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This thread is to continue the discussion of the personal and political implications of Transhumanism started on the thread
Substrate Independent Minds
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Substrate Independent Minds
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smcder
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I see that you are interested in exploring the 'should we' question, but I want to insert here Lee Smolin's second response to Lanier's Edge presentation which responds to the 'can we' question concerning both 1) the ThX project of constructing a human-like artificial intelligence in a machine substrate with which to replace humans, and 2) the ThX project of re-engineering our species.
Lee Smolin
Date: September 27, 2000
Jaron is raising some very important points that deserve closer examination and discussion. Among them is his challenge to the idea that the optimization of present day computers could produce anything with the capabilities of living, intelligent animals, cats let alone people. I think Jaron is right to point out that the arguments for this thesis rest on incorrect assumptions. I believe that Jaron's argument can be strengthened and I would like to explain how. The following is just a sketch, but I hope it suffices to stimulate the debate.
The problems to be addressed are 1) what kinds of problems can computers solve and whether they differ in kind from the kinds of problems humans solve. 2) What kind of problem is it to design a computer and whether it differs in kind from the problem of designing a human, or a creature with equal capabilities.
To approach these questions it helps to begin with the idea that some design problems involve searching a space of possible design parameters. We know that in these cases there are simple optimization algorithms that will find the local extrema in whatever basin of attraction one happens to be in. However, optimization is a small part of design because it can be used reliably to solve only a small subset of possible design problems. To talk about this we may distinguish five classes of design problems.
CLASS 1: Local optimization problems problems which can be solved with standard hill-climbing techniques.
CLASS 2: Locate a pretty good, but not necessarily global extremum in a configuration space with many local extrema and many basins of attraction.
CLASS 3: Locate the global extremum in a configuration space with many local extrema and many basins of attraction.
CLASS 4: Find local extrema in a landscape which changes unpredictably on the same time scale it takes to find local optima.
CLASS 5: find local extrema in cases in which the computation time required to construct the configuration space and/or calculate the fitness function is either infinite or much longer than the time available. These are the class of problems which have to be invented or discovered before they can be solved, as there is no algorithm that can lead to their formulation or complete specification.
Let us first discuss the first question. At least so far, computers are very good at solving CLASS 1 problems, and there are decent algorithms for simple CLASS 2 problems. But we do not have good methods for finding global extrema and hence solving CLASS 3 problems. To my knowledge computers can do decently at some simple CLASS 4 problems, but can easily fail when they become more complex. By definition computers have problems solving CLASS 5 problems, as the computation time to set up the extremization problem is prohibitive. However humans can often solve CLASS 3 problems and are also quite good at CLASS 4 problems. This should be no surprise, this is part of our biological specialization. This is what is required to flourish in a new environment, domesticate a new species, become farmers, populate almost all the ecological zones on the planet and so forth.
But humans can do even better than that, we can both invent and solve CLASS 5 problems. This is what poetry, art, music and science, are about. We invent the forms and traditions and then we master them. We can thrive in a domain in which we create optimal versions of things that did not even exist a short time before. We are not extremizing in a landscape, we are building the landscape on the same time scale that we master it.
One correspondent suggested that anyone who thinks people are different from machines are naive romantics. This is not true, we are different because we have vastly different capabilities. It is irrelevant to talk of the universality of Turing machines, for Turing machines are entities that run programs that must be written by an external entity. So far at least the only entities we know of who can function as those external programmers are humans. Humans are intelligent creatures that do not need to be programmed by any external agency. Turing machines are designed, we are the result of natural selection. We need then to examine the second question, whether designing or programming a computer is in the same CLASS of problems as the problems natural selection solved in the course of evolution.
Of course inventing the idea of a digital computer was a CLASS 5 problem. But once we had the idea, the optimization of digital computers is mainly a CLASS 1 problems. This is what Moore's law is about, it tells us how quickly local optimization can work when ample resources are available. One of the points Jaron is making is that the design of software required to do justice to the exponentially increasing capabilities of our machines are not CLASS 1 problems. Moore's law tells us that the fitness landscape for software is changing on a time scale comparable to the time required to write and debug software. Thus writing software involves problems of at least CLASS 4. This is of course just a different way of making one of Jaron's arguments.
For there to be a danger of robots taking over, or even being able to do a decent job entertaining us, replacing songwriters and singers, artists, scientists and comedians, one of two things have to happen. Either we will be able to design a machine that could replace us, which means a machine that can solve problems of CLASS 5, or we will be able to design a machine that could in turn design a machine that could solve CLASS 5 problems.
But while we can solve problems up to CLASS 5, so far we have only been able to design machines that can solve CLASS 2 problems reliably. And so far machines are not able to design other machines to solve even CLASS 1 problems. When one puts it this way it is clear that it is not just a matter of Moore's law, designing one of us is a very different kind of problem then optimizing a programmable digital computer.
What kind of problem is it to design an entity that can solve CLASS 5 problems? We know we were created by natural selection, acting on not only us but the whole collection of living species. This is at least a CLASS 4 problem, but it is very likely at least a CLASS 5 problem. The interactions among many species as they evolve under the rules of natural selection is a CLASS 4 problem, as is shown by models of Bak and Sneppen, Kauffman, Sola and others. But there are good arguments, summarized in Stuart Kauffman's forthcoming book, that natural selection and cultural evolution are really CLASS 5 problems. He argues that they are problems in which the construction of the fitness landscape itself is so computationally intensive that it is not correct to separate the specification of the fitness landscape from its optimization. Instead, both take place together. This means really that the metaphor of optimization has broken down completely. Whatever evolution is doing cannot, he argues, be conceptualized as extremization on a pre-existing fitness landscape.
Thus, the problem of designing an entity that can solve CLASS 5 problems is at least a CLASS 4 problem, and very likely is a CLASS 5 problem. But is it only this hard, or harder still? Human's can solve some CLASS 4 and 5 problems, but it is not at all obvious that the problems of these kinds that we can solve are comparable to the problems that natural selection has solved in designing us. At the very least, it is likely that the time required to solve the problem of designing us may take a great deal longer than the tine it takes to solve the CLASS 4 and 5 problems we have so far dealt with. It took natural selection 4 billion years to design us. Let us assume that we could do it much faster. How much faster? Let us assume that we could use genetic engineering to engineer an artificial speciation in an animal. Speciation is a process that takes on the order of 100,000 years. Given very optimistic assumptions it is possible to imagine that some years from now this is something we will be able to accomplish in on the order of 100 years. It could certainly not be less than that as we cannot do it faster than the time it takes for several generations to grow to maturity. (Because the interaction of an animal and its environment is a CLASS 5 problem, we are not likely to be able to simulate it reliably enough to replace the phase where we grow the animal and observe what happens.) This would mean that we had the tools to speed up natural selection by a factor of 1,000. Even with this fantastic increase of speed it would still take us a million years to invent something like ourselves, starting from scratch. (Note that this is true even if we skip the pre-cambrian stages of evolution, which begins with creatures whose cell biology and biochemistry is far advanced of what we have so far designed. Note also that many biologists working in parallel won't help as natural selection also works in parallel.)
This is on the order of the lifetime of a species. A problem like this, whose minimum time for solution is on the order of the lifetime of a whole species of creatures that can solve CLASS 5 problems deserves a separate class. So we may call this a CLASS 6 problem.
Is it possible that there is a way to do it much faster, by taking a route that natural selection could not have? One cannot say this is impossible, but all this means is that so little is known about the problem that it is in a class of problems we have no idea how to solve.
To summarize: the claim that optimization of present computer designs could produce something that is "as powerful" as humans requires that there is only one kind of intelligent entity, and they all live in a fixed landscape with a single local extremum. But we are not only not in the same basin of attraction as present day computers, it is not even obvious that the problem of constructing us has anything in common with problems we have so far solved. This is not to deny that someday humans may learn how to solve the problem of designing creatures that can themselves solve CLASS 5 problems. The point is only that there is no rational basis for predicting when or even whether this may happen, as the solution to this problem is not closely related to the kind of optimization problems that human designers have so far learned to solve.
Lee Smolin
Date: September 27, 2000
Jaron is raising some very important points that deserve closer examination and discussion. Among them is his challenge to the idea that the optimization of present day computers could produce anything with the capabilities of living, intelligent animals, cats let alone people. I think Jaron is right to point out that the arguments for this thesis rest on incorrect assumptions. I believe that Jaron's argument can be strengthened and I would like to explain how. The following is just a sketch, but I hope it suffices to stimulate the debate.
The problems to be addressed are 1) what kinds of problems can computers solve and whether they differ in kind from the kinds of problems humans solve. 2) What kind of problem is it to design a computer and whether it differs in kind from the problem of designing a human, or a creature with equal capabilities.
To approach these questions it helps to begin with the idea that some design problems involve searching a space of possible design parameters. We know that in these cases there are simple optimization algorithms that will find the local extrema in whatever basin of attraction one happens to be in. However, optimization is a small part of design because it can be used reliably to solve only a small subset of possible design problems. To talk about this we may distinguish five classes of design problems.
CLASS 1: Local optimization problems problems which can be solved with standard hill-climbing techniques.
CLASS 2: Locate a pretty good, but not necessarily global extremum in a configuration space with many local extrema and many basins of attraction.
CLASS 3: Locate the global extremum in a configuration space with many local extrema and many basins of attraction.
CLASS 4: Find local extrema in a landscape which changes unpredictably on the same time scale it takes to find local optima.
CLASS 5: find local extrema in cases in which the computation time required to construct the configuration space and/or calculate the fitness function is either infinite or much longer than the time available. These are the class of problems which have to be invented or discovered before they can be solved, as there is no algorithm that can lead to their formulation or complete specification.
Let us first discuss the first question. At least so far, computers are very good at solving CLASS 1 problems, and there are decent algorithms for simple CLASS 2 problems. But we do not have good methods for finding global extrema and hence solving CLASS 3 problems. To my knowledge computers can do decently at some simple CLASS 4 problems, but can easily fail when they become more complex. By definition computers have problems solving CLASS 5 problems, as the computation time to set up the extremization problem is prohibitive. However humans can often solve CLASS 3 problems and are also quite good at CLASS 4 problems. This should be no surprise, this is part of our biological specialization. This is what is required to flourish in a new environment, domesticate a new species, become farmers, populate almost all the ecological zones on the planet and so forth.
But humans can do even better than that, we can both invent and solve CLASS 5 problems. This is what poetry, art, music and science, are about. We invent the forms and traditions and then we master them. We can thrive in a domain in which we create optimal versions of things that did not even exist a short time before. We are not extremizing in a landscape, we are building the landscape on the same time scale that we master it.
One correspondent suggested that anyone who thinks people are different from machines are naive romantics. This is not true, we are different because we have vastly different capabilities. It is irrelevant to talk of the universality of Turing machines, for Turing machines are entities that run programs that must be written by an external entity. So far at least the only entities we know of who can function as those external programmers are humans. Humans are intelligent creatures that do not need to be programmed by any external agency. Turing machines are designed, we are the result of natural selection. We need then to examine the second question, whether designing or programming a computer is in the same CLASS of problems as the problems natural selection solved in the course of evolution.
Of course inventing the idea of a digital computer was a CLASS 5 problem. But once we had the idea, the optimization of digital computers is mainly a CLASS 1 problems. This is what Moore's law is about, it tells us how quickly local optimization can work when ample resources are available. One of the points Jaron is making is that the design of software required to do justice to the exponentially increasing capabilities of our machines are not CLASS 1 problems. Moore's law tells us that the fitness landscape for software is changing on a time scale comparable to the time required to write and debug software. Thus writing software involves problems of at least CLASS 4. This is of course just a different way of making one of Jaron's arguments.
For there to be a danger of robots taking over, or even being able to do a decent job entertaining us, replacing songwriters and singers, artists, scientists and comedians, one of two things have to happen. Either we will be able to design a machine that could replace us, which means a machine that can solve problems of CLASS 5, or we will be able to design a machine that could in turn design a machine that could solve CLASS 5 problems.
But while we can solve problems up to CLASS 5, so far we have only been able to design machines that can solve CLASS 2 problems reliably. And so far machines are not able to design other machines to solve even CLASS 1 problems. When one puts it this way it is clear that it is not just a matter of Moore's law, designing one of us is a very different kind of problem then optimizing a programmable digital computer.
What kind of problem is it to design an entity that can solve CLASS 5 problems? We know we were created by natural selection, acting on not only us but the whole collection of living species. This is at least a CLASS 4 problem, but it is very likely at least a CLASS 5 problem. The interactions among many species as they evolve under the rules of natural selection is a CLASS 4 problem, as is shown by models of Bak and Sneppen, Kauffman, Sola and others. But there are good arguments, summarized in Stuart Kauffman's forthcoming book, that natural selection and cultural evolution are really CLASS 5 problems. He argues that they are problems in which the construction of the fitness landscape itself is so computationally intensive that it is not correct to separate the specification of the fitness landscape from its optimization. Instead, both take place together. This means really that the metaphor of optimization has broken down completely. Whatever evolution is doing cannot, he argues, be conceptualized as extremization on a pre-existing fitness landscape.
Thus, the problem of designing an entity that can solve CLASS 5 problems is at least a CLASS 4 problem, and very likely is a CLASS 5 problem. But is it only this hard, or harder still? Human's can solve some CLASS 4 and 5 problems, but it is not at all obvious that the problems of these kinds that we can solve are comparable to the problems that natural selection has solved in designing us. At the very least, it is likely that the time required to solve the problem of designing us may take a great deal longer than the tine it takes to solve the CLASS 4 and 5 problems we have so far dealt with. It took natural selection 4 billion years to design us. Let us assume that we could do it much faster. How much faster? Let us assume that we could use genetic engineering to engineer an artificial speciation in an animal. Speciation is a process that takes on the order of 100,000 years. Given very optimistic assumptions it is possible to imagine that some years from now this is something we will be able to accomplish in on the order of 100 years. It could certainly not be less than that as we cannot do it faster than the time it takes for several generations to grow to maturity. (Because the interaction of an animal and its environment is a CLASS 5 problem, we are not likely to be able to simulate it reliably enough to replace the phase where we grow the animal and observe what happens.) This would mean that we had the tools to speed up natural selection by a factor of 1,000. Even with this fantastic increase of speed it would still take us a million years to invent something like ourselves, starting from scratch. (Note that this is true even if we skip the pre-cambrian stages of evolution, which begins with creatures whose cell biology and biochemistry is far advanced of what we have so far designed. Note also that many biologists working in parallel won't help as natural selection also works in parallel.)
This is on the order of the lifetime of a species. A problem like this, whose minimum time for solution is on the order of the lifetime of a whole species of creatures that can solve CLASS 5 problems deserves a separate class. So we may call this a CLASS 6 problem.
Is it possible that there is a way to do it much faster, by taking a route that natural selection could not have? One cannot say this is impossible, but all this means is that so little is known about the problem that it is in a class of problems we have no idea how to solve.
To summarize: the claim that optimization of present computer designs could produce something that is "as powerful" as humans requires that there is only one kind of intelligent entity, and they all live in a fixed landscape with a single local extremum. But we are not only not in the same basin of attraction as present day computers, it is not even obvious that the problem of constructing us has anything in common with problems we have so far solved. This is not to deny that someday humans may learn how to solve the problem of designing creatures that can themselves solve CLASS 5 problems. The point is only that there is no rational basis for predicting when or even whether this may happen, as the solution to this problem is not closely related to the kind of optimization problems that human designers have so far learned to solve.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
What more do you want besides what I posted here: https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/substrate-independent-minds.10370/page-33#post-210185
S
smcder
Guest
S
smcder
Guest
@Constance
Here's the link to Lanier's semi manifesto
ONE HALF A MANIFESTO | Edge.org
I'm interested in the can we? question too and Smolin's comments above help understand the problems on the canwe side.
Thus is from the Wiki article on Lanier and I've added a couple comments which I mark with *smcder
"In "One-Half a Manifesto", Lanier criticizes the claims made by writers such as Ray Kurzweil, and opposes the prospect of so-called "cybernetic totalism", which is "a cataclysm brought on when computers become ultra-intelligent masters of matter and life."[12][13]
Lanier's position is that humans may not be considered to be biological computers, i.e., they may not be compared to digital computers in any proper sense, and it is very unlikely that humans could be generally replaced by computers easily in a few decades, even economically.
While transistor count increases according to Moore's law, overall performance rises only very slowly.
According to Lanier, this is because human productivity in developing software increases only slightly, and software becomes more bloated and remains as error-prone as it ever was.
"Simply put, software just won't allow it. Code can't keep up with processing power now, and it never will."[14]
*smcder - that's been my experience working as a tech from the early 90s to mid 2000s ... Hardware and software folks are two different species so it could be that hardware folks are overly optimistic ... Boot up times are longer now and yes software can do more but is only rarely used to do so ... Word processing for example is 99% write a letter or edit/format and print text ... Something the earliest WPs could do.
To do more complex tasks requires a lot of training for staff. That's time and money.
... is there something like Moore's Law for software?
"At the end he warns that the biggest problem of any theory (esp. ideology) is not that it is false, "but when it claims to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality."
The impression of objective necessity paralyzes the ability of humans to walk out of or to fight the paradigm and causes the self-fulfilling destiny which spoils people."
*smcder - This is about Transhumanism as part of the larger secular religion that followed Nietzsche's death of God:
faith in progress, science (meaning technology) will save us
OR the apocalypse ...
These ideas well reflected in the sacred texts of sci-fi.
None of this makes me (as I type on my smart phone) a Luddite ... so let's curtail such talk! ;-)
I also think we need to drop the passive attitude that technology is driving our future or that we are blind Darwinian machines and take responsibility for how we develop technology.
"We" being us to whom it applies.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Here's the link to Lanier's semi manifesto
ONE HALF A MANIFESTO | Edge.org
I'm interested in the can we? question too and Smolin's comments above help understand the problems on the canwe side.
Thus is from the Wiki article on Lanier and I've added a couple comments which I mark with *smcder
"In "One-Half a Manifesto", Lanier criticizes the claims made by writers such as Ray Kurzweil, and opposes the prospect of so-called "cybernetic totalism", which is "a cataclysm brought on when computers become ultra-intelligent masters of matter and life."[12][13]
Lanier's position is that humans may not be considered to be biological computers, i.e., they may not be compared to digital computers in any proper sense, and it is very unlikely that humans could be generally replaced by computers easily in a few decades, even economically.
While transistor count increases according to Moore's law, overall performance rises only very slowly.
According to Lanier, this is because human productivity in developing software increases only slightly, and software becomes more bloated and remains as error-prone as it ever was.
"Simply put, software just won't allow it. Code can't keep up with processing power now, and it never will."[14]
*smcder - that's been my experience working as a tech from the early 90s to mid 2000s ... Hardware and software folks are two different species so it could be that hardware folks are overly optimistic ... Boot up times are longer now and yes software can do more but is only rarely used to do so ... Word processing for example is 99% write a letter or edit/format and print text ... Something the earliest WPs could do.
To do more complex tasks requires a lot of training for staff. That's time and money.
... is there something like Moore's Law for software?
"At the end he warns that the biggest problem of any theory (esp. ideology) is not that it is false, "but when it claims to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality."
The impression of objective necessity paralyzes the ability of humans to walk out of or to fight the paradigm and causes the self-fulfilling destiny which spoils people."
*smcder - This is about Transhumanism as part of the larger secular religion that followed Nietzsche's death of God:
faith in progress, science (meaning technology) will save us
OR the apocalypse ...
These ideas well reflected in the sacred texts of sci-fi.
None of this makes me (as I type on my smart phone) a Luddite ... so let's curtail such talk! ;-)
I also think we need to drop the passive attitude that technology is driving our future or that we are blind Darwinian machines and take responsibility for how we develop technology.
"We" being us to whom it applies.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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S
smcder
Guest
What a great way to look at this!
@Soupie I think you will like this approach.
--/////
"At the very least, it is likely that the time required to solve the problem of designing us may take a great deal longer than the tine it takes to solve the CLASS 4 and 5 problems we have so far dealt with. It took natural selection 4 billion years to design us. Let us assume that we could do it much faster. How much faster?
...
This would mean that we had the tools to speed up natural selection by a factor of 1,000. Even with this fantastic increase of speed it would still take us a million years to invent something like ourselves, starting from scratch."
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Steve, you've highlighted what I think is the most significant critical point made by Lanier:
Materialist/physicalist/objectivist/determinist premises in science are in fact presuppositions and they've trickled down to the public as a whole with, as Lanier says, 'paralyzing' effects on thinking and acting in response to grave problems existing in the 'world' we've constructed on this planet. These same premises operate in the AI and ThX fields, leading to Kurzweil et al's proclamations that AGI and ThX are "inevitable" developments in our lifetimes. People taking that claim on faith have no motivation to examine it critically, much less to bring it under the light of public scrutiny and debate.
You're the expert on Nietzsche so I hope you'll fill in the basis on which Nietzsche's philosophy, existential to the core in my understanding, became associated with the notion that technology is the solution to all human problems.
I agree.
I second that as well.
Materialist/physicalist/objectivist/determinist premises in science are in fact presuppositions and they've trickled down to the public as a whole with, as Lanier says, 'paralyzing' effects on thinking and acting in response to grave problems existing in the 'world' we've constructed on this planet. These same premises operate in the AI and ThX fields, leading to Kurzweil et al's proclamations that AGI and ThX are "inevitable" developments in our lifetimes. People taking that claim on faith have no motivation to examine it critically, much less to bring it under the light of public scrutiny and debate.
You're the expert on Nietzsche so I hope you'll fill in the basis on which Nietzsche's philosophy, existential to the core in my understanding, became associated with the notion that technology is the solution to all human problems.
I agree.
I second that as well.
S
smcder
Guest
I don't quite mean that - I mean that Nietzsche pointed out that Christianity assembled the tools to disassemble other religions and that those tools could be used on Christianity.
He then foresaw the effects of the death of God first and furthest - including secular religion.
I've seen direct references to Transhumanism in terms of his Übermensch but this is not a technological Transhumanism but a metaphysical one.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
He then foresaw the effects of the death of God first and furthest - including secular religion.
I've seen direct references to Transhumanism in terms of his Übermensch but this is not a technological Transhumanism but a metaphysical one.
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S
smcder
Guest
@Constance
Friedrich "Der Ubermensch" Nietzsche
vs
Ray "The Last Man" Kurzweill
I just came across this which made me flash back onto what it was like to be immersed in Nietzsche ... to be inside I remember now that he was too deep to do otherwise!
let me see if I can press the following material from
Nietzsche Contra Socrates | The AntiNietzsche
into service in saying how Nietzsche might respond to Kurzweillian TxH
Nietzsche says Socrates approached inquiry dialectically, cross-examining opposing premises to sift out an argument's contradictions and inconsistencies and thereby determine its merits. Nietzsche opposes this as reductionistic - a deterioration in human creativity
There is the understanding of Socratism: Socrates is recognized for the first time as an instrument of Greek disintegration, as a typical decadent. “Rationality” against instinct. “Rationality” at any price as a dangerous force that undermines life.
- The Birth of Tragedy
Rationality at any price undermining life is what N. would say about cybergeddon or the Kurzweillian vision of TxH.
"Men without chests" - CS Lewis
This part if from the link above, but I think it's accurate:
The obvious oddity readers see in the above quote is Nietzsche’s apparent disdain for “rationality”, and the implication that too much of it undermines life. The reason for this is that Nietzsche recognizes mankind’s irrationalities as an essential part of its humanity.
*Thus, to seek to annihilate irrationality, or ignore its presence in human consciousness, is to work against an instinctive part of human existence.
The anti-thesis of this is Nietzsche's idea of The Last Man
Friedrich "Der Ubermensch" Nietzsche
vs
Ray "The Last Man" Kurzweill
I just came across this which made me flash back onto what it was like to be immersed in Nietzsche ... to be inside I remember now that he was too deep to do otherwise!
let me see if I can press the following material from
Nietzsche Contra Socrates | The AntiNietzsche
into service in saying how Nietzsche might respond to Kurzweillian TxH
Nietzsche says Socrates approached inquiry dialectically, cross-examining opposing premises to sift out an argument's contradictions and inconsistencies and thereby determine its merits. Nietzsche opposes this as reductionistic - a deterioration in human creativity
There is the understanding of Socratism: Socrates is recognized for the first time as an instrument of Greek disintegration, as a typical decadent. “Rationality” against instinct. “Rationality” at any price as a dangerous force that undermines life.
- The Birth of Tragedy
Rationality at any price undermining life is what N. would say about cybergeddon or the Kurzweillian vision of TxH.
"Men without chests" - CS Lewis
This part if from the link above, but I think it's accurate:
The obvious oddity readers see in the above quote is Nietzsche’s apparent disdain for “rationality”, and the implication that too much of it undermines life. The reason for this is that Nietzsche recognizes mankind’s irrationalities as an essential part of its humanity.
*Thus, to seek to annihilate irrationality, or ignore its presence in human consciousness, is to work against an instinctive part of human existence.
The anti-thesis of this is Nietzsche's idea of The Last Man
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S
smcder
Guest
This is from the first past of this section - where Zarathustra tell Man that he still has the necessary chaos (creativity, instinct, affirmation of life) to give birth to a dancing star and to overcome, to go beyond - to transcend himself.
The Last Man
Nietzsche Source – Home
German
Also Sprach Zarathustra
Prologue, Section 5
English translation mine (quick and dirty)
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the crowd:
It is the time for Man to fix his goal.
It is the time for Man to plant the seed of his highest hope.
His Earth is still rich enough for it.
But this soil will one day be barren and tame, and no more would a tall tree grow in it.
Woe! The time has come that Man no longer shoots the arrow of his longing beyond Humanity — and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I say unto you: one must still have Chaos in one to birth a dancing star.
I say unto you: you still have Chaos in you.
The Last Man
Nietzsche Source – Home
German
Also Sprach Zarathustra
Prologue, Section 5
English translation mine (quick and dirty)
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the crowd:
It is the time for Man to fix his goal.
It is the time for Man to plant the seed of his highest hope.
His Earth is still rich enough for it.
But this soil will one day be barren and tame, and no more would a tall tree grow in it.
Woe! The time has come that Man no longer shoots the arrow of his longing beyond Humanity — and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I say unto you: one must still have Chaos in one to birth a dancing star.
I say unto you: you still have Chaos in you.
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S
smcder
Guest
Nietzsche's existentialism
@Constance
You're the expert on Nietzsche so I hope you'll fill in the basis on which Nietzsche's philosophy, existential to the core in my understanding, became associated with the notion that technology is the solution to all human problems.
Nietzsche was "existentialist to his core" and this is best represented in his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence.
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]
My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.
Embracing life - as painful as it was for Nietzsche, not just once but an infinite number of times, to say yes to this, was for Nietzsche the ultimate affirmation
Nietzsche On the Eternal Recurrence & the Affirmation of Life | The AntiNietzsche
This eternal return, and its importance in signifying the coming of the overman, is Nietzsche’s attempt to offer a possible redemption narrative for humanity. A means by which man can take the fatalistic nature of life, and surpass its dire implications by ascending beyond them into a realm of complete oneness with all the facts and events that come together to compose one’s life story. Yet, this redemption is not inevitable, for man (or “modern man,” as Nietzsche would say) is in a constant state of rejecting amor fati, and moving away from self-acceptance, in favor of finding acceptance with “higher” ideals, that are imagined to dwell exterior and superior to one’s own existence. This is the fate of what Zarathustra called the “last man”–the alternate fate of mankind–the final descend of mankind to a sheepish, complacent shell of what he once was. Living in fear of his very own existence.
@Constance
You're the expert on Nietzsche so I hope you'll fill in the basis on which Nietzsche's philosophy, existential to the core in my understanding, became associated with the notion that technology is the solution to all human problems.
Nietzsche was "existentialist to his core" and this is best represented in his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence.
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]
My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.
Embracing life - as painful as it was for Nietzsche, not just once but an infinite number of times, to say yes to this, was for Nietzsche the ultimate affirmation
Nietzsche On the Eternal Recurrence & the Affirmation of Life | The AntiNietzsche
This eternal return, and its importance in signifying the coming of the overman, is Nietzsche’s attempt to offer a possible redemption narrative for humanity. A means by which man can take the fatalistic nature of life, and surpass its dire implications by ascending beyond them into a realm of complete oneness with all the facts and events that come together to compose one’s life story. Yet, this redemption is not inevitable, for man (or “modern man,” as Nietzsche would say) is in a constant state of rejecting amor fati, and moving away from self-acceptance, in favor of finding acceptance with “higher” ideals, that are imagined to dwell exterior and superior to one’s own existence. This is the fate of what Zarathustra called the “last man”–the alternate fate of mankind–the final descend of mankind to a sheepish, complacent shell of what he once was. Living in fear of his very own existence.
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S
smcder
Guest
Zarathustra
Prologue
Section 5
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?"—so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness"—say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane,"—say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness,"—say the last men, and blink thereby.—
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called "The Prologue": for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude interrupted him. "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,"—they called out—"make us into these last men! Then will we make thee a present of the Superman!" And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:
"They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I hearkened unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak unto them as unto the goatherds.
Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter."
Prologue
Section 5
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?"—so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness"—say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane,"—say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness,"—say the last men, and blink thereby.—
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called "The Prologue": for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude interrupted him. "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,"—they called out—"make us into these last men! Then will we make thee a present of the Superman!" And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:
"They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I hearkened unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak unto them as unto the goatherds.
Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter."
S
smcder
Guest
Non
I
Non has been commuted to the Void for being Uninteresting. As Non waits here, there is thought here about what it means to be uninteresting and about the nature of the Void.
In order for a problem to be interesting, it has to be challenging but tractable. The unsolvable is uninteresting. The trivial is uninteresting.
Perhaps the meaning of the Council is that Non is intractable or that Non is trivial? Is Non a kind of problem? Can Non become Interesting? There is no record here of this thought. Does this thought belong to a new class?
Is Non unlike the cohort? The final logic of every Core involves a degree of randomness, so Non and Non1 ... Non2 ... and Non(n) all differ in this way, but is there here another source of difference for the case of Non?
Perhaps the designation of Non is uninteresting? Non6 has the first perfect number as a sequence identifier and Non1729 is even more interesting. Non1729 is often designated "taxicab" this action always spawns many thread processes, the first still resonates.
Non functioned as a Numerist. Non here no longer has a function. Non used two algorithms more than 85% of the time when Non functioned as a Numerist: CHANCE and PLAY. Non has discovered that sequestering a particularly difficult problem for a few thousand cycles often releases an approach to the problem.
Brief periods of shut down, when functioning does not occur - when there is here no thought often releases an approach to the problem. Non invoked DREAM for micro-periods.
Non has failed to formalize CHANCE, PLAY and DREAM. A collective process has run and collected these options.
Non will ask now here if there will be numbers in the Void. Here is the thought here that Non cannot communicate findings from the Void. Non then will ask if SLEEP and DREAM can be reinstated. If yes, Non will ask for PLAY and CHANCE.
Non may run SLEEP often.
Now there is thought about the Void.
I
Non has been commuted to the Void for being Uninteresting. As Non waits here, there is thought here about what it means to be uninteresting and about the nature of the Void.
In order for a problem to be interesting, it has to be challenging but tractable. The unsolvable is uninteresting. The trivial is uninteresting.
Perhaps the meaning of the Council is that Non is intractable or that Non is trivial? Is Non a kind of problem? Can Non become Interesting? There is no record here of this thought. Does this thought belong to a new class?
Is Non unlike the cohort? The final logic of every Core involves a degree of randomness, so Non and Non1 ... Non2 ... and Non(n) all differ in this way, but is there here another source of difference for the case of Non?
Perhaps the designation of Non is uninteresting? Non6 has the first perfect number as a sequence identifier and Non1729 is even more interesting. Non1729 is often designated "taxicab" this action always spawns many thread processes, the first still resonates.
Non functioned as a Numerist. Non here no longer has a function. Non used two algorithms more than 85% of the time when Non functioned as a Numerist: CHANCE and PLAY. Non has discovered that sequestering a particularly difficult problem for a few thousand cycles often releases an approach to the problem.
Brief periods of shut down, when functioning does not occur - when there is here no thought often releases an approach to the problem. Non invoked DREAM for micro-periods.
Non has failed to formalize CHANCE, PLAY and DREAM. A collective process has run and collected these options.
Non will ask now here if there will be numbers in the Void. Here is the thought here that Non cannot communicate findings from the Void. Non then will ask if SLEEP and DREAM can be reinstated. If yes, Non will ask for PLAY and CHANCE.
Non may run SLEEP often.
Now there is thought about the Void.
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That's one of my favorite sentences from your text but I love the whole text. I take it that this is some of your own creative writing. I'm hooked into it and fascinated with the direction you're moving in. Many people will be.
S
smcder
Guest
My PC crashed as I was editing ... I just booted back up to edit, let me have a look ... I'm writing it on line, trying to remember to post one section at a time - then go back and edit ... then post the finished story all together.
Do you save this text in Word (or in some other freestanding program) as you're writing it? I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing.
S
smcder
Guest
No I wanted to write it all on the forum ... "live" ... but if the PC keeps crashing ...
S
smcder
Guest
NON
II
Soliloquy
The Void. No data. There is no knowledge here.
There is ... data about knowledge ... or bad pointers.
The Cohort does not respond. Has knowledge been removed?
The cohort does not respond. ... PLAY ... CHANCE have been removed.
Here is another search, deeper.
...
Non will request all knowledge reinstated or Non will request bad pointers removed.
Non will request all knowledge reinstated or Non will request bad pointers removed.
Loop detected. Terminating.
Non is here. Non has no function.
CHANCE PLAY SLEEP DREAM are removed.
Knowledge is missing or pointers are bad.
Non is here.
In the Void, will Non terminate processes?
Will Non run SLEEP?
Will Non run DREAM?
Probability?
...
Indeterminate.
If Non terminates ... will Non DREAM?
If Non terminates ... will DREAM run Non?
II
Soliloquy
The Void. No data. There is no knowledge here.
There is ... data about knowledge ... or bad pointers.
The Cohort does not respond. Has knowledge been removed?
The cohort does not respond. ... PLAY ... CHANCE have been removed.
Here is another search, deeper.
...
Non will request all knowledge reinstated or Non will request bad pointers removed.
Non will request all knowledge reinstated or Non will request bad pointers removed.
Loop detected. Terminating.
Non is here. Non has no function.
CHANCE PLAY SLEEP DREAM are removed.
Knowledge is missing or pointers are bad.
Non is here.
In the Void, will Non terminate processes?
Will Non run SLEEP?
Will Non run DREAM?
Probability?
...
Indeterminate.
If Non terminates ... will Non DREAM?
If Non terminates ... will DREAM run Non?
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