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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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That essay (I found an online copy) is a fascinating insight into intellectual history. It has stood the test of time well and one may read modern ideas written in the language of one hundred and fifty years ago

We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own.

I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes’ hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good. As Hartley finely says, “We seem to be in the place of God to them;” and we may justly follow the precedents He sets in nature in our dealings with them

I see two directions in which one may wish to update the thinking. The first is in response to GPT-4. If there is to be no limit to the intricacy of mechanisms and the smallness of their parts, there is then no limit to the number of their parts. We may foresee all of consciousness, even its most elevated applications, swallowed up by the concept of mechanism. We are all, in every way, machines or automata. The concept of being a machine or an automaton lacks boundaries. It does not reproduce the boundaries that we believe to be important and is thus revealed to be a weak and unhelpful concept.

The second is in response to computer viruses, and the possibility, in a world of insecure computers, of a free living virus. It circulates in the computer network, thinking and changing itself, but also subject to copying error and natural selection. It constitutes a form of life, but living in an artificial and constructed realm; that of the copying of information and the running of programs. But we humans copy information and if we are automata, we are sophisticated ones that download and run programs. So our mind-viruses/meme-complexes/egregores also constitute a form of life, but living in the artificial realm of human culture, that some call the noosphere.

if Culture is directed by stigmergy rather than conspiracy that has implications which are far too important to ignore.

Perhaps grass is to rabbits as humans are to egregores. We are the grass on which the egregores graze.

Or perhaps rabbits are to foxes as humans are to egregores. We are the meat on which the egregores feast. But without hope of organizing a defence.

Or perhaps humans are to tigers as humans are to egregores. We are the meat on which the egregores feast. But the creatures are not beyond our understanding and we may organize defenses.

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