I am not an optimist nor a pessimist, but I think it's good to understand proper balance for well-being. If this story was interesting, you may also find Whispering Earring a counterbalance to this story.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.l...
The Gentle Seduction (1989)
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#22I ended up skimming a lot of it, though I closely read the beginning and the end. This is not a vision of humanity I agree with. Technology is not the only path towards expansion of consciousness, even though in this day and age, it appears so. The wonders, marvels, and growth described in this story can be experienced through other means. To act and build as if it is the only path is, in my opinion, deeply misguided…
Ok, what would be a vision of humanity you would agree with?
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#23Found this similar to ending of Parthenon. Show on netflix. The ending does something similar. Worth watching, the last 2-3 episodes really ramp up to 11.
Also. "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
I really thought there was going to be a 'let there be light' moment at the end.
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#24I am not an optimist nor a pessimist, but I think it's good to understand proper balance for well-being. If this story was interesting, you may also find Whispering Earring a counterbalance to this story. https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.l...
imho https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/1995-egan.pdf from 1995 is an even better exploration of the same theme
For more on why I'm skeptical it will end this way, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_risk_from_artifici...
I don't see why machines should keep biological life around, since they'll be much more efficient
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are more objective reasons to be pessimist about technology than optimist. There's mass surveillance, centralisation of power to an historically unprecedented degree, and algorithmic social media is destroying our community, culture, and politics. The industry that's receiving an Apollo project's worth of money every few months appears on track to produce not a machine to cure cancer, but to produce fake slop a…
> There are more objective reasons to be pessimist about technology than optimist. Strongly disagree, it's why I'm not dying in a ditch of famine at the ripe age of 30. > to produce not a machine to cure cancer, but to produce fake slop as indistinguishable from human speech or real images as possible Arguably a stepping stone to better technologies, and a prerequisite to machine intelligence
the existence of such an argument has no bearing on its merit
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#26I am not an optimist nor a pessimist, but I think it's good to understand proper balance for well-being. If this story was interesting, you may also find Whispering Earring a counterbalance to this story. https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.l...
imho https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/1995-egan.pdf from 1995 is an even better exploration of the same theme For more on why I'm skeptical it will end this way, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_risk_from_artifici... I don't see why machines should keep biological life around, since they'll be much more efficient
Efficient for what? What reason has AI to exist?
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#27Spoilers: https://areweseductionyet.pages.dev
Extreme longevity with a none is kind of depressing.
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#28I read the whole thing and I think it's useful to view this topic under a different lens. The most astonishing part for me is that it was written over 30 years ago!
I'm a bit grateful that science today isn't nearly that advanced. It would be cool to be able to explore the world like the main character, but then again it seemed so sad and miserable.
I share her sentiment from the beginning of the story: I don't want to be immortal. Living a short, happy life is much better than being miserable forever even though you have everything you could possibly imagine. I think death should be treated as a gift and not something to be afraid of (of course I'm probably too young to say this, but this is how I feel currently). It's another motivation for us to enjoy our lives in a meaningful way and not waste them.
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#29I think "seduction" as in Baudrillard
https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction....
which has a great intro about how "the more liberated people think they are talking about sex the less liberated they are" and towards the end anticipates the arc that video games will follow back when Pong and Space Invaders were state of the art. Funny enough when I got obsessed with seduction as a topic in 2021 and read that book as part of my curriculum I went down a side track in theme park design.
Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are more objective reasons to be pessimist about technology than optimist. There's mass surveillance, centralisation of power to an historically unprecedented degree, and algorithmic social media is destroying our community, culture, and politics. The industry that's receiving an Apollo project's worth of money every few months appears on track to produce not a machine to cure cancer, but to produce fake slop a…
> There are more objective reasons to be pessimist about technology than optimist. Strongly disagree, it's why I'm not dying in a ditch of famine at the ripe age of 30. > to produce not a machine to cure cancer, but to produce fake slop as indistinguishable from human speech or real images as possible Arguably a stepping stone to better technologies, and a prerequisite to machine intelligence
> Strongly disagree, it's why I'm not dying in a ditch of famine at the ripe age of 30.
I'm obviously talking about the future of technology and not about technology in general. I agree that vaccines and antibiotics and fertilisers and the three field system and writing and the automatic bread slicer are all good technologies that improved our lives. The """innovations""" peddled by big tech, AI among them, are nothing like this! Again: mass surveillance, predatory pricing, mass manipulation, fake videos, line-rate slop: this is what big tech proposes, not the cure for cancer or the 15-hour workweek.
Also a nit: infant mortality was dreadful and pushed avg life expectancy way down. But if you lived to 15 you had a good chance of living to 70 even in pre-modern times.