"this rat borg collective ended up [performing] better than single rats"
May 17, 2024 5:39 AM Subscribe
Conscious Ants and Human Hives by Peter Watts has an entertaining take on Neuralink.
In breif, Watts doubts Neuralink could provide "faster internet" in the sense Neuralink markets to investors, but other darker markets exist..
Around fiction, if you've read Blindsight and Echopraxia then The Colonel touches amusizingly employs Watts perspective on hiveminds.
“Attack of the Hope Police: Delusional Optimism at the End of the World?” is lovely latlk too.
Also “The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?” by Peter Watts.
In breif, Watts doubts Neuralink could provide "faster internet" in the sense Neuralink markets to investors, but other darker markets exist..
Around fiction, if you've read Blindsight and Echopraxia then The Colonel touches amusizingly employs Watts perspective on hiveminds.
“Attack of the Hope Police: Delusional Optimism at the End of the World?” is lovely latlk too.
Also “The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?” by Peter Watts.
I initially misread the title, and thought:
1. A group of potheads had repurposed taxidermied rats as smoking devices.
2. "Rat bong collective" would be a great username.
Ok, off to read the actual article.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:38 AM on May 17 [6 favorites]
1. A group of potheads had repurposed taxidermied rats as smoking devices.
2. "Rat bong collective" would be a great username.
Ok, off to read the actual article.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:38 AM on May 17 [6 favorites]
It is good for the soul to apologize.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:40 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]
posted by NotAYakk at 7:40 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]
Watts has more insight into the nature of consciousness than any other writer for general readers that I know of. Or at any rate he expresses the insight he has better than anyone else I'm aware of.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:46 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:46 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]
Watts is always informative and often amusing. I missed the letter to Homeland Security. Fantastic.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:39 AM on May 17
posted by BlueHorse at 9:39 AM on May 17
I had forgotten octopuses have torus-shaped brains. Their consciousness (assuming they have one the way we do) must be radically different - thanks for the post!
posted by somebodystrousers at 10:08 AM on May 17 [1 favorite]
posted by somebodystrousers at 10:08 AM on May 17 [1 favorite]
that Homeland Security letter...
every time I think I cannot become a more ardent fan of Peter Watts' very existence (not to mention prolific works) he shows me that I can, and I do.
posted by supermedusa at 10:46 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]
every time I think I cannot become a more ardent fan of Peter Watts' very existence (not to mention prolific works) he shows me that I can, and I do.
posted by supermedusa at 10:46 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]
Assuming you've seen The Thing by John Carpenter (1982), I suggest The Things for anyone want an introduction to Peter Watt's work in the form of a low-commitment short story.
As Peter Watts says himself, he's not exactly prolific by successful writer standards, but he explores ideas for longer before writing, which makes his books more worth reading than most writers.
AI boosters blindly say AI will save us. We've all read Charlie Stross' retort Dude, you broke the future! which exlains that AIs have similar problems to corporation, meaning they'll mostly be used for exploitation, with advertising being only the first form of exploitation.
AI x-riskers worry about the terminator movies. At some point here & elsewhere, Peter Watts has an even more interesting retort: We've no reason to expect AI even has a drive for selve preservation, given it did never evolved. Instead it'll have a drive to do what it was created to do, meaning exploit other humans.
As for bulk of this, there is obviously guesswork here by Peter Watts, maybe biased by wanting to tell an intereesting story, but his guesswork always sounds more sensible than capitalist hypemasters. I'd paraphrase Watts guesses here like:
Firstly, neocortex connections need not create sensory experence in the same way as our real input-output systems do. If true, Neuralink could've important applications, but probably never "product market fit" for FAANGs.
Secondly, consciousness roughly corresponds to some range of bandwidths, if you've little then it'll feel vaguely like conversation, while if you've as much Neuralink then you'll merge personalities and not feel anything, likely evevn worse for Neuralink as a consumer product.
In essence, Watts foresees Neuralink becoming some scarry new-tech defense contractor, ala like Boston Dynamics but with brain surgery, so think maybe human hive minds made from soldiers, or even the Chinese communist party.
As an aside, there is a series being made of The Peripheral by William Gibson, but reading the book sounds faster.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:21 AM on May 17 [5 favorites]
As Peter Watts says himself, he's not exactly prolific by successful writer standards, but he explores ideas for longer before writing, which makes his books more worth reading than most writers.
AI boosters blindly say AI will save us. We've all read Charlie Stross' retort Dude, you broke the future! which exlains that AIs have similar problems to corporation, meaning they'll mostly be used for exploitation, with advertising being only the first form of exploitation.
AI x-riskers worry about the terminator movies. At some point here & elsewhere, Peter Watts has an even more interesting retort: We've no reason to expect AI even has a drive for selve preservation, given it did never evolved. Instead it'll have a drive to do what it was created to do, meaning exploit other humans.
As for bulk of this, there is obviously guesswork here by Peter Watts, maybe biased by wanting to tell an intereesting story, but his guesswork always sounds more sensible than capitalist hypemasters. I'd paraphrase Watts guesses here like:
Firstly, neocortex connections need not create sensory experence in the same way as our real input-output systems do. If true, Neuralink could've important applications, but probably never "product market fit" for FAANGs.
Secondly, consciousness roughly corresponds to some range of bandwidths, if you've little then it'll feel vaguely like conversation, while if you've as much Neuralink then you'll merge personalities and not feel anything, likely evevn worse for Neuralink as a consumer product.
In essence, Watts foresees Neuralink becoming some scarry new-tech defense contractor, ala like Boston Dynamics but with brain surgery, so think maybe human hive minds made from soldiers, or even the Chinese communist party.
As an aside, there is a series being made of The Peripheral by William Gibson, but reading the book sounds faster.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:21 AM on May 17 [5 favorites]
as a double aside, the Peripheral series is very good and also really gives the awesome T'nia Miller room to really shine.
posted by supermedusa at 11:37 AM on May 17
posted by supermedusa at 11:37 AM on May 17
This is one of the few long video links I've actually watched in full! I'll credit that to being a big fan of Blindsight and Echopraxia and also feeling under the weather so not really doing anything this morning.
Seeing how it is a fairly easy experiment to replicate, assuming it doesn't need specific ants, I hope that people do try putting a mirror in front of an ant and putting paint on it to see if it will react the same way.
Also, the Peripheral series was cancelled so the one season is all we'll have.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:39 AM on May 17 [1 favorite]
Seeing how it is a fairly easy experiment to replicate, assuming it doesn't need specific ants, I hope that people do try putting a mirror in front of an ant and putting paint on it to see if it will react the same way.
Also, the Peripheral series was cancelled so the one season is all we'll have.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:39 AM on May 17 [1 favorite]
Also, the Peripheral series was cancelled so the one season is all we'll have.
dammit!
posted by supermedusa at 12:05 PM on May 17
dammit!
posted by supermedusa at 12:05 PM on May 17
The Pong Imperative: Driving Dishbrain to Suicide on Peter Watts blog has some citations for this talk. And Tub Thump Dump. lists some interviews.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:07 PM on May 17
posted by jeffburdges at 12:07 PM on May 17
Meh. Why would I listen to some dude who clearly cannot dance talk about the soul not having a purpose?
posted by grimace636 at 5:35 PM on May 17
posted by grimace636 at 5:35 PM on May 17
Ya sort of agree with grimace636 here. I really liked the talk but I think all the evidence re: the purpose of consicousness really shows is that consciousness isn't always necessary or that we don't have a generally understanding of it's evolutionary survival function. Seems to be a bit of dissonance between that line of evolutionary thinking in the talk and the clarification of Darwin's thought found in the climate change book interview.
I mean, how would one demonstrate that, for example, having more or less vivid/complex representations of various social or natural phenomena has no bearing on survivability/fecundity? We can't really measure or separate out people's varying levels of conscious representational abilities. And it seems at least plausible that there's a positive effect, though I'm not familiar with that one meta study he cited suggesting there isn't a function...
I'm curious for a research update though. Very intrigued by the idea that the sort of "singular seat" aspect of conscious experience will prevail when two previously separate "seats" are physically linked.
posted by Hume at 7:15 PM on May 17
I mean, how would one demonstrate that, for example, having more or less vivid/complex representations of various social or natural phenomena has no bearing on survivability/fecundity? We can't really measure or separate out people's varying levels of conscious representational abilities. And it seems at least plausible that there's a positive effect, though I'm not familiar with that one meta study he cited suggesting there isn't a function...
I'm curious for a research update though. Very intrigued by the idea that the sort of "singular seat" aspect of conscious experience will prevail when two previously separate "seats" are physically linked.
posted by Hume at 7:15 PM on May 17
We already do "link two seats" under Watt's conjecture and the evidence he cites. He argues our hemispheres forget their seperation because they've such a high bandwidth conenction.
It's true, Watts conjectures a simplistic model of conciousness: First, if you've a "neural network like us", then it'll manifest exactly one conciousness. Second, if large enough, then you'd stop calling what it manifests conciousness.
There is plenty of evidence one could unearth for or against his first conjectures If you link rat brains via high bandwidth connection, how do the rats individual personalities evolve? Are there humans who had their corpus callosum only partially cut? If so, what were their subjective experences?
It's copmpletely plausible merging conciousness requires more than bandwidth, like maybe habits & familiarity. In fact, hive minds have habits & familiarity in most of his fiction. At present though, we've no reason to thing Neuralink's high bandwidth plans would not create something more than mere "better internet access", and indeed something "too much more to be marketed comfortably to civilians".
As for the second conjecture, if you've some much larger "brain", then "how much does what" likely winds up different, which ironically gives good evidence against the first conjecture: Those linked rats use one another's brains, which maybe results in shared experence and partially shared conciousness, but they still have different bodies, so how ever much of our conciousness is tied to running bodies stays seperated.
As for his final point..
It's still plausible the US wants true hive minds running military operations, or the Chinese communist party descides their leadership should merge concuiousnesses. Watts says hive minds should squik us out, likely they're either exploiter or exploited, but either could be good things too.
In particular, we do have examples of dictatorships who at least briefly became somewhat sustainable. A government hive mind might be much more likely to handle climate change, as well as being smart enough to force other nations to too. We kinda shrink the planet by becoming hive minds, so then we either save ourselves like Shogunate Japan or the Dominican Republic, or else destroy ourselves like Easter Island or Haiti.
Imho, hive minds being positive sounds more plausible than another Watts' conjecture that big problems like climate change could be solved by surgically removing religion & selfishness. It's also hilarious if Musk creates the tech that underlies really large scale sustainable communism.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:17 AM on May 18
It's true, Watts conjectures a simplistic model of conciousness: First, if you've a "neural network like us", then it'll manifest exactly one conciousness. Second, if large enough, then you'd stop calling what it manifests conciousness.
There is plenty of evidence one could unearth for or against his first conjectures If you link rat brains via high bandwidth connection, how do the rats individual personalities evolve? Are there humans who had their corpus callosum only partially cut? If so, what were their subjective experences?
It's copmpletely plausible merging conciousness requires more than bandwidth, like maybe habits & familiarity. In fact, hive minds have habits & familiarity in most of his fiction. At present though, we've no reason to thing Neuralink's high bandwidth plans would not create something more than mere "better internet access", and indeed something "too much more to be marketed comfortably to civilians".
As for the second conjecture, if you've some much larger "brain", then "how much does what" likely winds up different, which ironically gives good evidence against the first conjecture: Those linked rats use one another's brains, which maybe results in shared experence and partially shared conciousness, but they still have different bodies, so how ever much of our conciousness is tied to running bodies stays seperated.
As for his final point..
It's still plausible the US wants true hive minds running military operations, or the Chinese communist party descides their leadership should merge concuiousnesses. Watts says hive minds should squik us out, likely they're either exploiter or exploited, but either could be good things too.
In particular, we do have examples of dictatorships who at least briefly became somewhat sustainable. A government hive mind might be much more likely to handle climate change, as well as being smart enough to force other nations to too. We kinda shrink the planet by becoming hive minds, so then we either save ourselves like Shogunate Japan or the Dominican Republic, or else destroy ourselves like Easter Island or Haiti.
Imho, hive minds being positive sounds more plausible than another Watts' conjecture that big problems like climate change could be solved by surgically removing religion & selfishness. It's also hilarious if Musk creates the tech that underlies really large scale sustainable communism.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:17 AM on May 18
if you've a "neural network like us", then it'll manifest exactly one consciousness.
I have strong and distinct memories of experiencing fragmentation into a somewhat rowdy internal committee of quite distinct consciousnesses, each with its own sense of self, its own collection of desires, and its own experience of some degree of frustration at needing to negotiate with its peers in order to get any kind of control over the musculature.
This was while driving home after several hours of extremely energetic dancing during which I'd also experienced my self-concept expanding to include the band and much of the rest of the crowd at the pub.
I had picked the mushrooms myself earlier that day, out in the forest near Trentham, with guidance from Max the guitar legend. Winter gold-tops. Good, good medicine.
Fuck knows how any of us survive our twenties.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on May 18 [3 favorites]
I have strong and distinct memories of experiencing fragmentation into a somewhat rowdy internal committee of quite distinct consciousnesses, each with its own sense of self, its own collection of desires, and its own experience of some degree of frustration at needing to negotiate with its peers in order to get any kind of control over the musculature.
This was while driving home after several hours of extremely energetic dancing during which I'd also experienced my self-concept expanding to include the band and much of the rest of the crowd at the pub.
I had picked the mushrooms myself earlier that day, out in the forest near Trentham, with guidance from Max the guitar legend. Winter gold-tops. Good, good medicine.
Fuck knows how any of us survive our twenties.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on May 18 [3 favorites]
Fuck knows how any of us survive our twenties
WORD
that's a beautiful anecdote flabdablet in the end it may not matter if we ever come to understand this stuff but I find it awe inspiring to think about it. our experiences are so ineffable, and words are so paltry, even in the best of mouths.
posted by supermedusa at 9:55 AM on May 18
WORD
that's a beautiful anecdote flabdablet in the end it may not matter if we ever come to understand this stuff but I find it awe inspiring to think about it. our experiences are so ineffable, and words are so paltry, even in the best of mouths.
posted by supermedusa at 9:55 AM on May 18
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