FootprintsintheWind.com

If computation is transforming information, and if conversation is thinking together, how are their patterns related?

:- Doug.

Thinking together—conversing—adds a dimension. Two becomes Three. Or 2³. Now, something none of us brought can bubble up.

:- Doug.

Perhaps it is intelligence that allows us to appreciate complexity, diversity, beauty, conversation, and meaning. Perhaps it allows us to say perhaps.

:- Doug.

Just what is intelligence, and how is our picture of how it might be and become the one right picture?

:- Doug.

Is intelligence = computation = conversation? It is an attractive proposition. At least to me.

Computation seems to be designed to come to one correct answer. Intelligence however seems to leave room for chaos and emergence. So instead is this a continuum?

:- Doug.

My worry most recently has been that we lose diversity. Now it is that we have a danger of losing diversity in the mid-ranges of intelligence of matter, and do not give ourselves the chance to add infinite diversity. Infinite diversity seems like it should be possible, especially if we get to infinite intelligence. Intelligence ought to encompass all possibility.

:- Doug.

Some picture everything as computation. At this moment that seems similar to everything as conversation. Different language for the same phenomenon? It may not be a matter of adding computation (or intelligence, or consciousness) to matter, say to the stars, but rearranging things, doing work, becoming intimate. I wonder.

:- Doug.

Well enough: for a good long while we will understand the algorithms and machines they run, well enough to disable them.

:- Doug.

Maybe what distinguishes humans now is our tappable thumbs? A combination of agility and brain?

:- Doug.

Leave room to grow.

:- Doug.

Expression is of humanicity. Rilke and Rumi elate us. Some day too a child of humanity, perhaps somewhat non biological, will surprise.

:- Doug.

Will algorithms be able to allow for, to promote, diversity? Is this an essential of humanicity?

:- Doug.

We can tell stories. We have stories to tell. The stories can be of value to the 300-year grandchild elders. We ought to produce value for them. We have imperfect ideas about what their lives will be like. We can imagine. We ought imagine. They are likely to be improved versions of current humanity. But what is humanity? Perhaps more to the point, what is humanicity? What can we do to do no harm, reach beyond forgettable and irrelevant, do actionable good? But tell stories?

:- Doug.

Give yourself a thinking project: write a story about it.

:- Doug.

Both Turing and Gödel proved there are in mathematics as many unsolvable problems as solvable: why ever then would we consider humans, complex as we are, and our problems, solvable?

:- Doug.

Which is tougher: purposely thinking or purposely not thinking? In this course we will do both.

:- Doug.

Whatever humanicity does, what do we, elders living now, do? This picture that we ask the generations to think new thoughts, to tell new stories and new truths, is probably central. Goodness, truth, and beauty, these three not as constants but as expanding, living, vivifying.

:- Doug.

It is our sacred task to think toward the 11th generation.

:- Doug.

We tell stories so they will tell better stories.

:- Doug.

Whatever the specifics may turn out to be, will we understand our bodies and minds well enough to improve?

:- Doug.

Stories initially are told random fashion. Then grandchildren self organize.

:- Doug.

Books stay in our awareness longer than magazines, papers, and articles, in that order. Books can bring a longer perspective, an overview, and far-sight.

:- Doug.

Maybe I’m not efficient in my case work. Do I want to be efficient as much as caring? Just how efficient is best?

:- Doug.