From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Mon Sep 07 1998 - 19:02:39 MDT
[This is a repost of an article I sent to the list July 21.]
It's an attractive analogy that a posthuman will be to a human as a
human is to an insect. This suggests that any attempt to analyze or
understand the behavior of post-singularity intelligence is as
hopeless as it would be for an insect to understand human society.
Since insects clearly have essentially no understanding of humans, it
would follow by analogy that we can have no understanding of
posthumans.
On reflection, though, it seems that it may be an oversimplification
to say that insects have no understanding of humans. The issue is
complicated by the fact that insects probably have no "understanding"
at all, as we use the term. They may not even be conscious, and may
be better thought of as nature's robots, of a similar level of
complexity as our own industrial machines. Since insects do not have
understanding, the analogy to humans does not work very well. If we
want to say that our facility for understanding will not carry over
into the posthuman era, we need to be able to say that insect's
facility for <something> would not work when applied to humans.
What we need to do is to translate the notion of "understanding" into
something that insects can do. That makes the analogy more precise
and improves the quality of the conclusions it suggests.
It seems to me that while insects do not have "understanding" as we
do, they do nevertheless have a relatively detailed model of the world
which they interact with. Even if they are robots, programmed by
evolution and driven by unthinking instinct, still their programming
embodies a model of the world. A butterfly makes its way to flowers,
avoides predators, knows when it is hungry or needs to rest. These
decisions may be made unconsciously like a robot, but they do
represent a true model of itself and of the world.
What we should ask, then, is whether insect's model of the world can
be successfully used to predict the behavior of humans, in the terms
captured by the model itself. Humans are part of the world that
insects must deal with. Are they able to successfully model human
behavior at the level they are able to model other aspects of the
world, so that they can thrive alongside humanity?
Obviously insects do not predict many aspects of human behavior.
Still, in terms of the level of detail that they attempt to capture,
I'd say they are reasonably effective. Butterflies avoid large
animals, including humans. Some percentage of human-butterfly
interactions would involve attempts by the humans to capture the
butterflies, and so the butterflies' avoidance instinct represents a
success of their model. Similarly for many other insects for whom the
extent of their model of humans is as "possible threat, to be
avoided".
Other insects have historically thrived in close association with
humans, such as lice, fleas, ants, roaches, etc. Again, without
attempting to predict the full richness of human behavior, their
models are successful in expressing those aspects which they care
about, so that they have been able to survive, often to the detriment
of the human race.
If we look at the analogy in this way, it suggests that we may expect
to be able to understand some aspects of posthuman behavior, without
coming anywhere close to truly understanding and appreciating the full
power of their thoughts. Their mental life may be far beyond anything
we can imagine, but we could still expect to draw some simple
conclusions about how they will behave, things which are at the level
which we can understand. Perhaps Robin's reasoning based on
fundamental principles of selection and evolution would fall into this
category.
We may be as ants to the post singularity intelligences, but even so,
we may be able to successfully predict some aspects of their behavior,
just as ants are able to do with humans.
Hal
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