Anyway we may as well begin discussing the obvious--

Sat Mar 17 04:44:37 CDT 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Mab

From: bledwelder at hotmail.com
To: bandwraith at aol.com; brook7 at sover.net; pynchon-l at waste.org; sweatyk at gmail.com
Subject: RE: Anyway we may as well begin discussing the obvious--
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:34:10 -0500

http://movies.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70212989&trkid=2965444&t=The+Pyramid+Code

If you don't have Netflix, get it.  Watch this.  I'm halfway through the first part.  Let's watch, and admit finally the obvious. This is non-human made.
Admit it.  We're all grown ups now.

> To: brook7 at sover.net; pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
> From: bandwraith at aol.com
> Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 23:34:50 -0400
> 
> And besides computers don't get high... he says,
> as he sits quaffing his second tumbler of frascati.
> 
> It does seem that consciousness requires a
> motivated self, and the primary motivation might be
> self-definition. Self-definition probably preceded
> consciousness- as self-reproduction, but why
> would a system want to reproduce itself? Initially
> they/it probably didn't want to, but given the
> inherent properties of space/time/mass/energy,
> mixed in the flask of the day/night/day... and all
> the other macroscopic repeating trends, found
> itself being replicated, on a more intimate scale.
> 
> But it didn't care. It hung together as much by
> inertia and The Principle of Least Action, as by any
> concern for self.
> 
> The line between tools, or artifacts, and the system
> selected for replication, by the conveniences of the
> day, must have always been fluid. Artifacts became
> internalized or essentials extruded as chance events.
> 
> Somehow motivation was dependent on a complete
> lack of motivation- a completely unbiased, inconsid-
> erate, neutral field of debris, that didn't care one way
> or the the other, and still doesn't, if some quirky sub-
> aggregation ends up evolving into a jackass. Or, do
> you imagine the field  to be biased somehow, is, I
> guess, what I'm asking.
> 
> AI might be impossible either way, but if life is the
> result of an accidental chain of events, there is
> nothing in the mix working against AI, other than the
> sheer difficulty of the engineering, and the anti-bias
> of the second law.
> 
> If life wasn't an accident- well then, have you ever
> known anything more motivating for our species than
> a good challenge?
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Fri, Mar 16, 2012 3:42 pm
> Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
> 
> 
> Well I just wrote a longish answer to your question, then somehow
> disappeared
> it. But here is the essence.
> I don't know what thought is. I am open to the possibility that what we
> call
> consciousness is really one of the dimensions of reality that is as
> fundamental
> as space or time and that thought is  a form within that dimension.  Of
> course
> it could be more a practical aspect of biological survival, but I have
> a hard
> time with the idea of wings coming from random mutations. Too much like
> rolling
> a rock down a mountain and getting the Nike of Samothrace. I suspect
> there is a
> deep connection between mind and body  or even mind and life that has a
> role in
> evolution.
>  I listened to Rupert Sheldrake yesterday talking about homing pigeons.
> Scientists have studied them a lot and they don't know how the pigeons
> do it.
> They have done experiments to test all the ideas that seem to fit what
> we know:
> sight, smell, ability to discern and remember the path away from home,
> celestial
> navigation, sun navigation, magnetic field of earth. It appears you can
> completely block any and all of these and they still fly home, though
> without
> sight they can only get a couple hundred feet from home.  Science has
> no
> explanation for how they do it and there are several similar mysteries,
> that
> point to the possibility that we may be missing some real basic parts
> of our
> picture of consciousness.
> 
> Still it is a lot about how you define intelligence.  Chess programs
> beat
> chessmasters and computers can be programmed to solve very hard
> problems. But
> will they ever ask their own questions and want an answer? But maybe
> that isn't
> really what Pynchon is talking about , but more what happens when
> machines can
> do anything we can do faster and with no mistakes.
> 
> 
> On Mar 15, 2012, at 11:26 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
> > But do you imagine that thought is something
> > more than a physical process, or just some
> > physically embodied process that is way too
> > complex and self-referential to program from
> > the top down?
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> > To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Thu, Mar 15, 2012 2:25 pm
> > Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
> >
> >
> > I personally think every prediction of AI so far is absurdly
> premature. The
> > premise still seems fundamentally bizarre to me. I just can't imagine
> self
> > generated thought apart from the kind of innate will that comes with
> being in
> a
> > bodily form with natural desires attributes and limits. The idea that
> you can
> > program curiosity, or desire to formulate and solve a problem into an
> electronic
> > device designed only to process  binary code just seems real iffy.
> >
> 
> 
> 

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