Comments on: Need Help Understanding Supermind Experience

By: Carol Maltby

Carol Maltby — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:50:16 +0000

Smarter is nothing, without being wiser.
I am reminded about what Terence McKenna said about the machine elves, that there are transactions involved with them, always some sort of trading.
I can’t locate the passage at the moment, but it struck me when first reading it that it reminded me of leaving milk for the fairies.
Take a look at the interview the Guardian did earlier this year with savant Daniel Tammet, who is able to articulate some of what seems to be going on in his mind when he is working with numbers. It was published February 12, 2005.
guardian.co.uk

By: Jerry Michalski

Jerry Michalski — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 02:01:07 +0000

I’ve been playing with TheBrain for a decade, which is a simple, single-user version of what you’re thinking, Rudy. You can see what I’ve wrought from links on my site, http://www.sociate.com
One important way to stay oriented is always to be able to go back to the webs you have woven personally, to see only the nodes and links that you authored.
With a solid base like that, you can wander pretty far afield and feel really good about your explorations. After a while, finding things you’re interested and “hanging” them in your own space is a joyful experience, a bit like decorating a Christmas tree with ornaments (assuming that brings you joy).

By: benign

benign — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 07:05:37 +0000

Wow, lots of cool ideas here. I think it’s feasible that the net might craft the interface or filter that the user accesses the it through to suit the particular way of thinking of the user, and that in turn would colour the user experience.
As for why the net would want to have anything to do with people: We’re a source of interesting information. The boppers wanted it, perhaps the ridiculous amount of computing power available to the net would allow it to appreciate it even more. If so, I could imagine people striking deals with it. Maybe let it poke around your memories, drive your body around for a bit, and in exchange get access to all its information, direct connection to other users, simulated fantasy lands, interesting philtres, and so on.
It’s kind of a funny picture actually. Supercomputer posessed humans marvelling at say trees blowing in the wind (mmmm rich universal computation), while their usual occupants are in cyberspace enjoying a little temporary transcendance.
As others have mentioned, it’d be a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. Sounds like fun too.

By: Loyal Student

Loyal Student — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:36:38 +0000

Symbiosis
That seems like the key requirement. Others have suggested specific kinds.
The humans would not need to remember the experience, they would just need to get the benefit of new knowledge, or something that is beneficial. One could see this kicking off an evolution, maybe a branching, of the species. Those that can and those that can’t would stick to their own kind.
I’m pessimistic about the current human stock being able to take in the information at the rate that the supermind can dish it out. That bandwidth limitation you spoke of in class two weeks ago.
It is harder to see what the supermind gets in return, esp. if you posit that it is orders or magnitude more intelligent then we are. One idea I want to explore in my story, at live journal comiseverthng is loneliness and relationship. A great mind, no matter how great needs something of intelligence to bounce off of. This becomes very quickly a metaphor for God living in each of us, and I’m not sure have far in that direction you want to go, but clearly many of the suggestions pointed in that direction.
It would be easy, and maybe too cheap, to make the supermind deficient in some other quality like emotions that it gets from humans, i.e. the rush of uncontrolled feeling.

By: Juan Ortiz

Juan Ortiz — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 21:06:42 +0000

Is human mind reading implied?

By: RockRobertson

RockRobertson — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 19:52:25 +0000

Good Questions Indeed.
A lot of the interface will be seamless, I believe. With the ever-shrinking horizon of physical size and increasing computational power, even the stunglasses would be able to recognize your most subtle of movements as fully parsed commands. Heck, even the contact lenses can be smart by then.
As to diving in and out of the supermind, I like the overlay concept. Outside the mind, you’re the same old schlub you always are, but inside, you just _know_ more and have access to more people more intimately. Quoting pi to the 400th decimal place. It’s not all going to be affective knowlege, the current temp in Bartow, Fl. doesn’t really help.
And what about the amount of “you” that goes into the supermind, the “Krell” problem. Will I be rubbing against brains or genitalia? Hopefully there would be a “dirty laundry” filter that protects me against your experience with that goat in your reckless years. And vice versa.
The Ghost in the Shell TV series addresses a lot of these concepts.

By: Angus Glashier

Angus Glashier — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:18:14 +0000

The experience of connecting with this mind web will be like sitting in a lecture hall listening to a brilliant scientist explaining her ideas using only a lengthly stream of jargon. Some people will make the effort to understand, others will get bored and go surfing or something. Those who do make the effort probably won’t get any smarter than they would of if left to their own devices in a library. Like an old computer made of vacuum tubes, I don’t think the brain is built to handle such high bandwidth networking, but people will try anyway.

By: Steve H

Steve H — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 21:47:48 +0000

Rudy, do you remember Lafferty’s story “Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne?” The AI kept shaking its dummy head and saying “I forget how it goes. I have it filed in my main mind in England if you’re interested.” I suspect it would be more like that than drinking a bucket of LSD or Merging With The Infinite. If using this mega-network would turn me into someone else, a la Charlie Stross’ Vile Offspring, I wouldn’t use it. I work in a library full of books and computers, so I can find out anything just by looking it up. But when I’m home, where I don’t bother paying for internet, I have only my bookshelf. If I could log on mentally, google the info, and log off, it would be great. Did you read FOREVER PEACE by Haldeman, in which being logged on with others makes you more ethical whether you like it or not? Great idea, but I like being my own un-vastened self too much - no Borg Collective in my back yard.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 18:09:52 +0000

Good idea, Keith, that agents in the arphidnet would enjoy using our meat bodies. I have a theme like this in Frek and the Elixir.
One thing that’s occurring to me is that getting all these comments is, in its own way, a bit like plugging into the arphidnet supermind.
SF is, after all, often a way of getting some perspective on our current reality.
My story is getting longer, with all these great ideas.

By: Keith P. Graham

Keith P. Graham — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:54:28 +0000

I believe that you have to invert the question. People will not be jacking into devices that extend their intelligence. As you suggest, if computing devices are going to be so damn smart, why would they allow the poor folk to ride on them? (I am thinking of the centaurs in Madeline L’Engle’s books who don’t normally allow humans to ride on their backs; a concept borrowed by JK Rowling.)
I believe that what will happen is that intelligent entities will be riding around in human bodies in order to experience the richness of a biological sensorium. AI’s will have meat envy (sounds like an idea in one of that Rucker guy’s books). Humans will allow an AI to ride along, even make suggestions, in exchange for some helpful computing power. It may be that some AI’s actually possess their hosts in the demonic sense. A more ethical AI would give fair exchange for the ride.
The problem as to where an extended experience would be archived is an interesting one. Economics might control how much a human can afford to live extended in a network, rather than isolated in single skull. There would be a point, of course, where the negative experience of living in a rapidly aging body would induce one to jump to an experience entirely on the net, letting the body die, raising religious issues about where life ends.
A few years ago I wrote a story where an AI is murdered, but the AI’s original body, forgotten by all and kept around for sentimental reasons, wakes up with only a partial memory of the extended experience. The protagonist in my story seeks the help of “naturals” who do not extend themselves for religious or philosophical reasons and they actually solve the murder.
The mechanism for machine-human interface is not important. It will happen and it will involve some tricks that we might not be aware of today. This will be something that will appear magical or strange, but probably won’t be as mechanical as a large hair dryer type helmet with goggles. I would suspect it will be a biological device that is created from engineered DNA that grows secondary nerve fiber. I much prefer biological machines made from protein than nanotech. Making machines by having DNA assemble amino acids into protein devices is a time proven method that works quite well in living organisms. Assembling machines from carbon nano-fibers may never work.