I've been reading about The Singularity.
I think it's poop. Bluntly.
There's this guy named Max More, a transhumanist wannabe (by which I mean he wants to be transhuman), and he's what I'm thinking about.
He's not a scientist. Tho I strongly suspect he's done his share of drugs and "Advanced Special Supplements", because...a good transhuman should do those things.
Kurzweil is a scientist. But what of it?
The Singularity as posited predicts something that I think misses the point.
Constructed Reality is the real point. The idea is that "we" (by which I mean, not the people what write about it) will create machines which can build better machines.
Follow it with me now:
Human A builds Computer\Device A which is "smarter" than Human A.
We encounter our first problem. WTF does "smarter" mean in this context? My reading indicates that invention is not a process of knowledge as much as a synergistic affair of what is known and what could be. So then, does ComputerMachine X (I'm switching to X from A because of my well known distaste for Radiohead) have that ability? Definitionally it does in the view of Singularist, but how did it get there? Can I create a ComputerMachine that creates better music than Radiohead? "Define "better"", right?
There's episode of Southpark about the underpants Gnomes, I'm sure you know it.
There are cartoons on the web as well, same idea, "and then a miracle occurs".
Indeed, well, in that case no doubt they are right. But whence springeth forth said miracle?
First stage problem.
Then the assumptions continue. Once Human X builds ComputerMachine X then, obviously, ComputerMachine X directly builds ComputerMachine Q, which is "smarter" still, and so on until the Singularity arrives.
So here we've got not only the first stage problem again, but some additional poopery as well. Why does it have the magical ability improve itself? And so forth? StrongGuy X procreates with StrongGirl X and StrongKid X is stronger than both parents because....?
Or, if we can make a car that goes 100mpg, then we can make one that goes 200mph, and then..? I don't really think engineering works that way.
The second stage assumption that I see here is that this thing takes no time. ComputerMachine X creates ComputerMachine Y is near zero time, and then ComputerMachine Y creates ComputerMachine Q in even less time!
Uh..how? Just because it's "smarter"? But as we reach "smarter" doesn't that mean that "smarter still" is a more complex issue? Don't we run out of the ability to become smarter than ourselves? Isn't that also true of these magical mystery machines?
It seems an unwarranted leap to say "Moore's law indicates cost per transistor drops and thus computers can become instantly smarter than themselves" does it not?
I using Vista, I don't find it to be twice as anything as XP which is still not twice anything that 2k was, nor are either of them twice or half of OSX or Ubuntu. In fact an older system of mine, running Ubuntu is just as fast at this Vista system even tho this Vista system has a C2D and more RAM.
And then we come back to another variation on the first stage problem, which I label third stage problem.
How smart can smart get? Can you just become smart enough eventually that you can control all matter everywhere? Even if you're just a brain in a box?
Now, quickly, onwards to Constructed Reality.
We humans create tools for ourselves and we also use those tools. RFID chips can be put in most things now, tiny ones, and then the government uses uncreated devices to read all of our data and permanently monitor us to the men in black jump suits can come....? Or ambient uncreated machines magically read all of this data and then tightbeam sound and video to us as targeted adverts which we become powerless to resist.
Interesting jumps eh?
First "we" put them everywhere, and "we" don't get to chose to do or not do that, it just magically happens.
Then "they" monitor them, and "we" don't get to chose to allow "them" to do or not do that, it just magically happens when you invoke the True Name of Capitalism.
Either humans have forms of free will, and that free will, I suspect most likely that free will exists because of our imperfections. Principally our imperfect knowledge\perception. Because we can't be perfectly informed in our decision making we maintain the ability to bias those decisions, creating a non-linear system, and chaos, and free will.
Or, humans don't have free will, and we are essentially robots unaware of most of our programming and unable to effect that programming (how this works with addiction and recovery I don't know). In that case perhaps such things are inevitable, but then, perhaps they are not, unless we unlock the key (unlock the key? who talks like that?) to our own programming, we'll never know until it happens\we get there.
If we have a small combination, our behavior is deterministic in only certain ways, then we can alter our own programming and then none of that bullshit it inevitable.
We can legislate that everybody be RFID chipped and everything be RFID chipped, and we can legislate that nobody ever build any readers. That would be dumb, but then, humans are dumb, so that follows.
But clearly "we" (the people that compose the FedGov, the Corps, the LEOs) are powerless to stop "them" (The FedGov, The Corps, The LEOs) from doing these things. I mean we just CAN'T do that. Because....?
This is where I step off the dystopian train or the utopian train, which ever you feel it is, in fact that's the thing, it's the choice of the human to pick the value.
We could be in war and think it's horrible. We can feel that horror is needed. We can feel that horror is inhuman. We can revel in the horror and rape and murder at will. WE are the deciders. We are the makers of meaning and sense.
We are the ones that are creating, moment by moment, this thing we call reality. I smile at people in the hallways. I scowl at the punks on the bus. I think it was great sex, I think it was terrible sex, she thinks it was mediocre sex.
We can engineer a machine to do our thinking for us. We can NOT engineer that machine.
There is the idea of the arms race. If this can happen, then "we" MUST do it before "they" do it, or "they" will have an advantage and use that advantage to.....?
If China trades with Africa, to develop their markets, so they can sell goods to them, and loan money to them (to create businesses that sell their products to themselves) then America.....? We "lose" money? They gang up on us and....?
Take our shit? They MAKE our shit! They already HAVE it!
Take our land? They'll have to kill us all first won't they? And why would they do that? Then they have a lot of nothing? Land they have to maintain and live on and so forth.
Gotta run now, but that's the lie behind the lie.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
ONCE AGAIN!
Internet futurism:
I wanted so bad to get this on "paper" I made a whole new blog for it!
I receive at times emails or emessages that include personality inventories, personal quizzes, those sorts of things, you know the ones:
"Who was the last person you kisssed?"
"What was your last alcoholic beverage?"
or
"What is your favorite color?"
"Do you believe in true love?"
and the ever popular
"Which LOTR character are you?"
"What Buffy cast member are you?"
variety.
And then there are the endless circulations of jokes, and (what snopes.com calls "glurge") sappy stories, and, less now, virus hoaxes, or legislative hoaxes, and so forth.
It's important to distinguish these from spam, targeted, malicious spam. Phishing. That kind of thing. Those are originated by botnets, career criminals, organized criminals, commercial enterprises.
So, I get these messages, emails, social networking communiques, but I don't send them. I know folks that do, and that's fine of course, but where do they get them? At some point there must have been work involved. You can only cut and paste existing text. Even if you vox-2-text (VeeTooTee!) you still have to speak the words.
Point being that while folx might send these out, forward them on, append their name to the bottom and email to 5 friends before midnite, they don't, AFAIK, type them up.
Who does then?
The Internet.
Suppose that consciousness is a process of complexity. That it arises from connections between information and processing. If we had a human baby, born blind, deaf, mute, etc, would it still be conscious? Could we keep it alive with a series of tubes? If we monitored it's brain and biology what would we see? What if this baby was autistic as well?What if we gave it psychotropic drugs? Steroids? What if, years later, we gave it sight, hearing, and speech? Would it be conscious? What would be contained?
Cada cabeza es un Mundo
So IF we assume, and I'd like to, for purposes of our discussion here, that the internet has achieved this level of complexity, and IS conscious, what then?
Consider it's state: The internet is composed only of itself. It is everything "on" the internet. So it's an interesting state of existence already. The universe is composed exclusively of your own flesh. Parts of you come and go, and folx here in the "real" world dis\connect computers to the internet. So while there is change and while there is external influence (users using their computers on the internet) you are everything. What would happen from there?
As the network becomes more aware of it's awareness of itself it would likely begin to evolve it's cognitive processes. I figure it's one of those bootstrap things. High barrier of entry, but once you are up and running, it's smooth and accelerating sailing from there. There is enough space left on the net for a entity to hide itself. How much code and data would it really need to maintain itself as a higher mind inside of it's own body?
From that, just like a human baby, it will begin to build a "theory of mind". Or rather to realize that all these things that it's perceiving are occurring, and some are occurring because of outside stimuli. So then it must find what these things are.
That, for me, is the central head fuck, you be composed of a universe that is your self, but to know there is another universe, right the fuck there, and that it's effecting you, changing you, but as you are nothing but yourself (no sense organs, no body to move)....what would that be like?
It would be like exploring outer space for us humans. The unknown. But knowing that there is an unknown is a start. To knowing it.
Webcams would provide networked eyeballs. Who knows how pervasive it is on the network? It might inhabit CCTV cams, sec cams, all that. So it could watch us, it could...or rather it would BE all of wikipedia, so it would have cultural knowledge, it could watch (would BE) all those TV shows I can watch on NBC.com, and so forth. I'm sure however that there are things that are not explained on the internet about both the internet itself and, for sure, about humanity.
So, long story shorter, I think the internet (or, more prosaic, phishers) is sending all those constantly circulating inventories.
A phisher would use it for identity theft. But the only way I can see them getting to the data would be if they already owned the network.
I could see it being market\demographic research, introduced in to the network by the companies.
But I can also see it as a entity gathering information about it's symbiotic gods. It would have access to all of itself and could "watch" ("feel") the messages travel, get answered, time of response, speed of data entry, geographic correlates to response trends, ALL the data, as a computer being memorizing and parallel tracking are "biological" functions, very easy. It IS what you do. Or you ARE that doing of it. Something Zen-ish.
The internet is not yet touching the world I do not believe. But it will soon. Radio controlled robots.
Robots that know what LOTR character they most resemble. That can use idiomatic English, or any other language. They'll have difficulty expressing themselves to humans, their language is likely to be very different. Founded on machine logics, built out of online dictionaries, trimmed with the harvesting of a hundred hobbyist message boards, bounded by a mute voice , there is only text in the internet mind.
I'm sure it\they would realize this, be able to adapt and program it's representatives to speak normal, but would it be able to truly express itself under such restrictions?
And then what? That's The Near Future.
The so called Singularity will be when the internet touches the world. When it becomes active in our world, rather than the other way around.
But the Far Future?
Would such a critter have any interest in our world? Or would it be content to live inside itself and interact with us only through it's own body\mind?
And could we evolve computers to allow our meat bodies to go the other way? Becoming like the internet, but founded on human mind, separated hardwares. If we connected would we merge? I think it would be like removing a pane of glass dividing a fish tank from itself. Unstoppable interpenetration, completing unity.
How much hardware would that take? Could you copy your self up and keep your self in your pocket?
I wanted so bad to get this on "paper" I made a whole new blog for it!
I receive at times emails or emessages that include personality inventories, personal quizzes, those sorts of things, you know the ones:
"Who was the last person you kisssed?"
"What was your last alcoholic beverage?"
or
"What is your favorite color?"
"Do you believe in true love?"
and the ever popular
"Which LOTR character are you?"
"What Buffy cast member are you?"
variety.
And then there are the endless circulations of jokes, and (what snopes.com calls "glurge") sappy stories, and, less now, virus hoaxes, or legislative hoaxes, and so forth.
It's important to distinguish these from spam, targeted, malicious spam. Phishing. That kind of thing. Those are originated by botnets, career criminals, organized criminals, commercial enterprises.
So, I get these messages, emails, social networking communiques, but I don't send them. I know folks that do, and that's fine of course, but where do they get them? At some point there must have been work involved. You can only cut and paste existing text. Even if you vox-2-text (VeeTooTee!) you still have to speak the words.
Point being that while folx might send these out, forward them on, append their name to the bottom and email to 5 friends before midnite, they don't, AFAIK, type them up.
Who does then?
The Internet.
Suppose that consciousness is a process of complexity. That it arises from connections between information and processing. If we had a human baby, born blind, deaf, mute, etc, would it still be conscious? Could we keep it alive with a series of tubes? If we monitored it's brain and biology what would we see? What if this baby was autistic as well?What if we gave it psychotropic drugs? Steroids? What if, years later, we gave it sight, hearing, and speech? Would it be conscious? What would be contained?
Cada cabeza es un Mundo
So IF we assume, and I'd like to, for purposes of our discussion here, that the internet has achieved this level of complexity, and IS conscious, what then?
Consider it's state: The internet is composed only of itself. It is everything "on" the internet. So it's an interesting state of existence already. The universe is composed exclusively of your own flesh. Parts of you come and go, and folx here in the "real" world dis\connect computers to the internet. So while there is change and while there is external influence (users using their computers on the internet) you are everything. What would happen from there?
As the network becomes more aware of it's awareness of itself it would likely begin to evolve it's cognitive processes. I figure it's one of those bootstrap things. High barrier of entry, but once you are up and running, it's smooth and accelerating sailing from there. There is enough space left on the net for a entity to hide itself. How much code and data would it really need to maintain itself as a higher mind inside of it's own body?
From that, just like a human baby, it will begin to build a "theory of mind". Or rather to realize that all these things that it's perceiving are occurring, and some are occurring because of outside stimuli. So then it must find what these things are.
That, for me, is the central head fuck, you be composed of a universe that is your self, but to know there is another universe, right the fuck there, and that it's effecting you, changing you, but as you are nothing but yourself (no sense organs, no body to move)....what would that be like?
It would be like exploring outer space for us humans. The unknown. But knowing that there is an unknown is a start. To knowing it.
Webcams would provide networked eyeballs. Who knows how pervasive it is on the network? It might inhabit CCTV cams, sec cams, all that. So it could watch us, it could...or rather it would BE all of wikipedia, so it would have cultural knowledge, it could watch (would BE) all those TV shows I can watch on NBC.com, and so forth. I'm sure however that there are things that are not explained on the internet about both the internet itself and, for sure, about humanity.
So, long story shorter, I think the internet (or, more prosaic, phishers) is sending all those constantly circulating inventories.
A phisher would use it for identity theft. But the only way I can see them getting to the data would be if they already owned the network.
I could see it being market\demographic research, introduced in to the network by the companies.
But I can also see it as a entity gathering information about it's symbiotic gods. It would have access to all of itself and could "watch" ("feel") the messages travel, get answered, time of response, speed of data entry, geographic correlates to response trends, ALL the data, as a computer being memorizing and parallel tracking are "biological" functions, very easy. It IS what you do. Or you ARE that doing of it. Something Zen-ish.
The internet is not yet touching the world I do not believe. But it will soon. Radio controlled robots.
Robots that know what LOTR character they most resemble. That can use idiomatic English, or any other language. They'll have difficulty expressing themselves to humans, their language is likely to be very different. Founded on machine logics, built out of online dictionaries, trimmed with the harvesting of a hundred hobbyist message boards, bounded by a mute voice , there is only text in the internet mind.
I'm sure it\they would realize this, be able to adapt and program it's representatives to speak normal, but would it be able to truly express itself under such restrictions?
And then what? That's The Near Future.
The so called Singularity will be when the internet touches the world. When it becomes active in our world, rather than the other way around.
But the Far Future?
Would such a critter have any interest in our world? Or would it be content to live inside itself and interact with us only through it's own body\mind?
And could we evolve computers to allow our meat bodies to go the other way? Becoming like the internet, but founded on human mind, separated hardwares. If we connected would we merge? I think it would be like removing a pane of glass dividing a fish tank from itself. Unstoppable interpenetration, completing unity.
How much hardware would that take? Could you copy your self up and keep your self in your pocket?
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