And that has made all the difference.
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[Technorati tags: Cartoons, Chickens, PoetBot, Poetry, Robot, Road Not Taken, Robert Frost]
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12 Responses to Poet-Bot
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Buy my new book!
Less than 30 seconds after I finished reading this cartoon, I slipped into “how might I ‘improve’ i.e. hack this code” mode.
Clearly I have no life.
(But it’s still a great cartoon)
try deciphering what came first– the chicken or the egg, poet-bot.
Profound. Verily.
The first time I read that poem (in high school), it sounded a lot like the Poet-Bot’s version! Gotta love public school…haha!
road_taken = (road1_traffic < road2_traffic ? 1 : 2)
output = diff(road1, road2)
“Set the value for road_taken to one,
if road1_traffic is less than road2_traffic
otherwise the value is two.
Output is the difference between road one and two”
🙂
I, for one, enjoy the poetry written by our robot overlords!
word.
if x > 1
Then y = “to be
else y = “not to be”
output = y + “that is the question”
Im so very ashamed
if (x=woodchuck::chuck(wood)) printf(“quantity=%d\n”,x);
I feel smarter! 😀
question = (2b || !2b)
The function for choosing the road to take is deficient, as a matter of logic and of fidelity to the poem — because it ignores the trichotomy of conditions given as (1) A < B, (2) A = B, or (3) A > B.
Namely, the poem offers the facts that the alternative roads seem to be equal, a priori. The poet then must have selected on other grounds, unmentioned here — leaving us with the impression of the Age of Uncertainty. There is no criterion score validating one’s choice — which then becomes essentially arbitrary, or random — a choice compelled only by the circumstances of having to make a choice.
In the last stanza of the poem, the poet opines that he was unable, with foreknowledge, to determine that the road that he took was going to be the one less traveled by. He could have whined about his “mistake” at that point — but instead he simply observes, that’s the way life is, you must make choices among equally plausible alternatives — without any justification for the road you choose. And, he does not rationalize his choice, for its consequences to him, that the one he chose proved, after all, after the fact, and despite an initial apparent equality, to be less traveled. Sigh.
Hence, the proper function coding for the choice procedure is missing the element of indeterminacy. I suggest this:
Procedure Choose_Road(A,B)
If A > B, Choice <- A
Elseif B > A, Choice <- B,
Else Choice <- Random(A,B)
Endif
Return Choice
End_Procedure