Some cosmologists, astrobiologists, etc, have come to view machine intelligence as the next step in evolution. Some of their wackier adherents suggest that UFO aliens are machines (or even that the UFOs themselves may be intelligent machines – one way to get around surviving a several-century-long journey through space).
Whatever the case, it’s a novel and interesting outlook on evolution. Since Darwin, we’ve mostly come to see evolution as the genetic inheritance and modification of organic beings. But with the development of AIs scaring the pants off Aunt Sophie and everybody else, it’s time to broaden the definition of “evolution.”
Oh, we talk about “social evolution,” but again that’s about shifting changes taking place within groups of organic machines like us. But now that we’re busy creating non-organic “beings,” they’ll likely develop a higher order of consciousness and intelligence (however you define those terms), so yeah, makes good sense to treat that as a continuing process – a continuation of evolution.
I especially like the implication that when machines become more intelligence than we are (which surely will be the case), there’s little or no reason to think they’ll act toward us with inbred malevolence. It’s at least as likely that we’ll become their puppy dogs or pussy cats and be considered “cute.”
On the other hand, human politicians would no longer be needed, so the few cretins that insisted on such destabilizing endeavors could be labelled “rabid” and put down – to everyone’s good, organic or otherwise.
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I’ve heard the sound of one hand clapping!
When I worked at the Welcomat, one of our weekly paper’s top writers (as far as learning about the world of insurance and bureaucracy goes, the top writer) was John Guinther.
Probably in his mid-60s, tall, often solemn but always engaging, he would punctuate his pronouncements by flapping the long fingers of his right hand back against his palm.
Yes, it made a sound. I couldn’t tell you what that sound… sounded like, just that it was the sound of one hand clapping.
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I despise arrogance.
Which, of course, is an arrogant posture to take.
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Around 1977, soon after I’d moved into the commune in the Powelton area of West Philly, Betty Nemeth and Peter Tilley also moved in and beefed up the then-depleted assemblage, bringing their kids, Peter’s two teenage boys and Betty’s brood of four – three boys and one girl, ranging, if I remember rightly, from about 7 to 14 years old.
Betty’s adopted son Paul, age 9, was unlike any other child (or adult, for that matter) I’ve met. I had many a long talk with him on the front porch, because he had a wide-ranging and incisive mind, especially about machinery.
He told me that when he dreamed, it was often of gears and levers, observing their interaction. He was an engineer at heart, with an inherent instinct for how things mechanical interacted.
At the time, I had an AT6 record changer (a ubiquitous brand in the 1960s) that hadn’t worked in maybe a decade. The cartridge arm was frozen in position and wouldn’t track at all.
Don’t know if I asked Paul about it or he’d just said he could take a look at it. About an hour and a half later, he brought the unit back to me, working perfectly. It’s pretty obvious he’d never handled a machine quite like it before, but he understood its mechanical soul, if that makes sense (or even if it seems absurd).
Paul also had a mental condition that threw him into manic states where Betty would hold him tight to keep him from (supposedly) doing damage to himself or others.
Our other memorable interaction with Paul (which I didn’t learn about at the time) may have reflected a combination of his mechanical interest and that physical intensity.
Linda and I had set up a small pond, and off from that I ran an even smaller, shallow, winding waterway, lined with black plastic – no pump, just a serene wander of water fed by the height of the pond.
We put goldfish in the pond, where they stayed through the winter, apparently frozen into the ice, then come February they revived and moved at the rate of about an inch per day.
One summer we added a pair of black mollies (a common fish-tank inhabitant). The female produced a stunning mob of tiny-weeny black fishlets who could (and did) navigate the miniature stream its full 3-4 foot length to the end, then return.
Damn, I loved those mollies. I could watch them for hours (not true for me when dealing with the rest of the world). Then the pond’s heavy-duty plastic liner sprang leaks. The baby mollies mostly stranded and died. Soon after, a raccoon decimated the goldfish (including the alpha, whom Ben and his friends named Jaws), not eating them, but hurling them into the bushes, a rather bizarre approach to predation.
We assumed the raccoon had damaged the pond liner with its claws. Not so, we learned years later: Leaning out a second-floor window, Paul would attempt to pick off the goldfish with his BB gun. I don’t think he ever hit a fish, but he riddled the liner.
I still mourn those mollies. But how mad can you get, in retrospect, at an amazingly talented 9-year-old with a BB gun?
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Most years, a couple mourning doves live in the trees out front. I know – I’ve heard this form others – that some folks find the call of the mourning dove sublime. I find it the most annoying, idiotic, asinine sound any living creature could possibly make – as bad as being tied to a chair while some fool plays Tommy Dorsey and Vic Damone at full volume.
Their whining call assaults me when I’m working in the garden, and I restrain the immediate desire to shout, “Shut the fuck up! I know what your mama does in the hemlocks!”
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Try this as a character name: Submersible Pump, whose acquaintances know him as either Sub or Mercy, depending on their relationship and general life outlook.
lickhaven 