GRGR(10) Control

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

stencil at bcn.net replies to me:
> > Ditto for
> >computers, the `thinking machines' the acme of whose learning
> >capabilities includes the stupidities of `smart' warfare.
> "Thinking machines?"  There's a straw man dead these twenty years.
> Smart weapons, the laser-guided bomb particularly, owe much less to
> computers per se than to advances, sorry, developments in
> communications, optics and image processing that have propagated along
> the same axes as arthroscopic surgery and forest- and crop-land
> diagnostics.  In any event, artificial cognition is the betrothed of
> physiology, not of physics.  Only as we learn what the brain does,
> will that behavior be synthesized - er, mimicked.

Err, well the book *was* written in John McCarthy's heyday when teh
acme of synthetic intelligence was the `I'm an animal, I'm an animal,
what kind of animal am I' game. And it's not been dead these 20 years
either. Silicon Valley was living high on the money until about 1987
(the gusher really only started in the early 80s). And I suspect that
reports of its demise etc.

> >No, the only real act of synthesis mankind has performed is the one he
> >was preprogrammed for, multiplying, polluting and poisoning -
> >`our mission is to promote death', by creating yet more human life? 
> No.  Sorry, abstract collective nouns don't m,p&p.

But most people so far have m,p&ped whenever and wherever they have
had the opportunity. I don't consider the exceptions to that rule
large enough to discount use of the all-embracing abstract collective.
Even where societies have started off living within their means
population growth has invariably led to pollution and poisoning. And
the eco-friendly few who live in high tech cultures (like the one we
are using to communicate) are still some of the worst polluters. Say
some eco-warrior in the US manages to cut their lifetime output of
solid waste by 50% that still leaves 200 tonnes. 90% leaves 40 tonnes.
Compare that with less than 10 tonnes for `third world' countries and
it's clear that most of the shit is not err, . . . well it's not just
plain old biodegradable shit, anyway, no matter how much more people
eat in the US.

> >maybe the only control man can (should) hope to attain is enough
> >self-control to stop despoiling our world in the search for God-like
> >powers.
> That one was going pretty good until the gratuitous motivational
> analysis.  Do you really believe the transition from edge-flaking to
> striking whole blades off a prepared core, was accomplished by nerdy
> paleolithic wannabes?  And you didn't really mean 'self-control', as
> in "control of the individual self  by that self", did you?  

Go back into the previous communication and it should be clear that
the search for `God-like powers' happened not in the paleolithic era
but in the 19th and 20th century. I thnk Neitzsche summed it up
best. Somethign to do with having to become Gods once you had killed
God. And yes, therefore, that does mean it is `self' as in self.
Sorry, must be all that Sri Lankan Buddhism but I suspect that
self-improvement has to begin with home-improvement.

> >Maybe control lies not in making things happen but in not
> >being tied to responding to what does happen. 
> Let swap "freedom" for "control" and you have an apostle.  F:IW -
> "Freedom: I Won't" was the themephrase of an early H. Beam Piper short
> from the Campbell days.

I think that's what I meant. The real nature of control is that it is
a trap. In trying to control everything in one's environment one is
led inevitably into slavish anticipation and response to that
environment. Even worse when the nature of the response is
predetermined by an even more slavish adherence to a rigid metaphysic.

> >Maybe those Herero are God's chosen people after all.

> Fat chance.  In any event, being chosen by God hardly seems to be a
> rose garden.

Unless, of course, it happens to be your own God of the moment who is
doing the choosing.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.