tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post7115442117920069086..comments2024-03-28T18:18:37.133-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: The Robots and Foundation Universe: Issues Left For Us by Isaac Asimov David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-70683030791645900962015-01-28T17:28:02.998-08:002015-01-28T17:28:02.998-08:00re: Imperial Earth.
The unrequited desire of Dunc...re: Imperial Earth.<br /><br />The unrequited desire of Duncan for Calindy was <b>way</b> too close to home when I first read the book.<br /><br />Also, it introduced me to pentominoes.<br /><br />I think I just liked the Clarke-ian touches, such as an interplanetary flight from Titan to Earth ending on a rain-slickened tarmac, just like stepping off of any airplane.<br /><br />Oh, and it wasn't until a third reading of the book that I "got" the meaning of the surprise ending.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58708562510398148622015-01-28T09:20:28.794-08:002015-01-28T09:20:28.794-08:00I agree IE is not one of Clarke's best. It wa...I agree IE is not one of Clarke's best. It was his first to suggest homosexual relations, and I suspect there was more personal experience hidden in the tale than appears. How much reflects Clarke's and Mike Wilson's relationship?<br /><br />SoDE is another novel that reflects Clarke's life and choices living on Sri LankaAlex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-591496170353912172015-01-28T05:58:52.254-08:002015-01-28T05:58:52.254-08:00Larry: I have a copy of Imperial Earth. It's O...Larry: I have a copy of Imperial Earth. It's OK, and has a few interesting things in it (check out the smart phones!). Coming after 'Rendezvous with Rama', it did feel like a bit of a fizzer with not a lot of content. I probably should re-read the sesquicentennial address.Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39572338340188773922015-01-28T04:52:20.559-08:002015-01-28T04:52:20.559-08:00Larry, I agree with you that a story can be enjoya...Larry, I agree with you that a story can be enjoyable even when its premises are implausible. However, I'm not sure your Kafka example quite works. The Metamorphosis was a metaphor for a mental state. Such metaphors, while implausible, have a long history in Western literature. Science fiction, as a relatively young genre, in theory depends for its uniqueness on its relationship to science. Good science fiction, while it speculates on how science may change in the future, loses credibility if its premises stretch plausibility too far. As the actor Paul Darrow once said, good science fiction should never ask you to believe more than one impossible thing.Paul Shen-Brownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-5745912981441104962015-01-28T04:32:12.335-08:002015-01-28T04:32:12.335-08:00Tony Fisk:
I had intended to point to some of Cla...Tony Fisk:<br /><i><br />I had intended to point to some of Clarke's more uplifting tales at the end of my last post, but it was late and I was tired. Glad to see other have brought their opinions on the matter up.<br /></i><br /><br />No one seems to know or care about his "Imperial Earth". I suppose it was more of an obscure little novel, written as part of America's bicentennial celebration in 1976, as was Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man". Neither of those stories seems to be in the authors' "greatest hits", and yet, they are personal favorites of mine.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-55691254191386567902015-01-28T04:29:05.181-08:002015-01-28T04:29:05.181-08:00Is it really that important to the enjoyment of a ...Is it really that important to the enjoyment of a science-fiction story or series how plausible the <b>premise</b> is?<br /><br />As I said earlier, neither time travel nor human invisibility seems plausible, but I can enjoy a good story that posits such things and goes forward from there. Ditto with psychohistory.<br /><br />"Metamorphosis" is considered great literature, even though the premise of its initial paragraph--that a human being wakes up one morning in the form of a giant bug--is neither plausible nor explained in the story. It's the starting point. The story is what happens from that point forward.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83202153060617353192015-01-27T15:58:59.378-08:002015-01-27T15:58:59.378-08:00Psycho-history may well become a thing. It's j...Psycho-history may well become a thing. It's just that I very much doubt it could be set up to operate unattended for the periods of time Asimov envisaged. Even classical systems contain domains of quantum chaos: something Asimov wouldn't have known in the forties and fifties.<br /><br />Why do we appear to end up in a hall of mirrors when we contemplate the possibility that we live in a simulation? It's almost like the Mandelbrot Maze virus Clarke used to bamboozle the malevolent malfunctioning monoliths in 3001...<br /><br />I had intended to point to some of Clarke's more uplifting tales at the end of my last post, but it was late and I was tired. Glad to see other have brought their opinions on the matter up. My personal favourite is 'City and the Stars'. Humanity picking itself up after a fall at the end of time. After comforting themselves with legends of the pyrrhic victory won in fending off 'the Invaders', the truth Vanamonde imparts to the citizens of Diaspar is chastening, but not wholly disgraceful. I much prefer this version to the earlier 'Against the Fall of Night'. Apart from being a better rounded story, the quantum leap in the technological descriptions of Diaspar are incredible. Sixty years on, it still astonishes. Not something that can be said of many tales set a few million years hence.<br />Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-12329473572665898152015-01-27T12:43:56.972-08:002015-01-27T12:43:56.972-08:00Heh. Count me as one of the people who thinks the ...Heh. Count me as one of the people who thinks the 'Universe as Simulation' idea is a bunch of nonsense. Even if we are, the predictive power gained from watching us is a little weak. One can learn the larger constraints and that we are as indeterminate as a whole as they are.<br /><br />If FTL and temporal backflow for information can be accomplished, then I'll consider the possibility that we might compose a determined system. Absent that, I think Popper's argument in favor of indeterminism slays the opposition. Anyone with that kind of advanced capability, though, probably doesn't need to simulate us. They will already be able to understand.<br /><br />Still... the stories exploring these ideas can be a lot of fun. I treat them like thought experiments for people who dislike the rigor (and waste of time) the philosophers require when arguing. 8)Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-12206077907640869822015-01-27T12:08:49.811-08:002015-01-27T12:08:49.811-08:00"...it goes back to Teilhard de Chardin and o..."...it goes back to Teilhard de Chardin and others. But never explored with Asimovian attention to detail."<br /><br />I think Julian May did a much better job describing a Teilhardian Noosphere than anyone else in fiction. Especially how we might have the benefits of a 'group mind' without losing our individuality.<br /><br />However, it's been a long time since I read the later Foundation books, so maybe I've just forgotten many of the details.Bleyddynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01223465132775822736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25304907532677147262015-01-27T11:52:36.334-08:002015-01-27T11:52:36.334-08:00"I don't think I want ever to meet someon..."I don't think I want ever to meet someone who CAN predict us. "<br /><br />why do you think you "exist" in this simulation, so the aliens can attempt to predict what the REAL humans will do...<br /><br />(from canaveral)David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-75064342127546541212015-01-27T11:11:41.901-08:002015-01-27T11:11:41.901-08:00There are some people I wish I could predict, but ...There are some people I wish I could predict, but then I sober up and I'm thankful the best I have are few heuristics. 8)<br /><br />I don't think I want ever to meet someone who CAN predict us.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-33922484580955741152015-01-27T10:39:16.313-08:002015-01-27T10:39:16.313-08:00You can predict Google a few years out, but you ca...You can predict Google a few years out, but you can't predict Larry Page.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-73582311289436819332015-01-27T10:31:50.480-08:002015-01-27T10:31:50.480-08:00Weather doesn't involve intelligent agents, so...Weather doesn't involve intelligent agents, so even weather prediction is too powerful compared to what you can do with humans. There might (maybe) be something broadly analogous to thermodynamics for human actions, but I'm skeptical we will stumble across it due to the fact that we are immersed in the subjectivity of the data. The state variables we would want to measure might require human interpretation and then we are back to something like quantum entanglement again.<br /><br />Below our intellect, I suspect there ARE a number of things that are broadly predictable. However, we've had some serious mishaps in trying even that. Malthus was pretty clear about where we were heading and the doom that awaited us. When I was young, a whole lot of people 'saw' the evidence all around them. Guess what, though? A few dedicated individuals with sketchy morals as judged by their contemporaries saved us all. Many women can now prevent the endless succession of pregnancies that was their lot in life. Is Malthus irrelevant now? Probably not, but his warning obviously isn't a hard fact about us.<br /><br />I suspect we are less predictable than the weather. At least with the weather you can apply thermodynamics and the fluid flow PDE's. There exists useful state variables for that problem.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-70703777883200594762015-01-26T18:57:41.822-08:002015-01-26T18:57:41.822-08:00Modeling people as simple agents for " fluid ...Modeling people as simple agents for " fluid flow" type models, even epidemics, doesn't capture the real essence of history due to individuals taking actions. You can model fluid dynamics probabilistically, build cellular automate, etc., but you will miss the unpredictable. For example, one can replay key battles, like Waterloo, and get Napoleon to win. That would change history. How would you even get Napoleon - is he unique, or would someone just like him have appeared anyway? <br /><br />I think indeterminacy means that, like the weather, you can only forecast a short distance into the future. But you can predict climate. Is psychohistory like climate or weather? I would plump for weather. Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72608167837246574272015-01-26T18:29:28.500-08:002015-01-26T18:29:28.500-08:00What Asimov described involved just a touch more a...What Asimov described involved just a touch more abstraction than mindless panics as we rush for fire exits. I'm deeply appreciative of those who have studied such needs, but they don't need the methods of science to do what they do. I'd rather they stuck to the methods they DO use since they are saving people.<br /><br />The problem with a science of psychohistory is that it requires magical transport of information between people. There is quite a bit of information that we pass back and forth, but no where near enough to create a deterministic theory. The best we can manage is a probabilistic theory that can't even state all the possible states of the system. There are black swans that emerge in systems that involve human action, so while we might be able to make statements about the constraints the system must obey, we will always be subject to the subjectivity of the data, thus we aren't doing science.<br /><br />Determinism is a Failed Dream. Study the N-Body problem in gravitation for a little while and you'll see that the information for a deterministic solution simply isn't there. Human action theories are even more indeterminate since we don't even know how to describe the evidence objectively.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-47667280039087715252015-01-26T18:26:33.024-08:002015-01-26T18:26:33.024-08:00Robert:
I love how people keep saying "psych...Robert:<br /><i><br />I love how people keep saying "psychohistory can't work"<br /></i><br /><br />Heck, FTL and human invisibility and time travel probably "can't work" either. It doesn't prevent me from enjoying some great stories written around those concepts.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34886799158951388722015-01-26T17:30:04.482-08:002015-01-26T17:30:04.482-08:00I love how people keep saying "psychohistory ...I love how people keep saying "psychohistory can't work" when in fact we are already utilizing psychohistory methodologies for building design and the like. <br /><br />Think for a moment of designing egresses for fires and other emergencies. Older designs, even with multiple exits, would result in pileups and people dying en-mass. But with intelligent design breaking up crowds and redirecting them, you can instead have buildings where people move to where they can more readily escape rather than have everyone stuck at one exit.<br /><br />In short, human behavior in a specific situation is anticipated and architecture is designed to disrupt those behavior patterns so to ensure a minimal loss of life.<br /><br />What psychohistory does is take little elements like that and little things like predicting national elections and expanding on it for a grand scale. Indeed, I look at the Foundation Series and I have a suspicion. I am willing to bet that there was a computer behind the Vault that would pick Seldon's forecasts depending on what happened. Seldon saw a wide variety of possibilities and created a "create your own quest" series of video recordings - indeed, the computer may very well be crafting these rather than have Seldon do more than record a dozen or so of the most likely ones. Take the Mule - it was an abnormality. The computer couldn't anticipate this and defaulted on what was going to happen. But what happened after that was within the boundaries of the "what-if" and allowed for humanity to continue to advance. <br /><br />No doubt upon the founding of the Second Galactic Empire Seldon would say "Congratulations... your path was a hard one, but it was all but assured. But if you are interested, I have mapped out <i>other</i> scenarios by which the Second Galactic Empire might have formed... would you like to start from the beginning and see what other choices might have wrought?"<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41410365982181335832015-01-26T17:27:07.190-08:002015-01-26T17:27:07.190-08:00Robert:
And if you do want to read something upli...Robert:<br /><i><br />And if you do want to read something uplifting by Clarke, I suggest "The Songs of Distant Earth" as that was Clarke's favorite of his own works.<br /></i><br /><br />I don't know how well-known this one is, but I'm quite fond of his "Imperial Earth", which is not at all what it sounds like.<br /><br />Citizens of the colony on Titan return to earth to join in the American 500th anniversary celebration--and for their own socio-political agenda as well. And while there's a hint of a possibility of an alien presence, there is no Overmind or Star-Child or anything of that sort in the book.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21962819711953352702015-01-26T16:47:12.051-08:002015-01-26T16:47:12.051-08:00Regarding psychohistory as ridiculous, I have to a...Regarding psychohistory as ridiculous, I have to agree now even though I was seduced by the idea as a kid. Nowadays I know it as 'historicism' through its link to the notion that some people thought history could be made a science. Many people are enamored by the tools of science and would extend them to subject areas where there is no set of customs to help decide the difference between objective and subjective 'evidence', let alone a scientific method for error removal. Hayek and Popper referred to that expansion as 'scientism' and it's a really dumb (but seductive) idea. The customs of science work wonderfully well where objectivity can be established, but that's not possible for studies involving human action except at the periphery of physiology and psychology. It is a travesty that we would subject perfectly useful fields of study to our expectations we have for science.<br /><br />Historicism is the tool of fascists. Look carefully at the seductive power it has and ask yourself if your liberty survives in a world where it is true or even believed to be true. I don't think it does. Asimov's tales show this as a regression of overlords.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84175320463453593522015-01-26T16:26:22.175-08:002015-01-26T16:26:22.175-08:00@Alex: The argument I make for why sentient AI (th...@Alex: The argument I make for why sentient AI (that we make) is going to look like us is that it is all we know. It will be mammalian in some sense of the term (mixing reptilian emotions and the higher functions that came later) and it will be social because we need that as part of the learning procedure. <br /><br />The fact that many explore the savant path can also be tied to the fact that we know that too. Our homo erectus ancestor could make those stone hand axes that are so common and could probably do it much like a rote-level ziphead would. Ever pick up one of those things? They sing to you at an instinctive level a bit like a club does. I don't know if that works as well for women, but it sure does on me.<br /><br /><br />I feel for the parents of that family you know. We went through a phase of locking things up. It didn't work long because these kids aren't stupid. Even if they can't bypass the locks, they'll figure out how to play you to get what they want. It isn't that they can't learn, it's that they don't learn to be social like we do. Something is broken and you get a very different kind of human being as they grow up. I've had to learn to adapt my dream for my son and I can understand when others can't.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-30423317875575450642015-01-26T15:56:57.794-08:002015-01-26T15:56:57.794-08:00@Alfred - does sentient AI need to be like us? Wh...@Alfred - does sentient AI need to be like us? Where would we draw the line at treating them as animals? We are already looking at giving chimps legal status as persons ( failed so far). But robots? Clearly our computers are not sentient and can be treated like machines. But what if we embody robots with sentience, even alien sentience? At what point do we confer some personhood status on such a machine/being? <br /><br />Getting back to Clarke, this was very much an issue with Chandra concerning HAL in 2010. While the rest if the crew were unconcerned with HAL, Chandra wanted to stay with HAL on the way back and did not want to turn him off. This was in contrast to his treatment of SAL at the outset. <br /><br />I somewhat understand what you are going through with your son. I know a family with an autistic son. They have to lock everything at night to prevent him breaking stuff and pouring liquids everywhere. Any error results in a mess, repair costs and a lot of anguish. At some point he will have to be institutionalized to protect him and them from harm. <br />Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22688116874407982292015-01-26T15:46:53.167-08:002015-01-26T15:46:53.167-08:00Treebeard said...
Psychohistory seems more ridicul...Treebeard said...<br />Psychohistory seems more ridiculous than warp drive or astrology to me – a hyper-rationalist Asperger mentat’s fantasy science. We can’t predict the weather 10 days from now with much confidence, but we’re going to predict the course of human history for tens of thousands of years?<br />----------<br /><br />I completely disagree. From our limited and immediate perspective, then yes. Just as our ancestors of 1024 AD never could have predicted our society. BUT given the advancement of scientific and computational knowlege, why not. Even the penultimate genius of teaching in University of Constantinople during the reign of Basil II could never have predicted computers or the theory behind them. <br /><br />Asimov's stories take place over ten thousand years after our lifetimes. I think he pegged it as something like 20 to 30 thousand years in Pebble in the Sky with changes in the joints in the skull among other bits of evidence.<br /><br />Given that time gap its entirely possible for something like that science to develop. We are already seeing strong hints of it - think of Nate Silverman's close predictions of the last presidential election for instance.<br /><br />Only when one is willingly blind do you automatically dismiss the possible.<br /><br />As for predicting Muhammad, that was almost inevitable. Think of it, both the Sassinid and Byzantine Empires had fought each other to exhaustion and left a massive power vacuum. Byzantium went further by severely alienating the locals in the reconquered regions of the middle east that later became the first conquests of Islam. So it was quite predictable. Right now we may not be able say that person X, Y, or Z would become the leader of a new religion, BUT we can say that given a set of circumstances such a new movement will occur and expand quite explosively outside of its area of origin.<br />Larry C. Lyonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04315424229764736078noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68234795845200419122015-01-26T15:45:52.094-08:002015-01-26T15:45:52.094-08:00Ordering a sentient person to focus for long perio...Ordering a sentient person to focus for long periods on time on a task is like taking high art objects and turning them into flower pots. The flowers might be lovely, but what a tragic waste.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-54331025816010637422015-01-26T15:38:32.387-08:002015-01-26T15:38:32.387-08:00My kid is drug-free and I intend to keep it that w...My kid is drug-free and I intend to keep it that way until he becomes a physical danger to himself. I'm leery of crude pharmaceuticals that mess with the brain, but not inclined to pick up a gun yet. 8)<br /><br />I think the people who think they are doing AI research who build the equivalent of savants are going down a path that will not lead to human-equivalent minds. We are universal machines in the sense that we can run moderate quality simulations of the savants, but a full human mind is more than a focused talent. If you want to do human-style AI, I think you have to follow Hofstadter's path where language is far more than the words and structures of our spoken languages. Human languages are the encodings that have emerged to represent communal knowledge. If you don't render that capability in silicon, you won't get anything like us.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6132962189315953792015-01-26T13:52:07.509-08:002015-01-26T13:52:07.509-08:00@Alfred - isn't Focus an extreme example of Ri...@Alfred - isn't Focus an extreme example of Ritalin type drugs? Focus is fairly clearly an awful, evil development. I can't imagine it being allowed in contemporary civilization. <br /><br />Interestingly, that is exactly what we expect of our current AIs. What happens when we build sentient robots but order them to focus on a task for very long periods? Will we be.committing an evil to?Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.com