pitspotter2
Thus what little philosophy I have read (mainly Popper) has helped me to tolerate confusion.
Paradoxically my ability to think has been improved by this ability to be confused, I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxa1gLt5YKI
For instance, I've noticed that most people refuse to see problems. They either want the answer straight away, or they want to pretend that the question or task is invalid or not needed. It takes a real thinker to put a confusing thought on one side and then pick it up later.
https://www.therapyroute.com/article/what-is-emotion-by-m-so...
Seeking makes a cat play with its prey before eating it. Presumably the exercise of skill and the risk of losing lunch make the overall process more satisfying.
What might be the reading equivalent? Something like having to track down one's target book in an elaborate and interesting library, complete with secret rooms and hidden shelves (this being an analogue of the internet). In the process one risks being tempted and distracted by other volumes and other authors...
Silicon carbide bricks, emerging gloriously from their tungsten moulds, would possess supreme corrosion resistance and almost double the crushing strength of engineering bricks. High thermal conductivity should reduce cracking and spalling, further increasing lifetime. A short railway journey to the nearest port and water desalination plant whence they can be distributed throughout the world.
We'll beat the Romans! Our public buildings will last for millennia!
Star Trek TNG was wrong about the desirability of flat screen interfaces but right about audible feedback.
Also if (2) is correct then fundamental progress, arising from periodic breakthroughs, depends more upon who we are than what we do. Doing stuff would then lead to incremental improvements which are still important but which depend themselves on previous breakthroughs.
However this doesn't explain the preponderance of pessimism in sci-fi. People generally turn to fiction for inspiration or at least comfort. Responsible parents would consider it wrong to read stories with bad endings to their children. Yet we have been pumping demoralising and potentially self-fulfilling nonsense to wider society for a while now.
(1) Optimism. The world has been getting better and all present evils can eventually be cured by developing the specific know-how (think Apollo programme)
(2) Eucatastrophe. The world has been getting steadily worse yet looming evil may be defeated by an unexpected turn of events among a few good people (think small fellowship of hobbits)
The first says that if we apply creativity and work energetically at solving problems in a scientific manner then we can solve them. No guarantees but also nothing in the laws of physics to prevent it. It sounds reasonable but in practice the argument seems to persuade very few, least of all in Hollywood where science fiction has all but given up on spaceships and the future. As Douglas Adams pointed out the stories are mostly set in LA about 5 years from now and it's raining.
The second is almost the opposite. It says that if a few unimportant but good people get involved, things may unpredictably and dramatically improve, perhaps by the intervention of grace or Providence. It sounds supernatural. Hope was indeed one of St Paul's big three ('Faith, Hope, and Love'). Yet consider how many scientific discoveries and inventions occurred purely by accident. How evolution succeeded in making ears out of jaw bones. Etc.
Historically I've sided with (1) and I've always wanted it to be true however however many times it is pointed out by the likes of Steven Pinker with graphs and statistics that conditions have improved through most of history, the pessimists still prevail in public news and debates. They get more headlines and seem more serious than their naive opponents.
Why do pessimists carry the day and with such preternatural authority? The very fact that they do hints that they're unwittingly cashing in on the fact that (2) may be correct or at least the predominating factor.
That is, most good things happen by accident, but they do require a few good people to show up.
1. Seeking. This is ongoing energetic and curious engagement with the world.
2. Attachment. The need for connection with others, especially to parents.
These two rarely come into conflict but when they do system 1 may be switched off.
e.g. A rat pup is separated from its mother and becomes anxious. It commences to squeak for a brief period in order to attract her attention. It then goes quiet; its brain switches off seeking. It experiences mourning and despair.
The evolutionary rationale for this built-in mechanism is to prevent vulnerable infants from attracting predators.
Obviously humans are more complicated. Perhaps the same shutdown process is triggered in response to the breaking of other kinds of attachment, e.g. attachment to ideas about what to do.
One of the reason it fires the imagination I think is that the encyclopaedia portions leave plenty of gaps for one's imagination to fill. Paradoxically this makes it seem all the more real.
The characters (with one exception) are of course ephemeral, changing from one story to the next.
Hard to think of a more difficult show to film.
In a better world all rulers and experts would be well-motivated and seen to be well-motivated. In practice some of them do 'get with the program' neither because they are convinced of is correctness nor in a spirit of hand-rubbing glee, but out of mundane fear of losing the esteem of their peers.
Steven Pinker on the evolution of the shrug:
Another favourite is of course Lieutenant Commander Data. His goal, rather than to destroy humanity, was to become more human himself. This is finally realised when he is presented with an 'emotion chip'.
Yet if neuropsychoanalyst Mark Solms is correct it turns out that emotions are the foundation of all minds, i.e. Data could not have been emotionless to begin with.
The cancelled Catholic intellectual E Michael Jones points out that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley may have been afflicted by guilt over the suicide of Harriet, Percy Shelley's estranged wife. Frankenstein's monster became an object that guilt. Similarly, in Aliens, the monsters represent guilt over growing sexual licence and abortion, he suggests.
If true this sort of thing may explain why the monsters are typically extremely powerful, can break through steel doors, etc. One cannot escape from them just as one cannot escape from a guilty conscience.
So our ideas about robots may say more about us than about robots. It would be a shame if psychological baggage were to hamper the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). It would mean that science fiction has primed us to reject the sub-creation of life merely because we project easily onto anything that resembles ourselves: even before it has come into existence.
In it he identifies subjective experience, for example perceiving the colour red, as an observational perspective.
He reminds us that we can also experience vision objectively, with the right lab equipment, e.g. by listening to spike trains travelling from the retina down the optic nerve.
Say we do the latter. We can then legitimately ask what the same process looks like from the point of view of the system/subject/patient. Answer, vivid red.
So spike trains and redness are differing valid perspectives on the same underlying physical process, namely vision. One doesn't arise from the other; they are both products of vision.