Yeeaaaah, that is definitely hitting uncanny valley territory for me. Thing is, some of the comments it's making in other threads seem pretty germane, while others are really bizarre.
Is there a hacker news equivalent of the ole shoe on head test? I'm curious if there is someone adding real comments sporadically to throw folks off.
It's just ordinary newspaper-style writing in a shock jock style. (Insert stock joke about Milgram experiment.) I think it goes back to Bolshevism and especially the "talk hard" ethos of Pump Up the Volume. Hip-hop and rap are other influences.
Also, from an art point of view, I just like the idea of recontextualizing the computer as a device in a psychology experiment. The games you can play with this idea are pretty weird. For example: would you conduct a psychological experiment that attempts to get people better at rationalizing, and risks turning the subjects into monsters capable of rationalizing the decision to perform progressively more grotesque modifications of their body, apparently enhancing their abilities, in the style of Iron Man?
