It seems like a lot of people, and most of the story for that matter, have focused on the tennability of arresting people for crimes that they have yet to commit, but I think that there might be another, more important issue. Since, unlike in the movie, it seems that the precogs can detect any or almost any crime, then it is virtually impossible to commit crimes in this society. And, if the state can define whatever a crime is, than it seems that precognition presents the ultimate tool for the creation of a total state- one where any commision of a proscribed act could be stopped before it happened- resistance would be stopped before it occured. Really, it seems like, due to that potential, precognition is to much power for anyone to have.

I think that this ties in to a part of the main plot- whether people in their society have free will. Even if the state justly defines crimes (for example, making the proscription of the excersize of fundamental freedoms and irrevocable crime, regardless of anything like a constitutional amendment that could change other legal provisions, thus stopping totalitarianism before it starts), I think that it is important that people have the free will to commit crimes, even if they will suffer the consiquences. One of the most important elements of humanity is the ability to control your own destiny- sort of like with BNW, I don't think that you can prohibit self-destructive actions, even on the level of an entire societies.

P.S.- sorry about the time. I just noticed that I had only saved this post as a draft- I thought that I had published it, but I just saw that it wasn't up on the page. Good thing I noticed!

I don't see why Precrime isn't efficient.
The concept of precrime isn't to decide a person's future for them and then imprison them for it. Precrime does not effect how a person will react to something, it only shows how they will react in the future of their own free will (if you were to video tape a baseball game and watch the tape later, you would already know how the players would react to different events in the game, but you would not personally be involved in those decisions).

In the case of Anderton, he knew the future that he would create, therefore he could make a consious decision to not accept that future (though, ironically, he ends up accepting it anyway). However, according to the Precogs, Anderton would only commit the murder after seeing the "majority report". I think that the system would be more efficient if the precrime system operated with telling the criminals what they were going to do in order to allow them the conscious choice of avoiding it, then, the precogs' reports would be examined to see what the outcome would be after telling the criminal, and if they were still going to commit the murder then he could be arrested.

Overall i thought it was an interesting story, it was slightly confusing at parts and too wordy, but it had a better plot than the movie, which i don't remember even explaining what the minority report was, maybe i was too young to remember.

Sam Devenport

For the justice system as depicted in “Minority Report” to be valid, there needs to be one crucial presupposition: the future is unchangeable, that events that have yet to happen are inevitable, that there is an established and unstoppable sequence of reality that is ultimately very similar to the notion of fate. Similarly, there would be no free will, no ability for an individual to make his own decisions and consequently choose his own destiny. Though there it is difficult to propose a formal argument that might be able to disprove such a world (and, conversely, support one with free will among other things), it is such a discouraging way of things that to even entertain the possibility that we today have no influence in what we do or become years from now is far too unsettling to even consider. Like the concept of predestination, which subjects those not favored or chosen to a life made miserable by the knowledge that, after their time spent on Earth, they will be condemned to an eternity (which is, of course, considerably longer than the half century spent toiling away in the living world) in the pits of Hell, the realization that nothing can be done, whether redemptive or preventive, to salvage one’s future does little to encourage the prospect of the rest of one’s life. In fact, it encourages nothing but paranoia as man lives under the oppression of the knowledge that he could, at any moment, be apprehended and punished for something that they knew nothing about. Further more, it destroys the philosophy of justice, which is, in essence, a two step process; first, a crime, whether in moral or legal terms, is committed, followed by the intervention of some higher authority, who punishes the committer with an appropriate sentence corresponding directly to the severity of grievance. To remove the crime breaks all the logic, regardless of how effective the method is.

The fundamental question of Minority Report is central to the theme of justice we've been discussing in classm - is crime necessary for a Just society? On one hand, you've got the dilemma of precrime - are they really guilty if they've never committed the crime, nor actually done it? Or more pertinently, the question of when meditation of a crime becomes as incriminating as committing it. The text seems to suggest that we do need robbers, murderers, even rapists to have justice in this world. Though the awful things they do will still continue to pass, when the people are brought to justice, they will be receiving a punishment that actually fits the crime. So a cautionary society, where people are brought up to fear the consequences of their actions, though ineffective in stopping crime, is great when it comes to actually being responsive to true crime. When you prevent crime from ever happening, you really make any action jeopardized in its possibility to criminalize.

The ending of the story seemed like a copout - it justifies murder to show that the system does work? Though I thought the three minority report conclusion was sort of clever, I believe the question above brings the concept of justice into further obscurity - as most good science fiction works do.

Ideas on our most recent discussion: Is the society of BNW just?

Defining the abstract of justice requires rather bluntly a lot of guts. I feel very hesitant to put together words on the subject, but feel it's necessary to compile some ideas before commenting on this issue. The qualities of a just society so far that I have seen include that it musn't infringe upon the rights of people to do as they please so long as what they please does not interfere with others' rights. It reminds me a lot of those classic Asimov three laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Except it should read something like that, except with freedom being the main key, as opposed to survival or murder. We should also follow the rules of a just society as a robot does. Humans : Robots :: Just Government : Just Citizens.

It's sort of a weird response, but as we've seen, robots and humans are really terribly tight. Basically, justice is entirely dependent on people not screwing around with other people, but still being able to do whatever they desire. In this sense, I cannot possibly argue that BNW isn't just. After all, people really don't mess around with the other Castes, and aren't aware of other pleasures outside of their rank. If you never knew higher things existed, you would never desire them, and thus you pass the justice test.

We desire condemnation of this society, because we more or less assume we can see the big picture of society. In BNW, there is still a fairly large amount of wool over the eyes. Thus, the people, though harvested, ignorant, and linear in existence still live a just existence. They do as they are told, are able to find simple pleasures, and continue to live. But what of that five-tiered system of self-actualization? I still think this society does not meet this test: do people ever really feel true pleasure, or just simulated happiness? Is true happiness required for self-actualization, and does this produce justice?

Great, more questions than answers.

by Sam Devenport
(obviously)


The one aspect of Brave New World that manages to strike me on a consistent basis is the population's choice in deity. This itself is of course a somewhat inaccurate phrasing: few, if any, of the individuals in Brave New World are gifted with the opportunity of choice in serious matters. What I mean, instead, is the God and the subsequent religion (though the specifics of the latter are left rather unacknowledged), the ones that have been imposed, assumedly, by the architects that designed and constructed the crooked world illustrated in the book.
Fairly early on in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley gives an unavoidably dubious explanation of history, describing the elaborate developments that eventually lead to the destruction of society and the reemergence of an entirely different one, and in doing so confirms what references to familiar characters and contexts might have already suggested: that his world, the world depicted in his book, is in fact the same as ours if only many years later. This was a reassuring development, lending a little clarity to what I felt was insofar an extended romp through the possibilities of the mind to conjure unsettling fantasy. It also helps to clarify the frequent allusions to "Ford", who apparently serves as god for all individuals. Soon we realize that this "Ford" is in fact Henry Ford, the founder and creator of the Ford motor company made infamous in the early 20th century for its phenomenal performance in business.

Of course it feels at first ridiculous, almost comical-for us, Henry Ford was nothing more than a corporate mogul, and a somewhat unlettered and ignorant one at that. Admittedly, his accomplishments are commendable, even revolutionary, but for many his significance fails to transcend the smudge of black on the page of a textbook. What becomes soon enough apparent is how pertinent the individual Henry Ford is to the individuals in Brave New World. The most notable quality was Ford's knack for ultra-efficiency: he pioneered the assembly line, for instance, a supreme example of production efficiency in history. It is this same sensitivity to efficiency that serves as the foundation of society in Brave New World. The result, of course, is a quiet dystopia, one that is, by all conventional standards, frighteningly flawless, but in reality aggressively banal and oppressive. In the lives of the characters in the novel, there is little uncertainty and thus very little room for diversity. Existence is preconceived and inflexibly executed. There is little suffering, little pain and little insecurity and little doubt. And though this might at first feel idealistic, there is a nagging doubt that there might be some aspect of living, some ineffable quality of life that is lost or neglected in this seemingly perfect process.

The Brave New World is essentially the world, as it would exist if people slowly began to remove any types of restraints from their lives. It is a world with almost total freedom given to its inhabitants. Sexual promiscuity is encouraged throughout life, giving no restraint in that sense, when something is old, people will just simply replace it, the inconvenience of actually having to know how something works is removed and instead people only have to know simple operations (pushing buttons, knowing numbers, etc.) in order to do any real “work”, and all games are extremely interactive to make people do something at all times. Then, for everything that cannot be completely controlled and may complicate life, citizens have soma which can make them happy again and completely oblivious of the outside events. The point that Huxley is trying to get across by this is that while we would assume that a world with total freedom and no work would be a utopia, it can only survive through ignorance and reverting to an animalistic state, only truly unique due to the fancy technology that they possess.
It is interesting to note that the world is meant to be a utopia where there is only pure pleasure and bliss, but that bliss can only be obtained through ignorance (“ignorance is bliss”); ignorance not only towards knowledge, but also towards emotion and restraint. The people of the Brave New World are all pushed away from emotion throughout their lives, initially by making them all a part of a national “collective population” rather than a part of a small family. Then, by supporting sexual promiscuity, societies looks down on monogamy and therefore love at all, which is exceedingly difficult to practice if one is changing “lovers” every week. Then, if a citizen does happen to feel emotion, it is seen as being abnormal and frightening, and soma is used to dull the senses and make the person happy again (though it is debatably whether they are happy in the same way that we today can be happy, seeing as their senses have been dulled. It is more likely that the people just do not feel sorrow or anger of fear).
It is also interesting how “soma” is the name of the Hindu god/drink (soma is both the god and the drink at the same time), which provided “spiritual excitement” to its drinker, and Hinduism is very supportive of the Caste system, such as the one used by the Brave New World. The Caste system also shows how the citizens are ignorant. Obviously the same joy that a delta feels is not the same as the joy that an alpha feels, since a delta gains joy from seemingly plain things, such as the roof. Since the deltas are experiencing happiness from things that do not “deserve” to produce happiness, this would mean that the alphas could possibly be ignorant to “true” happiness also (or, quite possibly we today are ignorant to true happiness as well).

Well, I thought that this part of Brave New World was very interesting. It seems that it showed the perfect total state, and really the most frightening vision of the future I have ever seen. In virtually every totalitarian senario, real or fictional, it seems that there has at least been the potential of people overthrowing their government. But, if like in BNW, humans can be genetically engineered & socially conditioned, then their instincts could be changed, so that they would have no urge to free themselves. Even the social conditioning seems to have the potential to do this, at least partially- if you look at what groups like the Khmer Rouge did, people can be conditioned to totally ignore their moral instincts. I agree with Eitan that the people and their society seemed fake, but ultimatly, all society & civilization is fake- an artificial construct. I think that their society's diametrical opposition to ours is what really makes it seem so fake. In the end, I think that this is the real danger to the modern world. If we loose all perspective, we really could become as bad as the Khmer Rouge, or the Nazis, or the people of Brave New World. I mean, if any of these groups had taken over the entire world, would people have really kept on trying to oppose them after some point? If they had known nothing but a world where everything else, like our world, was portrayed as perverse and "fake", would they know to do so?
-Tim

Well, Brave New World seems to have all of the wonderful qualities of a haunting new social order book. We see the meeting of certain extremes, and the results of such reactions can be violent. Like adding too much acid to a base, or something along that order. I should've paid more attention in chemistry. We see many polar opposites as thematic qualities in this novel: decadance against struggle, knowing too much against knowing nothing at all, ignorance, and information. It reminded me much of the classic philosophical question of whether one would be a happy fool or a tortured wiseman. The question here, of whether to be doped up on Soma for all existence or to be horrified at the condition of the world as The Savage seems too much to bear.

Shakespeare served as a rather interesting motif through the novel - it seems that Huxley used him less as a symbol of what the truest quality of literature is, and more as a vehicle. We're able to relate certain plot points and association through Othello, or Hamlet, or Romeo & Juliet, etc. In a sense, the novel ends like Hamlet - everyone's in a much worse place than when they began (arguably). Or at the least, disturbingly different. We could consider that perhaps this is what Huxley meant by using Shakespeare after all - his works truly encompass what is the human motivation and drive to existence.

So to follow up a question from this blog: I don't see why the people in the community cannot be considered humans. The reason we have no desire, or even inkling of liking for the poor creatures is because of their extreme ignorance. We like to think we are always informed, and we like staying within the know. Doesn't it feel a bit alarming to be the last person to know something's happened? We don't have the option to simply medicate ourselves into the ground whenever we're feeling bad, because we're somehow above that. Which isn't to say we aren't capable of it.

And so we come back again to the question of the end of the world: will we struggle against cruel, or surprisingly accomodating oppressors? I don't know what the best response to the old philosophical conundrum is, but I do know that there are some days I'd rather just take some soma and forget about it all.

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.