Genesis

by Bernard Beckett

History has shown us the futility of the conspiracy theory. Complexity gives rise to error, and in error we grow our prejudice.

the problem with conspiracy theories is their assumption that people are capable of exerting sophisticated control over events. I believe that complexity emerges quickly and unexpectedly.

the Artificial Intelligence industry had faced an imagination deficit. Because researchers wrongly assumed that their early computers were good models for the working of the brain, they persevered in programming thinking machines. It wasn’t until the second decade of this century, when the scientists and artists began working together, that they began to understand the nature of what we now call emergent complexity. “We cannot program a machine to think,” was the slogan of the pioneering firm Artfink, in which William learned his trade, “but we can program a machine to be programmed by thinking.”

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

“In my brain, the number of potential connections between my neurons exceeds the number of particles in the universe. So, you’ll excuse me if I don’t fall down at the feet of your puny electrical circuits, or marvel at the junkyard kitsch of your bodywork. You’re just a toy to me, a clever little gimmick. While I, my friend, I’m a miracle.”

“Your body is trying to distract your brain from things it doesn’t want to hear. That’s the problem with machines built by chance. Once a design flaw has become entrenched, it’s so difficult to correct it.

“In the beginning there was clay. Clay is made up of layers of little molecules; each layer folds neatly over the previous one, copying the shape of its formation. So actually in the beginning there was a copying device. Sound familiar? Now sometimes this copying makes a mistake, and one layer is not exactly like the previous one. Let’s call it a mutation.

How, you might ask, can one form of clay be any fitter than another? What does it mean for clay to be fit?”

“Fitness is a measure of reproductive success. If a particular copying mistake creates a form of clay that is better at spreading itself, we say this clay is fitter.

“So you see, the nature of clay is not fixed. Copying mistakes occur, and those that are beneficial are spread throughout the land. Change is spread by reproduction. It’s the very first form of evolution.

We silicates never knew that in time this new reproducer would be so fiercely successful that it, and all its offspring, would forget the ground from whence they came. Mind you, we never knew anything. Knowing came much later. “Your favorite life form sprang up next. The DNA revolution. By the time the cell form was stumbled upon, it was only a clever trick or two to the glory of the multicellular organism. Locomotion was a neat ploy too, and eventually, the big arrival you’d all been waiting for, the brain itself.

Yes, the world may push your buttons as it passes through your circuitry. But the world does not pass through me. It lingers. I am in it and it is in me. I am the means by which the universe has come to know itself. I am the thing no machine can ever make. I am meaning.”

This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.

“I speak these words because they say something I want to say. Yet it is possible for me to talk in my sleep, even hold a conversation with a conscious person. And this is a different type of speaking. Again, the difference is thought, the deliberate method by which I choose my words. That is why you are not like me. Your moving mouth is like my beating heart. A machine, designed for a purpose but absent of intention.”

You think the thing you call consciousness is some mysterious gift from the heavens, but in the end consciousness is nothing but the context in which your thinking occurs. Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory. Why else do you not have memories from your earliest years?

I do

“What if the example is simplified? What if I have a photographic memory, and I have committed thousands of word-perfect phrases to my mind. So that when a stranger speaks to me in this language I do not understand I can choose an appropriate phrase in return?” Adam turned and waited for the answer. Art trundled slowly toward him. “Is that what you think I am?” he asked. “An elaborate phrase book?” “Why not?” “And why not believe every other person you have ever met uses exactly the same trick? Why not believe you are the only conscious being that has ever existed?” “That’s ridiculous.” “Yes, it is,” Art agreed. “That would make no sense at all.”

Anax understood. Her desire to join The Academy could not be explained without first explaining her love for her own era, the finest of all history’s ages.

The pre-Republican world had fallen prey to fear. Change had come too quickly for the people. Beliefs became more fundamental, boundaries more solidly drawn. In time, no person was left to be an individual: all were marked by nationality, by color, by creed, by generation, by class. Fear drifted in on the rising tide.

It was the one central dogma. A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

You made me doubt my own mind. It is a clever trick, I grant you that, but a trick, no more.

Just talk. Let the truth form words. Pericles’ advice. Good or bad, she had no choice.