Machines
Up until about now, I was always convinced, untethering — that technology will free humans to be laissez faire tinkerers — free thinkers of our times.
I am reading a fascinating piece of text: my diary of 1990s. I happened to be very punctual diary writer in my teens. The texts reflect my thinking of the future, at the time. I have grasped the law of Moore, and am pondering of future, in around 1993.
My childhood contained home computers. A lot of it. Just as of even today, what keeps me thrilled about computers, AI, and all that jazz — is that they make great toys of thinking! We are homo ludens.
It is really interesting to have that material. There is sort of a continuum of existence on a whole another level, where you have a “double” of your mind. It also motivates to write today, at this time.
What do I mean by “liberation through technology — for us to be free thinkers?”
Free thinkers, in the way Roman empire might have some class of people spend their time.
The naive idea of freedom reflects an early perception, I think. I enjoy creative arts. I enjoy immensely also just pure thinking. Right now, I am producing text. There is not a single word out of ChatGPT in this.
Philosophy now — vs. 2000 years ago
Philosophy is literally, as a word, “philos” and “sophy” — love of knowledge. Simply put, however, what we perceive nowadays to be philosophy — was quite a different thing 2000 years ago.
Philosophy was some kind of mix of stratification of human thought and information interchange procedures, so that knowledge could be distilled in the most efficient way- without errors.
Philosophy nowadays is perhaps somewhat different thing.
What grew out of the early philosophy, is: everything. Really.
Scientifically we owe a lot of gratitude to the school of thoughts that worked out the logic of our thoughts.
Logic of thinking: not mandatory. And that is a magnificient thing! Cherish the freedom to be without bounds.
We are not, luckily, bound by these laws of thinking.
This very distinction is important to understand: applying logic is a voluntary hobby. It is not a mandatory thing. In fact, there is ample evidence that wrong-thinking is crucial to advancement of human species.
Imagine sitting in your electric, autonomous vehicle, and it grunted “Can’t do it today. Sorry.’
It won’t — unless programmed to.
We probably will get empathetic towards machines much faster than they will empathetic towards us. They actually never will.
It is basically not even a real research question. True emotions need some kind of intractably visceral mechanism of regulation, that machines simply do not have. Bit vague, but it is my gut feeling.
We build the marvels of modern society, with electronics, code (software), art, and either synthesized or recorded voice. An autonomous car is still a machine.
A car is nothing more than a machine.
And that exactly is the beauty of it.
Chariot of Thoughts, the wetware — our brains, thoughts, regulators within — are built with a very visceral feedback loop in it. You probably know it better that I do. I am very new on this platform. More of this concept later.
Adios, for now. Stay tuned. Love to hear your feedback!
