> I have SEEN a 53 year-old male NLP practitioner on a BBS, using chat and
> email, pass as a young woman aged 19. No effort on his part. His
> vocabulary would change, his verbal patterns would change, and this whole
> female persona -- with an aunt in another state, a college student's
> reality, personal problems, etc. -- would emerge. He'd been doing it for
> over a year. Many young men on the BBS wanted to meet this seductive
> avatar he'd created. And he was extremely convincing as this avatar:
> Nobody suspected that this person didn't exist.
I do not dispute that a person can convincingly represent emself in text
as a completely different person. I spend a lot of time in online
text-based environments, so I'm highly familiar with that phenomenon.
> Why go to the trouble? To test NLP. To test the online environment. To
> test whether one can launch different avatars and, through them,
> disseminate memes.
>
> So, going back to your original argument for concluding that Richard can't
> be Brett, it doesn't take a mad genius to pull this off. The techniques
> are well-established; how well they work is another story.
What I am disputing is the idea that Richard would a.) be able to portray
Brett, a complex and idiosyncratic personality, using some subset of his
total time and attention, and b.) would consider it worth doing, given the
effort involved and the very real resentment it would create in people he
appears to care about. It's not impossible, but it implies a terrific
devotion to a very difficult and, I think, counterproductive, task. Thus
my "mad genius" remark.
> > Look at Brett's latest post: how 'real' does it sound to you? How
> fabricated? Would anyone you know have responded like Brett, with an email
> that unemotionally repeats some of the things we said about him? There
> aren't many bot-like people out there.
I myself have been mistaken for a bot while online. I have a button
announcing my Turing test failure. But that's neither here nor there. I
have given up on analyzing Brett, as person or as construct, having
concluded it takes more energy than I wish to devote to it. I did notice
that his last post was readable.
> And finally, as to the 'I'm sure he [Brodie] has better things to do with
> his time', how could you know that?
I admit that is a subjective judgement, based on my impressions of Richard
Brodie in person, his interests, and his apparent levels of busy-ness.
> I still don't understand how can anyone conclusively assert that Brett is
> NOT Brodie's avatar, based solely on Brett's online presence. Maybe I'm
> missing something. If that's the case, can someone please help and clarify?
I don't claim it's impossible that he's Brett, but I personally am
satisfied with my conclusion that he's not, because his reasons for
*claiming to be if he isn't* seem far more convincing to me than the
postulate that he really has invented Brett out of whole cloth. If I
should prove to be wrong, I will be surprised, impressed with Richard's
inventive ability, and sorely disappointed in his character and
priorities. On the other hand, it would make me more eager to read his
eventual novel.
--Eva