Regular readers of
Toylit know that I am obsessed with the human-hive. Most self-other interactions involve tool-relationships. When manipulating inanimate plastic or wood, it's easy to see the tool-relationship. When befriending someone, or pledging allegiance to an organization (or even symbol), the tool relationships become more confusing. And yet, from these relationships, organizations arise. Invisible hands: entities that are comprised of humans and yet inhuman in nature. Organizations of any type can easily pass a Turing Test because they are COMPRISED of humans--bonded together by tools, systems and loyalties. Organizations, I argue, ARE AIs. The computerized AI, independent of humans, will never be as effective as a hive-AI. If anything, computerized AIs simply promise to be new components we insert into our composite-machine of a hive. So these AIs are molecules, with people--and increasingly computers--as discrete components.
A human is defined by tool-relationships, enhanced by them; and yet also constrained by them. Today's sociopathic killer was once Rome's finest General. What was once an essential white blood cell has withered away to an appendix. Times change, the hive changes. Hives compete, not only in war, but also in resource production and distribution. Banking can kill people as well as nukes can, as the Russians learned in the 90s. Ideas, like specific visions of law, can be so compelling that they become the highest allegiance an individual has, thus bypassing religion, state and sometimes even family.
I offer this thesis, that you might become unbounded by conventional visions of human and write something that scares you. If you are repelled by the thesis, then strike back with words in any form. Stab it in the heart if you can.
CombatWords! Engage.
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