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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)

#61

Post by sangnoir »

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?

The Machine Fired Me[0] is the best written account on how people do not question the systems. Even though nominally the machine has (collective)human masters, they are hard to find when needed; the individuals will do as instructed by "the system".

0. https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me

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

#62

Post by pygy_ »

narrator wrote: post #60
pygy_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now that's an interesting take :-)

Distributing said energy to cells would be non-trivial, and you'd still need nutrients.

Also humans need rest and unlike machines, the range of environmental conditions in which they can rest is narrower than their operational conditions (all of which are rather narrow and non-existent beyond the biosphere). Also, you can't suspend or reboot humans. Once they crash, they must be recycled.

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

#63

Post by mgolawala »

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…

Perhaps humans wont end up being inferior instead we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life.

When I was a kid, and learned about the billions of cells and bacteria making up my body, and how they communicated with molecules and worked together in immensely complex ways. Specializing and signaling and coming into existence and dying, and so on... I wondered if they were aware that they were part of a huge complex organism, or if they were just "doing their thing" oblivious to my existence.

Ofcourse, cells aren't conscious so they aren't aware of anything, but wouldn't it be interesting, if we humans end up acting like these cells and bacteria, completely unaware of the next level of life we were creating. We could just be "doing our thing" building our networks, and computers and machines, and going through our lives and such.. meanwhile it is all to sustain a level of life that we, like our own cells, do not realize we are a part of.

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

#64

Post by emeerson »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #20
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…

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.…

eerily poignant

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

#65

Post by leppr »

mgolawala wrote: post #63
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…

Perhaps humans wont end up being inferior instead we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life. When I was a kid, and learned about the billions of cells and bacteria making up my body, and how they communicated with molecules and worked together in immensely complex ways. Specializing and signaling and coming into existence and dying, and so on... I wondered if they were aware tha…

Smart contracts, and distributed value networks in general are the gateway to this vision. It will be attained once one of these contracts/DAO/AI/whatever becomes self-sustaining.

The DAO will "employ" people in exchange for cryptocurrency, interact with other DAOs, and influence the lives of millions of humans. All the while most individual participants will have no agency against the Dao. We're already used to this with the government-citizen relationship so the transition shouldn't be too painful. The crucial difference will be that, for trust purposes, no human will have absolute control over the DAO.

Some humans will be incentivized to accomplish primary tasks for the DAOs, other humans will keep watch and make sure the reported results are correct (oracles).

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

#66

Post by amelius »

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…

> we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation

... to make people click ads.

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

#67

Post by dalbasal »

thrav wrote: post #55
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…

I'll check it out.

Not exactly what the book is about, more a foundational assumption in the big narrative. Most of the book is about the subsequent examples driving history.

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

#68

Post by dthrown »

narrator wrote: post #60
pygy_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This would of course put a much higher value on proximity to renewable hydroelectric power, e.g., “Florida Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World“.

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

#69

Post by wahern »

mgolawala wrote: post #63
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…

Perhaps humans wont end up being inferior instead we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life. When I was a kid, and learned about the billions of cells and bacteria making up my body, and how they communicated with molecules and worked together in immensely complex ways. Specializing and signaling and coming into existence and dying, and so on... I wondered if they were aware tha…

This is, I believe, similar to what Richard Dawkins had in mind when he coined the term, meme, in The Selfish Gene (1976). Now meme has taken on a more degenerate meaning.

I read it 10 years ago, and Dawkins' book remains modern even today. Genetic evolutionary science hasn't surpassed it, we've just developed a richer understanding of the chemistry.

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

#70

Post by mirimir »

mgolawala wrote: post #63
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…

Perhaps humans wont end up being inferior instead we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life. When I was a kid, and learned about the billions of cells and bacteria making up my body, and how they communicated with molecules and worked together in immensely complex ways. Specializing and signaling and coming into existence and dying, and so on... I wondered if they were aware tha…

> we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life

That does seem likely. I'd rather say next level of something like consciousness, awareness and/or intelligence.

Maybe we'll evolve into it. But from what little I know about AI, what works will likely not be much like we work.

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