity to a sheep, while the other is
reminded of the Mandelbrot set. A pattern-matching algorithm,
set up to compare scanned-in photos of the cloud and of a
sheep in the appropriate position WRT viewpoint, with the
M set, will find and match these patterns, because all are
really there.

That example was not ideal, because there's actually just one
pattern that all three things match (big blob attached to smaller
blob), whereas the more interesting case has people focussing
on different features of the cloud, so they see different
patterns, but without (a) a graphics capability here and (b) the
time to set up a good example using it, you'll just have to resort
to your own experience and imagination.

Robin