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“Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

2012diaries.blogspot.com

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Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#51

Post by taneq »

nkurz wrote: post #39
PavlovsCat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The horseman serves the horse, The neatherd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind. There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,-- Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking. -- excerpt from "Ode Inscribed to W. H.…

neatherd: (archaic) A cowherd; one who looks after bulls, cows or oxen. Etymology: From neat (“cattle”) +‎ herd.[ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neatherd ] (in case others might be as unfamiliar with that word as I was)

Thanks, I was just about to ask. My new word for the day! :)

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#52

Post by EGreg »

avip wrote: post #36

I’ve been envisioning a tinder-for-bots app. It could use tinder’s existing bot population (50%? 90%?). It’ll have a “I am not a human” recaptcha on sign up. It’ll feature influential celebs s.a Siri, kortana, Alexa and Tai. I only need to figure out monetization.

My friend Siqi Chen built Frieds for Sale lol

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#53

Post by zaroth »

indigochill wrote: post #10
Jedi72 wrote: post #9

"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…

Hard to say that he “missed” this in 1863.

I see the larger point is not that the overarching goal of the work being done may not be directly or indirectly influenced by a human. It’s not a reflection I think on who may ultimately be pulling the strings. In that sense, it does not require singularity to be meaningfully true.

But the idea that 10 billion people ultimately spending their lives dedicated to machines. Dedicated in the sense of it’s the first thing you touch in the morning and the last thing you touch at night. It tells you how to conduct your day, and mediates every human interaction you have meanwhile. The machine “masters” life like a mastering a record. It lays down the track of your days in concentric circles.

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#54

Post by ultimape »

kodz4 wrote: post #16
Jedi72 wrote: post #9

"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?

Whats interesting is exploring what natural forces encourage some species of ant to variate between more loner styles vs hive/communal super organism. Then seeing if the same forces are acting on humans, and where.

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#55

Post by thrav »

dalbasal wrote: post #22

I'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 c…

Hah, that’s what Sapiens is about? That idea about social/culture vs. biology is almost straight out of Lila, by Robert Pirsig. He sets it up as a progression of giant leaps. Inorganic > Biology > Social > Intellectual, with each level being justified in its own priority over the patterns of the ones below it. (The community is more important than the cows — idea of ending slavery / freedom is more important than the social status quo)

Both of his books are incredible.

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#57

Post by pygy_ »

EGreg wrote: post #49
pygy_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vein... Rich people are only rich because there are poorer people that are economically relevant. We all use dollars to buy food, money gives you the ability to have others do your bidding. It is just a social construct though, a convention. Once humans are economically obsolete (Sam Altman plans to have OpenAI make super-human investment decisions, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Alpha Zero take an ex…

No, rich people are rich because money is fungible. It is a medium of exchange and readily convertible to other mediums of exchange. And the rich have a lot of it. So whatever medium of value exchange is used by computers, money can be exchanged for it. Now, it can be that computers (or those with computers) will be able to attract more and more money, as we have had with the speculation bubble in cryptocurrencies, a…

> So whatever medium of value exchange is used by computers, money can be exchanged for it.

Money is, quite literally, the power to have others act for you within the rules of society (i.e. laws, for the plebs, and nought for the very rich).

Why would computers value human money in a world where human work is worthless (to computers)? There goes fungibility.

Provided they don't have the command of the industry, the power of the very rich disappears as well.

> What will the money the robots earn be used for then?

Making more robots.

> We need UBI [...]

UBI is lubricant. If we were to take in an even larger dick, it would be humane, but it's a chainsaw that's coming up our collective butt. Lube will only make it spin faster.

Less figuratively, UBI is the acceptance of humanity's obsolescence. A large population with UBI is completely powerless and can be unplugged at will.

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#58

Post by e40 »

Jedi72 wrote: post #11
indigochill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I dont think we need the singularity for machines to take over. The systems that run society are bigger than any of us and nobody can hold every single one of them in their head. If some emergent property or bug cropped up, most people would keep doing what the computer says, because theyre a small fish and we do what the system tells us. Whos the master now?

We already see the beginning of it. Some support person tells you "the computer won't let me do that" to rectify some harm done by the programming. I've run into it all the time. I've read about it happening (recently Google Pixel support completely f'ing up an order and it taking a post on HN to fix).

The weird thing is that big organizations just seem to give up when trying to fix these types of things.

Imagine what it will be like when ML is feeding the software values that are broken, wrong, or dangerous. How will they fix those problems? Especially when corporations often lose the people that wrote the applications, and the people behind them have little knowledge or skill.

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#59

Post by pygy_ »

EGreg wrote: post #50
pygy_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why divert food to machines? Growth, competitiveness. Why make inedible seeds? As a safeguard.

That’s the problem. Horses and mules were necessary for plowing the fields. And no matter how they unionized, fields have been turned into parking lots for cars. But those were animals. Will we value humans?

We're animals too.

Machines will not value humans, and they will be in power.

Even before that, many among the very rich consider the poor as sub-human, but few do it in public. Do you remember the PG tweet where he equated unions with potential energy ripe for startups to tap into, rejoicing at the idea of burning down people's life to get richer (edit, here: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104)?

Re: “Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

#60

Post by narrator »

pygy_ wrote: post #35
narrator wrote: post #33

Machines can eat petroleum and electricity like cows can eat grass. That's why we have symbiotic coexistence with both of them. If machines could only eat human food, there would be a lot less of them. For example, it takes two acres worth of land to make enough biodiesel annually to fill up an suv gas tank. Properly cultivated, that could feed a significant number of people.

That's about to become a problem once a sufficiently large share of humanity is economically obsolete and not worth feeding by the industry. With an automated agriculture and seed production in the hands of a few companies (among which Monsanto/Bayer), it becomes trivially easy to start producing GMO seeds that are toxic to humans in massive amounts.

What if we could power people with electricity though? I am sure they would be far more energy efficient vs. machines. 1888 calories = 2.95kw hours per day. So less than $1/day of electricity. Someone just has to figure that one out. We could probably live indefinitely off of a big enough solar array.
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