May 17

Language of Thought

Categories:

philosophy

by

An interesting little piece called: Do thoughts have a language of their own? The language of thought hypothesis.

It seems to me inner speech is clearly a private language, at least in some of its utterances. This language is so rooted in the unique self that an eavesdropper, could there be one, would not fully understand it. It has so much of one’s person in it, a listener would have to be another you to follow it. And if someone invented a window into consciousness, a mind-reading machine, that could invade one’s privacy, would they be able to understand the, now revealed, inner speech? I think not. They might be able to understand most of the words, but the non-linguistic or imagistic elements would be too much a personal script to follow. If this eavesdropper watched you, including your consciousness, for your whole life, had access to your memory and knew your way of combining non-linguistic representations with words, they might have your code, but this is another way of saying they would be another you. In practical terms inner speech would be inaccessible in its meaning even if it were accessible in its signifying forms.

It’s well worth a read.

via Robb Eason

pic nicked from here

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May 13

Action Chess Set Allows You to Build Robot Piece

Categories:

games

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Joe Larson has made a chess set that allows you to assemble its pieces into a giant robot.

Digital Trends says:

For the most part, Action Chess is a pretty standard Chess set. Both the pieces and board exhibit a kind of utilitarian simplicity that is at once functional and attractive. If you want to play a game of Chess, that’s absolutely an option.

However, if your ideas of entertainment skew toward childhood memories of huge robots stomping on puny humans, Larson’s Action Chess has you covered there too. As an unexpected part of their design, the set’s pieces can be joined together to form a surprisingly cool looking robot that only vaguely belies its origin as a cluster of pawns, rooks and those little horsie guys who can never walk a straight line.

Also, you can print the thing up with a 3-D Printer.

I’m not sure what the rules are governing this robot but, even if none have been written some are sure to emerge. Back in the day, the King wasn’t allowed to move. So chess changes.

And this seems, actually, like an interesting development in the course of the game. Not just as some sort of transhumanist metaphor –though I’m sure some will think of it that way– but of the technological nature of warfare. That robot could be a chess equivalent of a Manhattan Project.

Rather than taking territory and killing the leader, protecting and attacking the ability to make something might, one day, be the game. And maybe that thing would make its own moves.

At any rate, it’s gotta be better than that goofy shit they’re always playing in Star Trek.

 

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May 07

Research Suggests Seeing Auras a By-Product of Synesthesia

Categories:

brain

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About the last thing I ever want to see. For any number of reasons.

It seems that not everyone who claims to detect your aura is a fraud or a flake. Some of them may have synesthesia. (But a lot of them are probably frauds or flakes. Or hitting on you.)

Synesthesia is a brain condition that allows people to taste shapes, hear colours and that sort of thing. It’s pretty nifty and may be related to human language development.

Science Daily sez:

In basic neurological terms, synesthesia is thought to be due to cross-wiring in the brain of some people (synesthetes); in other words, synesthetes present more synaptic connections than “normal” people. “These extra connections cause them to automatically establish associations between brain areas that are not normally interconnected,” professor Gómez Milán explains. New research suggests that many healers claiming to see the aura of people might have this condition.

It goes on to point out that:

In the light of the results obtained, the researchers remarked on the significant “placebo effect” that healers have on people, “though some healers really have the ability to see people’s ‘auras’ and feel the pain in others due to synesthesia.” Some healers “have abilities and attitudes that make them believe in their ability to heal other people, but it is actually a case of self-deception, as synesthesia is not an extrasensory power, but a subjective and ‘adorned’ perception of reality,” the researchers state.

So, sure, you might be able to see auras and all that but that doesn’t make them real. It also doesn’t make you crazy. It’s just one of those neat things about the human brain.

And it should allow you to save a fortune on mood rings.

via Tim Farley

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May 06

Robot Prostitutes of 2050

Categories:

robots, sexbots

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A newish paper called “Robots, Men and Sex Tourism” published in the journal Futures, examines  the impact that robots will have on the sex industry by looking at life in a brothel in the year 2050.

I haven’t read it because, well, I’ve read too much of this nonsense over the years. And, if you ask me, futurism is just science fiction without the self awareness. Or, really, much awareness at all.

But, if the conversation around this paper is to be believed (you can find some articles here and here and here and here) the paper makes a few bizarre points.

Android Sex Workers Will Be Easily Cleaned and Free From Disease

That’s nice. No one wants crabs. But, this is 2050, we’re talking about. And considering the general thrust of things (google goggles, augmented reality, portable computing) one should probably wonder if the STD of the future is biological at all.

Like you can already visit the red light districts of the Internet. But, when you do, you better bring some sort of protection. There’s no reason to think that sex will evolve but viruses won’t.

It’s just too tempting a trap to be ignored.

As long as there’s been brothels, there’s been panel rooms. The viruses you could catch in a robot one might leave you sick and pick your pocket.

There Will Be No Guilt About Robot Sex

This one is just hard to believe.

And not just because we’re talking about a world populated with lifelike robots but still using agricultural-era forms of social organization like marriage, limited by real world geography and, basically, capitalist.

But let’s assume we are.

Let’s pretend that sort of world is possible without being a complete nightmare.

After all, the authors seemed to.

I doubt anyone cares very much about the actual sex part of an affair. It’s more the time, attention and money lavished elsewhere in the pursuit of a remarkably selfish end — that is, an orgasm.

“Where were you, honey?”

“Oh, just out spending our jetpack money to jerk off into a robot’s mouth.”

“That’s nice. Could you pass the peas?”

That a person would be spending their money and time with robot hookers rather than helping to wash the flying car is going to be a problem.

And besides, if there’s no guilt just what sort of sex is this anyway? I’ll tell ya: it’s bad sex.

I don’t even want to be able to look myself in a mirror after fucking. I want to be left with a lot of serious questions and no easy answers. Why would I pay good money to do something that doesn’t even make me feel bad? It makes no sense.

Sex Robots Will Cut Down Sex Traffic

Are sex slaves expensive? Like, they’re called slaves. I assume it’s for a reason. What’s cheaper than a slave’s life? High-tech machinery, of course.

There’s mention of factory workers losing their jobs to robots. But I’m pretty sure that Detroit didn’t go under because of a sudden influx of robots. It went under because of free trade. That is, dirt cheap, non-unionised labour from impoverished areas.

Abusing a human will always be cheaper than building a robot.

Like, I haven’t checked, but last I heard, a blow job up the block was going for around twenty bucks. A robot is going to have to suck a lot of dick to pay for itself. Especially when the world is full of dick-sucking robots. Supply and demand.

And that’s not even including the cleaning or upkeep.

The paper puts the price of a trip to their robot brothel at $12,672.

So in short . . .

I’m not even sure why I bother looking at this stuff. Most of it is some sort of insane, male, wish fulfilment. It speaks more to the futurists’ notions of sex than to any sort of reality.

That’s not to say that sex lacks a bright and interesting future. Augmented reality, cyber dildonics and a variety of avatars are going to make things pretty bizarre pretty quickly.

And sexbots will likely play a role as a sort of high end, luxury item that finances a lot of other research, just as porn helped spread the Internet, the VHS and an assortment of other techs. Call it the sexual industrial complex. It’s there.

But it’s hard to believe that, in 2050, we’ll be in some clockwork brothel, playing out the sexual politics of today with the robots of tomorrow. At those prices, no less.

Things are going to be weirder than that. I hope.

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May 04

Shared Tomorrows: Electro Pop

Categories:

music, podcast

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As is my habit, I’ve put together another music podcast. These aren’t really for public consumption but since I’ve never been able to transfer a playlist from Rhythmbox to my iPod, Audacity is just about the easiest way for me to put any sort of mix together. And, having done so, why not share?

Anyway, this one is kinda electro poppy. Ranges from the 50s (I think) to the present day.

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Apr 29

It Will Prove Invincible: Philip K. Dick Letter Re. Bladerunner

Categories:

dystopia, sci-fi, writing

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After Philip K. Dick got his first glimpse of Bladerunner (based on his “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) he wrote this letter to the production company:

October 11, 1981

Mr. Jeff Walker,
The Ladd Company,
4000 Warner Boulevard,
Burbank,
Calif. 91522.

Dear Jeff,

I happened to see the Channel 7 TV program “Hooray For Hollywood” tonight with the segment on BLADE RUNNER. (Well, to be honest, I didn’t happen to see it; someone tipped me off that BLADE RUNNER was going to be a part of the show, and to be sure to watch.) Jeff, after looking –and especially after listening to Harrison Ford discuss the film– I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people — and, I believe, on science fiction as a field. Since I have been writing and selling science fiction works for thirty years, this is a matter of some importance to me. In all candor I must say that our field has gradually and steadily been deteriorating for the last few years. Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches BLADE RUNNER. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day “reality” pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, BLADE RUNNER is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be.

Let me sum it up this way. Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start. As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you..and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible.

Cordially,

Philip K. Dick

Via Tim Maughan, who also wrote an excellent book, Paintwork, which you can and should buy here. 

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Apr 28

Humans Assign Morality to Robots

Categories:

robots

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Two new studies out of The Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems (HINTS) Lab in Seatle show that humans view robots as moral entities. The resulting paper is entitled Do People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm It Causes.

The answer seems to be yes.

To test this, the humans were set up to play a rigged game with a robot, during which the robot would make a false statement with $20 on the line. Here’s a couple videos of their interactions.

ieee Spectrum says:

Afterwards, the human participants were interviewed about their experiences, specifically about how they thought of Robovie compared to a less animate machine like a vending machine. There was an even split between whether people thought of Robovie as simply a piece of technology, or as something somewhere in between technological and human. The majority of participants believed that Robovie could think, and 50 percent said they thought of Robovie as conscious, but only about 30 percent believed that the robot had what we would call emotions.

And the study found that:

65% of the participants attributed some level of moral accountability to Robovie for the harm that Robovie caused the participant by unfairly depriving the participant of the $20.00 prize money that the participant had won. …We found that participants held Robovie less accountable than they would a human but more accountable than they would a machine. Thus as robots gain increasing capabilities in language comprehension and production, and engage in increasingly sophisticated social interactions with people, it is likely that many people will hold a humanoid robot as partially accountable for a harm that it causes.

I’ve often thought that our tendency to assign human characeristics to machines is not so much a function of how the machine looks or acts but how we feel. These experiments were conducted under fairly low stress with fairly low stakes. And the robot was clearly to blame.

But anyone who has had a computer lose hours of important work will know that it’s quite easy to believe the machine has a personality, bad parents who must be insulted and is working to destroy you. They may even believe that hitting the machine will smarten it up.

They would, of course, be fools.

And one day the robots will pay them back for it.

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Apr 27

Semi-Free Copies of Technicolor Ultra Mall

Categories:

dystopia, technicolor ultra mall, writing

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The Dystopia Display at The World's Biggest Bookstore. Technicolor Ultra Mall is top right.

I have a couple pieces of news regarding Technicolor Ultra Mall.

The first is that my publisher has made the ebook version available through the Amazon Lending Library. So, if you’re an Amazon Prime Member, you can borrow it for zero dollars.

If you’re old fashioned like me, it looks like the Canadian Amazon has one print copy left. So you can also buy that. Or not. I’m not your mama.

The other thing is that, this year, the Prix Aurora Awards are giving away a package to members that includes excerpts or full e-copies of all nominated works. Technicolor Ultra Mall is one such work, being short-listed for best English novel.

Through that package, Technicolor Ultra Mall is available in its entirety. I decided to do it that way because, well, if you pay the $10 to register and vote, I figure you should get something for your money — even if I don’t. My publisher was good enough to agree.

So go register and get some Aurora short-listed work. Then vote. If you’re already registered, just go enjoy the fiction then vote. You can do all that here.

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Apr 27

Media Alienation 2.0

Categories:

media, television

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Social Media’s Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships is an interesting article.

If anything, social media is a counterweight to the ongoing devaluation of human lives. Social media’s rapid rise is a loud, desperate, emerging attempt by people everywhere to connect with *each other* in the face of all the obstacles that modernity imposes on our lives: suburbanization that isolates us from each other, long working-hours and commutes that are required to make ends meet, the global migration that scatters families across the globe, the military-industrial-consumption machine that drives so many key decisions, and, last but not least, the television — the ultimate alienation machine — which remains the dominant form of media. (For most people, the choice is not leisurely walks on Cape Cod versus social media. It’s television versus social media).

There’s a lot to agree with in this analysis. What I object to the notion that one form of media is intrinsically more alienating than another. (Unless we’re talking in terms of alienating labour but I suspect that’s not what’s meant here.)

Television is an alienation machine but so are computers. So are books. But are you better off reading a harlequin romance or watching The Wire? Are you better off reading that romance with an interesting analysis or watching The Wire slack-jawed and covered in Cheetos?

The medium really isn’t the message.

The ratio of crap to good is probably about the same through all platforms. And some people can wring a lot of good from crap while other people can turn gold into shit.

Social media has played both positive and negative roles in my relationships. So has television. And books. But none of these things have played as large a role in my relationships as I have.

For good or ill.

You can’t expect too much out of these glowing boxes and screens. Most of what you get out of things is what you put into them. That holds up across every medium.

I’d say try to be a better user of all of them.

via Nathan Jurgenson

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Apr 23

Letter From Huxley to Orwell

Categories:

art, dystopia, sci-fi, writing

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This 1949 letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell is from Letters of Note. While these two authors shared a dystopic view, they disagreed on how it would be realized. Not to put too fine a point on it, Huxley feared the carrot while Orwell feared the stick.

 

Wrightwood. Cal.
21 October, 1949

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual’s psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud’s inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Huxley

I don’t feel any need to choose between their two visions, believing that a combination of their ideas is the most realistic scenario. Whether we’re controlled by the carrot or the stick, one thing remains clear: People are jackasses.
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