Hard Determinist Apocalypse
I don’t really do this much anymore. Oh well.
I was kicking it on the internet today and I found this really old (ancient in internet years) thing about the end of humanity that was sort of novel.
Now, I sort of disagree with Kurzweil in a big way. I don’t disagree that intelligent machines are possible, nor do I disagree with the idea that they are in our future. I have a problem with his methodology and I think the conclusion that he draws, that this marvelous thing will happen that will create some crazy kind of transhumanist utopia, is just too pat. I don’t really want to spend a lot of time discussing that, though.
If you’re too lazy to click over and read, basically, the article posits that advanced computing merged with human brains will provide inescapable evidence that there is no free will. Following this revelation, we will languish in our slavery to determinism and just give up. The end.
I am troubled by this conclusion, mainly because it reminds me of other, equally wrongheaded arguments. Like the one about how atheists cannot be moral or ethical because they don’t have a god to tell them the difference between right and wrong. Equally specious is the argument that determinism robs us of any desire to keep on keeping on.
It may be that his real point is that with super computing power in a determined universe, we would soon be able to compute all of our futures, we could “read the end of the book” without living it, and that this knowledge of the inevitable would lead to apathy and no desire to pursue anything*.
But honestly, think about it for a moment. Would you avoid your next bath just because you knew beforehand how it would turn out? How about your next game of Super Smash Bros? How about your next lay? Does knowing that you’re about to have an awesome dinner make your dinner not awesome?
To be sure, foreknowledge of an event can diminish one component of the experience, but I think it would be tough to argue that it totally eliminates all good from that experience. Doing things is awesome! Experiencing the world is cool as hell! Why not go ahead and experience the world, even if you know the end.
Of course, Drum’s argument doesn’t even seem to take it to that extreme. It seems in his view, simply having knowledge that we are determined and not “free” is sufficient for the great giving up. But this is simply demonstrably not true.
I, for example, am a total hard determinist. For now, until I find a better explanation, I believe that various chemical and other physical processes drive me, cause my activities. Sure I choose things, but choose is a tricky word. I can’t suddenly choose to fly off the ground. Already, my “free” will is constrained. I can’t choose to breathe water or suddenly grow 3 feet. Similarly, circumstance and chemistry combined seem to be the real deciders in action. But I still experience that activity; I experience the process as choosing. I find no reason why knowing that there is no “I” that has control over these actions to be any more distressing than any other fact of the natural world. Because while it may change the way I think about and conceptualize experience, it does nothing to diminish the fact that, hey, I fucking love experiencing shit.
Why would I give that up just because I know the punch line?
* Addendum: This didn't really fit in with the rest of this thing, so I put it here at the end. So, if we had machines that could analyze all the data (wow, one hell of a machine**) and tell us the end, for Drum to be right that machine would have to tell us the story of us finding out the answer via the machine and then giving up.
** Follow-up question: Would a machine that could analyze "all the data" in order to determine the outcome of the universe be, in any way, distinquishable from the acutal universe? Does this prove that there, then, cannot be enough computing power for this machine to exist?
I was kicking it on the internet today and I found this really old (ancient in internet years) thing about the end of humanity that was sort of novel.
Now, I sort of disagree with Kurzweil in a big way. I don’t disagree that intelligent machines are possible, nor do I disagree with the idea that they are in our future. I have a problem with his methodology and I think the conclusion that he draws, that this marvelous thing will happen that will create some crazy kind of transhumanist utopia, is just too pat. I don’t really want to spend a lot of time discussing that, though.
If you’re too lazy to click over and read, basically, the article posits that advanced computing merged with human brains will provide inescapable evidence that there is no free will. Following this revelation, we will languish in our slavery to determinism and just give up. The end.
I am troubled by this conclusion, mainly because it reminds me of other, equally wrongheaded arguments. Like the one about how atheists cannot be moral or ethical because they don’t have a god to tell them the difference between right and wrong. Equally specious is the argument that determinism robs us of any desire to keep on keeping on.
It may be that his real point is that with super computing power in a determined universe, we would soon be able to compute all of our futures, we could “read the end of the book” without living it, and that this knowledge of the inevitable would lead to apathy and no desire to pursue anything*.
But honestly, think about it for a moment. Would you avoid your next bath just because you knew beforehand how it would turn out? How about your next game of Super Smash Bros? How about your next lay? Does knowing that you’re about to have an awesome dinner make your dinner not awesome?
To be sure, foreknowledge of an event can diminish one component of the experience, but I think it would be tough to argue that it totally eliminates all good from that experience. Doing things is awesome! Experiencing the world is cool as hell! Why not go ahead and experience the world, even if you know the end.
Of course, Drum’s argument doesn’t even seem to take it to that extreme. It seems in his view, simply having knowledge that we are determined and not “free” is sufficient for the great giving up. But this is simply demonstrably not true.
I, for example, am a total hard determinist. For now, until I find a better explanation, I believe that various chemical and other physical processes drive me, cause my activities. Sure I choose things, but choose is a tricky word. I can’t suddenly choose to fly off the ground. Already, my “free” will is constrained. I can’t choose to breathe water or suddenly grow 3 feet. Similarly, circumstance and chemistry combined seem to be the real deciders in action. But I still experience that activity; I experience the process as choosing. I find no reason why knowing that there is no “I” that has control over these actions to be any more distressing than any other fact of the natural world. Because while it may change the way I think about and conceptualize experience, it does nothing to diminish the fact that, hey, I fucking love experiencing shit.
Why would I give that up just because I know the punch line?
* Addendum: This didn't really fit in with the rest of this thing, so I put it here at the end. So, if we had machines that could analyze all the data (wow, one hell of a machine**) and tell us the end, for Drum to be right that machine would have to tell us the story of us finding out the answer via the machine and then giving up.
** Follow-up question: Would a machine that could analyze "all the data" in order to determine the outcome of the universe be, in any way, distinquishable from the acutal universe? Does this prove that there, then, cannot be enough computing power for this machine to exist?