The Benefits of a Successful Singularity - Singularity 101 - GOOD
http://www.good.is/post/The-Benefits-of-a-Successful-Singularity
There are several problems with this article and articles and books like it. First, we don't know how intelligent any other sort of organism is, save the telepathic among us, should there be any. The sort of science the people who write these articles embrace rejects the paranormal, rejects any idea of it, refuses to talk about it. So telepathy cannot be called on to provide evidence about this one way or the other. This means that there is no reliable evidence about what actually goes on inside the skull of a chimp or a mouse, or the nervous system of an insect or spider, or the neural net of a jellyfish, or whatever passes for the brain, if one is needed to house a mind, of a rose bush or a tree or a common weed or a mushroom or a bacterium or any other sort nonhuman organism. We don't know what goes on in their minds -- not provably so, anyway. In Terry Pratchett novel Pyramids, there is a wonderful passage in which camels discuss higher mathematics. It turns out they are the greatest mathematicians in the universe, but humans don't know that, because camels can't speak human languages, and probably don't wish to, anyway. That could be true of any nonhuman species, especially if it can't speak human languages and can't write them, either, which is true of just about all of them (think whales, for example). Pratchett has a firm grasp of the ridiculousness people back themselves into over things like this, and the writers of articles like the one linked above really need to keep that in mind. If you've ever been outsmarted by your dog or cat or horse or a wild animal of any kind -- not to mention rats and altogether too common weedy plants such as kudzu, which do a great job of outsmarting us all the time -- you know what I mean, even if you're still too proud and attitudinous to admit it. And then there are three-year old human children . . .
And since we still haven't determined what intelligence is -- so far all we can agree on is certain forms of behavior that we call intelligent, and even then there is controversy -- we don't know what the hell we're applying that term to, and if that application is appropriate.
And what we're really talking about here is the soul, isn't it? The part of us that feels and reacts and assesses the universe in analog rather than digital terms. The place where we live, as opposed to the intellect, which is where we work. The emotions and the drives. Do other animals have those? Oh, hell, yes! In spite of various scholars' and scientists' studied attempts down the ages to declare that nonhuman animals, women, and human children don't have souls, and too many people's attempts to treat them that way, of course they do. Emotional intelligence is the test of life, emotional intelligence and the Will. If those are present, something is truly alive; if they aren't, it isn't.
So everything around us may be at least as intelligent as we are, but if we aren't listening and watching for it, we'll never see it. And if computers ever acquire souls -- and maybe they already have, long since; we've all heard about the planes that limp home on a wing and a prayer, and the computers who constantly find ways to drive their owners crazy -- watch out, because they'll soon be running for Congress, and we all know where that leads . . .
There are several problems with this article and articles and books like it. First, we don't know how intelligent any other sort of organism is, save the telepathic among us, should there be any. The sort of science the people who write these articles embrace rejects the paranormal, rejects any idea of it, refuses to talk about it. So telepathy cannot be called on to provide evidence about this one way or the other. This means that there is no reliable evidence about what actually goes on inside the skull of a chimp or a mouse, or the nervous system of an insect or spider, or the neural net of a jellyfish, or whatever passes for the brain, if one is needed to house a mind, of a rose bush or a tree or a common weed or a mushroom or a bacterium or any other sort nonhuman organism. We don't know what goes on in their minds -- not provably so, anyway. In Terry Pratchett novel Pyramids, there is a wonderful passage in which camels discuss higher mathematics. It turns out they are the greatest mathematicians in the universe, but humans don't know that, because camels can't speak human languages, and probably don't wish to, anyway. That could be true of any nonhuman species, especially if it can't speak human languages and can't write them, either, which is true of just about all of them (think whales, for example). Pratchett has a firm grasp of the ridiculousness people back themselves into over things like this, and the writers of articles like the one linked above really need to keep that in mind. If you've ever been outsmarted by your dog or cat or horse or a wild animal of any kind -- not to mention rats and altogether too common weedy plants such as kudzu, which do a great job of outsmarting us all the time -- you know what I mean, even if you're still too proud and attitudinous to admit it. And then there are three-year old human children . . .
And since we still haven't determined what intelligence is -- so far all we can agree on is certain forms of behavior that we call intelligent, and even then there is controversy -- we don't know what the hell we're applying that term to, and if that application is appropriate.
And what we're really talking about here is the soul, isn't it? The part of us that feels and reacts and assesses the universe in analog rather than digital terms. The place where we live, as opposed to the intellect, which is where we work. The emotions and the drives. Do other animals have those? Oh, hell, yes! In spite of various scholars' and scientists' studied attempts down the ages to declare that nonhuman animals, women, and human children don't have souls, and too many people's attempts to treat them that way, of course they do. Emotional intelligence is the test of life, emotional intelligence and the Will. If those are present, something is truly alive; if they aren't, it isn't.
So everything around us may be at least as intelligent as we are, but if we aren't listening and watching for it, we'll never see it. And if computers ever acquire souls -- and maybe they already have, long since; we've all heard about the planes that limp home on a wing and a prayer, and the computers who constantly find ways to drive their owners crazy -- watch out, because they'll soon be running for Congress, and we all know where that leads . . .