4 ms·

Bathroom Monologue: He Has To Wonder At 130

33 points by mcantor 16y ago

ewjordan 16y ago
What I find really interesting is that despite the fact that nothing in this story indicates that things have gotten in any way worse for people - to the contrary, it appears that at every step except the last, people are perfectly happy with what technology is doing for them - almost every one of the comments on that blog is about what a scary horrible vision of the future it is, and dear God! someone do something to make sure it doesn't happen. It makes perfect sense for people to be frightened when a story is about how we screwed up the future by arrogantly pushing the limits of technology, Skynet and all that. But there's no war here, no famine, there's not even a computer enslaving us or keeping us as pets. Just chips in people's heads helping them do what they want. Oh, the horror...?
- amackera 16y ago
  This is unrelated, but something that always struck me as odd about people who fear the singularity due to an impending machine attack: What's so bad about that? Maybe machines are a natural evolution of our culture. They are created by us, and therefore are imbued with some aspect of our nature, perhaps humanity's destiny is to cultivate a species of sentient machines, then die off?
  - JeremyBanks 16y ago
    Although I am personally sympathetic with your position, I don't think the idea of us being replaced by machines is something most people are going to ever be comfortable with. They would probably disagree with the view that the machines would constitute any a tolerable continuation of our existence. Many people are already worried about how scientific advancements are "dehumanizing" us.
    - kiba 16y ago
      Why does it alway be about "replacing" us. What about a total upgrade?
      - JeremyBanks 16y ago
        With respect to my post: I was responding to his question "What's so bad about that?" which took replacement as a premise. Generally: I'd prefer an upgrade, but I worry that if we achieve strong AI it will be an extremely difficult problem [1] to ensure it behaves nicely -- so replacement may be more likely than upgrading. If we focus on augmenting human intelligence and not on developing independent intelligence this may be less of a problem, but I don't know which research paths will be more fruitful. [1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence
  - mcantor 16y ago
    Watch the original "Ghost in the Shell" movie if you haven't; it touches on this line of thinking in some very cerebral but accessible and thought-provoking ways.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- dools 16y ago
  It's a message about how technology increasingly disconnects us from the natural world, and from our own nature as humans. The key message I take away from this is that the longer we allow ourselves to continue along a path this path of disconnection, the more jarring the (inevitable) reconnection will be when it arrives. Food for thought.
  - DanI-S 16y ago
    Technology also has the power to connect us with the natural world in ways never thought possible. I can gaze into the innards of a cell from my desk, or explore the deepest reaches of the night sky with the augmented view provided by a mobile phone. Arguably, all of the developments in his post were allowed by a greater understanding of nature and our role in it. We're becoming capable of connecting with nature on far deeper terms; as participants rather than spectators. The desirability of that is a personal issue; many of our fears of it probably stem from the idea that 'playing God' is bad.
    - dools 16y ago
      NB: This is i reply to heed above as well. Firstly to address the point about human action being "part of nature": of course we are members of the natural world however I think the "disconnection" here that I'm picking up on the in the story is the archetypal story of disconnection told in Genesis. Getting kicked out of the garden of eden (a state of perfect and ineffible natural harmony) for eating from the tree of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil" (gaining sentience through our evolving brains and become Directors rather than Actors). Note I'm not actually a religious person but this is certainly an strong story in the collective psyche of a large part of the human population alive today so it's not to be ignored. Secondly to DanI-S I would say that the "connection" you're referring to here is the "cerebral" connection, or interconnection, illustrated by the burgeoning information economy in the story, and not a physical or emotional connection, illustrated by the "grass on the toes".
      - DanI-S 16y ago
        You're right, but at some level toes are just a high-bandwidth interface between your brain and the world ;)
bradleyland 16y ago
The story implies that the more accessible information is, the less you "wonder". I've found it to be the opposite. As a child, my appetite for information led me to read encyclopedias for leisure activity, but as the internet came in to my life, my imagination was set ablaze. Words are paper are great for recording history and conveying it back serially, but when you want to make lateral jumps from bridges, to caissons, to the bends, to oxygen, to chalcogens, to ... You get the idea. The more accessible information is, the more you wonder.
- JeanPierre 16y ago
  >>The story implies that the more accessible information is, the less you "wonder". This is a good story with multiple good interpretations. I myself read the story as a warning against working all day and being available through cellphones, intracells and whatnot: Without intracell assistance, his natural hearing is so weak that he misses all the grinding and screaming around him. He wonders what this feeling is called. People need silence and peace. We need to let our brain relax once in a while. You could interpret it as a "back to nature"-story. You could also interpret the story to tell us that we don't have to think as much as we did earlier: We use the Internet and other means of communication to find the answers we are looking for. When we don't have those tools available, we have to think. Your interpretation is yet another good interpretation.
  - jonah 16y ago
    "When we don't have those tools available, we have to think." 1) And remember. How many people's phone numbers do you have memorized? Far fewer than you did before they were all programmed into your phone's address book. 2) I'll think. I think I'll stop reading the NY Times on my phone for a while and instead take those times to ponder.
    - kiba 16y ago
      We have limited capacity for memory. We use our memory for something else.
lkrubner 16y ago
This is offered: "At 120: less than 3% of respondents under thirty do not have “at least some” of their emotions digitally regulated." I live in 2011, where more than a third of the population has been exposed to chemical anti-depressants. I can think of arguments against chemical anti-depressants, but I can not think of arguments against the overall goal of helping people with depression. There is the larger goal, too, of helping people manage with their lives, and all of the emotions, some quite painful, they must face.
- dools 16y ago
  To me this is a symptom of the totally unnatural effect of urbanisation. It'll come good - once we all have high speed internet we'll move out to the country and start growing our own food again :)
prodigal_erik 16y ago
Depends on what you're actually cutting yourself off from. Wondering about ideas is creativity, but wondering about facts is merely ignorance.

33 points by mcantor 16y ago

What I find really interesting is that despite the fact that nothing in this story indicates that things have gotten in any way worse for people - to the contrary, it appears that at every step except the last, people are perfectly happy with what technology is doing for them - almost every one of the comments on that blog is about what a scary horrible vision of the future it is, and dear God! someone do something to make sure it doesn't happen. It makes perfect sense for people to be frightened when a story is about how we screwed up the future by arrogantly pushing the limits of technology, Skynet and all that. But there's no war here, no famine, there's not even a computer enslaving us or keeping us as pets. Just chips in people's heads helping them do what they want. Oh, the horror...?

amackera 16y ago
This is unrelated, but something that always struck me as odd about people who fear the singularity due to an impending machine attack: What's so bad about that? Maybe machines are a natural evolution of our culture. They are created by us, and therefore are imbued with some aspect of our nature, perhaps humanity's destiny is to cultivate a species of sentient machines, then die off?
- JeremyBanks 16y ago
  Although I am personally sympathetic with your position, I don't think the idea of us being replaced by machines is something most people are going to ever be comfortable with. They would probably disagree with the view that the machines would constitute any a tolerable continuation of our existence. Many people are already worried about how scientific advancements are "dehumanizing" us.
  - kiba 16y ago
    Why does it alway be about "replacing" us. What about a total upgrade?
    - JeremyBanks 16y ago
      With respect to my post: I was responding to his question "What's so bad about that?" which took replacement as a premise. Generally: I'd prefer an upgrade, but I worry that if we achieve strong AI it will be an extremely difficult problem [1] to ensure it behaves nicely -- so replacement may be more likely than upgrading. If we focus on augmenting human intelligence and not on developing independent intelligence this may be less of a problem, but I don't know which research paths will be more fruitful. [1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence
- mcantor 16y ago
  Watch the original "Ghost in the Shell" movie if you haven't; it touches on this line of thinking in some very cerebral but accessible and thought-provoking ways.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dools 16y ago
It's a message about how technology increasingly disconnects us from the natural world, and from our own nature as humans. The key message I take away from this is that the longer we allow ourselves to continue along a path this path of disconnection, the more jarring the (inevitable) reconnection will be when it arrives. Food for thought.
- DanI-S 16y ago
  Technology also has the power to connect us with the natural world in ways never thought possible. I can gaze into the innards of a cell from my desk, or explore the deepest reaches of the night sky with the augmented view provided by a mobile phone. Arguably, all of the developments in his post were allowed by a greater understanding of nature and our role in it. We're becoming capable of connecting with nature on far deeper terms; as participants rather than spectators. The desirability of that is a personal issue; many of our fears of it probably stem from the idea that 'playing God' is bad.
  - dools 16y ago
    NB: This is i reply to heed above as well. Firstly to address the point about human action being "part of nature": of course we are members of the natural world however I think the "disconnection" here that I'm picking up on the in the story is the archetypal story of disconnection told in Genesis. Getting kicked out of the garden of eden (a state of perfect and ineffible natural harmony) for eating from the tree of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil" (gaining sentience through our evolving brains and become Directors rather than Actors). Note I'm not actually a religious person but this is certainly an strong story in the collective psyche of a large part of the human population alive today so it's not to be ignored. Secondly to DanI-S I would say that the "connection" you're referring to here is the "cerebral" connection, or interconnection, illustrated by the burgeoning information economy in the story, and not a physical or emotional connection, illustrated by the "grass on the toes".
    - DanI-S 16y ago
      You're right, but at some level toes are just a high-bandwidth interface between your brain and the world ;)

bradleyland 16y ago

The story implies that the more accessible information is, the less you "wonder". I've found it to be the opposite. As a child, my appetite for information led me to read encyclopedias for leisure activity, but as the internet came in to my life, my imagination was set ablaze. Words are paper are great for recording history and conveying it back serially, but when you want to make lateral jumps from bridges, to caissons, to the bends, to oxygen, to chalcogens, to ... You get the idea. The more accessible information is, the more you wonder.

JeanPierre 16y ago
>>The story implies that the more accessible information is, the less you "wonder". This is a good story with multiple good interpretations. I myself read the story as a warning against working all day and being available through cellphones, intracells and whatnot: Without intracell assistance, his natural hearing is so weak that he misses all the grinding and screaming around him. He wonders what this feeling is called. People need silence and peace. We need to let our brain relax once in a while. You could interpret it as a "back to nature"-story. You could also interpret the story to tell us that we don't have to think as much as we did earlier: We use the Internet and other means of communication to find the answers we are looking for. When we don't have those tools available, we have to think. Your interpretation is yet another good interpretation.
- jonah 16y ago
  "When we don't have those tools available, we have to think." 1) And remember. How many people's phone numbers do you have memorized? Far fewer than you did before they were all programmed into your phone's address book. 2) I'll think. I think I'll stop reading the NY Times on my phone for a while and instead take those times to ponder.
  - kiba 16y ago
    We have limited capacity for memory. We use our memory for something else.

lkrubner 16y ago

This is offered: "At 120: less than 3% of respondents under thirty do not have “at least some” of their emotions digitally regulated." I live in 2011, where more than a third of the population has been exposed to chemical anti-depressants. I can think of arguments against chemical anti-depressants, but I can not think of arguments against the overall goal of helping people with depression. There is the larger goal, too, of helping people manage with their lives, and all of the emotions, some quite painful, they must face.

dools 16y ago
To me this is a symptom of the totally unnatural effect of urbanisation. It'll come good - once we all have high speed internet we'll move out to the country and start growing our own food again :)

prodigal_erik 16y ago

Depends on what you're actually cutting yourself off from. Wondering about ideas is creativity, but wondering about facts is merely ignorance.