The Nightshirt Sightings, Portents, Forebodings, Suspicions

Welcome back! I was wondering just yesterday why I hadn’t had the pleasure of reading anything from you lately.

The article you link is lively and lucid. I have two concerns.

1. Like the ETH, your re-engineered version would seem to assume to naturalize or reify “intelligence” and “technology”. I would argue intelligence is a highly plastic and relative concept: a chickadee is more intelligent than a human being in stashing and retrieving seeds, for example. More importantly, the assumption that any organism intelligent-like-us would develop technology makes natural (universal, in several senses) a highly tenuous, contingent vector of human cultural development.

2. A much more difficult nit to pick is the attribution of near-human inventiveness to potential AI, which I would argue assumes too much. There is an aspect of human understanding that exceeds rules (algorithms), that plays a role in science, too, in the formulation of hypotheses, etc. And let’s not forget how the form of the Benzene molecule was discovered!

Aside from these concerns, a very inventive and (humanly) intelligent development of a surely outworn “hypothesis”!

Thanks for the well-considered response.

As you can imagine, this conversation, on these matters of technology and AI could go on! (Especially the latter, as the question of the Subject has been deeply pondered and debated, especially since Kant, and Novalis and Schelling have some telling insights that deftly puncture the more aggravated speculations concerning AI…).

I’ll consult that older post.

And I AM disappointed in the Benzene molecule dream being a fiction. I’m tempted to argue we shouldn’t let the facts get in the way of the truth here, because the lie points to the both mysterious (or merely “unconscious”) sources of human imagination and creativity, but also to the non-methodical, irrational dimension of even the most methodical, rational of inquiries.

Pray tell, WHAT is this book? It’s the first I’ve heard?

Your Noöverse scenario is still a fantastic thought experiment! What if the universe is already covered by an ancient internet of probes since long, long before mankind? This is very much the nuts and bolts version of the universe that is able to observe itself. Now with an emphasis on the interactive features of any observation that’s worth the effort. Maybe our inner drive for technological development is just a dispersion effect from a surrounding in which technology is a very, very ancient datum. – I’m happy to hear the book is doing good!

Nice to see you surface. I could easily see this essay or a version of it in *Analog*.

Nice to see the book has a title and a publisher. Am looking forward to it.

I read your intriguing article in Edge Science and it reminded me of something the science writer Timothy Ferris has explored in his books on scientific cosmology “The Mind’s Sky” and “Coming of Age in the Milky way. He has fleshed out some of his earlier thinking in a later (but still a bit ancient) blog, Science Bits, which appeared in 2008:

“Any other intelligent species that learns how to determine the age of stars and galaxies will come to the same sobering conclusion – that even if communicative civilizations typically stay on the air for fully 10 millions years, only one in 1,000 of all that have inhabited our galaxy is still in existence. The vast majority belong to the past. Is theirs a silent majority, or have they found a way to leave a record of themselves, their thoughts and their achievements?

“That is where an interstellar Internet comes into play. Such a network could be deployed by small robotic probes like the ones described earlier, each of which would set up antennae that connect it to the civilizations of nearby stars and to other network nodes… one could get in touch with many civilizations, without the need to establish contact with each individually. More important, each node would keep and distribute a record of the data it handled. Those records would vastly enrich the network’s value to every civilization that uses it.

“If there were any truth in this fancy, what would our galaxy look like? Well, we would find that interstellar voyages by starships of the Enterprise class would be rare, because most intelligent beings would prefer to explore the galaxy and to plumb its long history through the more efficient method of cruising the Net. When interstellar travel did occur, it would usually take the form of small, inconspicuous probes, designed to expand the network, quietly conduct research and seed infertile planets. Radio traffic on the Net would be difficult for technologically emerging worlds to intercept, because nearly all of it would be locked into high-bandwidth, pencil-thin beams linking established planets with automated nodes. Our hopes for SETI would rest principally on the extent to which the Net bothers to maintain omnidirectional broadcast antennae, which are economically draining but could from time to time bring in a fresh, naive species – perhaps even one way out here beyond the Milky Way’s Sagittarius Arm. The galaxy would look quiet and serene, although in fact it would be alive with thought.”

I know Ferris’ conjecture is not an exact match for your intriguing thesis you present, but the ideas do have some overlap. The avenues you and Ferris propose could prove more productive than the conventional Seti obsession with looking for a radio signal from a distant exoplanet or the unapologetic nuts-and-bolts technophiles who think we will some day find a grey in a crashed saucer.

Your writing makes me think. Thanks for that!

Eric, your “Time Loops” book is still in the “Coming Soon” section on the Anomalist Books website:

https://www.anomalistbooks.com/comingsoon.cfm

I suppose it is almost ready, isn’t it? I’m waiting for your return to blogging and debates…