Tag: Scott Adams

  • Humachines and the role reversal

    In his post ‘Virtual People‘, Scott Adams writes that his generation would be the last of the ‘pure humans’  raised with no personal technology. Someday historians will mark the smartphone era as the beginning of the Cyborg Age. From this day on, most kids in developed countries will be part human and part machine. As technology improves, we will keep adding it to our bodies.

    Singularity has appeared on this blog in various forms, and in at least a couple of posts, I have written about the augmented human, and like the proverbial frog in the slowly-boiling water, we wouldn’t know when it happened. (check this post for a fantastic short film on the subject) In fact, medical applications of 3D Printing are already accepted and on the rise. Not just ‘accessories like hearing aids or dental braces, we have moved on to a lower jaw, (previous link) 75% of the skull, an ear, and yes, ‘cyborg flesh‘! It’s obvious that the applications are improving the lives of many. My question though remains – as we replace more and more of ourselves, possibly the brain itself within my lifetime, what happens to the essence of us that makes us human – the feelings, the emotions, the zillion unique reactions to various physical and mental stimuli?

    In this wonderful post titled “How not to be alone“, in which the author writes about how we have begun to prefer (diminished) technological substitutes to face-to-face communication, (I couldn’t help but remember this)  he quotes Simone Weil, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” And from that statement I realised how the the narrative might come full circle – I remembered this post I had read a few months back. It mentions bots that have passed the Turing test (“test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of an actual human”) and has a compelling argument that while we’re singular entities with a complex design, we’re still just blueprints –  with many similarities. This also  entails that we’re building machines that can mimic, and evoke, our emotions. Thus, he writes, the era of artificial emotional intelligence is not far.

    Perhaps, in the future we will outsource our humanity and reverse roles – half-machine former humans who deal with each other in mechanical ways and go back home to a humanoid bot that will give it all the empathy and emotional anchoring needed. Or would it need it at all? 🙂

    until next time, be human, comment 😀

  • Moral Signs

    A little more than a year back, I remember writing a post on identity – what exactly constitutes the individual – work, relationships, consumption, combinations of these…….

    More recently, I read a Scott Adams post which actually asks the same question ‘Who are you?’ He also provides his best answer to it ‘You are what you learn’. It’s an interesting point and I do agree that what you learn is what gives you additional perspective. It changes the way you view older experiences and how you react to new experiences. And so, despite believing in being prisoners of birth to some extent, and knowing that the apple never falls far from the tree, and at the risk of generalisation, I would tend to agree.

    Which brings me to learning. In an earlier era, our ‘channels’ of learning were limited – parents, relatives, friends, teachers, literature, some amounts of media, and so on. Limited when compared to the abundance that a media explosion and the internet have brought into our lives. Sometime back, I read a post in the NYT titled ‘If it feels right‘, which discussed a study on the role of morality (rather, the lack of it) in the lives of America’s youth. The author clarifies that it isn’t as though they are living a life of debauchery, it’s just that they don’t even think of moral dilemmas, the meaning of life and such. The study ‘found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism’, mostly because they have not been given the resources to develop their thinking on such matters.

    It led me to think about the moral frameworks that were instilled in us by our sources when were young. At the very least, value systems existed, though obviously their ‘quality’ would be a subjective affair. I wonder, if in this era of abundant sources, we are missing out on inculcating the basic moral guidelines that are necessary for a society’s sustenance and  evolution. If people are what they learn, then the least we could do is take a closer look at our own moral framework. The next generation, despite the abundance of sources, could be learning from it. Or perhaps this is the way it has always been, between generations. 🙂

    until next time, moral poultice

    PS: a beauuuutiful related video

  • Reference Groups for Heroes

    Scott Adams had a very interesting post ‘The Comparison Advantage‘, in which he writes about status related stress when “media is changing our reference group. We’re continuously bombarded with stories about people who are fabulously successful.” I’d add that social media is also a big culprit. According to him, the cure is  “to make sure you’re near the top of at least one reference group in your life.”

    With some difference, this is a thought that had crossed my mind long before I read this. But before we get to that, an interesting thing happened. A couple of posts (in Google Reader) after the above, I came across a post by Nilofer Merchant on HBR Blogs titled “Be Your Own Hero“. Completely contradictory? No. But related and yet different perspectives? Yes. This author asks us to junk the ‘Hero Narrative’ and pushes us to be our own hero by following our own passions and not trying to emulate anyone – a “clarity of purpose” for oneself. One of the proposed mantras is also “I shall not obsess over others’ success”, in addition to doing our bit to co-create the future.

    And now we can come back to my thought. I can relate to Nilofer’s views because that was what led me to leave a cubicle and explore the path of being employed by myself. One and a half years gave me an immense amount of learning, one of which was that even with a well thought out ‘personal purpose’ in hand, it was difficult for me to stop comparing. It really didn’t help that the gestation time for it was quite high, and a ‘need it now’ attitude, probably heightened by social media, also played its part.

    After much thought, I jumped back into a cubicle, before which I rewrote the ‘personal purpose’, in which I attempted to factor in the statustics. Putting a full stop to comparison is a long journey, and I’m already on it. An insight (humour me 😉 ) I had while thinking about the ‘compare feature’ was that so far I had been dependent on one of my identities heavily. Mostly it was my work visiting card. So, when comparing, I wasn’t really acknowledging the other things that I was doing, and doing reasonably well. And that is where I mash Nilofer’s ‘personal purpose’ with Scott Adams’ ‘reference group’. I don’t need to top any of my reference groups, but I need them so that my ‘personal purpose’ is balanced between various activities and relationships. That way, I don’t have to kill myself for not blazing a new trail independently. The cubicle job allows me to work on the things I like to work on; the blogs, social platforms and columns allow me to explore other avenues of interest and gives me a sense of worth, and when I need a hug, there’s D and friends and family. I try to make conscious decisions on each of these, keeping the others in mind. Multiple identities, multiple reference groups, all part of the personal purpose. Early days, but the signs are good.

    until next time, try id out 🙂

  • Your next avatar

    There was a good debate at Slate on how far (if at all) we should go in augmenting what we have been biologically endowed with. I’d noted earlier the three tracks of speciation, and how we are already on two of the tracks. (prosthesis and cell/tissue engineering) The debate introduced me to the word ‘transhumanism’, and its proponents believe that nature has done all it can do in terms of human evolution, and we should now take the ownership of driving our evolution forward. The opposing view (that’s not religion based) is that by manipulating all this, we might lose track of ‘being human’. There is a middle path that advocates augmentation to the “species’ typical best”, so that everyone would be ‘maximum humans’.

    One of the conclusions of this debate is that it will happen to us slowly. This is one of the fears I’d expressed in that earlier post – that we won’t realise when it happens to us. One of my other fears on account of increasing lifespans is the economics of it all, again something I’d written earlier. In yet another post, I’d wondered if we would speciate on the basis of whether we want to keep up with the information deluge or not. Those who choose to, would most likely need augmentation of the mind.

    ‘Evolution on Steroids’ is the theme of this article in BBC News (via Vedant), in which Prof. Church would now like to write/edit DNA, now that we have started reading it, with devices that will monitor internal and external environments, warn us, and then change our body accordingly. It’s probably an inevitable reality, with the only real question being ‘when’ and not ‘if’.

    ‘The Cyborg in us all‘ is another excellent read, this time from the NYT, in which I learned of scientists who are working on controlling computers via thoughts. In one of computer engineer Schalk’s experiments, on the effect of Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall – Part 1” on human brains, a particular brain created a model of what it expected to hear, after the music had been switched off in between. What the guys are really working towards though, are neurons and language – eg. thinking ‘cat’ and the image popping up on screen. Towards the end of the article, there is the NeuralPhone – which lets you pick a name from the phone contact list, telepathically.

    That brings me back to the Slate article which mentions this argument against trashumanism -increased lifespans would cause us to be more fearful, because we have more to lose. That would cause us to opt for “safe but shallow digital experiences, leading to long, ultimately empty lives”. This debate on enhanced and extended humanity reminded me of a post by Scott Adams, in which he writes about programmable avatars, which over time, would pick up our preferences and memories so well that they could live on as us even after we die, thereby extending our mortal lives into the infinite. And in ‘Hitchhiker’ style, he wonders if this has already happened. We are avatars of those who came before us – a premise not dissimilar to one I had reached via a different path. So much for humanity, and the debate about it. 🙂

    until next time, Google Human+

  • A People Person?

    Scott Adams’ post titled “People who don’t need people” (via Surekha) reminded me of Asimov’s Spacers, the first humans to emigrate to space, and their life on Aurora, the first of the worlds they settled. Scott Adams predicts that “we will transfer our emotional connections from humans to technology, with or without actual robots. It might take a generation or two, but it’s coming. And it probably isn’t as bad as it sounds.“

    In the huge canvas that Asimov had created, the Spacers chose low population sizes and longer lifespans (upto 400 years) as a means to a higher quality of living, and were served by a large number of robots. As per wiki, “Aurora at its height had a population of 200 million humans and 10 billion robots.“

    These days, as I experience the vagaries of the cliques and weak ties – not just Malcolm Gladwell’s much flogged social media version, but even real life ones, I can’t help but agree with Scott Adams that it won’t be as bad as it sounds. I probably wouldn’t mind it at all.

    When I feel like a freak
    When I’m on the other end of someone’s mean streak
    People make fun I’ve got to lose myself
    Take my thin skin and move it somewhere else

    I’m setting myself up for the future
    Looking for the chance that something good might lie ahead
    I’m just looking for the possibilities
    In my mind I’ve got this skin I can shed

    Scott Adams began his post noting that humans are overrated. Sometimes, I wonder whether humanity is, and whether losing our current perceptions of it would actually make a difference. (earlier post on the subject)

    Lyrics: Invisible, Bruce Hornsby

    until next, bot.any