I almost twin with all that Francis. Veblen talked about 'machines' - his split was between the agriculture-industry-knowledge-growth machine and the business control machine. I have tried to write about a post-libidinal society (the whiskey there is good for the liver) - hard to fit it to readable discourse publishers want.
On Monday, 9 March 2015 23:56:44 UTC, frantheman wrote: > > I have always regarded Ursula Le Guin's *The Dispossessed > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed> *as one of the greatest > SF novels ever written. In her depiction of the anarchist society of > Annares, the whole administration of practical organisation is carried out > by computers. This serves to take a major component of the exercise of > power out of the area of human relations. > > "Rule" is basically the exercise of power. The will to power seems to be > one of the strongest human urges - indeed, it's wider than just human - > take the constant jostling for rank and status in a wolf-pack, for example. > I suspect most of those of us involved here in this forum are freaks as we > don't seem to possess much of it. Personally I don't get it, but I must > acknowledge that it seems to be (and always has been) an immensely strong > driving force for a lot of people. > > Our concepts of freedom and autonomy make my initial reaction to the idea > of "rule by machine" instinctively and immediately suspicious. But then, on > reflection, I'm already being "ruled" by all sorts of shadowy > people/groups/elites, who daily make all sorts of decisions which have huge > effects on the life I live and who certainly don't have an sense of my > well-being in mind (apart from that portion of my material assets which is > part of a pension fund/savings/investment fund/life insurance - which then > has the notionally privileged status of being the object of > shareholder-value). Could machines fuck things up any worse than humans do > at the moment? > > I wonder if there aren't some deep neurotic guilt/fear things at work > here. There's the old story of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, who Goethe has > despairingly calling out; "Herr, die Noth ist groß! Die ich rief, die > Geister, Werd’ ich nun nicht los. [Master, I'm in deep shit here! I can't > get rid of the fucking spirits I summoned]." Or the idea that when the > Singularity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity> comes, > the first things the machine intelligences will do is get rid of us for > being hopelessly corrupt and imperfect. > > It's the feeling that we're giving over control to something else - > something we may try to programme so that it is benevolent towards us - but > where there are no guarantees. But what guarantees do we have right now? > And who controls? > > > Am Montag, 9. März 2015 08:44:34 UTC+1 schrieb archytas: >> >> Human leadership is corrupt. The history is clear. We form empires of >> violence. At the start of WW1, about 1911 with the Italian invasion of >> part of the declining Ottoman Empire, we had a population the planet could >> manage, new technologies that could have released us from work serfdom and >> the potential to grow green and surpass our libidinal-violent biology. >> Instead we went to war and have over-populated like a bacterial colony >> poisoning itself. This war to end all war led to another one, largely >> about exhausting the Wehrmacht on Soviet forces. I have no idea how these >> wars started, interesting given how much education I've had. The Americans >> won and everyone else lost, but Americans generally wanted no part of the >> stuff. Various fables on cause make no sense. Much can be said on this, >> yet we evade the fairly obvious reality that human society is generally >> dire. About 250,000 of the 400,000 inhabitants of the zenith of the >> Athenian democracy were slaves, and slaving was the major Black Sea >> industry from then until 1870. >> >> Machines could help us get over ourselves and establish a rational >> society. This would be a rebellion to remove the allocation class that >> owns nearly everything a monetary value can be put on. We would embody >> knowledge in the machines (we already do) and rely on their genuine >> rationality instead of our faux version, corrupted by our libidinal-violent >> biology. Most people are very scared of intelligent machines and rather >> like the idea humans are superior because we can remove their plugs. We >> worry they will destroy us in a world with 8,000 nuclear weapons in safe >> human hands that are not problematic. Genghis Khan killed about a third of >> his known world's population. >> >> Why do we hate machines so much? Do we fear their rationality shames us? >> We are all now chronically ignorant compared with extra-somatic databases. >> Maybe we fear control by machines operating in the interests of a small >> group or police state - yet this 'machine' is already in place as a >> socio-technical human endeavor as the allocation class in real power we >> can't vote out. We could change a lot if we weren't so naff about this. >> Anyone here even think about it? >> >> In terms of data, what we chatter about, changes as data if we are not >> actually interested in large-scale human change. >> > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
