From 6291295821209cb40d1c6315d0dbb9dc75ed1972 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net> Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2017 09:48:40 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] You're not a gadget --- books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn | 155 ++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 155 insertions(+) create mode 100644 books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn diff --git a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef3c3a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,155 @@ +[[!meta title="You're not a Gadget"]] + +## Information Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free + + “Information wants to be free.” So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder + of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first. + + I say that information doesn’t deserve to be free. + + Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its + own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it’s + even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans + are real, and information is not? + + Of course, there is a technical use of the term “information” that refers to + something entirely real. This is the kind of information that’s related to + entropy. But that fundamental kind of information, which exists independently + of the culture of an observer, is not the same as the kind we can put in + computers, the kind that supposedly wants to be free. + + Information is alienated experience. + + You can think of culturally decodable information as a potential form of + experience, very much as you can think of a brick resting on a ledge as storing + potential energy. When the brick is prodded to fall, the energy is revealed. + That is only possible because it was lifted into place at some point in the + past. + + In the same way, stored information might cause experience to be revealed if it + is prodded in the right way. A file on a hard disk does indeed contain + information of the kind that objectively exists. The fact that the bits are + discernible instead of being scrambled into mush—the way heat scrambles + things—is what makes them bits. + + But if the bits can potentially mean something to someone, they can only do so + if they are experienced. When that happens, a commonality of culture is enacted + between the storer and the retriever of the bits. Experience is the only + process that can de-alienate information. + + Information of the kind that purportedly wants to be free is nothing but a + shadow of our own minds, and wants nothing on its own. It will not suffer if it + doesn’t get what it wants. + + But if you want to make the transition from the old religion, where you hope + God will give you an afterlife, to the new religion, where you hope to become + immortal by getting uploaded into a computer, then you have to believe + information is real and alive. So for you, it will be important to redesign + human institutions like art, the economy, and the law to reinforce the + perception that information is alive. You demand that the rest of us live in + your new conception of a state religion. You need us to deify information to + reinforce your faith. + +## The Apple Falls Again + + It’s a mistake with a remarkable origin. Alan Turing articulated it, just + before his suicide. + + Turing’s suicide is a touchy subject in computer science circles. There’s an + aversion to talking about it much, because we don’t want our founding father to + seem like a tabloid celebrity, and we don’t want his memory trivialized by the + sensational aspects of his death. + + The legacy of Turing the mathematician rises above any possible sensationalism. + His contributions were supremely elegant and foundational. He gifted us with + wild leaps of invention, including much of the mathematical underpinnings of + digital computation. The highest award in computer science, our Nobel Prize, is + named in his honor. + + Turing the cultural figure must be acknowledged, however. The first thing to + understand is that he was one of the great heroes of World War II. He was the + first “cracker,” a person who uses computers to defeat an enemy’s security + measures. He applied one of the first computers to break a Nazi secret code, + called Enigma, which Nazi mathematicians had believed was unbreakable. Enigma + was decoded by the Nazis in the field using a mechanical device about the size + of a cigar box. Turing reconceived it as a pattern of bits that could be + analyzed in a computer, and cracked it wide open. Who knows what world we would + be living in today if Turing had not succeeded? + + The second thing to know about Turing is that he was gay at a time when it was + illegal to be gay. British authorities, thinking they were doing the most + compassionate thing, coerced him into a quack medical treatment that was + supposed to correct his homosexuality. It consisted, bizarrely, of massive + infusions of female hormones. + + In order to understand how someone could have come up with that plan, you have + to remember that before computers came along, the steam engine was a preferred + metaphor for understanding human nature. All that sexual pressure was building + up and causing the machine to malfunction, so the opposite essence, the female + kind, ought to balance it out and reduce the pressure. This story should serve + as a cautionary tale. The common use of computers, as we understand them today, + as sources for models and metaphors of ourselves is probably about as reliable + as the use of the steam engine was back then. + + Turing developed breasts and other female characteristics and became terribly + depressed. He committed suicide by lacing an apple with cyanide in his lab and + eating it. Shortly before his death, he presented the world with a spiritual + idea, which must be evaluated separately from his technical achievements. This + is the famous Turing test. It is extremely rare for a genuinely new spiritual + idea to appear, and it is yet another example of Turing’s genius that he came + up with one. + + Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on + a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked + to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back + and forth. + + Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? + If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights? + + It’s impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the + time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of + the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the + war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of + strange creatures. + + When Turing died, software was still in such an early state that no one knew + what a mess it would inevitably become as it grew. Turing imagined a pristine, + crystalline form of existence in the digital realm, and I can imagine it might + have been a comfort to imagine a form of life apart from the torments of the + body and the politics of sexuality. It’s notable that it is the woman who is + replaced by the computer, and that Turing’s suicide echoes Eve’s fall. + + [...] + + But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten + smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a + degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a + simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let + your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you? + + People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time. + Before the crash, bankers believed in supposedly intelligent algorithms that + could calculate credit risks before making bad loans. We ask teachers to teach + to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm. We have + repeatedly demonstrated our species’ bottomless ability to lower our standards + to make information technology look good. Every instance of intelligence in a + machine is ambiguous. + + [...] + + Wikipedia, for instance, works on what I call the Oracle illusion, in which + knowledge of the human authorship of a text is suppressed in order to give the + text superhuman validity. Traditional holy books work in precisely the same way + and present many of the same problems. + + [...] + + Or it might turn out that a distinction will forever be based on principles we + cannot manipulate. This might involve types of computation that are unique to + the physical brain, maybe relying on forms of causation that depend on + remarkable and nonreplicable physical conditions. Or it might involve software + that could only be created by the long-term work of evolution, which cannot be + reverse-engineered or mucked with in any accessible way. Or it might even + involve the prospect, dreaded by some, of dualism, a reality for consciousness + as apart from mechanism. -- GitLab