Greetings from Darth Mencken

[Darth Mencken]

Finally signed-on! I don't know what the problem was with my Mike Parisi persona. Twice I tried, with new passwords, yet it just didn't work. Finally decided, "Screw it!" And registered anew as "Darth Mencken," whom in truth I identify as online for all but the most serious R/L matters (employment and/or romance - Haven't found a way yet to effectively combine the two!). Farewell, Mike Parisi. You'll always be there when needed!

Anyway, been busy in R/L of late. Happy to say the "employment" part of my situation has recently been resolved favorably, and things are looking good so far! That's enough WOT for now!

One slightly more relevant thing on my mind lately is, to what extent can each device connected to the Internet - along with the owners/users of such - be likened to neurons in the brain (each individually incapable of comprehending the whole, yet comprising a part of and contributing to such)? And could the first true transhuman intellect arise (or has it already, or is it in the process of such?) with the Internet comprising its brain/mind, and each of us (ourselves, and the various devices we use to connect to the Net) serving effectively as its neurons, synapses, etc., with no more awareness or comprehension of such than our own individual neurons presumably have of the whole they are a part of?

Know it's not the most original of ideas. But, well, might be worthy of analysis.

Thank you, and great to be here at last! Promise to contribute even more meaningfully than this when not busy with work, love, or anything equally important :-)

[kch49er]

Hi Again

[Drashner1]

From various things I've read here and there, I don't think the Internet has either the processing power to form a find, nor the structure even if it had the power. The odds of a mind arising from sheer random chance in the mere decades the Net has been around seem rather long. Even if it ever did, how would we tell?

OA being host to massively more powerful computers and vastly denser and more 'brainlike' networks, this sort of thing might arise from time to time. Perhaps in cases where a local civ purposely designs its local networks to have a strongly brainlike structure and operations, presumably because such offers advantages of various kinds. Of course, AI is common in Terragen civ so presumably they have a good idea of what structures make a mind and so might be able to get very close without actually generating it. But occasionally mistakes may happen...

Todd

[Darth Mencken]

From various things I've read here and there, I don't think the Internet has either the processing power to form a find, nor the structure even if it had the power. The odds of a mind arising from sheer random chance in the mere decades the Net has been around seem rather long. Even if it ever did, how would we tell?

OA being host to massively more powerful computers and vastly denser and more 'brainlike' networks, this sort of thing might arise from time to time. Perhaps in cases where a local civ purposely designs its local networks to have a strongly brainlike structure and operations, presumably because such offers advantages of various kinds. Of course, AI is common in Terragen civ so presumably they have a good idea of what structures make a mind and so might be able to get very close without actually generating it. But occasionally mistakes may happen...

Todd

The, "How would we tell?" bit is what's significant! In any case, I don't believe it's actually happened. Still, the point is, How can we tell, especially if we (our persons, and the devices we use to interface with the Net) are at all analogous to neurons in the brain?

Not "random chance," really. How random has the growth of the Net been? *Maybe* something like a lower vertebrate to a lower mammal in one sense, and something like our individual dream states in another sense, is what I'm thinking. I freely admit I could be dead wrong here!

And I'm well aware that OA civ, for most of its history, has had *far* more "brain-analogous" networks. Well, it has to start somewhere. That "somewhere" is with us!

[Matterplay1]

Finally signed-on! I don't know what the problem was with my Mike Parisi persona. Twice I tried, with new passwords, yet it just didn't work. Finally decided, "Screw it!" And registered anew as "Darth Mencken," whom in truth I identify as online for all but the most serious R/L matters (employment and/or romance - Haven't found a way yet to effectively combine the two!). Farewell, Mike Parisi. You'll always be there when needed!
[snip]

Hi! Glad you made it! Please get in touch with me about this, either offlist or with the private message functionality of this forum. Yours is the only case so far of difficulties with signup, but I'd like to understand it better. Also, let me know if you want to delete the Mike Parisi handle from this forum.

One slightly more relevant thing on my mind lately is, to what extent can each device connected to the Internet - along with the owners/users of such - be likened to neurons in the brain (each individually incapable of comprehending the whole, yet comprising a part of and contributing to such)? And could the first true transhuman intellect arise (or has it already, or is it in the process of such?) with the Internet comprising its brain/mind, and each of us (ourselves, and the various devices we use to connect to the Net) serving effectively as its neurons, synapses, etc., with no more awareness or comprehension of such than our own individual neurons presumably have of the whole they are a part of?

The elements of the internet would be better likened to neurons living in a petri dish than to neurons in a brain. As long as they're alive neurons will reach out and connect with one another, but without the right context they won't tune those connections into anything coherent, for all their individual complexity and sophistication. The simplest neural nets of natural organisms, like those of a hydra or a jellyfish, have more real ability to actually inform an organism than the whole internet does. The only way for that vast number of linked computers to actually 'mean' something would be for someone to design it, or for it to evolve. For it to be designed, some person or group would have to have an unprecedented degree of control of the overall design and the individual elements would have to be 'programmed' to behave quite differently with each other than computers do now. For it to evolve, well, to start with there's only one internet, it's not in competition with some other internets, and it doesn't reproduce (and even if all those things were true there hasn't been enough time for anything to have evolved). So, an interesting speculative idea but not at all likely in the present day. This is not to say that in the OA setting there might not be any number of internet-like arrangements that result in an an 'organism' of some sort. Anything from plant-like to transapient level in overall 'intelligence', in fact. It would have to have been designed that way, though.

[Drashner1]

The elements of the internet would be better likened to neurons living in a petri dish than to neurons in a brain. As long as they're alive neurons will reach out and connect with one another, but without the right context they won't tune those connections into anything coherent, for all their individual complexity and sophistication. The simplest neural nets of natural organisms, like those of a hydra or a jellyfish, have more real ability to actually inform an organism than the whole internet does. The only way for that vast number of linked computers to actually 'mean' something would be for someone to design it, or for it to evolve. For it to be designed, some person or group would have to have an unprecedented degree of control of the overall design and the individual elements would have to be 'programmed' to behave quite differently with each other than computers do now. For it to evolve, well, to start with there's only one internet, it's not in competition with some other internets, and it doesn't reproduce (and even if all those things were true there hasn't been enough time for anything to have evolved). So, an interesting speculative idea but not at all likely in the present day. This is not to say that in the OA setting there might not be any number of internet-like arrangements that result in an an 'organism' of some sort. Anything from plant-like to transapient level in overall 'intelligence', in fact. It would have to have been designed that way, though.

Weellll - Maybe. Given OA tech (even relatively early in the timeline) it is probably possible to set up an 'internet' (or perhaps several) in which the different elements act something like an ecosystem, with different elements both cooperating and competing with each other. In addition, you could design the hardware to 'evolve' in the sense that it would self-optimize and restructure rather like a neural network, but literally.

Run the right software on it and you could potentially create a type of mechosystem or A-life supraorganism that might evolve pretty fast and eventually become something pretty complex (while also doing useful stuff for its creators in rather the same way the biosphere does useful things for us while going about its business, but more so). If there were a bunch of these in proximity to allow competition, evolution might eventually produce some form of intelligence. Whether it would be anything we could relate to would be an open question.

Self-optmizing and self-evolving systems and technology might be a common part of some OA locales. How well it is controlled or how often it goes off in odd directions (or completely off the rails) may be an even more open question. This sort of thing could be an element (a feature? a bug? both?) of syntech.

Just some thoughts,

Todd

[Matterplay1]

[snip]
So, an interesting speculative idea but not at all likely in the present day. This is not to say that in the OA setting there might not be any number of internet-like arrangements that result in an an 'organism' of some sort. Anything from plant-like to transapient level in overall 'intelligence', in fact. It would have to have been designed that way, though.

Weellll - Maybe. Given OA tech (even relatively early in the timeline) it is probably possible to set up an 'internet' (or perhaps several) in which the different elements act something like an ecosystem, with different elements both cooperating and competing with each other.
[snip]

I think we're having a violent agreement here that it's quite easy given OA tech if someone wants it that way and sets it up, but not even remotely likely 'just by accident' in anything that resembles the present internet.