Quote of Tomorrow
Posted on 23 February 2012
As far as real science is concerned, we are as likely to create C3PO, or any other self-aware, talking, thinking and acting computer, as we are to create the Tin Woodman of Oz by the process of chopping off one body part at a time until all are replaced by the tinsmith (as described by L Frank Baum, the Royal Historian of Oz, in a grisliness odd for a children’s book.)
Despite the eagerness with which modern materialists confuse the objects on which symbols are inscribed, or to which symbolic meaning is attributed, with the material object itself, in their eagerness to pretend we are all Tin Woodmen, in reality even the most advanced of computers neither reflects nor cogitates nor acts of its own volition, no, not even so much as an amoeba acts.
One of my correspondents in a debate on this point solemnly proclaimed that the computers of the future would be self aware.
He was as confident as Robert Heinlein predicting the discovery of life on Mars. He seemed to forget that, as a science fiction writer, I am one of the unscrupulous ilk of story tellers who both made up the idea of talking computers and used our arts of deception to make them seem realistic. We did the same thing for flying cars, which are possible, and for time machines and faster than light drives, which are not possible.
As a lawyer, I admit it would be nice to call to the stand witnesses not yet born or introduce evidence not yet in existence. I could then describe to the gullible jury anything I wished the witness to have said. He would describe World War Three in great detail, or the invasions of the tripodal Martian War machines crewed by Sorns and Tharks.
The logic here seems a little elliptical. Since the computers of the future, which neither I nor any living being has ever had seen, will one day be capable of self-aware thought, therefore I should believe that computers now must be self aware merely at a more primitive level, and therefore should believe my brain was nothing more than a computer, and my soul and mind nothing more than my brain, an organic mechanism without intentionality or free will or imagination — or without anything else I distinctly and immediately perceive and suffer and do.
Determinists believe, in effect, that we do not make decisions, so I am aways puzzled why determinists so patiently spend their efforts in trying to persuade me to decide to be a determinist. None seems to accept my explanation that I am programmed in inescapably to believe in free will, and have no choice in the matter.
I did not answer my correspondent, being, for once, at a loss for words. I did, however, stumble by accident across this quote by GK Chesterton, which seems apposite to the point:
THE truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the future, because it is featureless; it is a soft job; you can make it what you like. The next age is blank, and I can paint it freshly with my favourite colour. It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we, and of things done which we could not do. I know I cannot write a poem as good as ‘Lycidas.’ But it is always easy to say that the particular sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry of the future.
And if, for poetry, you substitute technology, you will have a keen insight into the philosophy of both materialists and transhumanists, who are so confident that tomorrow will reduce to practice things currently thought impossible.
I have here an English translation of the collected tales of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. I think I’ll just read a few to help me forget that disturbing image from L. Frank Baum.
The horror….the horror…
What is funny is (and I don’t know if you meant this joke on purpose) that L Frank Baum intentionally wrote his Oz books as an American challenge to Grimm, disliking their unhappy endings, their moralizing tone, and their general lack of sweetness. Of course, a generation later, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien wrote stories as an English challenge to Baum whom they found too sweet — see particularly the arch portrayal of the Faerie Queen in SMITH OF WOTTON MAJOR, both in her glory, and as a sugary decoration on the great cake.
But I am sure you know Grimm’s tales were originally written for adults, as was, for example, the GOLDEN LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS, which I daren’t read to my children, for fear the fate of the martyrs would give them nightmares. (Albeit I did read the tale of Saint Nicholas, the real one, at Christmastide).
And the horrors. Baum was deliberately writing to leave the horrors out.
Beat me to the post….
“Kid” stories seem to either have pretty grim stuff that’s quickly scanned over, or only comes out when you really think about it– Accidental Nightmare Fuel, I think it’s called on TV Tropes. Sometimes, it’s background– I can’t be the only one who’s though about other half-giants in the Harry Potter universe, for example….
The Tin Man of Oz. Yes, there’s an issue. How much can we take from a Man before we can abort him? A pacemaker? Glasses? Where do the Democrats draw the line? You can’t claim “Strawman”, for it has already happened. Be on life support in Florida, get starved to death (As in other abortions, pain is maximized. What’s up with that?).
“(As in other abortions, pain is maximized. What’s up with that?)”
As Holmes never said to Watson, look for a supernatural explanation, when all natural explanations have been eliminated. They do the work of Hell.
The devil Mr Santorum mentioned has convinced doctors, who are vowed to cure the sick, to kill the weak and unwanted, and the doctors inflict as much pain as possible. I don’t know what the Democrat’s motive is, but I do know what the Devil’s is: man is the image of God, and the Devil hates that divine likeness in us.
“As in other abortions, pain is maximized. What’s up with that?”
I sometimes suspect it is for the purpose, not of horrifying the public with the kinds of things that they are agreeing to accept and so stir them to a sense of the value of human life, but rather to persuade us “See how horribly cruel the current restrictions force us to be? Now, if you would only permit us to give a nice, painless, injection to put this person to sleep instead!”
No, I think it is the inherent weakness of hedonism. A man who shoots a rabid dog does not hide from himself what he is doing. It is indeed a mercy killing. Starving Terri Schiavo slowly to death, so that she perished by inches, is the result of pretending she is not human and therefore insensible of pain. Likewise, the pain felt by the fetal baby when he or she is killed. The type of character, of manliness, needed to shoot your own beloved dog out of mercy is not in the hedonist.
The leftists and the PC-niks inflict tortures on the innocent not out of sadism toward the innocent, but out of a desire, nay, an obsession that the PC world not be disturbed by unpleasant reality. It is play-pretend.
In post-World War II studies, it was concluded that once a doctor agreed that some lives were not worth living — you could get him to do anything.
Hmmm, Genetic Engineering. I wonder how much we can take from Man before we can pretend that it’s artificial intelligence. Bunch of people want slaves, and if we can pervert a mother’s love to the point she murders her child, it will be child’s play to convince that lonely single guy that it’s not alive, it’s just a sex doll. Several ugly possibilities. Slave revolt, which will be really ugly, since, as a rule, slaves do the dirty work. Big difference between farming and tending the nuclear reactor…. Then there’s the ugly possibility that Women will, by process of elimination, be Kznitied out of the world. We now know that once women get “The Right To Choose” the birthrate drops below replacement rate. And the children they have are boys (see China!). Going to be lots of pressure for “biodroid” cat girl sex slaves. How long before Women stop being considered thinking beings? Funny, when you think of it. Women used their political power to make Abortion the law of the land, and it may be the end of them. So it goes.
In England they already decided that if you make a human inside of a cow egg, instead of a human one, they’re not “really” human. (Thankfully, several Churches exploded about this notion.)
“Creating the Tinman by chopping off one part after another”.
That reminds me of an old Sci-Fi movie called, I think, The Creation of the Androids. Set in the future, when the human fertility is dropping below replacement level, and secret calculations have revealed that humanity is going extinct, a scientist discovers a way to download a person’s complete memory and personality into a robot, provided they do it as soon as he is dead. The chief character, a robot-hater, is dismayed to discover this has been done to him. The following memorable conversation ensures:
“This is terrible. I’m just a horrible, soulless robot.”
“Now, wait a minute. If you lost a leg, and it was replaced by an artificial leg, would your soul be any smaller?”
“Of course not.”
“And if both your legs and both your arms were replaced, would it still be any smaller?”
“No.”
“And if, after that, you had a heart attack, and we given an artificial heart, would your sould still be any smaller?’
“Of course not.”
“Then we could go on with it, replacing one organ after the other. This is what has happened to you: you have had a body transplant.”
The article “The Wisdom of Repugnance” by Leon Kass, discusses the ethics of human cloning. Although not much discussed in recent years, human cloning is far more likely than self-aware computers.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0006.html
Dear Mr. Wright,
I wonder: have you ever read much about semiotics, the doctrine of the action of signs? When I’ve heard you talk of symbols and especially of your experience of God during your conversion, I’ve always been impressed on how closely it seems related to semiotics.
~Michael Humpherys
No, the closest I ever came to the study of semiotics was reading science fiction yarns, including WORLD OF NULL A by A.E. van Vogt, who used his action tale to popularize the General Semantics of Korzybski. I am not even sure if this is the same field as semiotics.
I am frankly curious what in my conversion story reminded you of semiotics?
I don’t quite remember the way you phrased it, but it was that the universe was perfused with relations, which sounded something very close to what C.S. Peirce said, “The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.” Signs are triadic relations; something refering to something other than the sign to someone. This triadic nature of signs sharply distinguishes them from the dyadic nature of physical interactions, such as two atoms hitting each other. This seems what you are getting at when you bring up symbols in refuting materialism, as far as I understand.