Anybody else read "Blindsight" by Peter Watts?

[phantom power]

[phantom power]

1. Because, it's pretty awesome.

[NewHampshireDem]

2. Me!

Yes, yes I did.

Anything you want me to add? ;)

[phantom power]

3. What did you think of it?

I've been thinking about a few topics, without any resolution:

a) (obviously) what *is* the benefit of self-awareness (if any)?

b) I wonder if "benefit" is beside the point? There is definitely benefit in being able to internally model the mental state of other group-members (for a social animal, at least). But then there is also benefit to modeling one's own mental state in relation to other group members. At that point, it may be very likely that a recursive loop gets closed, and self-awareness results. Just because all the pieces are there for it to happen. It's just a probable consequence of facilities that do have benefit.

c) I wish he had explored more what a non-self-aware technological species would be like. What kind of society would they have? Economy?

d) Where does an organic species evolve a dependence on 9-tesla magnetic fields for its metabolism?

e) who spiked Sarasti's anti-Euclidean drug? (so far, my best guess is the corrupted gang-of-four)

f) are the machine-intelligences from earth self-aware? If so, why?

[NewHampshireDem]

4. You've clearly thought about it more than I have ...

I read it as more of a ghost story, a Gothic novel in the tradition of 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turn_of_the_Screw">Turn of the Screw'.

I'm not sure that I could fairly respond to the questions you've raised, since I read it last June and it didn't have quite the same effect on me it seems to have had on you.

I guess, though, in response to your first question, I'd say that the novel makes the case that there isn't any benefit to self-awareness if perception is (easily) manipulated. But I'm not sure that's more than a strawman built upon another strawman. The novel is something of a setup in that the participants in the experiment it lays out are not typcially human--each has been modified in some way to make them particularly susceptible to environment in which they find themselves. The characters are already damaged when they are put into the crucible. (It's almost like asking 'What use are wings?' then pulling the wings off a bunch of flies and putting them in a bottle of water to explore the question.)

I have to admit, I don't recall the reasons given for the make up of the crew.

[phantom power]

7. Watts definitely likes to write about damaged characters.

Although most of the crew are modified, the military representative was not. Any earth-born animal's nervous system would be affected similarly by a 9-Tesla magnetic field. Not a good recipe for healthy cognition.

The gist of that thread was that these aliens had such total control over magnetics, and such intelligence, that they could almost immediately reverse-engineer how our brains function, figure out our weaknesses, and take advantage of them by manipulating our brains with their magnetic fields. They were more intelligent than we are, at least partly because their cognition wasn't impaired by the parasitic loops of self-awareness.

At any rate, that's the idea Watts wanted to explore. He's the first to admit that the entire premise is very speculative. We know very little about how self-awareness works, much less what it's effects on other cognition really are. But it is interesting that what few experiments we have conducted are not exactly ringing endorsements for the superiority of self-awareness.

I think of Watts as sort of The Anti David Brin. Fun quote from his website:

"Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts."
--—James Nicoll

http://www.rifters.com/index.htm

I don't know if you read his end-notes from Blindsight (or care to), but you can actually download them here as a pdf:
http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight_Endnotes.pdf

He describes in fair detail what he was thinking about when he wrote the book.

[NewHampshireDem]

5. Have you read Solaris?

If not, it makes a good companion-piece to Blindsight. I've only just read it now myself, even though it's 45 years old!

[phantom power]

6. No, I haven't. I did see the movie, FWIW.

Given the propensity for movie makers to mangle books, it's probably not worth very much.

[NewHampshireDem]

8. I haven't seen the movie

Either version, FWIW. :)

After reading the book, I'm having a difficult time imagining that it would make a very good film--very little action, lots of thinking.

[phantom power]

9. It did have that problem.

Very little action. And not a whole truckload of thinking either. The "George Clooney" verion, that is. I never saw the other version.

It wasn't terrible. But not very inspiring.