This little guy has been visiting me for a year now. The week I got diagnosed with leukemia he started coming and he seems to know when I need his cuddles the most (he’s got owners btw, just not sure who)
Climbers have given nicknames to thousands and thousands of rock climbing routes – and the names range from quirky to rude to bizarre. Clearly, this makes them an excellent candidate for imitation by a neural network, which specializes in these three things exactly. With the help of my friend Adrian Hill, a programmer and rock climber, I obtained lists of the named routes in Boulder, Colorado (4,527) and Joshua Tree, California (5,633).
Here it is in the early stages of training, attempting to generate Boulder routes with as little daringness as possible (i.e. a low “temperature” setting). The prevalence of “start”, “stare”, and “stank” is characteristic of a struggling neural network in a way that would probably be really interesting to have a linguist explain someday.
Start of the Stare Start of the Wall Splot Spleen Ward Whittle Stroker Space Traverse Wark Fly Dorf Space of Cheek Cracker Traverse Wart of the Hood Wart of the Door Starg, The Wart Face Spunger Spleen Crack Stank Traverse Wild Stare Start Fall Spurt Face Crackson
At a higher temperature setting, the neural net still doesn’t fare much better at the Boulder routes. These don’t sound much like climbing routes – they could be anything. The neural net needs more training.
Murfon Cow Sprolf Porgo Yourd of the Shire O Dan Dawo P Nire of the Bat Bup Slicny of the Never Hot Ad Eag of Nut Crack Heller Pon Crack Hen Shawt Lo Dill Bat
Here are the new climbing routes the fully trained neural net generated. Many of them end up a bit rude-sounding which is not an entirely unfair characterization of Boulder climbing routes.
Perfect (Crack) Fight of the Buff Ponesharia Miss of the West Wall Warm Crack Fleshy…… Leg in Trangers Dirty Dill Ass Over Raging Action Storming the Cat Angry Velvet Quarter Be Here? Fire on the Lookout Midblood Flesh Feat Bricks Gut Dyno Dirty Low Down In It Eldoran Goats Take the Pinks
And here are the Joshua Tree routes that the neural net arrived at after a similar training process. There was slightly more Joshua Tree data, which helped the algorithm produce actually rather convincing route names:
Cosmic Center Knob Crack Oh Chain Spit Slab Problem crack Spite Crack Pockberg, The Frenky Road Problem R Morning Slumps King of the Cell Bubbles and Sugar Orangish Crack Bad Back Holy Wall Good Job Bumbles Elbown Ego’s Boys Bongo Call Sitting Mutters
It also picked up on the way Joshua Tree names like to use animals a lot – particularly dogs. Particularly poodles.
Dog Chicken World Don’t Bud Poodles Shark Take Folly Dog Bear Dumble Cat Brew 1 Burly’s Poodles Tanga’s Bat Race Buts Belly Goose Love Bront Dogs Dot Shatter Dogs Slapshot Lizards Chicken Problem 2 Dogstears and Short Sliggles Bread Deads and My Lizards
I don’t know where some of its Joshua Tree route names came from, though.
Pows in My Falls My Eat System Filthrackler We Ken of the Air Mumbles and Conception Punhead Big Touch Aliens But Darby and a Love Attack Choset Hungocatter’s Loo Up the Poodles Intersect in My Finger Left Rocket Pumpkin Beat Amant My Fart Mumbles and Woads Roading Buns My Eanworsent Mother That Hot Bolt Don’t Hell, Buttress Borby Maw (aka Boogles of to the Sourdue Sock) Chocolatrance Problem (aka The Boom Sag Poodle Boys A Pill-Bob)
There are more of these – mostly, the unprintable ones. If you’d like them (and all future bonus material), enter your email here.
Cephalopod Week 2018 starts today! Take a peek behind the scenes of our Tentacles special exhibition and learn from the aquarists—the self-proclaimed “Tentagals"—about their work to bring the tentacular to the world!
Fibromyangela 