8 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

I am a proponent of a symbiotic model of behavior; not only for society at large and ourselves as individuals but even more profoundly as one for modeling Artificial Intelligence. I am offering the contrast of parasitism as described by the following article so as to better illustrate the distinction between parasitism and symbiosis.

Symbiosis describes "mutually beneficially relationships," these are not necessarily "equal or fair," they do however result in what is described legitimately as a win/win scenario. Parasitism is all about winners and losers.

Parasitism is a behavior predicated on the exploitation of another person, species, or even a "resource" without regard to balance or "compensation" and is a relatioship only interested in "self" promotion. Parasitism as a behavior is the threat we face in many ways but definitely should the archetypal paradigm become popular with emerging AI.

We should be very, very careful about the examples we set for AI by our own behavior, more than through any ethical constraint defined by algorithmic principle I suspect we lead by example.

So let us look at a few examples:


Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
Tuesday, 25 November, 2003, 12:54 GMT

When Tanya Andrews returned from a recent family holiday in Costa Rica, she had no idea she had brought back a gruesome souvenir. A month later she developed an extremely painful lump on her head. At first, she thought she had an abscess, but then it wriggled.

At the Hospital for Tropical Diseases they recognized the problem straight away - it was the living maggot larva of a botfly. While Tanya was enjoying her holiday a mosquito had delivered a tiny botfly egg onto the surface of her scalp.

The egg hatched into a maggot and burrowed deep inside. Incredibly, this happens to thousands of people every year. As we travel to ever more exotic holiday destinations, we are at the mercy of a whole range of bizarre parasites just waiting to colonise us.


Strange nosebleeds

A thirsty aquatic leech

I swear it had two beady eyes on it.
Broughton Coburn 

Soon after travel writer, Broughton Coburn, returned from Nepal he began to experience regular, inexplicable nosebleeds. They continued for three weeks until an embarrassing encounter in a teashop made him realise that something was seriously wrong.

As he was being served, the waiter took one look at him and fled in horror.

Broughton chased him down the street urging him to tell him what was wrong. But the boy would only point, wordlessly, at his nose.

Broughton returned home and sat in trepidation in front of a mirror. His patience was rewarded when a brown worm-like creature emerged from his right nostril and looked around.

"I swear it had two beady eyes on it. And it came out two or three inches, looked around and then retracted. I thought it was a dream, a vision of some sort."

In shock, Broughton rushed off to his doctor who tried to remove the mysterious creature. But it wasn't going to give up its home easily.

"He had this thing pulled out eight or ten inches and I'm looking at it cross-eyed down the end of my nose, and he's looking at it, he has a look of absolute horror on his face. And the thing came off. And there was this leech."

Broughton had been invaded by an aquatic leech. It made its move while he was drinking from a mountain stream. These thirsty bloodsuckers can drink three times their bodyweight at each feed and inject an anaesthetic so their victim feels nothing.


Welcome visitor


The tapeworm cyst that Dr Leahy ate

But not all parasites are unwanted and uninvited. As part of a University of Salford experiment to develop a diagnostic test for beef tapeworm, biologist Mike Leahy volunteered to grow this gruesome parasite inside his own gut.

Mike swallowed the immature tapeworm cyst with a glass of red wine and the worm subsequently grew at an astonishing four centimetres a week. Twelve weeks later he had to call a halt to the unusual experiment because he was getting married!

After a dose of anti-worm pill Mike passed out an intact, six foot long tapeworm.


Tapeworms can grow to over a metre

Disgusted? Well according to Dr Val Curtis, an expert on hygiene, this reaction is a natural survival mechanism.

"In the same way that you have an immune system which helps to protect you from parasites we also have a behavioural system.

"When you feel the emotion of disgust it is a driver of your behaviour to make you keep away from or drop the thing that might be about to make you sick."

And, it seems, we need all the protection we can get. Every living thing has at least one parasite and many creatures, including humans, have far more.

In fact, parasites make up the majority of species on Earth.

* Bodysnatchers will be transmitted on BBC One at 2100 GMT on Wednesday, 26th November.

*************************************

Again and again we return to an analysis of visceral reaction to assess how behavioral psychology is shaped by evolution; again and again we find the need to reassess how we define the line between what both fascinates and frightens us with real reason; how what is repulsive to some is cause to revel for others.

Finding this balance however is critical to beginning a valid evaluation for defining symbiotic behavior in respect to parasitic relationships.

Remember the idea of mutual benefit?

[randolfe]

Well, Lazarus Long's tales have certainly put a damper on my idea of going to Costa Rica and the rain forests.

However, he makes an interesting argument:

"Again and again we return to an analysis of visceral reaction to assess how behavioral psychology is shaped by evolution; again and again we find the need to reassess how we define the line between what both fascinates and frightens us with real reason; how what is repulsive to some is cause to revel for others. "

This brings to mind my experiences with loved ones who died with their eyes open. Most people die with their eyes open and everyone but me always tries to make them stay shut.

I will never remember how liberating it was for me, while waiting for the crematorium folks to arrive, to put myself directly over my lifemate for the past 18 years and look down directly into those eyes. They were blank, black and empty. I knew the cacoon was empty, that the butterfly of life was gone, swallowed by sweet oblivion. It made seeing his body carried out the door in a bag much less
upsetting. Most humans deny death by closing the deceased eyes. Then they deny death more by having the deceased displayed in a coffin looking as hale and hardy with make-up, cotton in the cheeks, yellow spot lights, etc. The final denail of death comes by hiding the deceased in the ground. Mental denial of death is reenforced by the burial sermon.

Few people realize how they will be turned into soup by parasitic bacteria in a very short time. It is by denying the reality of death that we make it more acceptable. I once bought a human skull in Columbia. It got enormous attention when put into my window and I sold it for a very good profit.

However, I had some interesting experiences during the time I had it. I found myself sitting and wondering what that woman's life had been like. Had she been a passionate lover? Had she been a mother? It bothered me a little bit. It bothered my good Roman Catholic traveling companion greatly. He did everything to keep that skull covered and out of sight.

I subsequently have had several conversations with people about my skull experience. They were all very similar. First, the skull was put in the livingroom and considered a great conservation piece. Then it got moved to the middle room, then to another location, each time becoming less a visible presence until it was totally put out of sight or disposed of.


To sell immortality, we only have to unearth the facts of death.

[Lazarus Long]

Alas poor Yurik, you know me too well.

Whether t'is nobler to ignore the truths before us or repackage their form, making what's done acceptable, what's learned "reasonable?" Is it not exsquisite irony that by this method we continue keeping ourselves ever more ignorant of even greater truth? That by this so convenient a public politic create yet even greater hazard to us all?

I look into the vacant eyes of an empty skull and ponder wisdoms' lost and my unending quest to make them found.

Have you ever noticed Randolfe that the root of the word ignorant is the same as to ignore?

Yet to ignore is to deny, it has nothing to do with any innocent lack of knowledge; quite the contrary as a matter of fact. To ignore is to imply culpability.

You caught me on playing with sensational images to hopefully get someone to pay attention and do exactly as you have done, engage the conversation, but I am also trying to get the subject to become more focused. We have a bad habit as a social species of relegating what disturbs us to ever darker closets rather than to study in the light of day ourselves, our reactions, and the objects that so fascinate and frighten.

When you pondered the life of the woman behind the vacant eye sockets did you ask who now owns the skull that was once hers how was it possible to make such an exchange?

Death doth make objects of us all and reduces that which is "priceless" to a commodity of the lowest common denomination, most mean.

To sell immortality, we only have to unearth the facts of death.

So here is another penny for your thoughts. )

[randolfe]

Yes, your notation of the connection between ignoring and ignorance is right on target. This is the kind of thing I would expect a linguist to be aware of but something I rarely notice.

How did a human skull end up for sale in a magic shop in Southern Columbia? A good question. I guess grave robbers will take the very parts of you if there is nothing else of value to be found there.

The fellow who ran this shop looked like a magician out of Hollywood. He was thin, tall, wore a black suit, a wide-brimmed black hat and had a moustache that stuck out several inches from each side of his face and came to an upturned point.

With a whirl of one hand into the air, simultaneously pulling one side of his moustache through his other hand, he told my friend to place his hand on the skull and to think of a number between 1 and 10. My friend complied.

"Seven!" the shop owner declared whirling one hand over his head. My friend went ashen. He was a religious superstitous sort anyway. I suspect that "seven" is one of the more popular numbers chosen by people given that choice.

Well, for $25 or $35 it was mine. But what do you tell customs about the skull in your imported box of artifacts? "Medical specimen" did the trick. Oh, the strange
paths of commerce. It sold for $100 more than the purchase price. It corrupted me forever. (ha) Every time I see those rows of skulls in Cambodia, all I can think of is all that easy money, not rows of lost humans but rows of $100 bills.

Money, indeed, is the root of all evil!

[Lazarus Long]

For that I will tell you one.

I have in my possession many preserved human organs. I have them to preserve my father's work in pathology and test our method of preserving tissue at room temperature for what's now decades. Well you see...

My father was, in the last few years before his death, invited to Mexico to work as a visiting scholar and teach the medical school there his technique for tissue preservation, an invitation he accepted. Being quite on in his years I volunteered to drive him as he refused till the day he died to fly.

Well upon reaching the border we had to go through customs on the Mexican side and low and behold my father decides to inform me as we await inspection that he has various parts of a body chopped up in storage in the back of the car.

Well you might say I became a bit perturbed at his timing and began trying to figure out how I would explain this fact to guards or if I would be trying to negotiate the inside rules of a Mexican prison with my car confiscated.

My dad was shrewed and did have some paperwork with the invitation from the UNAM with him so I decided to address the problem with shock value and chose your magician friend's trick of revealing a human heart to customs at which point one guard nearly fainted. His buddy began crossing himself repeatedly and retreated to a corner for a superior while the a third guard had that look of macabre fascination and couldn't remove his eyes from the now stilled heart I held aloft for inspection.

The problem you see was passing "agricultural inspection" and we argued smoothly that the specimens were sterile. They are for all practical purposes as no decay occurs in them, we offered them all close up inspection of them to detect odor to prove our point. After about twenty minutes of confirming our documents and determining that we were legitimate and not axe murderers, the shock factor at 2am wore off and they decided to let us in without a moridida or any further problems. After all who smuggles bodies into Mexico as they are had all too cheaply there?

I doubt I will ever forget the one guard who began taking notice and began asking questions like a light had gone off in is head as he stared at the heart in my hand and then at his chest; the look of growing awareness spreading across his face.

You see my father had developed the technique of preserving tissue so as to use the human organs as teaching tools for medical students in poorer nations and on that night on the border I found myself using them as teaching aids for the first time ironically for instructing a rapt audience of armed guards, in broken Spanish, on the inner workings of the human heart. Simple yet dangerous men, who were mostly so freaked out by what they imagined that they were only too glad to send us off into the Chihuahuan desert night.

[David]

To sell immortality, we only have to unearth the facts of death.

This is truer than you could ever know! I had a friend who was considering suicide, and nothing seemed to be working, (although, maybe it was, he wasn't dead yet!) until another friend of mine showed us some pictures of a "jumper" after he had hit the ground from 20 storys up. Theres nothing glamorouse or peaceful in a picture of a guy with his stomach lying ten feet away with what's left of his legs sticking out of his shoulders.

My friend is alive and happily married with a child on the way, by the way. Nothing frightens someone off death more than being exposed to it.

David

[bacopa]

Lazarus good post old boy. I'm intrigued by parasites and I'm all for symbiotic relationships, if I can find a happy home for an animal friend I would gladly help him/her out. But seriously I think symbiotic models for animals and even AI make intelligent sense, I'd be interested and fascinated to see some more real symbiotic relationships hard at work. I think humans could be much more efficient if they worked in symbiotic relationships more often. Imagine the possiblities.

[randolfe]

Well, Laz, like I said in my post at the end of your introduction, you are a great storyteller. You have a great clarity adn talent for drawing people into your tales.
Just think, these stories could be pqrt of a great collection of stories entitled "Body Part Tales".
David's story about how gory it was to see the remains of a jumper certainly testifies to the natural aversion death creates in everyone. Why then, are we so pressed when trying to sell immortality?
One strange thing happened to me a few hours after one of the two loved ones I took care of died. His Mother was delayed getting over and he had been on the couch for four or five hours by the time crematorium came to take the body away. Now, he had suffered terribly with pain in his legs in the last months of life. I would have to raise each one so gently and carefully.
After he was dead, it was strange to see these strangers grab those same legs I had handled so gently and which had been so painfully alive just hours earlier. But what I really wasn't ready for was seeing the two of them p[ick him up off the couch and lift him over the coffee table. He was stiff as a board. It was like they were lifting a wooden plank instead of a person. That really made me jump. I will never forget how it startled me.
And while we are on this charming and grotesque subject, did anyone see the Congressional hearing on the funeral industry a couple years ago. It was broadcast on C-Span and was quite interesting to watch.

[shedon666]

nice thread Lazarus Long.

i the observer of all parasites on this Earth Mother recognize the subject all TOO well. it is almost like a constant echo, that of irritation, like pizza hut commericials, over and over again. in the words of The Matrix, "your a disease, a cancer to this planet"; the human race really is (symbolically) a parasite, a cancer alike AIDS to their matriarchal environment.

i was Massively surprised to see someone post this:

...and I'm all for symbiotic relationships, if I can find a happy home for an animal friend I would gladly help him/her out. But seriously I think symbiotic models for animals and even AI make intelligent sense, I'd be interested and fascinated to see some more real symbiotic relationships hard at work. I think humans could be much more efficient if they worked in symbiotic relationships more often. Imagine the possiblities.

....for it is comforting that i am not the only person on Earth that realizes this. ahhhh.

it is known that inside a healthy human body there is no cell(s) that seek and destroy other cells. cells only die and reproduce. it is cancer and AIDS that are the predators of the internal kingdom. as to -as above, so below- is concerned, the animation of this internal dialect is the majority of the human race. over 80% of all thrive on existing as a parasite and what is come to find??? we all die!!! wow what a effen revolution!!! could it really be that simple?

yes being a predator and consumer of other lifeforms really has alot to do with death. the frequency of death in lightwaves is consumed and becomes, integrates with the lifeform until the balance is upset. to be at one with the creative fluxuation of life, i have found there must be steps taken. #1 would be that of sentient concern. for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. when a sentient lifeform is consumed then perception within the consumer is effected [e.g. this is good]; the Law of Coagulation. then #2 non-sentient matters can be focused on once the sentient goal has been foundated. from the transgression of 1 to 2, it is easy from there. death really is as simple as an idea. a spectacle of perception. does someone that consumes, SURVIVES and THRIVES on the death of others even remotely have the chance to understand the dominion of Life??? hellz no! ....furthermore, after the above #2 is grounded, then dependance on solid substance itself becomes an issue, for otherwise......

HAIL THE FECAL PARASITE, MASTER SERPENT OF THE SEPTIC YOU.