#dirkgently — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #dirkgently, aggregated by home.social.
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Dirk Gently #DirkGently #DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, published in 1987.
It is described by the author on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently's_Holistic_Detective_Agency
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"...the sort of calmness that comes over people when they realize that however bad things may seem to be, there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't simply get worse."
Dirk Gently vol 1, truly a novel for our times.
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okay, so I've now watched Dirk Gently (2016) and Dirk Gently (2010), the former being two seasons of big budget indulgent modern fantasy and the latter being 4 episodes of old-fashioned BBC. Both kind of fun, but understandable why neither continued. #tv #dirkgently #douglasadams
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started watching Dirk Gently, it's good fun, but in S2 the whole "Dirk is sad and passive because everybody he's running into dies" thing gets really tedious. #tv #dirkgently
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Dear pastafarian friends
Happy douglas Adams day
#pastafarian #pastafariancolander #churchoftheflyingspaghettimonster #douglasadams #thehitchhikersguidetothegalaxy #dirkgently #doctorwho
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I know it'd be extremely niche, but I want a #Mario64 #AMV with #GurrenLagann's song showcasing how to “Do the impossible, see the invisible, …, touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable,”. Maybe add a bit of #DirkGently's “eff the ineffable” in there somewhere. https://youtube.com/shorts/-Ncj7B7WA4M #pannenkoek2012
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I would never have thought that the Electric Monk from Dirk Gently would turn out to be Buddhist.
#robot #robotics #android #animatronics #DirkGently #ElectricMonk
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
The Salmon of Doubt, Part 3 “And Everything,” “The Salmon of Doubt,” ch. 5 (2002) [ed. Peter Guzzardi]More info about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/29761/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #serendipity #prediction #problemsolving #solution #surprise #unexpected
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
He had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his “Zen” method of navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 4 (1988)More info about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/78883/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #automobile #car #driving #fate #following #gettinglost #kismet #navigation #serendipity
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
It was his subconscious which told him this — that infuriating part of a person’s brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 17 (1988)More info about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/78947/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #longdarkteatimeofthesoul #humannature #mind #self #subconscious #unconscious
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
“Ah, I expect you’ll be wanting to pay for that paper, then, won’t you, Mr. Dirk, sir?” said the newsagent, trotting gently after him.
“Ah, Bates,” said Dirk loftily, “you and your expectations. Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.”Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 4 (1988)More info about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/56729/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #expectations #liveforthemoment #serenity #hereandnow
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
Ah, Bates, you and your expectations. Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 4 [Dirk] (1988)More info about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/29662/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #acceptance #anticipation #carpediem #expectations #focus #joy #liveforthemoment #livefortoday #serenity
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
“You,” said Sally Mills, “are very strange.”
“Only,” said Dirk, “as strange as I need to be.”Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 10 (1988)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/74183/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #dirkgently #oddity #peculiarity #strangeness #weirdness
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I posted this as a reply elsewhere, but think it stands on its own, fleshed out a bit. So here it is.
It's about "AI" - LLMs or chatbots, of course.
Ask an LLM "Is <X> a good idea?", and it will tell you why it's a good idea.
Ask the same LLM "Is <X> a bad idea?", and it will tell you why it's a bad idea.It occurs to me that this behaviour - ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).
Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem you described, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.
So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.
#LLM #AI #Reason #DouglasAdams #DirkGently #reasoning #TormentNexus #justification #chatbot
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It occurs to me that what you describe - basically, ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).
Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.
So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.
Weird.
#DirkGently #reason #reasoning #decision #DouglasAdams #TormentNexus #AI
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport.”
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 1 (1988)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/1462/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #longdarkteatimeofthesoul #aesthetics #airport #architecture #beauty
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
Gordon Way’s astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing to his astonishment at what happened next.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 7 (1987)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/78249/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #afterlife #astonishment #cliffhanger #death #killing #murder #surprise
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 23 [Dirk] (1987)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/49682/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #blindspot #child #childhood #clarity #expectations #filter #seeing #sight #vision
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve learned something about it yourself.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 4 [Richard] (1987)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/29566/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #analysis #breakdown #explanation #learning #programming #teacher #teaching #training #understanding
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 30 [Dirk] (1987)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/29485/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #duck #evidence #facts #inductive #interpretation #obvious #reason #reasoning #signs #conclusion #possibility
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A quotation from Douglas Adams
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 20 [Dirk] (1987)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/29362/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #ambition #attempt #deed #endeavor #goal #ideal #ineffability #outsidethebox #thought #try
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Yes, of course, I have a crush on Bart Curlish
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I think Bart was a great addition to the #DirkGently multiverse
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Ok how have I only just discovered this Dirk Gently thing it so weird it's frigin awesome.
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CW: Very minor spoilers for yellowjackets S2, Elijah Wood, mostly because I think there's a really ridiculous meta-pun going on
Yellowjackets is really giving me Elijah Wood, investigating purple people with a people eater?? Really??
Tell me the fandom has noticed this!!
#yellowjackets #elijahwood #dirkgently #flyingpurplepeopleeater
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Dirk Gently will be extremely pleased.
Mathematician solves the moving sofa problem
https://phys.org/news/2024-12-mathematician-sofa-problem.html