The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

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The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby tapitsbo » Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:19 pm

At present the development of a superintelligent AI by tech companies, governments, or both is basically taken as a fait accompli. Maybe it has already taken place. However, it would represent the culmination of a particular project that many human beings have serious misgivings about. It is conceivable that a detour in our collective preoccupations and belief systems as a species may result in significant modifications to this project as it is currently assumed to be taking shape.

After all, our contemporary world has not developed in accordance with the plans of the 1960's and 1970's for reform along various spiritual, environmental, technological, or political axes.

So where do you all see the "inevitable" transhumanist project swerving into a contested future from a certain one? I'm not taking about luddite or anarcho-primitivist challenges to the super-AI but ones that are less quixotic and more likely to have a real impact.

On the other hand, the other day it struck me that a great way to garner more security and funding for super-AI projects would be to conjure up the threat of a "Terran-Cosmist War".
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby Joao » Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:28 pm

Please define "super-AI" in this context. Computers are literally nothing more than extremely fast calculators. I don't agree that such a device will ever exhibit consciousness or intelligence. I think strong AI is hype. It's been right around the corner for 60 years--still waiting.

This is not to say that humans will never manufacture a conscious/intelligent being, but a digital processor is not that.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby tapitsbo » Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:35 pm

I would define it by its hype! I'm not persuaded myself that it's here, that it's around the corner, or that it will ever appear in the way that some apparently desire.

But we're still being sold on it; it's still being used as a central rhetorical device by TPTB.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby General Patton » Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:44 pm

For starters, Google and other Silicon Valley companies will probably be shoved out of Europe and Germany will try to create a monopoly. That would be the start of Silicon Valley's inevitable fall. And make no mistake, Transhumanism is a very SV kind of thing ( along with the obsession with IQ). Secondly, most SV businesses run off of ads, which are failing to produce meaningful results. Websites will pretend to serve impressions and collect ad revenue without actually showing the ad many times, and mobile ads are even worse. When the money dries up so will the extra vanity projects. Or maybe, god help us all, they'll actually figure out how to build something other than facebook for dogs. Or Texas will become the new tech hub of the US.

I'm not convinced a strong AI can be an AI at all if it's not psychic in nature.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby tapitsbo » Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:50 pm

Your oracular utterances about psychic strength are devilishly enticing.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby Joao » Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:59 pm

Frank Herbert wrote:Jihad, Butlerian: (see also Great Revolt) — the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

"The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines. Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby tapitsbo » Fri Oct 02, 2015 9:00 pm

lol, I read "selfdom" as "serfdom"
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby Occult Means Hidden » Sat Oct 03, 2015 8:11 am

I'm not sure why people keep confusing a concept of artificial intelligence with the concept of artificial consciousness. AI is programming that is predictive, independent and initiative through complex algorithms that are nearly today's reality. AC is self-realization and we have no idea where to even begin except by understanding that natural consciousness seems lost already on many people's artificial personas - which are, consequently, much easier to construct.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby backtoiam » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:05 pm

The transhuman peddlers sell it as 'artificial' intelligence but I have never viewed it that way. I have always thought of it more like 'augmented' consciousness similar to this:

Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.

Which begs the question why do the transhuman salesman want to install inputs that can access the consciousness of the general population? The sales pitch is that it will enhance natural abilities in a way that will create superhuman abilities and thus more freedom and power for each individual to fulfill their desires and needs.

Although I have little doubt that the peddlers mean what they say when they use the term 'artificial' and would greatly appreciate it if the project would conclude itself as close to 'artificial' as possible.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby General Patton » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:21 pm

Occult Means Hidden » Sat Oct 03, 2015 7:11 am wrote:I'm not sure why people keep confusing a concept of artificial intelligence with the concept of artificial consciousness. AI is programming that is predictive, independent and initiative through complex algorithms that are nearly today's reality. AC is self-realization and we have no idea where to even begin except by understanding that natural consciousness seems lost already on many people's artificial personas - which are, consequently, much easier to construct.


That's the difference between narrow/weak AI and strong AI. Strong AI has consciousness and is capable of applying itself to a broad range of problems over a wide range of environments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_AI

However nearly anyone with a STEM degree will be very uncomfortable with the word consciousness. Discussion or use of the word has been banned in a few science forums as undefinable and counter-productive. This obsession with materialism is rather new in scientists:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. -- Max Planck


This is what leads us to our psychic computers. If you buy into woo, then the astral and mental planes carry all of our thoughts and emotions and are visible to the initiated. Therefore, any computer that actually thinks must have some psychic presence to it. Then when the host computer becomes sophisticated enough, it would be possible for entities to attach themselves to these hosts and influence or use them for their own ends. A succubus in a sexbot for instance. Or a mischievous entity rerouting automated cars for shits and giggles. Programmers, being right-thinking materialists, would be searching for bugs in code instead of issues with entity possession.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby Luther Blissett » Sat Oct 03, 2015 2:07 pm

I was just talking about the manufacture of a Terran-Cosmist War with a friend yesterday. He feels as though disclosure is imminent to be immediately followed by a planned existential threat to humanity from outside forces. It is exactly one way to market and raise fundsr for super AI and transhumanism.
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby backtoiam » Sat Oct 03, 2015 2:40 pm

Luther Blissett » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:07 pm wrote:I was just talking about the manufacture of a Terran-Cosmist War with a friend yesterday. He feels as though disclosure is imminent to be immediately followed by a planned existential threat to humanity from outside forces. It is exactly one way to market and raise fundsr for super AI and transhumanism.

Ronald Reagan's Obsession With An Alien Invasion
By A. Hovni

Supermarket tabloids, that strange breed of sensationalistic American journalism, have been talking for most of the decade about Ronald Reagan's fascination with things like astrology and space aliens. Little attention was paid to the matter ... after all, the stuff was printed in the tabloids and nobody sane is supposed to believe in them. Yet truth is becoming stranger than fiction in the case of Ronald Wilson Reagan and some of his more curious remarks.

For starters, he has become the first President of the United States to talk about he possibility of an alien invasion from outer space, and he has done so not once or twice but in three speeches. Reagan is also the only President to my knowledge, who admitted -- in a 1984 Presidential debate against Walter Mondale -- [to] having "philosophical discussions" about Armageddon in the White House with some rather well known fundamentalist preachers.

And then there was the explosion about astrology in the White House, triggered by Don Regan's disclosures that Nancy had often consulted astrologers to arrange for appointments with the President. Everyone knows the details by now, yet we asked Marcello Galluppi, a well-known astrologer and host of a psychic radio and TV talk show in Detroit, to give us another view. "It is very clear to me that the politicians in Washington have their psychics and astrologers," said Marcello, "at least some of them do." Furthermore, continued Marcello, there is evidence that the Reagans have used astrology for a long time if we consider that "he was sworn in at midnight as Governor of California, based on astrology."

The media was having a field day with horoscopes at the White House when Reagan talked about the possibility of Earth uniting against a threat by "a power from outer space." Although the idea wasn't new for the President, as we shall soon see, this time everybody paid attention. More as a joke than a serious thought, however. The AP story on the speech, for example, had the headline, "Reagan follows astrological flap with comment on space invaders."

There might be a deeper reason for Reagan's apparent interest in the idea of an alien threat. There is an unconfirmed story that before he became Governor of California, Ron and Nancy had a UFO sighting on a highway near Hollywood. The story was broadcast last February on Steve Allen's radio show over WNEW-AM in New York. The comedian and host commented that a very well known personality in the entertainment industry had confided to him that many years ago, Ron and Nancy were expected to a casual dinner with friends in Hollywood. Except for the Reagan's, all the guests had arrived. Ron and Nancy showed up quite upset half an hour later, saying that they had just seen a UFO coming down the coast. No further details were released by Steve Allen.

The President first disclosed his recurrent thoughts about "an alien threat" during a December 4, 1985, speech at the Fallston High School in Maryland, where he spoke about his first summit with General Secretary Gorbachev in Geneva. According to a White House transcript, Reagan remarked that during his 5-hour private discussions with Gorbachev, he told [Gorbachev] to think, "how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries ..."

Except for one headline or two, people didn't pay much attention. Not then and not later, when Gorbachev himself confirmed the conversation in Geneva during an important speech on February 17, 1987, in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, to the Central Committee of the USSR's Communist Party. Not a High School in Maryland, precisely! There, buried on page 7A of the 'Soviet Life Supplement,' was the following statement:

"At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it's early yet to worry about such an intrusion..."

Notice that Gorbachev doesn't say this is an incredible proposition, he just says that it's too early to worry about it.

If Gorbachev elevated the theme from a high school to the Kremlin [palace], Reagan upped the stakes again by including the "alien threat" [again], not in a domestic speech but to a full session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Towards the end of his speech to the Forty-second Session on September 21, 1987, the President said that, "in our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.

"I occasionally think," continued Reagan, "how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask" -- here comes the clincher -- "is not an alien force ALREADY among us?" The President now tries to retreat from the last bold statement by posing a second question: "What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?" Unlike the off-the-cuff remarks to the Fallston High School, we must assume that the President's speech to the General Assembly was written very carefully and likewise, it merits close examination.

Ronald Reagan has told us that he thinks often about this issue, yet nobody seems to be paying attention. When the President mentioned last May 4 in Chicago for the third time the possibility of a threat by "a power from another planet," the media quickly dubbed it the "space invaders" speech, relegating it to a sidebar in the astrology flap. The ET remark was made in the Q&A period following a speech to the National Strategy Forum in Chicago's Palmer House Hotel, where he adopted a more conciliatory tone towards the Soviet Union.

Significantly, Reagan's remark was made during his response to the question, "What do you consider to be the most important need in international relations?"

"I've often wondered," the President told us once again, "what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer -- a power from outer space, from another planet." And then he emphasized his theme that this would erase all the differences, and that the "citizens of the world" would "come together to fight that particular threat..."

There is a fourth, unofficial, similar statement from Ronald Reagan about this particular subject. It was reported in the New Republic by senior editor Fred Barnes. The article described a luncheon in the White House between the President and Eduard Shevardnatze, during the Foreign Minister's visit to Washington to sign the INF Treaty on September 15, 1987. "Near the end of his lunch with Shevardnadze," wrote Barnes, "Reagan wondered aloud what would happen if the world faced an 'alien threat' from outer space. 'Don't you think the United States and the Soviet Union would be together?' he asked. Shevardnadze said yes, absolutely. "And we wouldn't need our defense ministers to meet,' he added."

The fact that there are so many references in important speeches, off-the-cuff remarks, and just plain conversations, means that -- for whatever reason or knowledge about deep UFO secrets that he may have as President -- Ronald Reagan does think often about the possibility of an alien invasion, and how this event could become a catalyst for world unity. Talking about these UFO secrets, there is also an unconfirmed story of a special story of a special screening in the White House of the movie "ET" at few years ago, with director Steven Spielberg and a few selected guests. Right after the movie, Reagan supposedly turned to Spielberg and whispered something to the effect, "There are only a handful of people who know the truth about this."

Indeed, more than one UFOlogist has even suggested that the real target behind "Star Wars" -- another of Reagan's cosmic obsessions -- is the projected ET invasion and not the Russians. Others talk of wild "deals" between the U.S. Government and race of gray dwarfs, better known for the appetite for abducting humans ... Stop! We're entering the forbidden terrain of tabloid revelations, like the SUN's screaming headline that "Reagan will end his presidency by adding several planets as states." Just think about it.

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http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/ha ... an_ufo.htm
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby backtoiam » Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:39 pm

"A mind stretched by a new idea can never return to it's original dimensions." Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Re: The Inevitability Of A Transhuman Tower Of Babel

Postby backtoiam » Sun Oct 04, 2015 4:47 am

This obsession with materialism is rather new in scientists:


I haven't noticed that but just for the sake of taking your word for it on an evolutional joy ride I would not doubt it a bit. I'm too old to care...

Infolding in the process of evolution creates a backlash of resistance in a desperate bid to maintain expanded consciousness, because infolding decreases expanded consciousness.

When the "point" or the "turn" is reached and the outfolding begins everything reverses in the evolution game.

Those who are expanded must "gravitate" in the opposite direction to maintain material status or dissolve in the one.

Pretty simple. Turn the tree over.
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