In the age of technology, this was bound to happen. It may start some skirmishes here but:

http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php?n=Main.FAQ

Ha, ha! Oh, that's great!

that's likely to be flagged with a SF of 1, J.

-joe (as will this, for lack of Caps, etc.) friday

edit: all of their examples rate from 3 to 5, so I don't know..

Here's an interview with the two guys who started the project. Gabriel Ortiz and Paul Starr seem like OK fellows, and it's good that they're busy at work in these times, but, they're probably doomed to failure (at worst) or (at best) will come up with a better definition of stupidity than typos and SMS abbreviations.

[Addendum: It just dawned me, how badly the filter might do with mathematics, computational, or lexicographical texts (i.e., with any texts that use abbreviations). I just spent yesterday reading up on the programming languages APL, J, and Haskell.]

This definitely is TheThing the world has been waiting for!
Since The StupidFilter is blind to irony this praise might be rated as not too stupid.

Seems pretty intelligent to me; rather than reading it and making up your own mind, let someone else's idea of what constitutes stupid filtered through the ultimate stupidity of a computer program make up your mind for you.

Well, it's no news to me. They've been testing for this type of thing before you get married, so it was bound to get into computers at one point.

I'm from Canada, but got married in Puerto Rico. One of the prerequists for getting a marriage license was a test that would look for gonorrhea, syphilis, familial relatives, and, wait for it...idiocy.

How, exactly, did they test for that in the blood is anybody's guess, and the nurse who took our blood was a little surprised at the paperwork we'd gotten from the government, but imagine our relief when we got our permits and, as such, confirmation that we were, indeed, not idiots.

a test that would look for ...idiocy. You gotta be kiddin' me!

Nope. Dead serious. We were quite surprised by this. Even the wedding consultant (we used one since we didn't know the rules in P.R.) was surprised at that bit on the U.S. forms.

The nurse though, was a little quicker on the uptake than we were. She was surprised, but quickly came back with, "well, if we find you have syphilis or gonorrhea, they'll think you're an idiot."

But do we understand idiocy: extreme mental retardation and stupidity: a poor ability to understand or to profit from experience as one and the same thing?

For those who believe that decimate can only mean "kill one in ten" idiot means "private person, layman."

Absolutely.

exempli gratia: Faldage is an idiot!


See? Me and Faldage understand these things.

`

Idiocy was a "correct" medical/legal term in the past (for example, what is now called Bennett disease was “juvenile amaurotic idiocy"). Syphilitic idiocy was a possible result of syphilis. The 1870 US Census form has a column labelled "Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic."

Unless there's some non-genetic test for consanguinity, I'd imagine a test to determine "familial relatives" would turn up all sorts of interesting things.

Googling, I can't find that anything that says Puerto Rico currently requires more than a VDRL (syphilis) test. Most states no longer require any blood test at all.

It wasn't that long ago either, only 11 years.

I don't know if it's just un-updated paperwork that is sent to people from out of country.

I know that happens. I got two different customs forms from the government of Canada last year...one in September saying I was allowed to bring back 450$ after being out of the country for 48 hours, and a second form in November claiming I was only allowed to bring in 250$.

When I spoke to the airline person, she said they were finishing off the old forms they had in inventory.

The old forms are inaccurate but we want to use them up. Where is the stupid filter on that one?!?

I know, eh.

I was all stressed out because I'd bought too much stuff the second time, and can't lie for beans, so I declared it at the custom's gate, prefacing with the fact that I thought I had seen the maximum at 450$ a few months before.

He told me I was absolutely right, stamp, stamp, and off I went. Phewf!