Casey Dorman's Blog, page 2
May 9, 2021
Understanding Aliens
Our human minds were constructed over hundreds of thousands of years (actually millions of years, considering pre-human evolution), cellular circuit by cellular circuit, to allow us to survive and reproduce in earth’s environment. As amateur philosophers are prone to make much of, the world we see and how we interpret it are not one and the same with the world that is “out there,” surrounding us. Like the sounds dogs hear but we don’t hear, or the nonvisible wavelengths of light, or the magnetic fields we are not aware of except with artificial devices, we see, hear and sense what is necessary for our survival. Dogs, insects, birds, and ocean creatures may sense what we do not, so what was selected as necessary for survival for humans was not the only option.
Even more importantly than what we sense, is how we interpret and understand it. Psychologists use various illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion or the Ebbinghaus Illusion to show us that our brains make decisions below our level of consciousness about how to interpret our environment. Kahneman and Tversky similarly demonstrated that our logical thinking is riddled with “errors,” mostly a result of assumptions and shortcuts built into our way of thinking because they allowed faster, albeit, less accurate decision making, which probably assisted our survival in the past.
We only have a vague idea how many of our fellow species on earth share our sensory and cognitive biases and see the world the way we do. Hive insects probably don’t. Whales and porpoises are intelligent, but what reasons are there that creatures with no hands who live in water would have the same perceptual and intellectual processes we possess? As the philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” His point was that human understanding is limited. As Donald O. Hebb observed decades ago, basic physical properties of the world place limits on what perceptual and cognitive systems can do, because there is a common world to which all species must adapt, but what about creatures from another world?
The great Polish philosopher and writer, Stanislaw Lem, addressed this issue in his science fiction novels, The Invincible and Solaris. In The Invincible, the aliens are tiny automata, descended from small robotic assistants to members of an alien race, which crash-landed on a planet. Over eons, the automata evolve into a collection of tiny “flies,” which, although not individually conscious or possessed of reasoning, use evolved herd behaviors to destroy their alien masters and all other living creatures on the planet’s surface, including the humans who come to visit.
In Solaris, humans discover a planet with only a single creature on it—a massive, alive, ocean, which obeys higher-order mathematical principles and has an ability to create copies of the humans’ most intimate memories. Its purpose, if it has one, and its way of thinking are incomprehensible to humans, including the main character, who learns that there are ways of being that are simply beyond the comprehension of men because the concepts by which we think and perceive provide a limit to our understanding.
Lem’s conception of aliens is in the minority among science fiction accounts of other species humans might encounter. Most create their aliens to resemble humans.
Without resorting to alien encounters, humans may be right now developing artificial intelligences that think differently than we do. There certainly is no reason to build human perceptual or cognitive biases into the way a machine perceives or thinks. And because machine learning allows feedback-based modification of the thinking mechanisms themselves, and such modifications don’t require long time periods from one “generation” to the next, machine intellectual evolution can proceed rapidly, in fact at break-neck speed compared to human brain evolution. We could create an AI creature that soon operates as differently from our way of thinking as any of Lem’s aliens. Obviously, if we don’t understand how it thinks, we have little chance of controlling such a machine.
Some of these ideas are approached in my new novel, Ezekiel’s Brain. Approached, rather than embraced, because, as a novel, its purpose was to introduce a species of AI that the reader could understand. But in further books in the “Voyages of the Delphi” series, of which Ezekiel’s Brain is the first novel, encounters with other alien species will bring these issues up, much as Lem has done in his writing. It’s a difficult idea to contain in a novel’s plot, because the paradox is how to describe something to the reader that, by its very nature, the human mind is not built to comprehend? I have a lot of work to do.
For the time being, I urge you to begin the journey by reading Ezekiel’s Brain, available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.
Want to read more from Casey Dorman? Subscribe to his fan page to get regular updates on his writing and read his latest ideas. Subscribe here. https://caseydorman.com/subscribe/
Even more importantly than what we sense, is how we interpret and understand it. Psychologists use various illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion or the Ebbinghaus Illusion to show us that our brains make decisions below our level of consciousness about how to interpret our environment. Kahneman and Tversky similarly demonstrated that our logical thinking is riddled with “errors,” mostly a result of assumptions and shortcuts built into our way of thinking because they allowed faster, albeit, less accurate decision making, which probably assisted our survival in the past.
We only have a vague idea how many of our fellow species on earth share our sensory and cognitive biases and see the world the way we do. Hive insects probably don’t. Whales and porpoises are intelligent, but what reasons are there that creatures with no hands who live in water would have the same perceptual and intellectual processes we possess? As the philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” His point was that human understanding is limited. As Donald O. Hebb observed decades ago, basic physical properties of the world place limits on what perceptual and cognitive systems can do, because there is a common world to which all species must adapt, but what about creatures from another world?
The great Polish philosopher and writer, Stanislaw Lem, addressed this issue in his science fiction novels, The Invincible and Solaris. In The Invincible, the aliens are tiny automata, descended from small robotic assistants to members of an alien race, which crash-landed on a planet. Over eons, the automata evolve into a collection of tiny “flies,” which, although not individually conscious or possessed of reasoning, use evolved herd behaviors to destroy their alien masters and all other living creatures on the planet’s surface, including the humans who come to visit.
In Solaris, humans discover a planet with only a single creature on it—a massive, alive, ocean, which obeys higher-order mathematical principles and has an ability to create copies of the humans’ most intimate memories. Its purpose, if it has one, and its way of thinking are incomprehensible to humans, including the main character, who learns that there are ways of being that are simply beyond the comprehension of men because the concepts by which we think and perceive provide a limit to our understanding.
Lem’s conception of aliens is in the minority among science fiction accounts of other species humans might encounter. Most create their aliens to resemble humans.
Without resorting to alien encounters, humans may be right now developing artificial intelligences that think differently than we do. There certainly is no reason to build human perceptual or cognitive biases into the way a machine perceives or thinks. And because machine learning allows feedback-based modification of the thinking mechanisms themselves, and such modifications don’t require long time periods from one “generation” to the next, machine intellectual evolution can proceed rapidly, in fact at break-neck speed compared to human brain evolution. We could create an AI creature that soon operates as differently from our way of thinking as any of Lem’s aliens. Obviously, if we don’t understand how it thinks, we have little chance of controlling such a machine.
Some of these ideas are approached in my new novel, Ezekiel’s Brain. Approached, rather than embraced, because, as a novel, its purpose was to introduce a species of AI that the reader could understand. But in further books in the “Voyages of the Delphi” series, of which Ezekiel’s Brain is the first novel, encounters with other alien species will bring these issues up, much as Lem has done in his writing. It’s a difficult idea to contain in a novel’s plot, because the paradox is how to describe something to the reader that, by its very nature, the human mind is not built to comprehend? I have a lot of work to do.
For the time being, I urge you to begin the journey by reading Ezekiel’s Brain, available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.
Want to read more from Casey Dorman? Subscribe to his fan page to get regular updates on his writing and read his latest ideas. Subscribe here. https://caseydorman.com/subscribe/
May 2, 2021
Beyond Homo sapiens
Could humans disappear from earth? As far-fetched as it sounds, the chances of such an outcome are not as small as some might think. Stephen Hawking has said we must leave earth to survive as a species. “Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.” Hawking foresaw a number of disasters, including climate change and nuclear war, that could make earth unlivable for humans. Elon Musk agreed. His hope is to colonize Mars, establishing an outpost for humans when earth becomes uninhabitable, or when the earth-bound species destroys itself in war. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red, Green and Blue Mars series depicts the difficulties, and perhaps futility of terraforming Mars to accommodate humans. His recent The Ministry for the Future had humans facing the climate challenges and beating them, avoiding having to leave the planet.
Instead of, or in addition to leaving a toxic earth, some writers have focused on adapting the species. In 1930, in his classic novel, Last and First Men, Olaf Stapleton predicted that our current species is only the first in a long line of adaptations that will allow us to survive for millions, if not billions of years. More recently, Richard Morgan described a future in which humans achieve immortality by uploading their minds into new bodies, an option available only to the rich and powerful. His Altered Carbon became not just a hit novel, but a hit television series.
Humans are not limited by evolution. We have the intelligence and technical skill to alter our genes, to clone ourselves, and to merge ourselves with machines. We can create planned adaptations in ourselves. Uploading our conscious minds into computers is one avenue that, while no doubt decades in the future, is plausible. In Permutation City, Greg Egan shows us one version of how such a scenario might unfold. In his story, the adaptational capacity of the computer programming that allows uploaded minds to inhabit virtual worlds of their choosing creates a competitor for humans, which proves more than our species is able to handle.
While uploading people’s minds into computer circuits might solve the problem of dying from organic causes, it does nothing to change human nature, which thinkers such as Hawking and Musk blame for the demise of our species here on earth. Androids with uploaded minds from real humans will still carry on wars, pollute the atmosphere and kill each other. Being stronger, less vulnerable, and able to think faster than ordinary humans, they very well might hasten the process of making earth uninhabitable or destroying each other.
In Ezekiel’s Brain, I’ve explored the topic of an uploaded brain, an artificial intelligence (because it is not organic) that is an emulation of a human brain. But, as is likely to be the case, by the time the brain circuit copying technology is sophisticated enough to copy a real human brain and duplicate it in silicon circuits, our computer technology will likely have progressed to the point of being able to construct artificial intelligences that are at least as smart as humans, if not smarter, without copying their brains. Who will be dominant, the AIs that are copies of human brains or AIs that are pure artificial intelligence, who think differently than humans? Such beings, which is what they will be if they are conscious, will not share human nature, but what nature will they possess? Will they be friendly toward humans? Will they see any value in preserving the human species—even just its minds?
These are the questions asked in Ezekiel’s Brain. It is fiction—science fiction—but the possibilities it explores are real possibilities. They could determine the survival of the human species.
Ezekiel’s Brain is available on Amazon
“Ezekiel’s Brain does exactly what a piece of speculative fiction should: it delights in being thought-provoking, ranging over issues in AI, neuroscience, politics and philosophy, and at the same time takes the reader on a high octane narrative journey.”
Bernard Beckett, author of the scifi classic, Genesis
Ezekiel's Brain
Instead of, or in addition to leaving a toxic earth, some writers have focused on adapting the species. In 1930, in his classic novel, Last and First Men, Olaf Stapleton predicted that our current species is only the first in a long line of adaptations that will allow us to survive for millions, if not billions of years. More recently, Richard Morgan described a future in which humans achieve immortality by uploading their minds into new bodies, an option available only to the rich and powerful. His Altered Carbon became not just a hit novel, but a hit television series.
Humans are not limited by evolution. We have the intelligence and technical skill to alter our genes, to clone ourselves, and to merge ourselves with machines. We can create planned adaptations in ourselves. Uploading our conscious minds into computers is one avenue that, while no doubt decades in the future, is plausible. In Permutation City, Greg Egan shows us one version of how such a scenario might unfold. In his story, the adaptational capacity of the computer programming that allows uploaded minds to inhabit virtual worlds of their choosing creates a competitor for humans, which proves more than our species is able to handle.
While uploading people’s minds into computer circuits might solve the problem of dying from organic causes, it does nothing to change human nature, which thinkers such as Hawking and Musk blame for the demise of our species here on earth. Androids with uploaded minds from real humans will still carry on wars, pollute the atmosphere and kill each other. Being stronger, less vulnerable, and able to think faster than ordinary humans, they very well might hasten the process of making earth uninhabitable or destroying each other.
In Ezekiel’s Brain, I’ve explored the topic of an uploaded brain, an artificial intelligence (because it is not organic) that is an emulation of a human brain. But, as is likely to be the case, by the time the brain circuit copying technology is sophisticated enough to copy a real human brain and duplicate it in silicon circuits, our computer technology will likely have progressed to the point of being able to construct artificial intelligences that are at least as smart as humans, if not smarter, without copying their brains. Who will be dominant, the AIs that are copies of human brains or AIs that are pure artificial intelligence, who think differently than humans? Such beings, which is what they will be if they are conscious, will not share human nature, but what nature will they possess? Will they be friendly toward humans? Will they see any value in preserving the human species—even just its minds?
These are the questions asked in Ezekiel’s Brain. It is fiction—science fiction—but the possibilities it explores are real possibilities. They could determine the survival of the human species.
Ezekiel’s Brain is available on Amazon
“Ezekiel’s Brain does exactly what a piece of speculative fiction should: it delights in being thought-provoking, ranging over issues in AI, neuroscience, politics and philosophy, and at the same time takes the reader on a high octane narrative journey.”
Bernard Beckett, author of the scifi classic, Genesis
Ezekiel's Brain
July 7, 2014
What I'm working on
Right now I'm working on a new book. Many of my friends have read parts of all of previous versions when I published it in sections on my blog last year. At that time it was called "Unfair Vanities,' but now I have renamed it "Searching Saigon." I have been working on this same novel for nearly five years. It is a general interest, somewhat literary novel with two main characters; a 19 year old girl and her 52 year old father. She is searching for him, he having left before her first birthday and her mother recently having died, leaving her alone. He is a famous writer but now an alcoholic living in Vietnam. She is a rebellious teen with an interest in writing and literature. Anyone who wants to read the Word document and give me feedback, just let me know. I'm looking for all the feedback I can get.
Greetings Readers
Hi friends and interested readers. I have been writing for years but just opened a goodreads author page. I am interested in building a fan base and obtaining some reviews by those of you who have enjoyed my novels and nonfiction books. On this blog I will share some information on my books as well as what I am currently writing and even what I am reading. I look forward to interacting with some of you and finding out who is reading my books.
