Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction (pt 2 of above)
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html
Both sides of the coin...good robot/bad robot
  

    
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/computers_math/artificial_intelligence/
The latest in A.I. research compiled by Science Daily.
  

    
via (bruces) The Stack, Benjamin H Bratton
http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/benjamin-h-bratton-presentation-of-the-stack/
On Software and Sovereignty
While acknowledging that current ecological, sectarian and financial
emergencies could lead to a regressive Cloud feudalism, he offers
hope that robust, inhuman artificial intelligence may finally clear
the air of self-destructive humanist daydreams. (Intro to video)
  

    
Gosh, that's a lot to digest.

Let me just say that some really basic errors (such as mis-stating
Moore's Law) in the waitbutwhy.com article do inspire confidence.
  

    

just want to butt in with a comment/query:

the line from above 'If it can't be "communicated," can it be
known?'
does open a lot of doors. 
 
I'm willing to say this unequivocally - the answer is no, from the
point of view of the DIGITAL sphere, as I understand it.

I'm willing to say, with less certainty, the answer is yes for both
EAST and WEST spheres.  An interesting problem is getting these
two different 'yes' answers to understand each other.

examples - WEST might cite romantic love as knowable but not
           easily communicated.

           EAST might cite the shared feeling of an approaching
           peak in a 700 year cycle.
  

    

mark knows i wrote about all these issues 20 yrs ago --- doesnt really seem
like much has changed. we are truly partying here like it's 1999.

oddly, wrt to humanity vs. machines, the one thing i was never able to find
archivally was the 'brain tennis' hotwired set up between me + extropian max
more in 1997. the wayback machine had just gotten started then and max says
he cant find our debate either. but in it i said among other things it's our
sensorium + emotional life + subjectivity + individuality --- that make us
human and create our special genius as a species. old news, i think. just as
the old news of 'how is intelligence defined? by whom? to what end?' most of
us are not stephen hawking.

just as, i wonder about the terrific levels of abstraction in this
discussion, with ted it seems in particular advocating for how great
networking for the 2nd decade of the 21st century will be. but meanwhile
women routinely get trolled/doxxed/harrassed and worse online. not to
demonize guys --- just what the technology is and how it is used remains
entwined with same old human nature.

cyber this and networked that and AI hoopla --- are still dependent on the
material world: of mining from conflict zones, mining with huge negative
environmental impacts, of huge carbon/tranport footprints for electronics,
resources in the real world. meanwhile we have shooting wars going on
everywhere; sectarian violence and repression everywhere; too many angry ppl
in the world with too many loose munitions of all kinds. coral reefs are
bleaching and bellies of sea creatures are filled with plastic.

how can cyber futurism be divorced from the material world it and we all
live in?

in a terrible kind of way, i felt vindicated when what was being depicted as
'twitter democracy' with arab spring --- turned out to be no such thing. the
main value of twitter there was letting folks outside those countries know
what was going on; the organizing that happened there took place mostly
using other means. meanwhile --- news flash --- setting up civil open
societies is really really hard and hasnt happened in the arab world. and it
has to happen in a real boots-on-the-ground way. china and russia may have
the internet but...

i think the whorf hypothesis has become, um, quite contested. ideas about
how language and thinking influence each other --- let's just say it's
complex. culture, language, it's all a muddley mess.

finally, i hesitated about posting anything here --- am i in the mood to be
flamed? do i think raising there perennial issues will make any difference?
but just like those mostly-useless online petitions i sign, maybe there is
some tiny bit of merit in going on the record, once again, however wearying
doing so is.
  

    
I'm glad you posted Paulina, and I take your points...I am finally
getting that it's been a long, long road from the idealism of the
60's and 70's where we rolled one and agreed with Bella and every
other feminist of the day, sure you should be free, respected,
equal, duh!...getting there has been a struggle and obviously there
is still, after 45 years, still much to be done...please excuse my
'guyness' and if there has been any insensitivity on my part, I
apologize.


I don't think "how great networking will be"...not that naive...I
just see it as a new potential, an addition to the already extremely
difficult road to hoe heading  into the next 40 years...there is a
lot on the planet's plate, a lot on human's plates, and, like it or
not, we are "stuck here in the mud". Things take generations to
effectively change in meatspace...up against a decaying capitalistic
system, decaying economies all over the planet, decaying political
and power structures, a decaying planet, and I'm not feeling all
that good myself.

Just think digital offers another layer of communication, if used
effectively and with some degree of literacy. And I hope there will
be ways that people of good will and talent will be able to
collaborate together in that dimension as well as here on the
ground.

Not overly optimistic, but hopeful, would be the way I would say it.


<how can cyber futurism be divorced from the material world it and
we all
live in?> It can't!!!

Going on the record is what the WELL and particularly Inkwell.vue is
all about....yeah, it has felt like the old 70's - 90's chatfest. So
far! But I think that is all the kind of groundwork that needs to be
on the record and noted as what has gone on before...we've got some
good links, some good give and take, have established some
definitions and I'm thinking the conversation should take off about
now...

We are not going to agree here, too many polarities, too many lenses
besides just Mark's...I do want to know more about his work and the
Center's work...also want us to be able to "frame" the polarities,
questions, possible futures, possible solutions in some kind of
sensible and workable discussion...

It would make for a good archive, and a touchstone for "where do we
go from here"? So, a little clarity, a little levity, a little space
for people to disagree - feel comfortable expressing a different
point of view; a general WELL-tuned conversation.
  

    
#80 David, you are not butting in...and I hope other folk following
along feel comfortable to jump in with a question, observation, or
whatever..

I think you sliced that argument perfectly...Mark, how does the
Center see those dynamics and how does it address the difficulties
in cross communication?
  

    
As a reminder to those jumping in, we are talking with Mark Stahlman
about Digital Life and the work that is done at his Center for the
Study of Digital Life:

Here is the link to the Center for the Study of Digital Life, CSDL,
from here on out:

http://www.digitallife.center/
  

    

i think i have always had a tragic view of the world and 60s/70s were to me
less about idealism than radical critiques. and when i 1st interacted with
computers (a caltech mainframe in 1967; 1st paid job with pick-based
minicomputers in the early 1980s) it didnt spark any nascent feelings of
utopianism. my reaction was 'eh, this is just a new kind of
plumbing/infrastructure/prosthetic' --- a position i havent seen much need
to change.
  

    
Smiling, interesting. 'Tragic view of the world'. Maybe, I've always
read you as realistic and not afraid to mix your feelings with your
intellect. No doubt, the world is tragic...just turn on TV...but
it's surprisingly healing at times as well. It's both...think we
have to see both and not get totally depressed or overly enchanted.

I was too stoned to notice much of anything back then, pretty much a
yippie, skippie space cowboy...so I thought everything was just
groovy and cosmic...took quite a while to accept this is the place
and space I'm really in and connect to the ground. 
 
I remember feeding my stack of punch cards into a computer that
filled the whole freakin' room, watching and smelling the chaff, and
saying, "this is ridiculous, I'll wait". That was 1970...didn't
bother with computers again until 1985 when I got playing with an
Apple MacIntosh and MacPaint...sorta cool. I liked all the theory
and would talk for hours with IT guys and installers of large
systems...but the nuts and bolts have always bored me. VHS was
happening, and MTV was just starting. Too easy. Didn't bother
getting serious about it all until 1995 when my son and I got our
first system, hopped on AOL and I found the WELL. 

All seemed like a whole lot of work, ridiculous learning curves,
unbelievably slow, way too many 800 calls for support, download
something and go to bed and hope it was done when you woke up...
just generally sucked...seems like the wheel is turning again.
Personally, I find all these devices and hardware tiresome...can't
wait for them all to be unnecessary...however, here we are.
  

    
Paulina, one last comment, about radical critiques...you are
definitely on the money there...my picture of walking across campus
or going into any rock concert or festival is TABLES...lots and lots
of tables...everyone was promoting some new point of view,
advocating for some new cause, some new awareness, or, as you say,
pushing the paperwork for some new critique...Marxism, Hare Krishna,
Weathermen, Women's Lib, Interational Socialism, Green Peace,
Co-Evolution Quarterly, Gay Lib, Black Panthers, Brotherhood of
Islam, you name it, they had a table for it.
  

    

you nailed it, depressive realist i am. and yeah, i have always felt that if
i have any value as a writer it's because deep feelings are banked in a
subterranean way underneath everything i think and write. feeling, thinking,
and intuition have neve felt in opposition.

never been either a true believer nor anhedonic nor much into substances ---
which meant i couldnt buy necessarily what anyone was selling. born a
skeptic and by nature/nurture/some strange life experiences --- even more
so.

i remain grateful for modern dentistry and for antibiotics when they are
still effective. i remain grateful for modern IT because i cannot type and
suffer from writers block --- composing in light (pixels) solves those
issues. and because i have spent much of the last 30 yrs housebound, ill,
and isolated --- am grateful for the online world for information and a kind
of connection.

but have never fetishized the digital/cyber world (as i guess i dont with
anything) --- and the peak experiences of my life all have taken place in
the material world --- with places and ppl.

so in that sense, i am the wrong person to be posting anything in this
topic.

herman kahn turned out not to be accurate, in that he thot would have had a
thermonuclear exchange by the yr 2000. but in another sense i dont think he
was wrong: the world is an ever more precarious place. and cyber/digital
whatever just contributes to that.
  

    
this video is prety good, if you can deal with an hour long
lecture to architecture students.  He gives an outline of
what's happening.  The reasons to be worried are clear.

http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/benjamin-h-bratton-presentation-of-the-stack/
  

    
Y'all:  WOW -- great stuff . . . !!

The impulse to "perfect" humanity is an old one in the WEST (and,
just to keep things straight, never really comes up in the EAST). 
And in many ways, it is a primary motivation behind all this A.I.
brouhaha.

The name we probably first heard about this drive for "perfection"
was probably in grade-school when it was called PURITAN, which we
were told gave us our Thanksgivings.  What we weren't told is that
they were an End-of-The-World *cult* that had already fought and
lost an English Civil War -- killing huge swathes of the English
and, particularly Irish, population in the process.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Turned-Upside-Down-Revolution/dp/0140137327/

Then after a few last tries to blow everything up -- much as John
Brown would do at Harper's Ferry a few centuries later, funded by
the Boston "divines" -- they got on some boats and came to the
"Garden of Eden" (aka NEW England) to wait for the *spaceship* to
come pick them up -- HALE BOPP style . . . !!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_group)

The granddaddy of all this might have been the CATHARS, who had
apparently come from Greek Christianity (still *alphabetic* so still
the WEST) to bust up Roman Christianity.  They got pretty far and
many battles were fought, without any real conclusion, after which
they morphed into the Calvinists (Presbytarians etc) and eventually
settled in Princeton, New Jersey . . . <g>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_Theological_Seminary

The notion that the *humans* are FALLEN is a pretty fundamental one
for the WEST (but not the EAST).  The "solution" that we can/should
try to become GODS is also pretty basic, including the famous quote
that launched the Whole Earth Catalog.  And it was the driving point
of the "Woodstock Anthem," in which we have all been "caught in the
Devil's bargain."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aOGnVKWbwc

It should be no surprise that one of the earliest promoters of Ray
Kurzweil was George Gilder, who found Ray's "spiritual machines"
fascinating and, like other "born-agains" in the tech business, was
hoping that the INTERNET would help in to usher in a 2nd Coming --
so that we wouldn't have to deal with human "imperfection" (i.e.
dying) anymore.

http://www.singularity.com/fullbiography.html

The WEST Sphere has generated the DIGITAL Sphere, in part, as an
escape-pod from the "death star" that is our life in what they
believe is a *fallen* world.  If Voltaire had A.I. as an option
(since he was a partisan of Isaac Newton, who, in turn, spent much
of his life trying to calculate the Judgement Day), would he have
worked it into his satire about Leibniz (aka "Dr. Pangloss") and his
"best of all possible worlds" (as another reflection of the
"optimism of the Germans") . . . ??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide

Some see in the ROBOTS -- particularly once they have been
"uploaded" with human personalities -- what the 17th century
Rosicrucians wanted in their "Reformation of the Whole World."  Yes,
the ILLUMINATI (the real ones in Bavaria) called themselves the
"Perfectibilists" and, not coincidentally, named their HQ after the
place in Greece where the LSD was being handed out, Eleusis.

http://www.amazon.com/Perfectibilists-Century-Bavarian-Order-Illuminati/dp/097
7795381/

We in the WEST have made quite a mess in our quest to become "Gods"
-- so now we will have to figure out what we've done and try to
clean it up -- tossing "perfection" out with the bathwater this time
. . . !!
  

    
Paulina:  I'm new around here (even though I know many of you), so
I'm glad you jumped in and hope that it's not *too* tiring (or
hostile) for you to participate . . . !!

> i think the whorf hypothesis has become, um, quite contested. 
> ideas about how language and thinking influence each other --- 
> let's just say it's complex. culture, language, it's all a 
> muddley mess.

Correct.  That said, however, the purpose of the Center is to weigh
in on behalf of "Whorf" (who, of course, many who cite have never
read) and, in particular, McLuhan -- who, along with the
anthropologist Ted Carpenter, extended "Whorf" to the rest of the
technologies we habitually use.  

http://www.amazon.com/They-Became-What-Beheld/dp/B0006CAL56/

In case there was any doubt, when they reported on the progress of
their Ford Foundation funded seminar (which was a follow-up to the
1930s Radio Research Project) in 1956, the title of the article was
"The New Languages" (about which I will be giving a paper later this
year in Toronto).

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25293194

Yes, I know that many will disagree with us -- fine!  But at least
we need to get our loaded-guns on the table (as Wyndham Lewis
supposedly did when he met with the King).  The Center is what many
would call "technological determinists" (or in the language world
"linguistic determinists") and we are proud of it . . . <g>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism  

We believe that TECHNOLOGY *does* "drive history" and that the
particular ROBOT technology we are dealing with today has some nasty
plans for humanity (as noticed by my godfather Norbert Wiener so
long ago) which global/thought leaders need to understand.  Yes, if
they don't we will all suffer greatly . . . !!

http://www.amazon.com/Technology-History-Dilemma-Technological-Determinism/dp/
0262691671/
  

    
That characterization of a "quest to become 'Gods'" is debatable in
various directions. What you call a quest could be an evolutionary
pattern that is inherent if somewhat unstable. Or one could argue
that we're builders and makers who have unfortunately ignored
context and consequence. 

I'm less worried about the god aspiration than the god emotion.
  

    

I read that as god emoticon, and now I'm worried about that.
  

    
Jon:  Self-deification is another one of the *basic* differences
between EAST (who don't) and WEST (who do), as Harvards' Puett
describes here --
http://www.amazon.com/Become-God-Cosmology-Self-Divinization-Harvard-Yenching/
dp/0674016432/

The concentrated versions of this GOD-COMPLEX in the WEST tend to
occur in Protestant and Orthodox Christianity, while much less in
Catholicism and Judaism.  It is often a result of those who took the
PRINTED Bible seriously, making it an *effect* of the Gutenberg
Galaxy.

As a result, the *varieties* of the MILLENNIAL experience in the
WEST are multi-fold and impossible to ignore (including ISIS etc) .
. . !!

http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Earth-Varieties-Millennial-Experience/dp/01997535
98/
  

    
Jumping back for a second, Paulina's observation:

> just what the technology is and how it is used remains
> entwined with same old human nature.

is, for me, the deepest of truths.  I don't find it depressing at all.
It is one of the reasons why I find neuroscience to be so important.
But it does tie us directly back to Mark's 'humanist' concerns.

Earlier, in <63> Mark posted:

> In fact, McLuhan was very much a *humanist*, not a
> proponent of "What Does Technology Want?"
>
> His goal, like mine, was to help the humans understand what
> technology is doing to them -- not to *submit* to its rule over our
> lives.

I'd like to better understand how 'technological determinism' helps
us with that task. My naive concern is that by deciding to hold a
*technology* accountable we lose the connection to the underlying
human impulses that shape and control it.
  

    
Craig:  Good question . . . !!

In fact, the term "technological determinism" is a phony (i.e. from
what I can tell, many who use it think of it as a *meaningless*
meme) and meant as an insult, not to stimulate discussion.  Good
catch!

This comes from the false application of EFFICIENT causality to the
relationship between humans and their technologies.  As McLuhan
tried to make clear (but was largely ignored), the way we are
*shaped* by our own habits is more a result of FORMAL causality
(which few are even aware of, although Brenda Laurel has written
about it), so the way all this works *cannot* be described as
"determinism" at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes

McLuhan -- both Marshall and Eric -- was/is Catholic and was trained
in Thomas Aquinas (as was common in the 1930s/40s but hard to find
in the 70s) which brought him in contact with Aristotle etc.  Eric
McLuhan got so tired of trying to explain this that he wrote an
important essay on the topic called "Media and Formal Cause."

http://www.amazon.com/Media-Formal-Cause-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0983274703/

However, the difficulty they ran into is that they never proposed a
PSYCHOLOGY that would bring all this together.  I'm now working with
some folks on trying to do just that.

You are correct.  It is the HUMAN that matters in all this, but, as
everyone knows, we are *plastic* and change our behaviors/attitudes
all the time.  So, our human "nature" is to be malleable, and if I
understand the neuroscience involved, that can even mean "rewiring"
our brains in the process.

What helps us is to *blow past* the social science institutionalized
(and phony) concerns over "technological determinism" to explore
what is *really* happening -- which is one of the core projects of
the Center.  And, why we don't mind the label (particularly if it
provokes smart questions like yours.)

At the beginning of this discussion, we were tossing around the
"mutate" term.  As you know, the "co-evolution" of humans and
technologies does *not* generally involve biological mutations.  So,
the mental changes which some think of as "mutation" aren't what
genetics talks about but instead something quite different.

Our hypothesis -- in terms of Aristotelean "psychology" -- is that
different technologies alter the *balance* of what "The Philosopher"
(and his 1000+ years of Islamic and Christian commentators) called
"internal senses" of MEMORY, INTUITION (or Evaluative Reason) and
IMAGINATION.  This parallels McLuhan's own work on balances of the
more obvious "external senses."

http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/intsense.html

All this is quite new in terms of our work (which may even be the
first time anyone has taken this path), so stay tuned for the
results . . . <g>
  

    
I certainly will.

> and if I
> understand the neuroscience involved, that can even mean "rewiring"
> our brains in the process.

That seems fair to me. Especially given that such changes may involve
not only the actual creation or destruction of connections but, perhaps
more often, involve adjustments in the strength or persistence of
connections.

This is also an example of why, imo, we are not yet in a position to
seriously compare the power of man-made computing substrates with any
result of natural evolution. Oh it's very tempting, but how can we give
it any real significance?

Here's another example of a misplaced comparision: consider the compute
power of the *analog* computing device known as the slide rule. The time
needed for a slide rule to compute an answer is basically zero: as soon
as one provides an input, an answer is available. So why don't we think
of slide rules as being much more powerful than electronic computers,
which are fast but take measurable time to perform computations?

Obviously there's more to a meaningful comparison than just focusing
on the 'cycle time' of the basic elements of computation. We know this
in the case of the slide rule and electronic computer because we
understand them completely.

This is not so when we try to compare the substrates of natrual and
artifical intelligences.
  

    
re #90--As a Christian myself, it is my observation that any
attempts we humans have taken to perfect ourselves have and only can
end in disaster.  Imperfect beings cannot invent perfect objects. 
Only God Himself can do that, and only He Himself is able to ever
make us perfect, which can and will be completed only on the other
side of eternity.




"PURITAN, which we
were told gave us our Thanksgivings.  What we weren't told is that
they were an End-of-The-World *cult* that had already fought and
lost an English Civil War -- killing huge swathes of the English
and, particularly Irish, population in the process.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Turned-Upside-Down-Revolution/dp/0140137327/

Then after a few last tries to blow everything up -- much as John
Brown would do at Harper's Ferry a few centuries later, funded by
the Boston "divines" -- they got on some boats and came to the
"Garden of Eden" (aka NEW England) to wait for the *spaceship* to
come pick them up -- HALE BOPP style . . . !!"

Kinda makes me suspect that some of the Fundamentalist types who
believe so fervently in the Rapture, a pre-Tribulational one at
that, not only seem to have no problem with actively destroying this
world (or stepping back and knowingly allowing it to go to seed) but
even believe it is their God-ordained mandate to do so in order that
Christ may return to Earth; never mind the fact that Christ Himself
made it clear that NO ONE knows the date or time of His return, not
even He Himself.  But He DID make it clear that we are to wait
expectantly for His return and in the meantime, be actively engaged
in loving our neighbors (ALL persons) as ourselves and NOT
practicing anything like dishonesty, oppression of others,
defrauding others, stealing, or killing.  

If I recall correctly, He said, among other things, "All those who
take up the  sword shall perish  by the sword."  And His words about
separating the sheep from the goats based entirely upon how each of
us treated "the least of these" in Matthew 25 seem to be ignored by
so many of the right-wing Fundamentalists, some of whom are quite
Dominionist in their view of governments and how we Christians are
to treat all other persons, including our fellow believers.  So many
of these Fundamentalists seem to be more supportive of the global 1%
than they are of Christ.

But maybe that's just me.
  

    
One thing is clear, when discussing Digital, we all have to leave
our 'isms' and 'ologies' at the door...The AI's could not care less
what belief systems we bring with us....that's for us to work out at
a personal level...and for effective communication to take place
between Mark's East/West Spheres it is critical we know our biases
and the biases of those we wish to communicate with.

Only way I can see to work with those overlapping Venn Diagram areas
we talked about earlier.
  

    
Speaking of Venn Diagrams, this one is a beaut:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153367067087303&set=gm.1532752917033
696&type=3&theater