by Lore Sjöberg
We've heard the disoriented masses crying out for moral guidance.
We've seen the uplifted faces peering at us, hoping to find universal
truths dropped on them like water balloons. We've felt the rumblings
among the philosophical foundations of our society, and we know that
millions are looking to us to show them the way. But you know,
we're pretty busy.
So instead, we've created the Automated Philosopher, a disturbingly
small but potent program that combines the attitudes of four
of the most widely- and fanatically-followed figures of the Twentieth
Century:
Ayn Rand is the capitalist's capitalist, Wonder Woman to Adam
Smith's Superman. She wrote three novels and founded Objectivism, a school of
philosophy that can be summed up in five syllables: "If you're
rich, you're right."
Robert Heinlein wrote over forty novels, all of them identical.
His rugged, free-thinking, oversexed heroes and heroines have
inspired college students to emulate them and form many
communes and group marriages, none of which Heinlein would have been
caught dead in.
Chairman Mao is best known as "that guy in that one Beatles
song." He was the leader of the "Cultural Revolution" in China in
the Sixties and inspired millions of followers, not all of whom he
had killed.
Miss Manners writes a syndicated column on etiquette where she
answers questions that ten percent of the time are along the lines
of "What can I do to be more polite?" and ninety percent of the
time are more like "There's this one oaf in my social
circle who used his shrimp spoon to eat prawns! How can I spit on
him in an appropriate manner?"
The theory here is that moral teaching, like everything else, is basically
a popularity contest, and if so many people have elected these folks
Homecoming Queen, whom are we to judge?
Anyhow, by pressing the button below, the Automated Philosopher
will algorithmically combine quotes from these four human beings
into a single Frankensteinian uber-dialectic, which should theoretically
imbue you with an ineffable sense of moral truth and inspire you to go
on and so forth.
The Automated Philosopher is based on the legendary Perl program "travesty."
Perl builds strong bodies eight ways. Larry Wall deserves oral sex. Thank you.
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