Image courtesy of user PJZ at flickr.com

Hey gang. I want to tell you about an interesting encounter I had with my young nephew Brian. He is a code ninja for a software startup in Los Angeles. I was having a nice visit with him, and he was telling me about artificial intelligence. He claimed that a well-written algorithm could approximate a human personality almost perfectly. I asked him if he could write an algorithm to approximate his Uncle Chris’ peculiarities. After a few minutes, he presented me with the following snippet of what he called “pseudocode:”

repeat

output(random(words));
pause(pregnant);

repeat
input(baby);
until (insatiableLustForPristineSouls==sated);

cowbell++;

until (cowbell==sufficient);

“Eight lines?” I said. “You coded your crazy Uncle Chris in eight lines?”

My nephew just nodded smugly.

“That is human shit,” I said. “I don’t believe it.” And I started to storm out.

Brian grabbed me before I reached the door and started laughing. He said he was just kidding, that no algorithm could ever capture my essence. He explained that the
“random(words)” subroutine, while elegant, was not actually possible. He said there was no such algorithm in existence that could output gems like “I enjoy masturbating to the memory of recent sex more than I enjoy the sex itself.” (He claims I said this to him when he was thirteen and put him into three years of counseling).

That made me feel better. And I still find this to be an interesting exercise. If you have any coder friends, ask them to try to code your personality. If they come back with any less than 20 lines, they are dead to you.