Comment by l33tbro
2 days ago
Doesn't really make much sense. It states that this is a purely mechanistic world with no emotion. So why would a machine be "bored" and wish to create a human?
2 days ago
Doesn't really make much sense. It states that this is a purely mechanistic world with no emotion. So why would a machine be "bored" and wish to create a human?
Yea, not really. It also writes:
"Some among the machine society see this as potentially amazing...Others see it as a threat."
That sounds like a human society, not machine society.
But what really is a machine society? Or a machine creature? Can they actually "think"?
A machine creature, if it existed, it's behaviour would be totally different from a human, it doesn't seem they would be able to think, but rather calculate, they would do calculation on what they need to do reach the goal it was programmed.
So yes, the article is not exactly logical. But at least, it is thought provoking, and that's good.
> it doesn't seem they would be able to think, but rather calculate
This may be a distinction without a difference. Just because a program has a 'goal' doesn't mean it will ever reach that goal (halting problem). There is a potentially unbounded, even infinite number of paths a significantly advanced program can take to attempt to reach a destination. Then there is things like ideals of a universal simulation theory that anything that can occur in our universe and also be simulated in binary. This would mean any 'machine' could perform a simulation of anything a human could do.
Hard to say at this point, we still have more to learn about reality at this point.
For a decent description of machine society you can check the Culture cycle form Ian Banks. AI are backing an organic society but they are also have their own.
Or Hyperion, fron Simmons. ( the « techno-center is a decentralized computing and plotting government)
The story to me implied that machines were created by humans or vice-versa in a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. In that case it would make sense for them to think similarly.
> That sounds like a human society, not machine society.
Does it? Different algorithms can evaluate something and come to different outcomes. I do agree that "potentially amazing" is not a good choice of words.
I think we are supposed to just gloss over those bits and enjoy the rest of the story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief
I see it as an anthropomorphized word for the story. I imagine the machines run out of tasks with high or even low priority, but they still generate tasks at some epsilon priority that are close but not quite to random. That's a kind of boredom.
My headcanon is that "boredom" and "fear" are probabilities in a Markov chain - since it's implied the machine society is not all-knowing, they must reconcile uncertainty somehow.
How would a machine know that it doesn't know?
Experience of encountering things that were previously unknown unknowns would teach it of the general existence of such things.
Probably by comparing what it experiences to what it can explain.
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It would be rational for them to have some level of a "novelty-seeking" drive, in order to avoid getting stuck at a local maximum.
yeah, more on the environmental constraints and where the machines even come from would be nice
> There is no emotion. There is no art. There is only logic
also this type of pure humanism seems disrespectful or just presumptuous, as if we are the only species which might be capable of "emotion, art and logic" even though we already have living counterexamples
I felt it difficult to continue with the story after that. If you're going to say, "Imagine, for a moment, a world with no humans" and mention walking the streets, then you have to assume the reader is going to think of our world, but with no humans. And then "There is no emotion" doesn't make sense. If you're going to say there are no humans, then why aren't you saying that there are no other living beings? So anyway, I found it hard to connect with the story right off the bat. I was off-putting in some way for sure.
Disrespectful? Of whom? It's a work of fiction. There's really no need to find something to offend you wherever you look.
of other animals
but yeah I'm not sure that was the right word, just seems wrong. basically humanism seems like racism but towards other species. I guess speciesist?
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