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In many ways the kind of thinking in this tribe strongly resembles that of the German Romanticists. They were strongly interested in understanding the mind of God (which here is referred to as superhuman intelligence).
Also I would like someone to distinguish between "meta brain growth process" and the basic scientific idea of intelligence augmentation by tools like microscopes. The proposed higher degree of human interconnectivity (i.e. intimacy) achieved by using machines seems especially dangerous and misguided. Telephones and the internet were the first steps in this process. Am I to believe that wiring a computer into my brain will create *authentic* intimacy? The internet/cyberspace is purely *virtual*, it is a collection of code and servers that creates only the illusion of space.
More authentic intimacy would seem to be available in direct face-to-face communication in the real world using our bodies rather than computers to communicate.
Also I would like someone to distinguish between "meta brain growth process" and the basic scientific idea of intelligence augmentation by tools like microscopes. The proposed higher degree of human interconnectivity (i.e. intimacy) achieved by using machines seems especially dangerous and misguided. Telephones and the internet were the first steps in this process. Am I to believe that wiring a computer into my brain will create *authentic* intimacy? The internet/cyberspace is purely *virtual*, it is a collection of code and servers that creates only the illusion of space.
More authentic intimacy would seem to be available in direct face-to-face communication in the real world using our bodies rather than computers to communicate.
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Re: German Romanticism
Fri, January 5, 2007 - 5:24 PMdepends on the person, Patrick
a mundane example:
some people love to watch lots of television, it is an auditory and visual experiance
I prefer to read rather than watch TV, even though the written text is far abstracted from any actual auditory or direct visual experiance (unless it's a book with pictures).
As we develop new ways of communication, for instance brain to brain hookups through electronics, I am sure you will find that some people would prefer not to communicate that way. There are some people I know that hate to read even though they can and find it stressful whereas I find reading relaxing and enjoyable....so why wouldn't there be some people who wouldn't love communicating in that new medium of computer-brain interface? I am sure for some people, it would be detrimental, but not for everyone, it's a matter of temperment and character.
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Re: German Romanticism
Fri, January 12, 2007 - 1:25 AMThe question I was trying to pose is this, has the internet become something that contributes to alienation rather than reducing it? I find the idea of electronic brain augmentation interesting; however, I am not convinced that the brave new world it enables will be heavenly rather than hellish. Two schools of thought which inform my lack of faith in the project are German romanticism a la Goethe and Situationism.
From the romantic standpoint, it occured to me that the idea of MBGP might just be an elaborate prank in the spirit of the romantics. That's what I thought the "meta" referred to. That was until I noticed the technical writing and realized that its proponents are apparently sincere and serious. Evidently Nature has little appeal for them.
A situationist reading suggests that the end result of MBGP would be a spectacle of unreality that would be as to TV as a firecracker is to a nuclear bomb -- one highly dangerous in its effects on our perception of the real world. Guy Debord writes in "The Society of the Spectacle":
The spectacle is ideology par excellence, because it exposes and manifests in its fullness the essence of all ideological systems: the impoverishment, servitude and negation of real life. The spectacle is materially "the expression of the separation and estrangement between man and man." Through the "new power of fraud," concentrated at the base of the spectacle in this production, "the new domain of alien beings to whom man is subservient... grows coextensively with the mass of objects." It is the highest stage of an expansion which has turned need against life.
The mind-altering affects of drugs, propaganda and the media would seem downright innocent compared to a computer that is connected electronically to one's brain. The hallucinatory effects of drugs and the staged "historical events" of the media wear off and end eventually. You could turn off a computer connected to your brain -- *but* only as long as you can distinguish one from the other. Have the more enthusiastic members of this tribe considered that through the MBGP they might lose the ability to distinguish between reality and illusion?
One of my favorite movies, "eXistenZ" is about this subject. In it a famous game designer of the future demonstrates her newest creation, which is a system that plugs directly into the CNS. The game play is ... how shall I say ... highly realistic? Importantly, one can use the same VR system as started the game within the game.... Have the more enthusiastic members of this tribe realized that they very well might trap themselves in such a way as that they create an identical copy of their physical body within the virtual world, and are unable to distinguish between the two? And that, once in such a state, the only way to verify the virtuality or reality of the world they are perceiving is through "death"? -
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Re: German Romanticism
Thu, January 25, 2007 - 2:06 PMThe question I was trying to pose is this, has the internet become something that contributes to alienation rather than reducing it?
Patrick I did answer that question... perhaps not with a yes or a no
but more that I feel you are responding to a false dichotomy.
An example would be how I feel about cellphones, I don't like them. The concept of people with an expectation that I should be available to them, that I'd even have to come up with reasons to explain why I had it off for a while, means that I don't like owning them and prefer to screen my calls with an answering machine and a house line.
I could make a blanket statement that from my own personal experiance and temperment that cellphones are more bad than good. But I know I'd be wrong. There are people who love them, talk on them frequently, latchkey kids weren't that safe in my generation that they have typically a cellphone to call police as they walk home from school if there is a hassle. Parents can even track kids on maps with the cellphone to know where they are.
That means that for some people it's wonderful, just not for me.
Patrick, it will work the same way with the electronic brain augmentation.
Some people like you say will find it alienating, they'd probably eventually go off grid, form groups of people that don't use it. No one should force anyone to do it or live in that new mode.
Some people will like it, feel more connected.
I mean direct brain connectivity could be really cool in some ways.
Imagine you're down but someone's in a great mood, you could download their emotions and bye bye blues.
Imagine going into a mode where you are experiancing all of the orgasms of everyone on the network, male and female.
Imagine even what it would be like to listen to people speak to you face to face or otherwise with real and complete emotional empathy, no room for lies, every sincere and heartfelt thing... every uncertainty...all of it enhancing communication between people who might normally misunderstand one another. For instance, what if a husband who leaves the seat up on the toilet could feel the emotions of his wife as she for the millionth time sat on it without the seat... could feel her frustration and know how much it really upsets her... or what if the wife really can feel the exhileration her husband feels when he's watching the football game instead of whining about it.
I give comical mundane examples... but really think of the goal as technologically enhanced Telepathy. The mythos around telepathic communication is old... something that people have striven for or wanted since the days of Madame Blavatsky. -
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Re: German Romanticism
Fri, February 2, 2007 - 6:00 PMright so it's going to be like MDMA x 1000....
drugs and other distortions of reality like MBGP almost always lead to an illusion of intimacy rather than authentic intimacy. the illusion of intimacy is the same as alienation, perhaps worse.
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Re: German Romanticism
Fri, February 2, 2007 - 6:06 PMAlso, what do you think of the possibility of losing the ability to distinguish between meta brain and real brain? If you can create a simulation in the meta brain of the initial meta brain connection process you may become lost in the system by forgetting how many layers deep you are in. For example, "oops I just killed someone or injected a lethal dose of heroin, but it's cool, I'll just turn it off and go back to reality --- I'll just.... ummm.. oops, this *is* reality, not metabrain. Oh fuck, I got too high and didn't keep track of the layers of meta-ness..." How do you plan to address that danger? -
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Re: German Romanticism
Fri, February 2, 2007 - 7:00 PMIt is a technology that is far from developed, how are any of us going to answer that question as to what kinds of safteys there might be to it's use. It could be developed like any other technology responsibly or irresponsibly. If the system in place in that day is anything like the one we have today people providing any capacity to create and sustain a metabrain people could be a part of for periods of time will have to have some kind of safety standards or they might be open to litigation that could bankrupt them as well as be shut down immediately for the adverse effects.
that means it probably will do either of two things....
1. Go on before consideration for safety, probably in a desire to make a buck, and set up a minor disaster with the first group of people to get involved with it, because most people wouldn't. I wait about ten years after any new technical innovation assuming that there will be bugs that need to be worked out before I buy it, I and probably most other people will take a wait and see approache. It would obviously attract media attention, if anyone has a serious adverse effect it will be the subject of public debate. If it's a bad enough situation it will generate a demand to politicians to regulate it or shut it down until it's made safer. It might not be accepted or allowed again if it generates a catastrophic effect to the involved group psychologically or otherwise even if eventually they make effective safeties.
2. They are careful, the metabrain as you call it is carefully debated, it is held to careful safety standards, it is grown cautiously and people learn. Some problems are solved while they are still small and managable. In other words, it's done responsibly.
Truth be told, given our history with the development of new technologyies I would at least concede to you that the first generation of such a techonological innovation might have some very bad effects before the bugs get worked out or human beings somehow learn to adapt to that reality and still retain some sense of identity through it.
It's hard to say.
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