The Butlerian Jihad is coming
I cannot wait for it.
“Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
21–30 of 79 posts
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#22I've always been interested in notional "starting points" like the appearance of writing representing the beginning of "history."
Since reading "Sapiens" I buy into YNH's definition of the beginning as the point where culture takes over from genetics as the driver of progress. He attributes this to the paleolithic revolution, and supports the hypothesis that this poit represents a breakthrough in language, enabling cultural concepts like tribalism, money, priesthood or whatnot and leading to much more sophisticated group and intergroup behaviours. That resulted in a creature that was no longer an animal a meaningful sense.
From that point on, human behaviour evolves so much faster than genetics that natural selection is replaced, as the meaningful driver of change. Biology becomes a legacy and a platform, but the culture grafted onto biology is what matters historically.
It's hard, with our biases, to put younger events like the industrial revolution into context alongside palaeolithic events... but it certainly seems like a revolution on that scale.
In any case, speculating about the present... It seems plausible we are currently at a point where technological advancement is (a) driving change rather than culture and (b) cultural institutions can't keep up.
The wild card is that technology can influence biology (and culture) in ways that culture could not. But. whether technology replaces us or subsumes us doesn't seem that different to the eye-in-sky perspective. It is technological progress that dictates progress from now on...
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#23reminds me of the unabomber's tech manifesto
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#24The Butlerian Jihad is coming
A few people may have stopped using Facebook. Take that, machine life.
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#25"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self…
What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad infinitum, the biases are there in the…
What human bias would a knowledge seeking AIXI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI ) agent have? AIXI is incomputable but that doesn't mean unbiased approximations would have any resemblance to any human-provided/designed priors after some years/centuries.
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#26"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self…
Superior/inferior story is a very misleading starting point. There are 10^7 billion ants crawling around the earth, doing robotic mindless things for reasons no human can understand, without any machines controlling them. What's up with that? Does Samuel Butler sit around wondering what comes after the ants?
Robots.
Superior means superior in power, i.e. the ability to act constructively or destructively to further their existence.
The power of the industry grows faster than the power of humans, and while humans are more than ever reliant on the industry to survive, the industry is busy stripping out its meaty bits and destroying ecosystems (bye ants).
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#27"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self…
What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad infinitum, the biases are there in the…
A creator, sure. A master less so. The power trend doesn't favor humans here.
The minute an automated subset of the industry can perpetuate itself more efficiently than a partially human-powered counterpart, we're toast.
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#28And with the advent of dating apps, we, the machines, are selectively breeding them.
If 23 and me buy tinder... constant vigilance!
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#29"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self…
What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad infinitum, the biases are there in the…
True. The issue IMHO is that the number of people who are, or are simply able to be, the master of the machine trends to very low numbers.
One, slightly off topic example, is Amazon compared to other companies I know. Amazon is doing with pretty sophisticated processes, systems and, say, 5 FTEs what others are doing with four times the number. This is not covering warehouse stuff like picking, packing, stowing and such. And the other companies are using the mist up-to-date version of SAP incl. APO. Yet, all but max. a handful of people are simply biological extensions of SAP pushing buttons because they were told to. They won't be able to function in an Amazon like environment because there is ni need for them. I only see this trend to speed up. Not sure where it will end an whether that place will be a good one so.
Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
#30The Butlerian Jihad is coming
In the end the Ixians found ways around it!