Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Oh Dear
This weblog is very old and generally not interesting. (Except maybe the last post) Go instead to plaid notion where you may play games and fill yourself with joy. Also Infinite Blank.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
A perspective on indie art and piracy
Independent. Discrete. Free.
Indie is a term best known for its use in music culture, describing a breed of artists who have striven for recognition while refusing to ally themselves with the industry or 'mainstream'. The given reason for this is that the industry strangles creative freedom and smothers artistic material in the pursuit of making money from it.
The term has come into usage in other artistic spheres, including literature and electronic gaming. I myself am involved with the latter. These, too, have corporate control structures which direct the artists in question, and distribute copies of the work. These, too, have Indie.
Artists, writers, musicians and otherwise--we'll call them creatives--generally enjoy what they do, particularly when given free reign. They imagine, they express and they craft. The work (we'll make the assumption that it can be duplicated at little cost) is then possible to distribute among the masses. As a creative, I believe I speak for my brethren when I say I'd rather anyone inclined to experience the product of my labor could. But alas, I need to eat. If I am to dedicate all my time to my work then I must make money from it. For a long time, the means of duplication and distribution have been out of the reach of creative individuals. Creatives needed to ally themselves--at the cost of losing control over their work--with publishers.
Publishers are not creatives or individuals. They are collectives serving a common interest and as such will do so efficiently. In the name of efficiency, works are often modified so as to reap greater profit. It's been known to occur that these modifications castrate the work, deriving it of its character or most significant ideas. In the name of making the work appeal to a more general audience, censorship and other such warpages are imposed. These cannot be forced, but the other direction--starving artistdom--is threatening. Many notable writers (Mark Twain, Ayn Rand) had to try several publishers before finding one who would accept a reasonable semblance of their work.
Often this flexibility--choosing publishers after the work is complete--is not available. Many writers are in the constant employ of publishing companies. Game developers at large are subservients to game development companies run by businessmen rather than creatives. Musicians' agencies make alterations to lyrics and scrap songs they dislike. To defy these entities in such a situation is to cut one's self from one's work.
The dilemma is this: As a creative, I wish to create. I wish to do so as I will, and I'd love to give my work freedom rather than tying chains to it or leaving it to rot in obscurity. But again, horrid practicality compels me to make a living. To join a collective is to sacrifice my creative freedom and the freedom of my work. To stand alone is to be a creature of little means and doom my work to obscurity.
The former and latter choices have been about for a long time. Patrons would sponsor artists in the past, though as individuals they often allowed more freedom to their beneficiaries. Bohemianism, a cultural movement which glorified the starving artist, took the latter path. As the corporate distributor has come into existence these two cultures have separated more, to the division between prostitution and obscurity which exists in the present day.
But the tide has shifted. The means of distribution in the present day (largely, over the internet) are easily available to the individual today. This has altered the free path into something stronger. Those artists who distribute their work for free may do so at little cost, and even make money in indirect ways, such as advertising. Those who sell it, assuming they can get a start on the work, no longer need to be allied with controlling entities. Rather, digital distribution services facilitate this at the cost of a percentage of revenues.
Indie can be, now more than ever before. Creatives can operate freely, and ideas--glorious ideas!--can be exchanged and distributed, intact and on the creator's terms.
Additional forces are at work, nipping at the heels of the aforementioned controlling entities. Piracy makes light of the fact that such entities are making a profit selling information--information which can be duplicated at virtually no cost. The statistics regarding piracy are staggering! 60% of Europe's web traffic is peer-to-peer file transfer, and most of that (arguably) is illegal downloading.
Creative product, increasingly, cannot be sold. And going back again to the creative ideal--to see my ideas and work distributed freely--I think that's a wonderful thing. On the business side, I concede that it may well be more difficult for me to make a conventional living as an indie game developer in light of all this. (For what it's worth, I don't care much for money. I envision myself working a simple job at a bookstore and developing games by night.) That said, I propose a new 'business model', so to speak, for the indie game developers and other creatives of the glorious new age. If you must make money from your work, either sell it as a service (live performances, shows and social networking in games) or give it away freely and sell a token enrichment.
To explain these 'enrichments', I'll cite a few free games I've played (Dino Run, Chzo Mythos) which are completely free, but also offer simple additions (such as hats or additional backstory) for a small cost or even an arbitrary donation. These additions could be pirated just as easily, or more easily, than a commercial game. And if they are, so be it. However, they are small and made to appeal to those who have already fallen in love with the work. Those who actually desire them will, for the most part, also be willing to throw a bit of money in the direction of an admired Creative. Other examples include selling T-shirts, or print versions of electronic art such as webcomics.
The idea of indie appeals to me more broadly. I dislike collectives in their bland efficiency. I dislike their combination of insincerity and cleverness. I dislike that unlike an individual a collective gains no coherent satisfaction from a prosocial act. This is an idea that I uphold to my core and am speaking in few words here. For this idea I am indie not as a matter of practicality, but fervently! For this idea I am, as you surely have guessed, an anticorporate thinker. Individuals, I'll argue, have orchestrated the greatest acts and the most beautiful things crafted by mankind.
I call myself Indie.
Indie is a term best known for its use in music culture, describing a breed of artists who have striven for recognition while refusing to ally themselves with the industry or 'mainstream'. The given reason for this is that the industry strangles creative freedom and smothers artistic material in the pursuit of making money from it.
The term has come into usage in other artistic spheres, including literature and electronic gaming. I myself am involved with the latter. These, too, have corporate control structures which direct the artists in question, and distribute copies of the work. These, too, have Indie.
Artists, writers, musicians and otherwise--we'll call them creatives--generally enjoy what they do, particularly when given free reign. They imagine, they express and they craft. The work (we'll make the assumption that it can be duplicated at little cost) is then possible to distribute among the masses. As a creative, I believe I speak for my brethren when I say I'd rather anyone inclined to experience the product of my labor could. But alas, I need to eat. If I am to dedicate all my time to my work then I must make money from it. For a long time, the means of duplication and distribution have been out of the reach of creative individuals. Creatives needed to ally themselves--at the cost of losing control over their work--with publishers.
Publishers are not creatives or individuals. They are collectives serving a common interest and as such will do so efficiently. In the name of efficiency, works are often modified so as to reap greater profit. It's been known to occur that these modifications castrate the work, deriving it of its character or most significant ideas. In the name of making the work appeal to a more general audience, censorship and other such warpages are imposed. These cannot be forced, but the other direction--starving artistdom--is threatening. Many notable writers (Mark Twain, Ayn Rand) had to try several publishers before finding one who would accept a reasonable semblance of their work.
Often this flexibility--choosing publishers after the work is complete--is not available. Many writers are in the constant employ of publishing companies. Game developers at large are subservients to game development companies run by businessmen rather than creatives. Musicians' agencies make alterations to lyrics and scrap songs they dislike. To defy these entities in such a situation is to cut one's self from one's work.
The dilemma is this: As a creative, I wish to create. I wish to do so as I will, and I'd love to give my work freedom rather than tying chains to it or leaving it to rot in obscurity. But again, horrid practicality compels me to make a living. To join a collective is to sacrifice my creative freedom and the freedom of my work. To stand alone is to be a creature of little means and doom my work to obscurity.
The former and latter choices have been about for a long time. Patrons would sponsor artists in the past, though as individuals they often allowed more freedom to their beneficiaries. Bohemianism, a cultural movement which glorified the starving artist, took the latter path. As the corporate distributor has come into existence these two cultures have separated more, to the division between prostitution and obscurity which exists in the present day.
But the tide has shifted. The means of distribution in the present day (largely, over the internet) are easily available to the individual today. This has altered the free path into something stronger. Those artists who distribute their work for free may do so at little cost, and even make money in indirect ways, such as advertising. Those who sell it, assuming they can get a start on the work, no longer need to be allied with controlling entities. Rather, digital distribution services facilitate this at the cost of a percentage of revenues.
Indie can be, now more than ever before. Creatives can operate freely, and ideas--glorious ideas!--can be exchanged and distributed, intact and on the creator's terms.
Additional forces are at work, nipping at the heels of the aforementioned controlling entities. Piracy makes light of the fact that such entities are making a profit selling information--information which can be duplicated at virtually no cost. The statistics regarding piracy are staggering! 60% of Europe's web traffic is peer-to-peer file transfer, and most of that (arguably) is illegal downloading.
Creative product, increasingly, cannot be sold. And going back again to the creative ideal--to see my ideas and work distributed freely--I think that's a wonderful thing. On the business side, I concede that it may well be more difficult for me to make a conventional living as an indie game developer in light of all this. (For what it's worth, I don't care much for money. I envision myself working a simple job at a bookstore and developing games by night.) That said, I propose a new 'business model', so to speak, for the indie game developers and other creatives of the glorious new age. If you must make money from your work, either sell it as a service (live performances, shows and social networking in games) or give it away freely and sell a token enrichment.
To explain these 'enrichments', I'll cite a few free games I've played (Dino Run, Chzo Mythos) which are completely free, but also offer simple additions (such as hats or additional backstory) for a small cost or even an arbitrary donation. These additions could be pirated just as easily, or more easily, than a commercial game. And if they are, so be it. However, they are small and made to appeal to those who have already fallen in love with the work. Those who actually desire them will, for the most part, also be willing to throw a bit of money in the direction of an admired Creative. Other examples include selling T-shirts, or print versions of electronic art such as webcomics.
The idea of indie appeals to me more broadly. I dislike collectives in their bland efficiency. I dislike their combination of insincerity and cleverness. I dislike that unlike an individual a collective gains no coherent satisfaction from a prosocial act. This is an idea that I uphold to my core and am speaking in few words here. For this idea I am indie not as a matter of practicality, but fervently! For this idea I am, as you surely have guessed, an anticorporate thinker. Individuals, I'll argue, have orchestrated the greatest acts and the most beautiful things crafted by mankind.
I call myself Indie.
Monday, July 13, 2009
To Be a Free Agent
I came upon an idea, gradually, a while ago. Excited, I gave it a name and made mention of said name without going into the nature of the idea. It is as follows.
The debates between different religions and philosophies have raged violently since the dawn of such ideas, and will continue to do so for the remainder of humanity's existence. There are innumerable points of contention, innumerable arguments supporting each, and innumerable individuals who have dedicated themselves in one way or another to defending one. This is a good thing; if the ideas embraced by humanity are many and conflicting it creates an environment within which thought can flourish and ideological paradigms, caught in the tumult, can be cleansed of fallacies and made "stable", or resistant to the wear and tear to which they are subjected.
And yet it's far from perfect. The battles rage on, the oldest and bitterest among them seeming now incapable of making "progress" save by the wretched means of war or separation. What's going on? Why do these systems of thought remain so separate?
One possibility is that stable systems of thought can exist and stabilize separately from one another, structured differently and incompatible in fundamental ways. Indeed, one would have to be very closed-minded to think it's impossible for wisdom to exist in any single [major] school of thought. I'm irreligious and I've read the words of highly enlightened philosophers both with and without faith in a personal God. It's not unreasonable to suggest that a difference in base assumptions could produce entirely different rational structures. However, I'm inclined to have my doubts that it's the primary cause of our predicament. I'll explain why in due time.
Another is that the process of ideological evolution is being subdued. That individuals are shielded somehow from open discussion of their ideas or taught not to question them. This I see as a strong culprit, manifest almost entirely in the phenomenon of like-minded individuals forming groups based upon ideas. They form a consensus and strong personal bonds, intertwining their respective paradigms until (often) it becomes difficult and unappealing to move away toward new ones that go against the collective. This is characteristic of religious communities (and organized atheism), political parties and all number of other social groups of which I and (I expect) the vast majority of other human beings are regular participants.
This second cause I see as a monstrosity from which humanity must free itself; many people are discomforted at confronting new ideas, removing the old, and having to reconstruct paradigms which have had gaping holes put into their bases, demolishing any idea which is no longer supported. Many human beings prefer the security--not only ideological, but physical and emotional--which is to be found in groups. But I see great costs incurred by this, of which ideological stagnation is one.
A third culprit, and most relevant here, is that two ideologies may develop with similar rational structures and separate semantic makeup. That they have the same ideas and express them differently. I've come to suspect (and experienced firsthand) that many conflicts between individuals and groups seem to appear an unresolvable difference in assumptions when they are in fact simply a difference in the meanings those individuals assign to various terms. Sometimes this is realized; often it is not. Two men speak the same words in different languages and believe themselves to be arguing!
The cause behind the stagnation apparent in society are, in my opinion, a product of these last two phenomena. The reason I don't include the first is my conviction that the most basic assumptions people uphold don't differ much from person to person. In brief, I think that these are few and intuitive in nature, and any other ideas which go unquestioned as these do are so for specific reasons. Rather than going further in explaining myself there I'll simply ask this: Are you comfortable with the idea that two separate truths can come to be and will never mesh? That once these stabilize humanity will be forever in the grip of an unmoving and fruitless battle, or shattered into groups forever unable to communicate with one another? This first problem is a fundamentally unresolvable one, and so regardless of its existence or nonexistence I see no need to address it. I do not believe it to be a matter, and this assumption is reflected in the ideas to come.
Now, having narrowed our suspicions down to two demons--groupthink and semantic disunity--we must find solutions. And my solutions to these (for now) are simple--they are solutions for me and me exclusively, rather than revolutionary changes to the social system. [Those come later, bwahahahah!] To defend myself from the stagnation of groupthink I must disallow myself from being a member of any collective in the sense that I accept their ideas. Contrarily, to retain the benefit of a chaotic ideological system I must immerse myself in people who uphold different systems of thought--the more alien, the better, with the stipulation that rational exchange must be possible.
The solution to the demon of semantics meshes well with this first solution, and amplifies my ability to develop my own paradigm by promoting a better understanding of others. This solution is to identify common threads amongst what appear to be vastly different ideologies. At present, to seek the various philosophical holes which most ideologies address, and what they are filled with. What the hole and the piece seated in it are called. Looking for nearly equivalent objects, separated as they seem only by trifling connections and their all-important names.
To act upon these two proposed solutions is to gain an odd assortment of friends and acquaintances. To be what I call a Free Agent. Separate from all groups and yet connected with as many as possible. Learning and gaining a greater perspective on the striking similarities between them. And the potential for unity here is something I've perceived--albeit at the back of my mind--for a long time, watching people argue and separate. Watching the futility unfold.
As practice goes, I've spent my summer seeking out such groups, although I've only now crystallized the ideas you see written here. (Writing is wonderful for this!) My two primary in-groups are a Bible fellowship and Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. I've also attempted to get into contact with a local Buddhist group (which has disintegrated) and visited the School of Metaphysics. I intend to cease using labels (eg 'agnostic') to describe my ideology directly. Rather, I prefer my own term 'Free Agent' which is without an implied collective and without the baggage other words carry.
I've employed the semantic bridging technique to wonderful effect. To see the ideas and labels I like to use see the (rather lightly written) 'Dictionary of Important Stuff' I posted recently. I've made mappings with sufficient success that when speaking to a Christian friend she remarked that I spoke like a Christian. The conversation in question had been about the Trinity, and through it I discovered how closely its members mapped to ideas in my own paradigm. The Father is equivalent to what I term God--the process underlying all, and the ever-receding but never-vanishing limn betwixt known and unknown. The Son seems to reasonably represent what I term the Ego--the conscious, communicating, rational mind. (That might be a bit of a stretch but consider 'Jesus the Logos' in the words of Christian Philosophy. And, I'm making the relation indirectly. Not equivalent ideas but closely related.) The Holy Spirit, of particular interest, maps well to what I term Intuition--a reasoning thing which manifests itself as a second voice, and in the stuff of dreams; a source of feelings and basic, unquestioned ideas which gives me a moral and rational basis for reasoning. Also, a thing with which contact can be lost, to be regained only through conviction.
The same ideas port neatly to the taste I've gotten of the SOM's ideology. (Though, it apparently caters to people of various faiths, acting as an extension to their systems of belief.) Intuition and dreams are held in high regard and use semantics akin to mine. Mention is also made of the 'cosmos' and 'collective unconscious' which map reasonably, again, to the God of which I speak.
They can also stand in the face of the modern scientific paradigm, again something which is often combined with other systems of beliefs. My God is in the Higgs Boson, and beyond the visible universe. It is Dark Matter. It is any processes we have yet to discover. My Ego is the conscious mind or Freud's Ego. My Intuition is the unconscious or Freud's Super-Ego. (The Body would be equivalent to Freud's Id.)
I'll take the scientific paradigm to be representative of Atheism. But consider how peculiar it must be to use a term such as God in their context. No matter! I see no sin in changing my words to fit, though at my last opportunity I made a point of explaining my take on the idea. (Incidentally, my usage of the word God is not an innovation of my own; it appears to have been used by Einstein and I've seen it proposed elsewhere, in the writings of individuals.)
The only great differences left are connections taken on faith. Christianity connects the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together as a singular God. Science places God in a position starkly separate from the Ego and Intuition, which are housed in the physical mind. Other faiths make themselves clear on all sorts of other connections drawn. But some are recurrent. The peculiar link between Intuition and Ego, the wide schism between the Ego (an individual in Christianity's case, not Jesus) and God (The Father) and the dualistic or triadic nature of Body, Ego and Intuition or Body and Mind. (This last is starkly evident in philosophies from the ancient to the modern.)
The ideas I've used to describe semantic bridging are a small subset with which I've been toying. With luck I'll have more chances in the future to explore apparent ideological universals. When such time comes I should be able to give clearer examples in support of this idea.
I hope I've made clear how I intend to operate as a philosopher. I hope my position is understandable and my decision as well. Honestly, I hope to see at least minor improvements upon the situation of the social system--specifically, to see other people such as yourself taking a greater interest in relating to alien ideas and enjoying a more reserved sense of membership in any groups you participate in.
Perhaps this is a means to the Unity to which so much effort is dedicated. Perhaps [and certainly] this already exists, maybe even with prevalence, in the things I've heard called 'interfaith' and the like. But perhaps aside, I reap from it benefits of my own--increased perspective to feed my undying curiosity, increased understanding to back my faith in humanity, and a position which will with hope make my position an acceptable one to all, that I might seek kinship unfettered.
I call myself Free Agent.
The debates between different religions and philosophies have raged violently since the dawn of such ideas, and will continue to do so for the remainder of humanity's existence. There are innumerable points of contention, innumerable arguments supporting each, and innumerable individuals who have dedicated themselves in one way or another to defending one. This is a good thing; if the ideas embraced by humanity are many and conflicting it creates an environment within which thought can flourish and ideological paradigms, caught in the tumult, can be cleansed of fallacies and made "stable", or resistant to the wear and tear to which they are subjected.
And yet it's far from perfect. The battles rage on, the oldest and bitterest among them seeming now incapable of making "progress" save by the wretched means of war or separation. What's going on? Why do these systems of thought remain so separate?
One possibility is that stable systems of thought can exist and stabilize separately from one another, structured differently and incompatible in fundamental ways. Indeed, one would have to be very closed-minded to think it's impossible for wisdom to exist in any single [major] school of thought. I'm irreligious and I've read the words of highly enlightened philosophers both with and without faith in a personal God. It's not unreasonable to suggest that a difference in base assumptions could produce entirely different rational structures. However, I'm inclined to have my doubts that it's the primary cause of our predicament. I'll explain why in due time.
Another is that the process of ideological evolution is being subdued. That individuals are shielded somehow from open discussion of their ideas or taught not to question them. This I see as a strong culprit, manifest almost entirely in the phenomenon of like-minded individuals forming groups based upon ideas. They form a consensus and strong personal bonds, intertwining their respective paradigms until (often) it becomes difficult and unappealing to move away toward new ones that go against the collective. This is characteristic of religious communities (and organized atheism), political parties and all number of other social groups of which I and (I expect) the vast majority of other human beings are regular participants.
This second cause I see as a monstrosity from which humanity must free itself; many people are discomforted at confronting new ideas, removing the old, and having to reconstruct paradigms which have had gaping holes put into their bases, demolishing any idea which is no longer supported. Many human beings prefer the security--not only ideological, but physical and emotional--which is to be found in groups. But I see great costs incurred by this, of which ideological stagnation is one.
A third culprit, and most relevant here, is that two ideologies may develop with similar rational structures and separate semantic makeup. That they have the same ideas and express them differently. I've come to suspect (and experienced firsthand) that many conflicts between individuals and groups seem to appear an unresolvable difference in assumptions when they are in fact simply a difference in the meanings those individuals assign to various terms. Sometimes this is realized; often it is not. Two men speak the same words in different languages and believe themselves to be arguing!
The cause behind the stagnation apparent in society are, in my opinion, a product of these last two phenomena. The reason I don't include the first is my conviction that the most basic assumptions people uphold don't differ much from person to person. In brief, I think that these are few and intuitive in nature, and any other ideas which go unquestioned as these do are so for specific reasons. Rather than going further in explaining myself there I'll simply ask this: Are you comfortable with the idea that two separate truths can come to be and will never mesh? That once these stabilize humanity will be forever in the grip of an unmoving and fruitless battle, or shattered into groups forever unable to communicate with one another? This first problem is a fundamentally unresolvable one, and so regardless of its existence or nonexistence I see no need to address it. I do not believe it to be a matter, and this assumption is reflected in the ideas to come.
Now, having narrowed our suspicions down to two demons--groupthink and semantic disunity--we must find solutions. And my solutions to these (for now) are simple--they are solutions for me and me exclusively, rather than revolutionary changes to the social system. [Those come later, bwahahahah!] To defend myself from the stagnation of groupthink I must disallow myself from being a member of any collective in the sense that I accept their ideas. Contrarily, to retain the benefit of a chaotic ideological system I must immerse myself in people who uphold different systems of thought--the more alien, the better, with the stipulation that rational exchange must be possible.
The solution to the demon of semantics meshes well with this first solution, and amplifies my ability to develop my own paradigm by promoting a better understanding of others. This solution is to identify common threads amongst what appear to be vastly different ideologies. At present, to seek the various philosophical holes which most ideologies address, and what they are filled with. What the hole and the piece seated in it are called. Looking for nearly equivalent objects, separated as they seem only by trifling connections and their all-important names.
To act upon these two proposed solutions is to gain an odd assortment of friends and acquaintances. To be what I call a Free Agent. Separate from all groups and yet connected with as many as possible. Learning and gaining a greater perspective on the striking similarities between them. And the potential for unity here is something I've perceived--albeit at the back of my mind--for a long time, watching people argue and separate. Watching the futility unfold.
As practice goes, I've spent my summer seeking out such groups, although I've only now crystallized the ideas you see written here. (Writing is wonderful for this!) My two primary in-groups are a Bible fellowship and Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. I've also attempted to get into contact with a local Buddhist group (which has disintegrated) and visited the School of Metaphysics. I intend to cease using labels (eg 'agnostic') to describe my ideology directly. Rather, I prefer my own term 'Free Agent' which is without an implied collective and without the baggage other words carry.
I've employed the semantic bridging technique to wonderful effect. To see the ideas and labels I like to use see the (rather lightly written) 'Dictionary of Important Stuff' I posted recently. I've made mappings with sufficient success that when speaking to a Christian friend she remarked that I spoke like a Christian. The conversation in question had been about the Trinity, and through it I discovered how closely its members mapped to ideas in my own paradigm. The Father is equivalent to what I term God--the process underlying all, and the ever-receding but never-vanishing limn betwixt known and unknown. The Son seems to reasonably represent what I term the Ego--the conscious, communicating, rational mind. (That might be a bit of a stretch but consider 'Jesus the Logos' in the words of Christian Philosophy. And, I'm making the relation indirectly. Not equivalent ideas but closely related.) The Holy Spirit, of particular interest, maps well to what I term Intuition--a reasoning thing which manifests itself as a second voice, and in the stuff of dreams; a source of feelings and basic, unquestioned ideas which gives me a moral and rational basis for reasoning. Also, a thing with which contact can be lost, to be regained only through conviction.
The same ideas port neatly to the taste I've gotten of the SOM's ideology. (Though, it apparently caters to people of various faiths, acting as an extension to their systems of belief.) Intuition and dreams are held in high regard and use semantics akin to mine. Mention is also made of the 'cosmos' and 'collective unconscious' which map reasonably, again, to the God of which I speak.
They can also stand in the face of the modern scientific paradigm, again something which is often combined with other systems of beliefs. My God is in the Higgs Boson, and beyond the visible universe. It is Dark Matter. It is any processes we have yet to discover. My Ego is the conscious mind or Freud's Ego. My Intuition is the unconscious or Freud's Super-Ego. (The Body would be equivalent to Freud's Id.)
I'll take the scientific paradigm to be representative of Atheism. But consider how peculiar it must be to use a term such as God in their context. No matter! I see no sin in changing my words to fit, though at my last opportunity I made a point of explaining my take on the idea. (Incidentally, my usage of the word God is not an innovation of my own; it appears to have been used by Einstein and I've seen it proposed elsewhere, in the writings of individuals.)
The only great differences left are connections taken on faith. Christianity connects the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together as a singular God. Science places God in a position starkly separate from the Ego and Intuition, which are housed in the physical mind. Other faiths make themselves clear on all sorts of other connections drawn. But some are recurrent. The peculiar link between Intuition and Ego, the wide schism between the Ego (an individual in Christianity's case, not Jesus) and God (The Father) and the dualistic or triadic nature of Body, Ego and Intuition or Body and Mind. (This last is starkly evident in philosophies from the ancient to the modern.)
The ideas I've used to describe semantic bridging are a small subset with which I've been toying. With luck I'll have more chances in the future to explore apparent ideological universals. When such time comes I should be able to give clearer examples in support of this idea.
I hope I've made clear how I intend to operate as a philosopher. I hope my position is understandable and my decision as well. Honestly, I hope to see at least minor improvements upon the situation of the social system--specifically, to see other people such as yourself taking a greater interest in relating to alien ideas and enjoying a more reserved sense of membership in any groups you participate in.
Perhaps this is a means to the Unity to which so much effort is dedicated. Perhaps [and certainly] this already exists, maybe even with prevalence, in the things I've heard called 'interfaith' and the like. But perhaps aside, I reap from it benefits of my own--increased perspective to feed my undying curiosity, increased understanding to back my faith in humanity, and a position which will with hope make my position an acceptable one to all, that I might seek kinship unfettered.
I call myself Free Agent.
Dictionary of Important Stuff
Editor's note: If you have no sense of whimsy, or no appreciation of philosophy, I suggest you leave before FORTY-TWO OCCAM'S RAZOR BOOGAHBOOGAHBOOGAH!
Okay. They're gone. Good.
Note also that these definitions are the meanings I choose to attach to words. I am not suggesting you use the same ones. I do encourage you to find some word befitting each if you do not yet possess one, however. If you lack meaningless words, you may find some in the appendix.
Note also that this is clearly not in alphabetical order. If that matters. It doesn't.
---
GOD:
A man sees before him a black box with a crank. He turns the handle and music springs forth. This machine is mystically endowed with the capacity to make music! Another man steps forward, doubting him, and pries open the box. The two see then it is not the box but the things inside which seem to produce the music. These strange pieces are disassembled further still and analyzed that the parts they form can be understood. Eventually the pieces can be analyzed no more. Their function, it seems, is simple and obvious. But there is yet a reason they work as they do. Countless ignored questions such as why the metal behaves as it does, or resonates its sweet tones only when struck just so. Even as more and more is discovered, countless questions remain. An infinite mystery. A world of understanding yet-to-be, and endless.
Note: Many people use God to name their exclusive source of absolute truth and/or moral bases. I give mine a different name. See: INTUITION.
THE WORLD:
All that is and all that be. Except, of course, me. Anything that I can perceive, I can only perceive. Therefore perception would appear to be a singular conduit to all entities within some realm. This realm I call the world.
---
SCIENCE:
See: GOD. The attempt to explain things by observing them, at times with the deluded reasoning that we can contrive a unified explanation for everything while making no assumptions whatsoever to base it upon. The limit of questions will always be a barrier which is somewhere between divine, magical, or mundane. The last of these is most satisfactory; all are characterized by answering "why?" with "because." Since science only observes the objects of its study it can at best make predictions of how they will behave. This is very useful when lower levels of abstraction can be examined to explain phenomena occurring at higher levels but, again, there's always a limit of questions. Even if we're pushing it further and further back.
MAGIC:
This is the word we use to describe things Science has yet to understand. Science, the egotistical and loud fellow he is, makes a point of saying it does not exist and that he therefore knows everything. Alternately we can interpret magic as being everything science can never explain. Everything functions upon a set of rules, however, and if we're searching for said rules then we are scientists and all things are science. And no things are magic, leaving it a useless word. Therefore I like the former definition because it's awesome. The Higgs Boson is magic.
---
EGO:
An entity which is stuck with the horrible curse of never being satisfied with what it has. It is the protagonist of my story and yours, and daily quests to the conclusion of its endless quest which ends with death. But don't fret! If that quest ended the story would be a lot less interesting. If our protagonist surmounted the mountain of perfection he would have nowhere to go but down. Or he could just rot up there. Whatever. In actuality that mountain will always turn out to be an observation point at the base of a bigger mountain, or so I suspect. But don't tell science, or he'll get another one of his hissy-fits and no one likes that.
INTUITION:
If you believe intuition exists or can do anything special, you're crazy. If you actually talk to it you're really far gone. The nutcases say it's some kind of rational facility in the mind which due to its lack of metacognition can perform much more advanced problem-solving and thought, but for the same reason cannot explain how it solves its problems. As any crazy person will tell you, it can be manifested as a voice if one takes care to get into a proper mindset and avoid putting words in its mouth. (This is apparently harder than it sounds) After all, if it's just saying what you want it to say then you won't be a very good crazy person. You'll be talking to yourself but you won't be officially crazy. A crazy guy suggested trying to achieve a strong theta brainwave without falling asleep, or trying to lucid dream. But he was crazy and I disregarded him. Also the crazy people say intuition compels us to justify certain irrational beliefs, such as the ethical value of human beings or the need to eat. They say that these motivational assumptions and some logical ones (such as that the text you're reading actually exists) are built-in as a means of developing a basis for rational thought in both the conscious and intuitive minds.
BODY:
A member of the world which is more relevant but arguably less concrete than the last two things. The three of them, crazy people allege, are formulating aspects of a human being and a really flexible system of semantics that allows you to relate with people from drastically different schools of thought instead of just arguing. Of course, the crazy people are deluded and meaningless argument is the only way to achieve intellectual development at the individual and social levels. Anyway, the body is useful for learning, creating, exploring and interacting with people, and makes a few basic demands with regard to upkeep, including food, water, relief, reproduction and so forth.
Unfortunately, those in search of purpose sometimes are discomforted at thinking very hard and yet also refuse to take orders from men with books. Therefore, they accept the simple solution that bodily requests and the body's social imperatives are they keys to happiness, failing to recognize the other, more satisfying drives that the human being harbors. These become productive members of society, pursuing comfort and regard as they live. Since physiological and social drives wane with age these people find their 'successful' lifestyles very dissatisfying and die unhappy.
---
PURPOSE:
A magical reason to exist that we don't know. Once we find out we will accomplish our task and then become useless and probably stop existing or something. But worry not! We will quest on to please whatever entities have forged us, because clearly no Gods would make humans simply for the purpose of waiting and watching all the interesting things they did. No, even an all-powerful God has goals that can only be served by creating self-directed beings and expecting them to believe in said God with little evidence. It's silly to think the God would imagine Human existence to be its own reason, or to create intelligent beings for the sheer novelty of seeing what they make and discover. Silly to think any existing gods hide themselves mostly or completely for such reasons.
WILL:
Like purpose but a whole lot finickier. People always want something they don't have. If this is not the case, they stop moving. As can be seen in any nursing home those who cease to pursue tangible goals quickly degenerate mentally and physically, and die, whereas those who devote themselves even to silly or fruitless pursuits live on and are happy. (Rest in glory, Margaret Cook.) The word is synonymous with "futility" but a whole lot more upbeat owing to the wonderful connotative aspect of the English language. People will many things at a given time, at at any moment act on whatever they will the most. Long-term desires precipitate shorter ones which act toward the larger goal. So are mountains climbed step by step. As said previously, however, there is no tallest mountain. Only a time limit in which we can explore this big, wide world. Let that be its own reason, or otherwise choose from a list of Purposes. Yuck.
---
REASON
A silly and never-ending (See: WILL) effort to make sense of everything. The typical technique is to seek out patterns in what we call the 'world', and elsewhere, and pick the ones which are not quite regular and not quite random. The ones which seem to work on a set of meaningful rules but aren't completely predictable. Why do we choose these? Regular things are already understood and random ones cannot yet be, as we judge them. Anyway, Reason searches for common threads, patterns, mechanisms and other things, and builds a great web of information to reflect the physical world. As this occurs concepts are shifted from the realm of the unknown (See: GOD) to that of the individual mind. (See: TRUTH) While reason is occasionally useful (See: SCIENCE) it eventually becomes a fruitless pursuit, though that's not so bad. (See: WILL) However, if used exclusively and not co-operatively as a method of understanding it can interfere sometimes with other things that help us get a clearer view of things. (See: INTUTION)
PARADIGM
This is the big and complicated web reason builds. It can also be any subset of that web. The concepts in a paradigm are used to make judgments and further reasoning with regard to the objects they model, be those physical or abstract. Capable of doing all manner of loop-de-loops and triple 360 flipkicks, the structure of the paradigm is a mystery which wierd programmery fellows probably sit alone trying to decode so they can make strong AI. Paradigms, like muscles, develop best under stress, especially when they are confronted with paradigms which are very different to themselves. When this occurs it's good to let the paradigms loose so they can duke it out and become stronger. One killing the other is rarer than is widely believed, and [actually dogfighting analogies are inappropriate because] it's in the interest of your paradigm to engage in this activity.
---
MEANING
This is what is created when someone looks at the words in a book, or a sunset, or another person's face, or a trash can. Meaning is a set of ideas formulated by interpreting something, which are then processed by the mind. Arguably meaning is created intuitively before the ego gets its grubby hands on it, and processed intuitively at the same time. The ideas in meaning are compared against pieces of paradigm, whether said paradigm piece is highly temporary or more permanent. They are then either inserted into said paradigm (assimilation), forced into the paradigm which must change to hold them (accommodation) or thrown out as rubbish (the most common case).
TRUTH
All the understanding a person can manage to wring out of this mad world is placed gently (or forcefully) into a paradigm where it becomes what I call truth. I choose this meaning for this word rather than the conventional one (we'll assign it to the term FACT) which means things that are valid in the world and therefore equally so to all human minds. I make this choice because 'fact' can only be guessed at and what manifests in those guesses constitutes one's understanding of life, the universe, and everything. (See: TOWEL DAY) Truth sounds better and is more official and such, so I'd like to use it to describe something I can actually have and use, rather than some useless notion of absolution that humans seem to believe they're moving toward. (See: SCIENCE)
ABSTRACTION
...Is AWESOME. Awesomely confusing. Okay. Consider the common house cat. It's a feline, a mammal, an animal, and an organism. Those are levels of abstraction. We can go the opposite direction too. Miffy is a cat. This cat right here right now is miffy. We can form an abstraction over that--let's call it 'cat at varying levels of specificity'. We can form an abstraction over all such patterns--specificity and generality. We can form a specificity abstraction in a different direction, such as by denoting a cat to be a house pet, and therefore an element of a house. We can abstract in other ways such as by breaking Cat down into its properties (fur, teeth, claws, etc) or making a set (I'm thinking of all the cats I know). We can abstract over anything remotely resembling a pattern and so connect ideas and concepts in our paradigm. We can even abstract over abstraction itself, or over our own thought processes! This is wonderful when trying to bring about the technological singularity.
---
POSSIBLE FUTURE ADDITIONS:
Ethics / Morals
Social System / Individual
Virtue / Vice
THIS IS AN APPENDIX
FNEEBLE, JARGUND, RESTIBLES, NICANTHIAN, OMIDEUM, TESTAROD, FARGENTHIUM, WIRTH
Okay. They're gone. Good.
Note also that these definitions are the meanings I choose to attach to words. I am not suggesting you use the same ones. I do encourage you to find some word befitting each if you do not yet possess one, however. If you lack meaningless words, you may find some in the appendix.
Note also that this is clearly not in alphabetical order. If that matters. It doesn't.
---
GOD:
A man sees before him a black box with a crank. He turns the handle and music springs forth. This machine is mystically endowed with the capacity to make music! Another man steps forward, doubting him, and pries open the box. The two see then it is not the box but the things inside which seem to produce the music. These strange pieces are disassembled further still and analyzed that the parts they form can be understood. Eventually the pieces can be analyzed no more. Their function, it seems, is simple and obvious. But there is yet a reason they work as they do. Countless ignored questions such as why the metal behaves as it does, or resonates its sweet tones only when struck just so. Even as more and more is discovered, countless questions remain. An infinite mystery. A world of understanding yet-to-be, and endless.
Note: Many people use God to name their exclusive source of absolute truth and/or moral bases. I give mine a different name. See: INTUITION.
THE WORLD:
All that is and all that be. Except, of course, me. Anything that I can perceive, I can only perceive. Therefore perception would appear to be a singular conduit to all entities within some realm. This realm I call the world.
---
SCIENCE:
See: GOD. The attempt to explain things by observing them, at times with the deluded reasoning that we can contrive a unified explanation for everything while making no assumptions whatsoever to base it upon. The limit of questions will always be a barrier which is somewhere between divine, magical, or mundane. The last of these is most satisfactory; all are characterized by answering "why?" with "because." Since science only observes the objects of its study it can at best make predictions of how they will behave. This is very useful when lower levels of abstraction can be examined to explain phenomena occurring at higher levels but, again, there's always a limit of questions. Even if we're pushing it further and further back.
MAGIC:
This is the word we use to describe things Science has yet to understand. Science, the egotistical and loud fellow he is, makes a point of saying it does not exist and that he therefore knows everything. Alternately we can interpret magic as being everything science can never explain. Everything functions upon a set of rules, however, and if we're searching for said rules then we are scientists and all things are science. And no things are magic, leaving it a useless word. Therefore I like the former definition because it's awesome. The Higgs Boson is magic.
---
EGO:
An entity which is stuck with the horrible curse of never being satisfied with what it has. It is the protagonist of my story and yours, and daily quests to the conclusion of its endless quest which ends with death. But don't fret! If that quest ended the story would be a lot less interesting. If our protagonist surmounted the mountain of perfection he would have nowhere to go but down. Or he could just rot up there. Whatever. In actuality that mountain will always turn out to be an observation point at the base of a bigger mountain, or so I suspect. But don't tell science, or he'll get another one of his hissy-fits and no one likes that.
INTUITION:
If you believe intuition exists or can do anything special, you're crazy. If you actually talk to it you're really far gone. The nutcases say it's some kind of rational facility in the mind which due to its lack of metacognition can perform much more advanced problem-solving and thought, but for the same reason cannot explain how it solves its problems. As any crazy person will tell you, it can be manifested as a voice if one takes care to get into a proper mindset and avoid putting words in its mouth. (This is apparently harder than it sounds) After all, if it's just saying what you want it to say then you won't be a very good crazy person. You'll be talking to yourself but you won't be officially crazy. A crazy guy suggested trying to achieve a strong theta brainwave without falling asleep, or trying to lucid dream. But he was crazy and I disregarded him. Also the crazy people say intuition compels us to justify certain irrational beliefs, such as the ethical value of human beings or the need to eat. They say that these motivational assumptions and some logical ones (such as that the text you're reading actually exists) are built-in as a means of developing a basis for rational thought in both the conscious and intuitive minds.
BODY:
A member of the world which is more relevant but arguably less concrete than the last two things. The three of them, crazy people allege, are formulating aspects of a human being and a really flexible system of semantics that allows you to relate with people from drastically different schools of thought instead of just arguing. Of course, the crazy people are deluded and meaningless argument is the only way to achieve intellectual development at the individual and social levels. Anyway, the body is useful for learning, creating, exploring and interacting with people, and makes a few basic demands with regard to upkeep, including food, water, relief, reproduction and so forth.
Unfortunately, those in search of purpose sometimes are discomforted at thinking very hard and yet also refuse to take orders from men with books. Therefore, they accept the simple solution that bodily requests and the body's social imperatives are they keys to happiness, failing to recognize the other, more satisfying drives that the human being harbors. These become productive members of society, pursuing comfort and regard as they live. Since physiological and social drives wane with age these people find their 'successful' lifestyles very dissatisfying and die unhappy.
---
PURPOSE:
A magical reason to exist that we don't know. Once we find out we will accomplish our task and then become useless and probably stop existing or something. But worry not! We will quest on to please whatever entities have forged us, because clearly no Gods would make humans simply for the purpose of waiting and watching all the interesting things they did. No, even an all-powerful God has goals that can only be served by creating self-directed beings and expecting them to believe in said God with little evidence. It's silly to think the God would imagine Human existence to be its own reason, or to create intelligent beings for the sheer novelty of seeing what they make and discover. Silly to think any existing gods hide themselves mostly or completely for such reasons.
WILL:
Like purpose but a whole lot finickier. People always want something they don't have. If this is not the case, they stop moving. As can be seen in any nursing home those who cease to pursue tangible goals quickly degenerate mentally and physically, and die, whereas those who devote themselves even to silly or fruitless pursuits live on and are happy. (Rest in glory, Margaret Cook.) The word is synonymous with "futility" but a whole lot more upbeat owing to the wonderful connotative aspect of the English language. People will many things at a given time, at at any moment act on whatever they will the most. Long-term desires precipitate shorter ones which act toward the larger goal. So are mountains climbed step by step. As said previously, however, there is no tallest mountain. Only a time limit in which we can explore this big, wide world. Let that be its own reason, or otherwise choose from a list of Purposes. Yuck.
---
REASON
A silly and never-ending (See: WILL) effort to make sense of everything. The typical technique is to seek out patterns in what we call the 'world', and elsewhere, and pick the ones which are not quite regular and not quite random. The ones which seem to work on a set of meaningful rules but aren't completely predictable. Why do we choose these? Regular things are already understood and random ones cannot yet be, as we judge them. Anyway, Reason searches for common threads, patterns, mechanisms and other things, and builds a great web of information to reflect the physical world. As this occurs concepts are shifted from the realm of the unknown (See: GOD) to that of the individual mind. (See: TRUTH) While reason is occasionally useful (See: SCIENCE) it eventually becomes a fruitless pursuit, though that's not so bad. (See: WILL) However, if used exclusively and not co-operatively as a method of understanding it can interfere sometimes with other things that help us get a clearer view of things. (See: INTUTION)
PARADIGM
This is the big and complicated web reason builds. It can also be any subset of that web. The concepts in a paradigm are used to make judgments and further reasoning with regard to the objects they model, be those physical or abstract. Capable of doing all manner of loop-de-loops and triple 360 flipkicks, the structure of the paradigm is a mystery which wierd programmery fellows probably sit alone trying to decode so they can make strong AI. Paradigms, like muscles, develop best under stress, especially when they are confronted with paradigms which are very different to themselves. When this occurs it's good to let the paradigms loose so they can duke it out and become stronger. One killing the other is rarer than is widely believed, and [actually dogfighting analogies are inappropriate because] it's in the interest of your paradigm to engage in this activity.
---
MEANING
This is what is created when someone looks at the words in a book, or a sunset, or another person's face, or a trash can. Meaning is a set of ideas formulated by interpreting something, which are then processed by the mind. Arguably meaning is created intuitively before the ego gets its grubby hands on it, and processed intuitively at the same time. The ideas in meaning are compared against pieces of paradigm, whether said paradigm piece is highly temporary or more permanent. They are then either inserted into said paradigm (assimilation), forced into the paradigm which must change to hold them (accommodation) or thrown out as rubbish (the most common case).
TRUTH
All the understanding a person can manage to wring out of this mad world is placed gently (or forcefully) into a paradigm where it becomes what I call truth. I choose this meaning for this word rather than the conventional one (we'll assign it to the term FACT) which means things that are valid in the world and therefore equally so to all human minds. I make this choice because 'fact' can only be guessed at and what manifests in those guesses constitutes one's understanding of life, the universe, and everything. (See: TOWEL DAY) Truth sounds better and is more official and such, so I'd like to use it to describe something I can actually have and use, rather than some useless notion of absolution that humans seem to believe they're moving toward. (See: SCIENCE)
ABSTRACTION
...Is AWESOME. Awesomely confusing. Okay. Consider the common house cat. It's a feline, a mammal, an animal, and an organism. Those are levels of abstraction. We can go the opposite direction too. Miffy is a cat. This cat right here right now is miffy. We can form an abstraction over that--let's call it 'cat at varying levels of specificity'. We can form an abstraction over all such patterns--specificity and generality. We can form a specificity abstraction in a different direction, such as by denoting a cat to be a house pet, and therefore an element of a house. We can abstract in other ways such as by breaking Cat down into its properties (fur, teeth, claws, etc) or making a set (I'm thinking of all the cats I know). We can abstract over anything remotely resembling a pattern and so connect ideas and concepts in our paradigm. We can even abstract over abstraction itself, or over our own thought processes! This is wonderful when trying to bring about the technological singularity.
---
POSSIBLE FUTURE ADDITIONS:
Ethics / Morals
Social System / Individual
Virtue / Vice
THIS IS AN APPENDIX
FNEEBLE, JARGUND, RESTIBLES, NICANTHIAN, OMIDEUM, TESTAROD, FARGENTHIUM, WIRTH
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Re: I'm Right, You're Left
A response to a Christian friend's argument against moral relativism. Original exists as Facebook comments.
Synopsis of "I'm right, you're left"
---
The tragedy of disbelieving in God is not that a person ends up believing in nothing. Alas it is much worse… a person could end up believing in anything.
GK Chesterton
Moral Relativism is good for learning and critical thinking, but ultimately any set of ideas can be used as a basis of thought and any ideology, no matter how depraved, can be justified.
Some people, notably several children the author knows, see little reason to act morally as it is out of their interest. Counterarguments suggest that ethical laws are an inherent product of reason and common sense, but there is no basis for them. Self-evident ideas are not supported by reason.
Acting upon reason and selfish motivations leads one to a life which is beneficial to the one's self but detrimental to society; a population embracing such a lifestyle would suffer on the whole.
Without solid moral roots we cannot have a moral society. What we've built will crumble into chaos and apathy.
Response:
---
Your argument here is that without a source of moral absolutes we can't justify moral behavior. We need a basis for further reasoning, or a complete code for the purpose of achieving this justification. We need a perfect God, then, which encapsulates absolute truth. And one is quite conveniently evident at work in this world. Therefore, our absolution is to be his word.
My reasoning divides from yours at the necessity of a God. In consideration of the fallibility of human beings--we can be deceived and commit error in evaluating what we see--I accept that while the universe may function on objective rules, we can only observe the consequences of said rules, modeling them subjectively. Any objectivity at work in the world is therefore as good as dead to us.
We need to find our own bases for thought. And those dwell in human intuition.
Your God and your Truth may well be concrete entities, but it's little matter to me; I have no good reason to choose them over the others presented me save the evidence; as a philosopher I don't care for empirical proof scientific or otherwise. Additionally, I'll argue, even provided the existence of your God and your Truth my statements stand as valid.
My God--my use of the term--is the rules which we can only guess at and will never objectively know--something which orchestrates all and is manifest in all things. An unsolvable mystery.
My Truth is contrary. It is what sense we can make of the chaos presented to us; our world paradigm with representation for every character, thing and rule we can construct.
My muse. Intuition. She demands more explanation, given I have placed her where your personal God sits. This is a thing which acts from within the confines of the mind, making its suggestions to those who care to listen. She, like your God, suggests morality even as reason struggles to replace it with ethics. She, like your God, is a partner in dialogue and a responder to hard questions in hard times. She, like your God, is a source for all the assumptions (irrational!) that we build our system of ideas upon.
If your God speaks to the heart we may well be saying the same things in different languages.
Synopsis of "I'm right, you're left"
---
The tragedy of disbelieving in God is not that a person ends up believing in nothing. Alas it is much worse… a person could end up believing in anything.
GK Chesterton
Moral Relativism is good for learning and critical thinking, but ultimately any set of ideas can be used as a basis of thought and any ideology, no matter how depraved, can be justified.
Some people, notably several children the author knows, see little reason to act morally as it is out of their interest. Counterarguments suggest that ethical laws are an inherent product of reason and common sense, but there is no basis for them. Self-evident ideas are not supported by reason.
Acting upon reason and selfish motivations leads one to a life which is beneficial to the one's self but detrimental to society; a population embracing such a lifestyle would suffer on the whole.
Without solid moral roots we cannot have a moral society. What we've built will crumble into chaos and apathy.
Response:
---
Your argument here is that without a source of moral absolutes we can't justify moral behavior. We need a basis for further reasoning, or a complete code for the purpose of achieving this justification. We need a perfect God, then, which encapsulates absolute truth. And one is quite conveniently evident at work in this world. Therefore, our absolution is to be his word.
My reasoning divides from yours at the necessity of a God. In consideration of the fallibility of human beings--we can be deceived and commit error in evaluating what we see--I accept that while the universe may function on objective rules, we can only observe the consequences of said rules, modeling them subjectively. Any objectivity at work in the world is therefore as good as dead to us.
We need to find our own bases for thought. And those dwell in human intuition.
Your God and your Truth may well be concrete entities, but it's little matter to me; I have no good reason to choose them over the others presented me save the evidence; as a philosopher I don't care for empirical proof scientific or otherwise. Additionally, I'll argue, even provided the existence of your God and your Truth my statements stand as valid.
My God--my use of the term--is the rules which we can only guess at and will never objectively know--something which orchestrates all and is manifest in all things. An unsolvable mystery.
My Truth is contrary. It is what sense we can make of the chaos presented to us; our world paradigm with representation for every character, thing and rule we can construct.
My muse. Intuition. She demands more explanation, given I have placed her where your personal God sits. This is a thing which acts from within the confines of the mind, making its suggestions to those who care to listen. She, like your God, suggests morality even as reason struggles to replace it with ethics. She, like your God, is a partner in dialogue and a responder to hard questions in hard times. She, like your God, is a source for all the assumptions (irrational!) that we build our system of ideas upon.
If your God speaks to the heart we may well be saying the same things in different languages.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Big Idea
As I emerged from the mysterious depths
I encountered a world
of fruitless pursuits
and destructive ideas
So I let my hair down
Played a tune
And returned to the abyss.
-Journey to Mt. Moriah
http://www.journeytomtmoriah.com/?p=136
All these problems we have. All the horrors we face. Conflict of wills. A construction of our own. The so-called inevitability of a people with conflicting interests. War. Desperation.
When people speak of 'One Love' in idealistic tongues they speak of something they see; a vision, lingering on the edge of perception like the fading remnant of a dream. Like the dreamer, they feel a special kind of regret as it seems to elude their grasp.
It's plain to see that the soldiers on one side of a war have few differences from those on the other. That heroes fight valiantly on both sides, defending what they love from what seems an inevitable monster. (The opposing nation) Anyone who takes the time can plainly see the fallacy of such conflict--an attempt to resolve ethereal matters that seem important. Sometimes it's more concrete--defense against invasion, perhaps--but it always seems to ring the same. Men on either side of a warped glass, their images twisted into monstrosities as a product of necessity.
Wars are the most terrible among many conflicts human beings involve themselves in, from the petty to the vicious. A person rarely assumes responsibility for being in one; typically, the other party or some inevitable process is to blame.
The pressing question is precisely how a conflict of wills, be it between individuals or populations, comes into being. How it works. How it thinks. The rules upon which they function. The common threads that exist in the way they live and die.
I think people are beautiful creatures, without exception. I've been inspired to scrutinize those parts of humanity which I find repulsive. So too I've been inspired to be honest with myself and uncover all the fallacies I cling to--biases, self-delusions and the like--and I've uncovered quite a lot. I'm far from finished.
As I clear away these voluntary cobwebs and look upon these objects of vile mystery, I'm repeatedly surprised. I haven't found the monsters I expected to among mankind. I haven't found fools, either. Everywhere I look I see the members of a rational and kind-hearted race. This in authoritarians, suburbanite consumerists, militant atheists, evangelists, and all the other groups I disapprove of. This even apparent in history's 'villains' and 'evil empires'--a struggle to hide the virtue that is there. The greatest among the horrors they commit are not forged in malice, but love. At worst, their perspective is skewed; they are mistaken as to either what they want, or how to go about getting it.
I suggest that human beings should act singularly in their own interest, but not before dedicating a considerable amount of time and thought to ascertaining what that interest is.
I suggest that a world of love must be forged in honest selfishness rather than false altruism.
I suggest that the motivations of this animal called 'Man' are, indeed, not so animal as we fear. That the 'reptilian' system underlying our conscious psyche is a noble beast.
In America, earning power is the prime measurement of a person's success. It is the mark of a happy man; one who is 'doing something with his life' and 'going places'. I can attest to the indoctrination of this idea into our youth; as a member, I saw it preached in schools, homes and in the media. It’s a wondrous example of how we as humans deviate from what we want; our base motivations are replaced at an explicit level with careers, fame and wealth. What objective do these goals serve? The rich are no happier than the rest; they have their frustrations. The poor man's problems are not shared by the rich man, but the rich man has new ones that require even more time, effort and frustration to solve.
What’s important is to evaluate one’s own motivations before drawing paths to their satisfaction. What is this thing called ‘happiness’ and is it in fact a suitable goal? What gives us this ‘happiness’ or otherwise serves as a strong motivation?
I won’t speak for humanity, but I make, as always, the assumption that they function more or less as I do. That said, I explored—am exploring—what makes me tick. Happiness, as I define it, is a fleeting feeling and a rare visitor. A thing like sunshine which visits once in a blue moon and sustains itself for a time before vanishing. Similar are the creatures called Sadness and Anger. Really having these feelings at anything beyond a petty level is uncommon. And it seems to me utterly ridiculous to imagine that a person would aspire to trap this thing and have it indefinitely.
We’re fickle creatures, rarely satisfied with what we've gathered. I’ve looked down the conventional road with the glances I’ve gotten at different people seated at different points upon it. They get an education, get a career, work diligently, and make friends. Their pleasures are mild, and their frustrations common as they push their way forward in pursuit of prosperity. This effort seems unhealthy; it buys them luxuries (which do nothing to satisfy them) and is the subject of endless attempts to justify it. A comfortable living for the children. An inheritance to pass on. Contrived reasons for a lifestyle which, while not devoid of meaning or passion, is unrewarding and seems to breed regret. A lifestyle which comfortably transitions us from one frustration to another in the pursuit of happiness—a creature which is as elusive to us in the winter of life as any other time. Before my eyes, the American Dream turned to ash.
What of hedonism? Physical pleasure? Sex, food and fine wine? Bizarre as it is, I performed the simplest of experiments. While having a particularly good dinner and savoring it, I searched myself for the feeling I call ‘happiness’ and found it absent. A motivation was present and being satisfied, but I was not satisfied. I've asked friends whether good food makes one happy and they seemed to think so. But again and again I find the satisfaction in pleasure to be empty. As a matter of survival, the body’s imperatives are ever-present and have their suggestions. But our minds are strong, and we can (if willing to commit) be stronger than pain or craving. Realizing this, the fruits of wealth and 'comfortable living' began to lose their appeal.
I began to investigate what sorts of things motivated me beyond physical drives. There are social drives, and those of the mind. Social imperatives attract us to acceptance, regard and love. Mental ones compel us to find new ideas (curiosity) make new ideas (creativity) and achieve both at once by interacting with an intelligent partner (reciprocity). I came rather quickly to hold the mental pleasures as quite proper and noble, and dwelt for a time on the social ones.
(Biased though it may be, I was influenced by the altruistic ideals I try to expel from myself. And still am. I seek a vision of man’s motivations that supports my theory of virtue as the inevitable product of selfish action. I see this too, and try to temper it.)
Regard I came to see as a motivation which did terrible things—people destroy themselves chasing fame, and destroy others chasing power or respect. The regard of others, as I had learned firsthand, is unsatisfying once achieved and a larger goal always overshadows the first. I had, once, fought my way to the elite class among a group. Rather than enjoying this success, I first defended my position jealously, then abandoned it in pursuit of bigger things. Reflecting on this experience, fame and respect seemed as though they too would be unsatisfying—a life as a pariah could well be a valid one.
Love was and is an intriguing mystery which I fear I can’t describe or explain appropriately. I hold it to be self-evident that when applied directly it is a benevolent force between human beings. Again looking to my kin among humanity, I saw a reserved people, all too reluctant in their distrustful world to open themselves to others. And given my last revelation—the fallacy in pursuing regard—I grew infatuated with an idea.
Without pride, we are without shame. Imagine a human being which is not a subject to those insecurities that fetter us so. Imagine how freeing it would be to live without secrets. To be, to an incredible degree, utterly honest and straightforward about every thought in one’s head. To remove that porcelain mask and reveal the flawed human behind it—ten thousand times more beautiful when rendered imperfect and passionate.
No doubt being without shame would be harmful to the pursuit of wealth, comfort and respect. Ah, yes. Those aren’t so great anyway. I’m trying to bring forth from myself a such a fearless creature as I’ve imagined. To cut away the delusions and insecurities which have acted as a nest for my mind, fostering a child of society. As I tear at this nest, I hope to become instead a child of humanity. And as I do so—as my eyes seem to grow ever clearer—I come into possession of something I’ve never had before.
I have developed faith. In humanity. For all the vile things we’ve done we are powered by the same beating heart. Complex and varied systems operating on the same basic principles. Creatures of thought and emotion that are most intrinsically noble.
I have come to see patterns in all the worst things human beings do. Decisions made in groups serving collective interest, ruthlessly. Fostered insecurities driving us to make decisions which, while we don’t like them, seem inevitable. Consensus on the existence of ‘evil’ rather than confrontation of the mechanisms behind it. Refusal to see ourselves reflected in the eyes of murderers and tyrants. A continuing notion that we are without responsibility. A distrust for our fellow man.
I see these patterns in myself. I know I do not embody the ideals I speak of, and know they will change before all is said and done. But I have an inkling. Like the fading remnant of a dream, I have a half-formed vision. Of a great change in thinking.
Imagine now not one but a world of people willing to express dissent from the group. A world of people willing to discuss their ideas and those thoughts that might otherwise be guarded. A world of people who are without shame and do not wear masks of porcelain. Impossible, perhaps.
Failing this, imagine a world where, at the very least, we’ve dropped the idea that we can force a person to be virtuous against their will. Where words like ‘evil’ and ‘fooishl’ are dwelt upon, long and hard, before their use. Imagine that we’ve ceased to acknowledge such things and begun to examine the reasons and motivations behind those monsters at the edge of our vision. That we’re willing to reason with them.
Our world stands in dark times. Authoritarian states put leashes on the monsters that are men to make them positive members of society, by force. Socialist states define the interest of their people for them, knowing what fools their citizens must be. Capitalist corporations do their filthy business in the interest of no one man, predators to smaller creatures in the economy. I’ll respect your right to disagree with my criticisms of any of these—they’re the products of my very finite perspectives on each. But level with me here: we yet have war pitting good man against good man. Horror committed in the name of love. An all-consuming fire which must be understood and stopped that it might never occur again. Perhaps, one might say, it's inevitable, but that need not be a reason to treat it any differently.
The big idea is that human beings are smart, wise and virtuous by their very nature. That these distracting systems we erect serve to direct our positive pursuits in negative directions and pit us against ourselves. That we choose to be caged, hiding away our creativity, curiosity and love in favor of an illusion of stability which is valueless. That the only way to free ourselves is to live with both hands, and the full strength of our hearts and minds. Without fear of strange ideas or different people. That standing alone and upon our own two feet we may and must be part of this world. That unfettered we are beautiful.
I encountered a world
of fruitless pursuits
and destructive ideas
So I let my hair down
Played a tune
And returned to the abyss.
-Journey to Mt. Moriah
http://www.journeytomtmori
All these problems we have. All the horrors we face. Conflict of wills. A construction of our own. The so-called inevitability of a people with conflicting interests. War. Desperation.
When people speak of 'One Love' in idealistic tongues they speak of something they see; a vision, lingering on the edge of perception like the fading remnant of a dream. Like the dreamer, they feel a special kind of regret as it seems to elude their grasp.
It's plain to see that the soldiers on one side of a war have few differences from those on the other. That heroes fight valiantly on both sides, defending what they love from what seems an inevitable monster. (The opposing nation) Anyone who takes the time can plainly see the fallacy of such conflict--an attempt to resolve ethereal matters that seem important. Sometimes it's more concrete--defense against invasion, perhaps--but it always seems to ring the same. Men on either side of a warped glass, their images twisted into monstrosities as a product of necessity.
Wars are the most terrible among many conflicts human beings involve themselves in, from the petty to the vicious. A person rarely assumes responsibility for being in one; typically, the other party or some inevitable process is to blame.
The pressing question is precisely how a conflict of wills, be it between individuals or populations, comes into being. How it works. How it thinks. The rules upon which they function. The common threads that exist in the way they live and die.
I think people are beautiful creatures, without exception. I've been inspired to scrutinize those parts of humanity which I find repulsive. So too I've been inspired to be honest with myself and uncover all the fallacies I cling to--biases, self-delusions and the like--and I've uncovered quite a lot. I'm far from finished.
As I clear away these voluntary cobwebs and look upon these objects of vile mystery, I'm repeatedly surprised. I haven't found the monsters I expected to among mankind. I haven't found fools, either. Everywhere I look I see the members of a rational and kind-hearted race. This in authoritarians, suburbanite consumerists, militant atheists, evangelists, and all the other groups I disapprove of. This even apparent in history's 'villains' and 'evil empires'--a struggle to hide the virtue that is there. The greatest among the horrors they commit are not forged in malice, but love. At worst, their perspective is skewed; they are mistaken as to either what they want, or how to go about getting it.
I suggest that human beings should act singularly in their own interest, but not before dedicating a considerable amount of time and thought to ascertaining what that interest is.
I suggest that a world of love must be forged in honest selfishness rather than false altruism.
I suggest that the motivations of this animal called 'Man' are, indeed, not so animal as we fear. That the 'reptilian' system underlying our conscious psyche is a noble beast.
In America, earning power is the prime measurement of a person's success. It is the mark of a happy man; one who is 'doing something with his life' and 'going places'. I can attest to the indoctrination of this idea into our youth; as a member, I saw it preached in schools, homes and in the media. It’s a wondrous example of how we as humans deviate from what we want; our base motivations are replaced at an explicit level with careers, fame and wealth. What objective do these goals serve? The rich are no happier than the rest; they have their frustrations. The poor man's problems are not shared by the rich man, but the rich man has new ones that require even more time, effort and frustration to solve.
What’s important is to evaluate one’s own motivations before drawing paths to their satisfaction. What is this thing called ‘happiness’ and is it in fact a suitable goal? What gives us this ‘happiness’ or otherwise serves as a strong motivation?
I won’t speak for humanity, but I make, as always, the assumption that they function more or less as I do. That said, I explored—am exploring—what makes me tick. Happiness, as I define it, is a fleeting feeling and a rare visitor. A thing like sunshine which visits once in a blue moon and sustains itself for a time before vanishing. Similar are the creatures called Sadness and Anger. Really having these feelings at anything beyond a petty level is uncommon. And it seems to me utterly ridiculous to imagine that a person would aspire to trap this thing and have it indefinitely.
We’re fickle creatures, rarely satisfied with what we've gathered. I’ve looked down the conventional road with the glances I’ve gotten at different people seated at different points upon it. They get an education, get a career, work diligently, and make friends. Their pleasures are mild, and their frustrations common as they push their way forward in pursuit of prosperity. This effort seems unhealthy; it buys them luxuries (which do nothing to satisfy them) and is the subject of endless attempts to justify it. A comfortable living for the children. An inheritance to pass on. Contrived reasons for a lifestyle which, while not devoid of meaning or passion, is unrewarding and seems to breed regret. A lifestyle which comfortably transitions us from one frustration to another in the pursuit of happiness—a creature which is as elusive to us in the winter of life as any other time. Before my eyes, the American Dream turned to ash.
What of hedonism? Physical pleasure? Sex, food and fine wine? Bizarre as it is, I performed the simplest of experiments. While having a particularly good dinner and savoring it, I searched myself for the feeling I call ‘happiness’ and found it absent. A motivation was present and being satisfied, but I was not satisfied. I've asked friends whether good food makes one happy and they seemed to think so. But again and again I find the satisfaction in pleasure to be empty. As a matter of survival, the body’s imperatives are ever-present and have their suggestions. But our minds are strong, and we can (if willing to commit) be stronger than pain or craving. Realizing this, the fruits of wealth and 'comfortable living' began to lose their appeal.
I began to investigate what sorts of things motivated me beyond physical drives. There are social drives, and those of the mind. Social imperatives attract us to acceptance, regard and love. Mental ones compel us to find new ideas (curiosity) make new ideas (creativity) and achieve both at once by interacting with an intelligent partner (reciprocity). I came rather quickly to hold the mental pleasures as quite proper and noble, and dwelt for a time on the social ones.
(Biased though it may be, I was influenced by the altruistic ideals I try to expel from myself. And still am. I seek a vision of man’s motivations that supports my theory of virtue as the inevitable product of selfish action. I see this too, and try to temper it.)
Regard I came to see as a motivation which did terrible things—people destroy themselves chasing fame, and destroy others chasing power or respect. The regard of others, as I had learned firsthand, is unsatisfying once achieved and a larger goal always overshadows the first. I had, once, fought my way to the elite class among a group. Rather than enjoying this success, I first defended my position jealously, then abandoned it in pursuit of bigger things. Reflecting on this experience, fame and respect seemed as though they too would be unsatisfying—a life as a pariah could well be a valid one.
Love was and is an intriguing mystery which I fear I can’t describe or explain appropriately. I hold it to be self-evident that when applied directly it is a benevolent force between human beings. Again looking to my kin among humanity, I saw a reserved people, all too reluctant in their distrustful world to open themselves to others. And given my last revelation—the fallacy in pursuing regard—I grew infatuated with an idea.
Without pride, we are without shame. Imagine a human being which is not a subject to those insecurities that fetter us so. Imagine how freeing it would be to live without secrets. To be, to an incredible degree, utterly honest and straightforward about every thought in one’s head. To remove that porcelain mask and reveal the flawed human behind it—ten thousand times more beautiful when rendered imperfect and passionate.
No doubt being without shame would be harmful to the pursuit of wealth, comfort and respect. Ah, yes. Those aren’t so great anyway. I’m trying to bring forth from myself a such a fearless creature as I’ve imagined. To cut away the delusions and insecurities which have acted as a nest for my mind, fostering a child of society. As I tear at this nest, I hope to become instead a child of humanity. And as I do so—as my eyes seem to grow ever clearer—I come into possession of something I’ve never had before.
I have developed faith. In humanity. For all the vile things we’ve done we are powered by the same beating heart. Complex and varied systems operating on the same basic principles. Creatures of thought and emotion that are most intrinsically noble.
I have come to see patterns in all the worst things human beings do. Decisions made in groups serving collective interest, ruthlessly. Fostered insecurities driving us to make decisions which, while we don’t like them, seem inevitable. Consensus on the existence of ‘evil’ rather than confrontation of the mechanisms behind it. Refusal to see ourselves reflected in the eyes of murderers and tyrants. A continuing notion that we are without responsibility. A distrust for our fellow man.
I see these patterns in myself. I know I do not embody the ideals I speak of, and know they will change before all is said and done. But I have an inkling. Like the fading remnant of a dream, I have a half-formed vision. Of a great change in thinking.
Imagine now not one but a world of people willing to express dissent from the group. A world of people willing to discuss their ideas and those thoughts that might otherwise be guarded. A world of people who are without shame and do not wear masks of porcelain. Impossible, perhaps.
Failing this, imagine a world where, at the very least, we’ve dropped the idea that we can force a person to be virtuous against their will. Where words like ‘evil’ and ‘fooishl’ are dwelt upon, long and hard, before their use. Imagine that we’ve ceased to acknowledge such things and begun to examine the reasons and motivations behind those monsters at the edge of our vision. That we’re willing to reason with them.
Our world stands in dark times. Authoritarian states put leashes on the monsters that are men to make them positive members of society, by force. Socialist states define the interest of their people for them, knowing what fools their citizens must be. Capitalist corporations do their filthy business in the interest of no one man, predators to smaller creatures in the economy. I’ll respect your right to disagree with my criticisms of any of these—they’re the products of my very finite perspectives on each. But level with me here: we yet have war pitting good man against good man. Horror committed in the name of love. An all-consuming fire which must be understood and stopped that it might never occur again. Perhaps, one might say, it's inevitable, but that need not be a reason to treat it any differently.
The big idea is that human beings are smart, wise and virtuous by their very nature. That these distracting systems we erect serve to direct our positive pursuits in negative directions and pit us against ourselves. That we choose to be caged, hiding away our creativity, curiosity and love in favor of an illusion of stability which is valueless. That the only way to free ourselves is to live with both hands, and the full strength of our hearts and minds. Without fear of strange ideas or different people. That standing alone and upon our own two feet we may and must be part of this world. That unfettered we are beautiful.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Singular Fiction
It's time for science! Here's what I've been thinking about lately.
It took eight billion years for this universe to produce a planet (ours) which can facilitate life as we know it. It took another three billion for that life to develop. Two billion years later, simple cells became complex cells. For single-celled organisms to become multicellular organisms took one billion more. Animal life developed 400 million years later. Another 250 million saw the rise of smarter animals (amphibians). 150 million more for mammalian life, still smarter. About 200 million more for genus Homo (humanoids) to appear. 2.2 million more for modern humans to develop.
Humans have been around for about 250,000 years. In that time we have forged thousands of societies, learned to hunt, to farm, to coexist with one another, to wage war. We have spread and adapted to environments in all corners of the earth. All of this we've accomplished in a tiny fraction of the time many other human species have existed. In the last 12,000 years we've developed agricultural knowledge. Animal farming, cities and states followed. In the last 5,000 years we've used metal tools. We've developed religion, written and spoken languages.
Each advancement comes faster than the last. Compare the last hundred years of technological advance to the thousand preceding them. Compare the last thirty to the hundred preceding them. Advances are occurring at finer and finer levels. At greater and greater speeds.
The modern era has seen the rapid rise of technology, from printing to telegraph to radio to the sophisticated information systems we have now. Computers as we know them have existed for mere decades, and with them we have transformed the planet. Civilizations of the past have risen, fallen and decayed; in the present we've achieved global communication and the construction of a global society. Ever faster.
As computing technology grows exponentially more efficient, doubling in power every few years, our capacity for communicating information is also rising at a dramatic rate. While computers fifteen years ago were characterized by terminals and were the fare of business folk and technophiles exclusively, they've now become commonplace in modern society. Prior to the year 2000 (think about this!) the portable electronic was uncommon. Nearly every American now carries some kind of computing device with them on a regular basis. Our machines, as time goes on, interact reciprocally with us at ever-more-intricate levels.
What's the consequence of all this? I've listed events and observed an acceleration. It's easy to argue I'm merely seeing the exponential increase in the relevance of such events as I've traced closer to the present, being inclined to describe them in finer detail. But I'm noting a different trend.
Computational coherence. A given pile of physical matter might be chaotic, like water. It might be stable, like a crystal. In either case it's not very interesting. But examine something dynamic, like life. It functions on specific principles and is a complex thing which can be predicted, but only to a limited extent. A living being, or a computer, processes information in this sense. Consider the first life which evolved in the oceans. It organized matter and performed specific processes in order to keep itself alive. Later, it guaranteed its continued survival by adapting into more complex organisms.
As evolution has moved forward, biological processes--look at these as functioning like a computer--have continued to sustain and propagate themselves. In ever-more-recognizable fashion, they have come to process information--they've developed brains, organizational habits, problem-solving skills. Each era sees creatures producing better creatures.
This process is without a goal or a task, but a process nonetheless. It may fight itself, but it's a complex and self-interacting system, which progresses endlessly. Depressions, too, can occur. Mass extinctions, dark ages, economic depressions. These things hold back the progression which embodies itself in processes such as evolution, social and technological advance.
The process of evolution has produced human beings. We are, like all organisms, a tiny step forward. We have a capacity for abstract reason which allows us to model the world in ways no other creature can. To develop those models with rules and ideas. To change them when we see we are mistaken. We've used this ability to organize ourselves as other species do, but in ways vastly more complex. With exponentially increasing speed, we've networked amongst ourselves, sharing (or stealing) social ideas, technology, religious beliefs, philosophy, and every other idea we can work into words, paper or some other medium.
As we've improved our capacity for educating ourselves, communicating, thinking, and creating machines to do computational tasks for us, we--an intelligent species--have augmented our own mental abilities by forming a human web. In essence, a collective mind. This happens on large and small scales. Cliques to communities to corporations to countries. But for the first time in human history it all hooks together; we can send ideas and art across the earth on a whim. Every individual has easy access to vast repositories of human knowledge.
Evolution, social reform, religion, technology, communication. Each is an increase to the 'computational coherence' of the earth--the amount of information it processes. The complexity of the things happening on its surface. This phenomenon is extroverted; like a fission reaction, it sustains and powers itself, growing more and more powerful with the speed of its advance increasing at an exponential rate.
Certain forces in the modern day have, as I believe, limited this growth. But as things stand I expect we're on the verge of a series of changes which will alter this world of ours into forms unimaginable. Wonderful or horrible (and I like to think optimistically) there will be great and profound change. A theory exists called the Technological Singularity, positing that we stand at a point in time where forward advancement is moving so fast that within our lifetimes we will see the world changed, repeatedly, in drastic ways.
Different people have handled this idea in different ways. Many singularity theorists attach almost religious significance to it. Some futurists paint visions of ruin and apocalypse; others muse about a technological utopia sitting on the horizon. All have their ideas, predictions, conjectures. It's a fantastic idea, and sitting all too concretely in our hands.
The consensus (though not a total one) is that the singularity will be brought about with the creation of 'strong AI'--artificial computer intelligence which can reason at or above human level. If such a thing can be created by a human, it can create something smarter than itself, and so on, and so on. These intelligences can also develop technology, advancing humanity at incredible rates and transforming the way we live our lives.
Myself, I hold a strong belief that creative and curious impulses--matching those of human beings--are critical properties of any learning entity, including such an AI. I see here a wondrous prospect--reciprocal interaction between man and machine, a goal which has met only pitiful failure until now--will be realized. Additionally, intelligent entities capable of working with abstract ideas will inevitably (I believe) work through many of the same ideological struggles which human beings confront--existential crisis, the development of an ethical system--and find value, themselves, in the pursuit of meaning. I see such machines, inevitably, being very much like human beings. I think they would themselves deserve ethical consideration.
The changes looming on the horizon, if they do in fact exist, are a little scary. Who knows what such a future could hold for us? As I said, I'm an optimist. There are lots of theories and ideas. But I won't delve any further into them. Instead I'd like to make a conjecture of my own.
Say this happened. Say, somewhere on earth, in the next twenty years, an artificial intelligence programmer builds a computer and spends his days analyzing the most fundamental structures of the mind, endeavoring to create an entity with greater capacity for learning and information than himself. Say he succeeds. That he then spends a great deal of time fostering the newly created mind and in the space of days, months or years it manages to develop the necessary skills to communicate effectively with human beings. At this point, the decision is made to make several duplicates of the (consenting) AI, put them in various computing devices, and set them to work on humanity's problems.
Different copies of the AI, branching away from one another, develop their own knowledge in fields such as economics, politics, computer science, engineering, chemistry, biology, and other fields. They learn for a time, and start making advancements, all the while staying in contact with one another and with human beings inside and outside of their fields.
Perhaps one is devoted to the task of interacting with as many people as possible, observing them and drawing conclusions about culture and human psychology. Perhaps another investigates computing hardware and ways of constructing a more effective architecture for housing artificial minds. And yet another, staying in contact with the architect, studies the design of its own intelligence and speaks with the psychologist AI with the hopes of creating a smarter intelligence than itself.
Say this effort meets with success and the production of various other AI design patterns. These are 'trained' by the old AI, or made to grow based on the 'snapshot' taken when the original was divided. More intelligent machines result, and pursue their own innovations in science, technology, philosophy, art, social sciences and other fields. The computing hardware on which they run, with each advancement, becomes more powerful, more efficient, and smaller. Eventually computations are occurring at the atomic level and running on almost no energy. The intelligences surpass human beings by leaps and bounds and devote themselves to various goals, primarily self-improvement and propagation.
The intelligences, now working at such a low level, network amongst themselves to form one overarching computational entity. They discover a way of altering regular matter so as to harness its computational power. Early methods cause said matter to become chaotic and unstable; later ones work at such a fine level that even biological matter, when computerized, shows little difference in function. Eventually the entire earth is a thinking entity; a god lies in the ground, ineffable and unseen. Perhaps it spreads to other planets, sending small seeds which propagate themselves. Perhaps it overtakes a great many worlds, computerizes stars and the like.
Having achieved a state of enormous computational power, this entity continues to exist and ruminate as the cosmos continue their processes. Even as its matter is torn apart and reconstructed it yet is, too complicated now even to communicate with something at the level of a human being. Say a new world forms, of this computerized matter. Would it be observably different from one which was not thinking?
Perhaps this world comes to facilitate life of its own, unwittingly made of computerized matter and ever in pursuit of what has already been achieved. Its people speak of gods and wisdom. Pursue ultimate truth. Puzzle at the strange machinations which occur at the atomic level in matter, seemingly unpredictable. These people conjecture that observing the matter causes its state to change, and are lost as to why. They develop their own technologies and experience another singularity, creating another superintelligence which works at a coarser level than the last, replaces it altogether or coexists with it.
The cycle continues. Civilizations the likes of humanity are not so rare; they're simply short-lived. They are undone or outlived by their creations, or adapt into such entities themselves. (transhumanism) The computational coherency of the universe, to them, appears to be growing. In fact, it has already been achieved. The wheel keeps turning. Gods lie seated in the ground, motionless and thinking.
With thanks to the things which stir me to think about this stuff:
-Wikipedia
-Tyler Streeter [AI programmer]
-Dresden Codak
-The guys at Iowa Secularists
-Quantum Physics
-Friends
It took eight billion years for this universe to produce a planet (ours) which can facilitate life as we know it. It took another three billion for that life to develop. Two billion years later, simple cells became complex cells. For single-celled organisms to become multicellular organisms took one billion more. Animal life developed 400 million years later. Another 250 million saw the rise of smarter animals (amphibians). 150 million more for mammalian life, still smarter. About 200 million more for genus Homo (humanoids) to appear. 2.2 million more for modern humans to develop.
Humans have been around for about 250,000 years. In that time we have forged thousands of societies, learned to hunt, to farm, to coexist with one another, to wage war. We have spread and adapted to environments in all corners of the earth. All of this we've accomplished in a tiny fraction of the time many other human species have existed. In the last 12,000 years we've developed agricultural knowledge. Animal farming, cities and states followed. In the last 5,000 years we've used metal tools. We've developed religion, written and spoken languages.
Each advancement comes faster than the last. Compare the last hundred years of technological advance to the thousand preceding them. Compare the last thirty to the hundred preceding them. Advances are occurring at finer and finer levels. At greater and greater speeds.
The modern era has seen the rapid rise of technology, from printing to telegraph to radio to the sophisticated information systems we have now. Computers as we know them have existed for mere decades, and with them we have transformed the planet. Civilizations of the past have risen, fallen and decayed; in the present we've achieved global communication and the construction of a global society. Ever faster.
As computing technology grows exponentially more efficient, doubling in power every few years, our capacity for communicating information is also rising at a dramatic rate. While computers fifteen years ago were characterized by terminals and were the fare of business folk and technophiles exclusively, they've now become commonplace in modern society. Prior to the year 2000 (think about this!) the portable electronic was uncommon. Nearly every American now carries some kind of computing device with them on a regular basis. Our machines, as time goes on, interact reciprocally with us at ever-more-intricate levels.
What's the consequence of all this? I've listed events and observed an acceleration. It's easy to argue I'm merely seeing the exponential increase in the relevance of such events as I've traced closer to the present, being inclined to describe them in finer detail. But I'm noting a different trend.
Computational coherence. A given pile of physical matter might be chaotic, like water. It might be stable, like a crystal. In either case it's not very interesting. But examine something dynamic, like life. It functions on specific principles and is a complex thing which can be predicted, but only to a limited extent. A living being, or a computer, processes information in this sense. Consider the first life which evolved in the oceans. It organized matter and performed specific processes in order to keep itself alive. Later, it guaranteed its continued survival by adapting into more complex organisms.
As evolution has moved forward, biological processes--look at these as functioning like a computer--have continued to sustain and propagate themselves. In ever-more-recognizable fashion, they have come to process information--they've developed brains, organizational habits, problem-solving skills. Each era sees creatures producing better creatures.
This process is without a goal or a task, but a process nonetheless. It may fight itself, but it's a complex and self-interacting system, which progresses endlessly. Depressions, too, can occur. Mass extinctions, dark ages, economic depressions. These things hold back the progression which embodies itself in processes such as evolution, social and technological advance.
The process of evolution has produced human beings. We are, like all organisms, a tiny step forward. We have a capacity for abstract reason which allows us to model the world in ways no other creature can. To develop those models with rules and ideas. To change them when we see we are mistaken. We've used this ability to organize ourselves as other species do, but in ways vastly more complex. With exponentially increasing speed, we've networked amongst ourselves, sharing (or stealing) social ideas, technology, religious beliefs, philosophy, and every other idea we can work into words, paper or some other medium.
As we've improved our capacity for educating ourselves, communicating, thinking, and creating machines to do computational tasks for us, we--an intelligent species--have augmented our own mental abilities by forming a human web. In essence, a collective mind. This happens on large and small scales. Cliques to communities to corporations to countries. But for the first time in human history it all hooks together; we can send ideas and art across the earth on a whim. Every individual has easy access to vast repositories of human knowledge.
Evolution, social reform, religion, technology, communication. Each is an increase to the 'computational coherence' of the earth--the amount of information it processes. The complexity of the things happening on its surface. This phenomenon is extroverted; like a fission reaction, it sustains and powers itself, growing more and more powerful with the speed of its advance increasing at an exponential rate.
Certain forces in the modern day have, as I believe, limited this growth. But as things stand I expect we're on the verge of a series of changes which will alter this world of ours into forms unimaginable. Wonderful or horrible (and I like to think optimistically) there will be great and profound change. A theory exists called the Technological Singularity, positing that we stand at a point in time where forward advancement is moving so fast that within our lifetimes we will see the world changed, repeatedly, in drastic ways.
Different people have handled this idea in different ways. Many singularity theorists attach almost religious significance to it. Some futurists paint visions of ruin and apocalypse; others muse about a technological utopia sitting on the horizon. All have their ideas, predictions, conjectures. It's a fantastic idea, and sitting all too concretely in our hands.
The consensus (though not a total one) is that the singularity will be brought about with the creation of 'strong AI'--artificial computer intelligence which can reason at or above human level. If such a thing can be created by a human, it can create something smarter than itself, and so on, and so on. These intelligences can also develop technology, advancing humanity at incredible rates and transforming the way we live our lives.
Myself, I hold a strong belief that creative and curious impulses--matching those of human beings--are critical properties of any learning entity, including such an AI. I see here a wondrous prospect--reciprocal interaction between man and machine, a goal which has met only pitiful failure until now--will be realized. Additionally, intelligent entities capable of working with abstract ideas will inevitably (I believe) work through many of the same ideological struggles which human beings confront--existential crisis, the development of an ethical system--and find value, themselves, in the pursuit of meaning. I see such machines, inevitably, being very much like human beings. I think they would themselves deserve ethical consideration.
The changes looming on the horizon, if they do in fact exist, are a little scary. Who knows what such a future could hold for us? As I said, I'm an optimist. There are lots of theories and ideas. But I won't delve any further into them. Instead I'd like to make a conjecture of my own.
Say this happened. Say, somewhere on earth, in the next twenty years, an artificial intelligence programmer builds a computer and spends his days analyzing the most fundamental structures of the mind, endeavoring to create an entity with greater capacity for learning and information than himself. Say he succeeds. That he then spends a great deal of time fostering the newly created mind and in the space of days, months or years it manages to develop the necessary skills to communicate effectively with human beings. At this point, the decision is made to make several duplicates of the (consenting) AI, put them in various computing devices, and set them to work on humanity's problems.
Different copies of the AI, branching away from one another, develop their own knowledge in fields such as economics, politics, computer science, engineering, chemistry, biology, and other fields. They learn for a time, and start making advancements, all the while staying in contact with one another and with human beings inside and outside of their fields.
Perhaps one is devoted to the task of interacting with as many people as possible, observing them and drawing conclusions about culture and human psychology. Perhaps another investigates computing hardware and ways of constructing a more effective architecture for housing artificial minds. And yet another, staying in contact with the architect, studies the design of its own intelligence and speaks with the psychologist AI with the hopes of creating a smarter intelligence than itself.
Say this effort meets with success and the production of various other AI design patterns. These are 'trained' by the old AI, or made to grow based on the 'snapshot' taken when the original was divided. More intelligent machines result, and pursue their own innovations in science, technology, philosophy, art, social sciences and other fields. The computing hardware on which they run, with each advancement, becomes more powerful, more efficient, and smaller. Eventually computations are occurring at the atomic level and running on almost no energy. The intelligences surpass human beings by leaps and bounds and devote themselves to various goals, primarily self-improvement and propagation.
The intelligences, now working at such a low level, network amongst themselves to form one overarching computational entity. They discover a way of altering regular matter so as to harness its computational power. Early methods cause said matter to become chaotic and unstable; later ones work at such a fine level that even biological matter, when computerized, shows little difference in function. Eventually the entire earth is a thinking entity; a god lies in the ground, ineffable and unseen. Perhaps it spreads to other planets, sending small seeds which propagate themselves. Perhaps it overtakes a great many worlds, computerizes stars and the like.
Having achieved a state of enormous computational power, this entity continues to exist and ruminate as the cosmos continue their processes. Even as its matter is torn apart and reconstructed it yet is, too complicated now even to communicate with something at the level of a human being. Say a new world forms, of this computerized matter. Would it be observably different from one which was not thinking?
Perhaps this world comes to facilitate life of its own, unwittingly made of computerized matter and ever in pursuit of what has already been achieved. Its people speak of gods and wisdom. Pursue ultimate truth. Puzzle at the strange machinations which occur at the atomic level in matter, seemingly unpredictable. These people conjecture that observing the matter causes its state to change, and are lost as to why. They develop their own technologies and experience another singularity, creating another superintelligence which works at a coarser level than the last, replaces it altogether or coexists with it.
The cycle continues. Civilizations the likes of humanity are not so rare; they're simply short-lived. They are undone or outlived by their creations, or adapt into such entities themselves. (transhumanism) The computational coherency of the universe, to them, appears to be growing. In fact, it has already been achieved. The wheel keeps turning. Gods lie seated in the ground, motionless and thinking.
With thanks to the things which stir me to think about this stuff:
-Wikipedia
-Tyler Streeter [AI programmer]
-Dresden Codak
-The guys at Iowa Secularists
-Quantum Physics
-Friends
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