io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 6:30 AM
Fri Dec 18
25 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz |
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders |
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner |
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis |
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan |
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier |
Ed Grabianowski |
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan |
Lauren Davis |
Chris Hsiang |
Lynn Peril |
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins |
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox |
Interns:
Tim Barribeau |
Julia Carusillo |
Alex Eichler |
Cyriaque Lamar |
Caitlin Petrakovitz |
Mary Ratliff |
Josh Snyder |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/03/09
There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is.
So... he's a fiction writer who doesn't give a shit about people? What kind of dumbass statement is that? That's WHAT LITERATURE IS. It's the absolute pinnacle of stupidity to criticize an art for being itself. It's like saying "christ, I wish peanut butter could get away from this myopic need to taste like peanuts".
What he wants to read and write sounds like speculative, non-fiction books about science and culture. Why doesn't he just do that, then? There's plenty of that in the world, and it's great!
Then he wouldn't have to sound like an idiot curmudgeon and I wouldn't have to type out why he sounds like an idiot curmudgeon. #books
11/02/09
Woo! #books
11/02/09
Whenever a new Egan book comes out, it's like a little piece of my Bizarro universe has slipped through into the normal universe. Maybe that other world's version of me is scouring bookstores for obscure Dan Brown novels and wondering why everyone cares so much about equations and shit... #books
11/02/09
But why with the hate of life before now? Sure, life in Earth's ecosystems can be competitive and cruel, but it's also infinitely diverse and cooperative, too. I'll never understand why so many people--even really smart people--miss that part and focus on the cruelty.
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/03/09
11/03/09
I don't think Egan was anthropomorphizing, and neither was I. But he used vivid, violent imagery talking about nature, and didn't leave much room for considering the wonder and beauty that exists along side the danger.
I could be wrong about that, but he goes on to say:
People with no interest in science are very well catered for in science fiction; 99% of SF is written for them. I make no apology for contributing to the 1% that treats science as something of interest in its own right.
The two statements combined tell me he's either fairly cynical (though he probably considers himself a hard realist), or he was in a bad mood when he gave the interview.
I remain fallibilistic as to these theories, of course. I have not met the man, and can't really judge him. But that's the impression I get from his statements.
None of this stopped me from enjoying Diaspora, the only piece of his writing that I've read. It was a great book, and I loved the notion that subtle changes in an otherwise barren planet's biochemistry would be as obvious a sign of alien intelligence as it would be if there were huge stone pyramids on its surface.
11/02/09
Just as an example, an AI built out of a quantum computer would evolve super-exponentially faster than humans have. #books
11/02/09
As for the fears concerning the AI, I consider those fears both as foolish and as serious as the fear towards other human beings. Yes, treated wrong an AI can indeed emerge as a sociopath, or otherwise demented, but in right circumstances it can show as much altruism as any of us. The mistake that people are making is seeing the AI as an alien Other that is incomprehensible and potentially malign, when the most likely example of an AI will be modelled after human consciousness, and raised in human-like environment, and can be expected to mirror the humanity both in good and ill.
And since the AI will probably a side-product in the research into improving the human mind artificially, I don't see it as a threat to human control over this planet, either. They'll be more advanced than we are now very quickly after their birth, but so will we. Only the Luddites refusing to upgrade are in any danger of obsolesence. #books
11/02/09
"Pay attention to what his opinion of brain-mapping is. I very much agree with him that the best way to approach the problem is to study the only current example of sentient life that we know, and extrapolate from there."
I think brain-mapping is a promising line of research in understanding the brain and the human mind, but I don't think it's necessarily the best, nor even necessarily the right, approach to achieving AI.
Just because we're sentient, it doesn't mean that how we got sentience is the only possible or the most efficient way to achieve it.
As for the terminator-like fears, it will be as it always is with any scientific advance: there are benefits and risks. #books
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
03/03/09
Sounds like a book for me! Time for a trip to the library!
03/03/09
03/03/09
Your description of Roi's people is very intriguing. Can you elaborate on "social arrangements are the opposite of what you'd expect among humans."?
03/03/09
Basically Roi's people have placed work and labor at the center of their emotional lives. They get "buzzed" by collaborative work. But they have no families - they mix seeds rather than mating as such, and lay eggs which other members of the group raise. All children are basically anonymized, so every child is the group's child. This creates a lot of interesting scenarios, which you'll have to read the book to find out about!
03/03/09
I've been scared off by Egan in the past, his characters seem rather impersonal to me and the math and postsingularity stuff really is hard for my squishy meatbrain to absorb. I'm more attracted to descriptions of alien biology and societies, so I might sample some of this to get to the tweedlebug parts.
Roi's world sounds like it evolved sentience from a hive model but developing individual consciousnesses. Interesting...
03/03/09
03/03/09
03/03/09
03/03/09
Riiiight.
03/03/09
03/03/09