So what is wrong with Romantic-Dualism?

It's magic. That's fine, if you'll admit it; if you're admit that you're saying the artist imbues his artifacts with a kind of non-physical enchantment that humans (and presumably only humans) have an innate supernatural ability to assense, then there's no logical contradiction. The problem is trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Also, it disqualifies you from talking. Just kidding, just kidding.

*pouts* No Talking at All? Ever?

Besides, I never said a Machine was capable of technical perfection, I stipulate that it could be a possibility (I believe I said "Even IF").

Hehehe. This has been a productive threadjack, if the correct product of Dumpshock is spent-time. And I think it is.

That's the whole problem, though. Once you stipulate the theoretical possibility, you're claiming magic. Everything is fine as long as you *don't* say 'even if'.

Okay Then.... Machines suck at forging art, they will never produce a faithful, nor technically perfect, copy of a work of art.

Got it

I was talking about something called emotion, which is what human actors use when they read Shakespeare or any other script. Note what I said - a technically perfect rendition of the text - i.e. all the right words in exactly the right order. Reading Shakespeare in a monotone would be a technically perfect rendition of the text, but any human listener would find it dull and lifeless, and I for one would probably be asleep before the conclusion of the first act.

And despite your credentials, I would argue that people DO convey emotion in speech. People who are angry WILL TALK IN A RAISED VOICE and, more often than not at a faster tempo than usual etc, etc. I will grant you that pure transmission of speech is accoustic, and that computers (especially in the 2070's in a makebelieve world that magic has come back called Shadowrun) could probably do a pretty good job mimicking human emotion in speech, but that doesn't mean that these same computers "understand" emotions such as anger, happiness or sadness and this misunderstanding could lead to mistakes, although admittedly the mistakes would mean the copy may not be "technically perfect".

Whoa, I certainly didn't say emotion is not conveyed in speech. I said that it is conveyed *acoustically* (as opposed to mystically), and that a 'technically correct' realization of Shakespeare includes all of that. 'Technically' means 'in technique'; 'technically perfect' means 'perfect in technique', not like the legalese 'well, that's *technically* true, but actually false'.

So our misunderstanding is that you used 'technically perfect reading' to mean 'technically very imperfect' from my point of view. (I also have a different definition of 'text', which didn't help. Sorry!)

But, aside from that, there's my point again: the computer has zero need to 'feel' or 'understand' the emotions conveyed by the vibrations of air molecules it's creating, any more than a CD player needs to understand the emotion on a CD it's playing.

So, it sounds like we're totally on the same page now: 'technically perfect', a) is not necessarily attainable from machines in all media with available tech, and b) means that all physical data is reproduced with complete fidelity, including intonation, etc. Any emotion is physical data, so *if* 'technically perfect' exists, then all emotion is present.