Cheers,
Blog Review

Google's Sergey Brin is quoted as saying “Perfect search requires human-level artificial intelligence, which many of us believe is still quite distant. However, I think it will soon be possible to have a search engine that 'understands' more of the queries and documents than we do today. Others claim to have accomplished this, and Google's systems have more smarts behind the curtains than may be apparent from the outside, but the field as a whole is still shy of where I would have expected it to be”, which agrees with my assessment that search software will strive toward AGI.

In the article “Cell Phone That Listens And Learns” we are told, “a group at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, NH, has created software that uses the microphone on a cell phone to track and interpret a user's activity…In testing, the SoundSense software was able to correctly determine when the user was in a particular coffee shop, walking outside, brushing her teeth, cycling, and driving in the car. It also picked up the noise of an ATM machine and a fan in a particular room”. Here we see another step towards a better understanding of 'what you are doing', one of key requirements of improving search software and artificial intelligence.

So, as the Emperor said in 'Return Of The Jedi', “everything is proceeding as I have forseen. Mwahahahaha!”

“Fascists and communists and other totalitarians try to disrupt and disintegrate the integrity of the individual in order to beat a person down, break them, and take them over.”

Yes, something along these lines is aparrent in the last few chapters of Orwell's '1984', in which- through torture and bonkers philosophical arguments- O'brien strips Winston Smith of his identity and remoulds him into a perfect citizen of Oceania. At one point, O'brien declares “reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal”.

I find it hard to believe that this is an accurate assessment of objective reality. But, when it comes to a virtual world like SL I think it works, up to a point. After all, any virtual world exists by virtue of the people who bring their imaginations to it, and use artifacts designed to be cognitive extensions to add to the accumulating content of that world. Where it breaks down is in the fact that the SL community is no single-minded thing where everyone must conform to some totalitarian's version of the truth, nor do I think any online world hoping to keep people interested indefinitely ever should be or could be.

'the self as “dynamic” is fascist because it implies that the individual isn't himself, isn't real, isn't whole, isn't sovereign'.

The self is a pattern that is reasonably consistent. It is not some immutable object that can never change, but nor is it totally chaotic and 'noisy'. It is somewhere between those two extremes.

'If you have to explain the problem of the individual and fascism at this basic a level, you can't talk to a person normally, as they are not speaking in good faith, or are so abstracted from common sense as to be really delusional. I think in your case, it's more the latter'.

In my experience, when people say 'this is true' or 'this is wrong', they really mean 'this does (or does not) conform to my prejudices'. Common sense evolved to model a very tiny slither of reality, but the sciences I am interested in routinely pushes past our mind's comfort zone. Of course, when we try to piece together a picture of what is going on at this deeper level of reality, it all looks crazy and in violation of common sense. To me, though, the crazy person is the person who believes their common sense view of reality is a perfect model of how reality actually operates. That is the one true delusion that a person can be prone to.

'Good bye.'

Byeee:)

So all social constructs based on altruism and inter-relationships lead to totalitarianism?

On the other hand, the egotistical approach where self is an isolated phenomena that requires self-pleasing at the expense of others, leads to liberal societies.

Hmm. It's worth thinking about.

And of course, if you wish to “suspect” me of believing in the fundamental altruistic and compassive nature of human beings, I'm guilty as charged!! If that leads to totalitarianism, I have no idea, but I can tell you that I have been taught otherwise

Fascists and communists and other totalitarians try to disrupt and disintegrate the integrity of the individual in order to beat a person down, break them, and take them over. Locke always spoke of the persistent of the self across thinking sessions, if you will. All the great classics and liberal thinkers have always talked about the dignity of the individual as a whole being. Those ideologies that try to make the individual seem like a bundle of chemicals, nerve endings, societal constructs, blah blah, are reductivist and of course trying to justify taking political power over the individual.

Of course the self as “dynamic” is fascist because it implies that the individual isn't himself, isn't real, isn't whole, isn't sovereign, and therefore this or that piece of him, this or that “I” or collection of feelings or mechanical actions can simply be taken over — by code, groups, institutions, chemistry, science, whatever – ostensibly for his “betterment”.

If you have to explain the problem of the individual and fascism at this basic a level, you can't talk to a person normally, as they are not speaking in good faith, or are so abstracted from common sense as to be really delusional. I think in your case, it's more the latter, but both are operative. Gwyn's indulgence of you makes her suspect.

Good bye.

But what the passages you quoted have to do with any political ideology has quite escaped me. I must be missing something obvious, would you care to elaborate on why the move away from notions of a fixed essence of identity towards the self as a dynamic phenomena is 'fascist'?

>This knowledge is revealing flaws in the common conception of self. Traditionally (in the West at least), the self has been attributed to an incorporeal soul, making “I” a fixed essence of identity. But neuroscience is revealing the self as an interplay of cells and chemical processes occurring in the brain — in other words, a transitory dynamic phenomena arising from certain physical processes. There seems to be no particular place in the brain where the feeling of “I” belongs, which leads to the theory that it is a number of networks that creates aspects of self.

Gosh, you had me right up until the end, there, Extropia, I thought it was a story about Communism, what with the Red Queen and all, but instead, it's a story about Fascism!

Glad we got that sorted!

Prokofy Neva
Director, Society for the Pluralarity, NE Chapter
Corresponding Member, Association for Neuronic Coherence
Secretary, Movement for the Promotion of the Feeling of “I”
For Our Freedom, but…not yours, with totalitarian ideologies like this! Yikes!