A sketch of Pynchonian politics

[Richard Fiero]

Jane O' Sweet wrote:


>Jane O' Sweet wrote:
> >
> > I doubt this can be proven. I don't think Pynchon is
> > prescient and think he satirizes those that claim to be so
> > and those that believe they have x-ray vision.
>
>
>If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out
>for will come -- you heard it here first -- when the curves
>of research and development in artificial intelligence,
>molecular biology and robotics all converge. Oboy. It will
>be amazing and unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass,
>let us devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed. It
>is certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward
>to if, God willing, we should live so long. Meantime, as
>Americans, we can take comfort, however minimal and cold,
>from Lord Byron's mischievously improvised song, in which
>he, like other observers of the time, saw clear
>identification between the first Luddites and our own
>revolutionary origins.

Not AI so much, but nanotech and biotech and driven by what? 
The seeking of military or business advantage perhaps. This did 
not require prescience at the time of the writing of the essay 
as both researchers and the lay cheering section were busy at 
work (see Extropians as opposed to Entropians below). This is 
currently a very heated topic with a great deal of material 
available online. A Turing Machine is no spacy construct but a 
very well-defined one (see below).
=========
Post-humans:
http://www.extropy.org/extprn3.htm
EXTROPY — the extent of a system’s intelligence, information, 
order, vitality, and capacity for improvement.
EXTROPIANS — those who seek to increase extropy.
EXTROPIANISM — The evolving transhumanist philosophy of extropy.

With respect to the alarms recently raised by Bill Joy. A response by Max More:
http://www.extropy.org/maxview.htm
"As a philosopher, I find his comments about losing our 
humanity to be frustratingly offhand. I will address this issue 
in a separate response. Here I wish to focus on Joy’s call for 
relinquishment of the technologies of genetic engineering, 
molecular nanotechnology, and robotics (and all associated 
fields). As someone who has thought about these issues for many 
years, I wish to challenge Joy’s relinquishment policy on two 
grounds: First, it’s unworkable. Second, it’s ethically 
appalling. (A third reason—that in practice it would result in 
authoritarian control while still failing to achieve its 
purpose—I will leave for a separate response.)"

========
Turing machine:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/
A Turing machine is an abstract representation of a computing 
device. It consists of a read/write head that scans a (possibly 
infinite) two-dimensional tape divided into squares, each of 
which is inscribed with a 0 or 1. Computation begins with the 
machine, in a given "state", scanning a square. It erases what 
it finds there, prints a 0 or 1, moves to an adjacent square, 
and goes into a new state. This behavior is completely 
determined by three parameters: (1) the state the machine is 
in, (2) the number on the square it is scanning, and (3) a 
table of instructions. The table of instructions specifies, for 
each state and binary input, what the machine should write, 
which direction it should move in, and which state it should go 
into. (E.g., "If in State 1 scanning a 0: print 1, move left, 
and go into State 3".) The table can list only finitely many 
states, each of which becomes implicitly defined by the role it 
plays in the table of instructions. These states are often 
referred to as the "functional states" of the machine.

A Turing machine, therefore, is more like a computer program 
(software) than a computer (hardware). Any given Turing machine 
can be realized or implemented on an infinite number of 
different physical computing devices. Computer scientists and 
logicians have shown that Turing machines -- given enough time 
and tape -- can compute any function that any conventional 
digital computers can compute. Also, a ‘probabilistic 
automaton’ can be defined as a Turing machine in which the 
transition from input and state to output and state takes place 
with a certain probability (E.g. "If in State 1 scanning a 0: 
(a) there is a 60% probability that the machine will print 1, 
move left, and go into State 3, and (b) there is a 40% 
probability that the machine will print 0, move left, and go into State 2".)