POLL: If you could augment your intelligence, how far would you go?The poll's choices were:
Actually, I want to reduce my intelligence. Knowledge is a burden [ 1 ] [0.84%]
No thanks, I'm smart enough as it is [ 5 ] [4.20%]
I'd make myself as smart as Einstein [ 1 ] [0.84%]
I'd give myself super human intelligence but I'd keep some limitations so I could still be challenged [ 13 ] [10.92%]
I'd become smart enough to understand every concept that can be understood [ 88 ] [73.95%]
other (explain) [ 11 ] [9.24%]
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I tried to vote for "other", but couldn't, because the (no doubt) infallable software here informed me that I had "already voted in this poll". So much for my present level of intelligence! This is in line with my discouragement in the mid-1980's that a $35 Radio Shack chess game could unfailingly defeat me so long as I set the level above some particular point (I won't reveal how low that was; it's too embarrassing).
Nonetheless, I'm hopeful that with something better than a biological brain I'd be able to be a "better me", and given that no one edited my life-experience mindfiles on the way to that, I'd be happy for any improvements that could be made, however vast.
One thing that tickled me about the questionnaire was the idea of "understanding every concept that could be understood". This implies that concepts, phrased they are usually are, are even
worth understanding or (to put this in the most disparaging way possible) that "understanding them" might not mean developing an inescapable feeling of contempt for the mind that originated them. One example seems to me a classic illustration of this, and it has to do with Ayn Rand's position on free will.
I have a great deal of respect for this great lady, and am sad that she was not frozen when she died. For example, one of the most powerful (and as yet not widely recognized) ideas I'm indebted to her for is the use of the word "existence" vs. "universe". The latter term has spawned all kinds of chaotic (and for the most part incomprehensible or worse) concepts about "multiple universes", "many worlds", and even Carl Sagan fell prey to this in his speculations about "universes within atoms", etc. The term "existence", however, steps neatly around this. "Existence exists," Ayn Rand said, "And only Existence exists!" Yes, I know, we can hear these words being spoken by Nathanial Branden, but Ayn Rand has them in a novel somewhere or something close enough to it for any practical purpose. This is very clean thinking, given the limitations we have by using any of the many human languages with which we are now stuck.
On the other hand, when it came to free will, Ayn Rand got trapped. She couldn't give it up, and she couldn't reconcile it with either strict or sloppy causality. To her, free will represented a possibility of choosing moral action over immoral action, and she couldn't see how deterministic behavior could be moral. I won't get into explaining how that could be, because it would take up too much time here, but Ayn Rand (again, we can hear Nathanial Brandon speaking, but it's her thinking behind him) said that free will depended on "causal primaries". They didn't leave interpretation of this up to your imagination. A sentence or two later, it was explained that "a causal primary is an event in man's brain having to do with man's consciousness that has no causal antecedants." Really! We're to rest the whole of morality on the idea that something can happen in our brain which has no causal basis? This has to be one of the most embarrassing corners anyone has ever painted their way into, and yet, it is such a small flaw in the context of all the other really great things she created that one has to simply acknowledge that it is possible to stumble once in awhile and move on.
So, "understanding every concept" may not really be a very good way of describing merit in terms of intellectual function, unless it is framed in a better grid of interrelationships itself. And the choices of lesser mentality are there for those whose thought processes are so painful and troublesome to them as to be wished away, if it were possible, so that by being dumber one might be happier? OK, there are times when that point of view has been expressed, too. Once, while going through engineering school, I found myself on a date with a nursing student who was very happy with this way of thinking about things. She told me proudly that one of her high school teachers had told them (and she took this seriously) that they were lucky, because they would never have any psychological problems. When she (the teacher) was asked, "Why?" she was supposed to have replied, probably without screwing her face up into a sarcastic expression, "Because you're just far too simple, that's why!" And, this was taken literally and in a positive way, by this nursing student. As you can presume, this date did not lead to any long term romantic relationship.
So, where am I going with this choice of more intellect or less, as a goal? I guess at the moment I'd have to say that "more is better", and that it had better be "orchestrated with the goal of being networked with others who have resolved to treat each other fairly in a highly defined way", or the outcomes could be disastrous, as warned by Ray Kurzweil in his "The Singularity is Near" and by Howard Bloom in his books "The Lucifer Principle" and "Global Brain". The idea of a "hard AI takeoff" where the self-conscious cyberbeings are reflections of "how we are now" is so bleak as to make movies like "Terminator" and "Matrix" (by comparison) seem like stories of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. If we don't seriously reconstruct our personalities before we equip them with super-high performance mental capacities, we'll have the kind of society where water guns have been replaced by paint ball guns launching compact tactical nuclear weapons. It will be a bad day for us all!
By now, hopefully most of you have given up on me, but I've been holding in the Windows clipboard the contents of a webpage URL'd
http://www.lifepact.com/Imachild.htm, where the text portion is this (now I'll paste it in):
I Am A Child
by Fred Chamberlain
(April 1970 – Revised January 2002)
[Note: The term “man” below is intended to include both sexes, particularly inasmuch as it may well turn out that women have higher leadership potential than men over the next several centuries, as a result of their greater natural capacities to nurture and network.]
I am a child - among infants who call themselves adults and imagine that their years of growth have passed. I will remain a child because to mature is to prepare for death, and my goal is life.
The purpose of life is survival. The weed and the Sequoia both survive, but somehow there is a difference. Man, being self conscious, can work to alter his nature.
The man with the stature of a weed can seek to become like a Sequoia. The man with the stature of a Sequoia can seek to become anything he can comprehend. But the infant who calls himself an adult seeks nothing.
What interaction do I seek with regard to others?
Besides exchanging my work for theirs, I seek to help them grow. I will use my strength to maximum advantage, to increase the growth of others to the greatest extent for each minute of my time invested.
I do not seek to help those who cannot benefit from my help - perhaps I can benefit from theirs. I do not seek to help those who do not want my help - there are too many others who do want it. I do not seek to help those who exploit or damage others. Survival does not lie that way. I do not seek to teach first grade if I am geared for teaching at a high school level.
I seek most to help those who wish to deal with me freely, without coercion. Their growth can only increase the fruition of our relationship, and they do not threaten my freedom to pursue my own values.
Today, I swap apples for oranges. Tomorrow, perhaps I will trade materials extracted from a planet's core for products manufactured in the corona of the Sun.
Today I help children to learn about the pitfalls of dependency, the limitations of independence and the potential of interdependent synergy. Perhaps tomorrow I can help other children to develop further potentialities of networking along the lines suggested in Paolo Soleri’s “City in the Image of Man” .
Beyond all, my goal is life. For the time being, I will fight biological aging, but - I will not become an adult; I will never mature; I am a child.
Additional note, 12/22/2009. This set of thoughts from long ago now mirrors the image of a future that I see evolving along the lines suggested in "The Terasem Truths".
Edited by boundlesslife, 25 March 2010 - 07:54 AM.
LongeCity
