From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Wed Dec 15 1999 - 10:31:37 MST
James Rogers wrote,
>What would be a psychedelic to an AI? Using PRNGs as modulation
>sources linked to certain parameters of its mind? That's the closest
>analogy I can think of to a psychedelic for a computer mind. By
>controlling the modulation routings you could control the specific type of
>the psychedelic experience. It would conceivably open up thought pathways
>that weren't necessarily available to it otherwise (booting it off a local
>maxima as it were by feeding it targeted noise).
I guess an AI would have to discover or cook up its own artificial psychedelics.
"PRNGs"? Whazzat?
We can speculate endlessly about what could cause psychedelic experience in an
AI, but since we don't yet have an AI with which to experiment (or to let
experiment on its own), it remains just that -- speculation. Gender issues ("Y
is it so?") concern humans, but will they concern transhumans? If men and
masculinity become extinct, as the article in _The Australian_ (cited in first
post) suggests, then perhaps other human attributes will also become extinct. A
complete evolutionary shift, a punctuated evolution, could render both men and
women extinct, replacing Homo sapiens with Homo novus or Homo whatever. I don't
believe that evolution (life) has any particular affinity for Homo sapiens, and
so I don't think that the hubris which permits some people to equate
transhumanism to transferring their egos into a machine has much merit. The
greater our understanding of the vastness of reality, the more clearly we see
our own insignificance.
The psychedelic experience that expands our consciousness so that we can grok
that, may or may not have any significance to an AI. At any rate I think it
possible that an AI could have a better appreciation of the foibles that cause
misperception among humans, than humans do themselves. For example see:
http://www.vix.com/menmag/fiebert.htm
and note that 99.9% (my guesstimate) of Americans have the opposite perception
to that revealed by science (due in large measure to misdirected political
campaigns by those who would hasten the extinction of men and masculinity before
transcendence can occur).
Misperceptions abound in the general public, as we all know. To the extent they
abound among extropians, we can anticipate failure. I suspect that few if any
people on this list knew about the facts presented at
http://www.vix.com/menmag/fiebert.htm
and even fewer care about the issues raised at
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/1999/1214/opt1.htm
which would indicate that misperceptions abound on this list too.
--J. R.
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