Neil Postman hypothesized once that the demise of mankind would not be Orwellian - our future masters would not oppress us and force us to a life of suffering and fear. Rather, he believed our end would be Huxleyan - we would die due to stagnancy, a life of pleasure and avoidance of conflict. This was one of the major reasons I wanted to read this piece. (Note, Postman was arguing that our mediation was destroying out society). Huxley's writing confused me at first - mostly a jumbling of notes about how babies are birthed by the hundreds, delivered in a tone that had the same effect of "how many jellybeans in that jar?" The concept of class separation was fairly ingenious by the greek alphabet, but overall what shocked me the most was the Fordian concept of existance. Everyone's favorite Anti-semite makes an appearance in this text to remind us of the striking pain of efficiency in a modern society. Like a machine that is too well oiled, its only purpose becomes to sustain itself. Is this enough in our world? Eventually, it would appear as if we should run out of a way to support and create life - a natural cycle. When defied, it should shatter. Huxley dares us to see what would happen if it didn't.

Even though there wasn't much happening, I think that this part of Brave New World was still interesting. The controller’s perspective on their society & ours made me think about how both of our societies (real & in the book) would find each other repugnant. I think that this shows how, if we are to have any idea of absolute truth, we have to find an objective, as opposed to relativistic, perspective to judge societies by, if we are going to judge them. I agree with Cory that, really, just because they accept themselves doesn't mean that they are right- by that definition, we should not even condemn human sacrifice or the Spanish Inquisition.

The one thing that makes me think that their society (objectively) might not be good is their homogeneity- even if they are happy, while happiness is important, maybe free will is necessary for that to mean much. However, this raises a good question- if the desires for happiness and free will are just evolutionary adaptations, than what is to say that it is wrong to genetically manipulate these desires in people, and if the new desires that they have are satisfied, how is that worse than if these desires were the product of evolution. I don't really know how to think of that, but I think that it certainly seems relevant, with modern cloning technology & genetic modification already used on plants & some animals.

I enjoyed the story The Proud Robot because it seemed more realistic than the other stories we’ve read because the reactions that Ghallager and Joe have to each other seem more realistic with bursts of emotion than the well thought out philosophical arguments that characters from other stories have with each other. This story also seemed like it was kind of like a detective story where Ghallager was trying to figure out what he made Joe for and how he could get him to do what he wanted, and he used a sort of philosophical reasoning in order to see into Joe’s subconscious.
It seemed ironic that after trying for the whole story and trying over and over again to find out what exactly Joe’s purpose was that it turned out that Joe was only a sophisticated can opener. I thought that this gave the most prominent message of the story, where Joe and Ghallager represent humanity attempting to figure out what the purpose of we as humans and individuals are and in the end the author is trying to say that our purpose is really insignificant. It’s kind of a dark thought.
The message on subconscious was kind of confusing and I didn’t completely understand what he was saying. When Joe hypnotized himself he was able to experience new senses, so I assume that when we loose our reasoning and live only in our subconscious that we can experience the world in a new and different way with almost limitless knowledge (since this is how Ghallager does his best inventing). Someone commented on how it was confusing that when Ghallager found out Joe’s purpose that Joe became his servant, but Ghallager says that he built into Joe’s subconscious that when this happened that Joe would become his slave and obey him, which makes us question whether our subconscious can also contain parts of us that we cannot control.

Like Iona, I got a packet with only 'The Proud Robot' in it, so I think that I have missed something as well. Does anybody know if there was a second packet or if the packet was supposed to contain 'Microcosmic God'?
I thought that 'The Proud Robot' was the funniest piece that we have read so far. The character of Gallegher was pretty entertaining, and Brock's & Kennicott's attempts at communicating with him were funny. But I don't think that the story was very profound in the way it raised philosophical questions. Until I reached the end I kept on trying to find somthing by reading into it. Even when Joe started talking about the subconcious it seemed almost inconsiquential. So I'm not really sure what to think about it. The story was amusing, but in the end, to drawn out in the begining & middle, and it doesn't do much to explore the issues it raised.

So what if MacGyver was an alcoholic? The Proud Robot, as Cory noted, was a rather peculiar character. When we discuss the notions of what a human being is, and if this robot meets this criteria, it's very possible that Henry Kuttner is making a very sly remark on mankind through this robot who is vain, extremely reckless, and generally careless. To our observer's eyes, Joe appears very gruesome and crude, "like an old subway" while he thinks himself perfect and beautiful. Within his own subjective view, he finds himself to be the image of God, something that is above other's creations, though intrinsically very flawed. It reminded me a lot of QT, except as written by an inebriated Asimov. Are humans, all things perceived as beautiful only within their own perspective? Or is this simply a criticism on the human belief of universal supremacy? Joe seems to be a quintessential objectivist, as he finds beauty to be the "sixth sense". Frankly, I think all this objectivity stuff is a bunch of bunk. The senses are poor channels, but they are the only ones.

As for Microcosmic God...it's sort of ridiculous. Or "characteristically unorthodox" as they say it. The story seemed sort of cliche, but that's only from my watchings of Twilight Zone or the Simpsons.

The big question I have from this peice is, of course, how frighteningly dark the nature of created civilization is. That wasn't a very good question.

I thought that the ideas in the reading about being able to test a robot on "humanity" was interesting, but I have to disagree somewhat about it. For one thing, what really makes a human different from a robot that can pass the test? We really draw the line by deciding what is alive, but people have always strugled with finding a good definition of "life". An adaptive, reproducing machine could furfil all of the requirments that are conventionally included in the defenition of life. However, even beyond this, what is the difference between simulating the type of thought that makes us human and actually posessing this thought? Maybe we just "simulate" thought extremely well, to the point of not being able to distinguish it from "real" thought. And isn't assigning meaningfullness to "humanity" rather arbitrary. For example, some apes that do sign language might exibit more evidence of inteligence than newborn babies, so how do we diffine which of these are human? Furthermore, maybe computers are actually more "advanced" than humans. It is possible that, a some time in this millennium, we will develop a computer that will be indistinguishable (mentally) from a human, but no human could replicate the comutational abilities of supercomputers- even a prodigy. And what if- by observing minor indicators in voice, facial positions, gestures, etc, a computer was better than determining if a human was lying than a biological human- than the test might just be useless.

When I read Imposter it didn’t make me wonder about how complex computers can become or not, but seemed like it was a story that focused more on memory (like We Can Remember It For You Wholesale). So far in the stories that we’ve read it has questioned reality and mainly our surroundings, but in this story the main character is not living in a false world that is out to harm or deceive him, but is in fact the complete opposite. Olham is in fact in the world that he believes but is instead his own enemy, and ironically an essential part of his existence is to deceive himself and keep himself from knowing who he truly is. This story is similar to the other Phillip K. Dick story A Scanner Darkly which deals with a man who has two separate lives and sets of memories and must “spy” on himself to know who he truly is in his other life. So far we have come to the conclusion that we cannot trust our surroundings but with stories such as these, we now cannot even trust ourselves for fear that we will always simply be deceiving ourselves. Therefore it would seem as if the only thing that we can believe is that we exist, which is the most basic law of philosophy.

As for the topic of artificial intelligence, it was interesting to read the argument made for and against the possibility of it. The characters make interesting points, saying that artificial intelligence is like a simulated hurricane and that if one was to be within the simulation the hurricane would be for all points and purposes “real”. Though it is essentially no more than a simulation of intelligence, it can still appear to be real (like the simulated hurricane) however this means that the idea of artificial intelligence relies on your interpretation of “reality”. Like the Matrix, artificial intelligence is only a “simulation”, however as we had decided in class, it is not real. However, before knowing that the world was simply a program when we first watched the movie, I’m sure that everyone assumed that the world being portrayed was reality. This means that Perhaps artificial intelligence is only artificial because we can knowingly compare it to actual human reasoning and intelligence.

Although there is the argument that even a simulation of intelligence is realistic enough to be actual intelligence. Actual intelligence is based upon several factors, knowledge, an ability to apply knowledge, information, reasoning, emotion, and most likely more that I’m forgetting. The point is that computers may be able to have reasoning (or at least the ability to compute statistics) along with these other factors, however it seems doubtful that computers can actually have human emotion. Not just imitate the physical reactions caused by joy in humans, but actually feel joy or sorrow or anger, or love because one may argue that it is only hormones and various chemicals within the brain that cause emotion and technically any emotion can actually be “created” within machines. It is too difficult for me to argue this point either way, seeing as how the creation of emotion has never been accomplished so the actual possibility of it is not for me to argue (I tried but ended up confusing myself).
I suppose we can never know if artificial intelligence is true or not, since we have established that we can never know anything beyond our own senses, therefore we can never feel emotions for a computer and no one beyond the computer can ever truly know if it can feel pleasure or pain. So after all of this I’ve determined that I cannot determine anything and will only end up where I began.

I thought that Imposter was interesting for the points that it raised and as a story, but I think that it had some plot holes. For one thing, if these aliens are capable of using a U-bomb the size of a person to apparently destroy a world, why didn't they just send one in a probe to earth to blow it up. Also, if they thought that Olham could be set off by a verbal phrase, then why did the officers arresting him talk to him?

Even if it did take a contrived plot to do it, I think that Dick did raise some good questions. Really, I think that Olham's situation is the ultimate conflict of interest. On the one hand, he wants to protect himself, and even more, his entire mental conception of who he is. On the other, one would think that, at least if he took Peters and the others seriously, he would want to protect humanity from destruction. Considering what people will do in extreme situations, I suppose that it is rather realistic that he would refuse to consider that he might be a robot-bomb at first, though. One would really have to emotionally detatch oneself from that situation in order to deal with that realization without going insane. Then again, he would have to consider the possibility that his mental processes were changed by the aliens, so maybe he cannot even trust them- and if he cannot trust himself, others, or anything that he thinks- that he can think- than what can he do?

P.S.- sorry about posting this late, but I lost my copy, couldn't find the text on the internet, and spent about an hour looking for it until I finally found it.

Turing Machines, U-Bombs, and yes, the obligatory hyper sensory savant. This must be philosophy + science fiction. Philip K. Dick presents more questions about machines in this piece, but most of the topics seem to revolve around the same things we've seen in all of his writings. There is uncertainty, and the question of memory being a great deceptor, but what sets this piece apart is the general sense of terror and hysteria that is caused during wartime. Surprisingly psychological, if you ask me. There is an extreme feeling of paranoia that comes in considering that perhaps realizing you are the planet's greatest threat to its own existence. Worse still that saying your own name causes its destruction. However, this raises an interesting question. If he concludes that he cannot be himself, who then does he conclude he is that causes the bomb to trigger? Does the robot's identity rise to the surface when his host's memory becomes compromised? If we were to find unquestionable evidence that we were not ourselves, would our true identities become clear?

A final note on robots before moving on to clearly the most interesting piece of the three. I've had experience working with Turing Machines and tests this past summer at the University of Chicago, so it was a special treat to find references to materials I had worked with. It is an exceptionally hard concept to grasp, that is the fact that we can represent with paper and pen the processes that computers and machines go through even with simple tests to compute a language. If my brain hurt so hard from trying to make it compute the string "1979" then what chance could we have to create fully capable robots. I don't think they're coming in this lifetime, and if they do, there better be an awesome explanation how.

Funes is the most interesting character we've met in Science Fiction this year. He's your typical case of the "Daredevil" Archtype who loses one capability to become infinitely more sensitive to another. What is fascinating about him is his desire to manifest his beliefs about the constantly changing world through creating a separate language. This is the first case of tangible response to existential doubts we've seen. He doubts the world is always as we see it, so he changes his tongue to account for this. Sure, perhaps he's crazy, but he's the only crazy so far who has made their beliefs really hit where we are the most expressive: in our mouths.

Oh, and then there's the obvious Turing Machine / Constantly changing language connection. Curious? I think so.