The Accelerating Future Family of Sites
Did you know? Accelerating Future is not just this blog where I rant about futuristic topics, it is a domain... a domain of several interesting blogs and sites. Blogs written by my friends Tom, Steven, and Jeriaska. Also, there's the Accelerating Future People Database, put together by Jeriaska, and a small database of papers by the intellectual powerhouse known as Michael Vassar. Other interesting things are in the works, as always, and if you want to accelerate their fruition, don't hesitate to donate by clicking the little bit of text under where it says "support" in the sidebar.
Particularly, in recent months we've seen a lot of postings by Jeriaska at the Future Current blog, including transcripts of many talks at the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference, AGI-08, Aging 2008, you name it. On the sidebar there are also links to videos of all these events. I can say with some authority that the significance of these gatherings to the future of humanity probably exceeds that of the Academy Awards, or even the MTV Music Awards. The Future Current blog was linked by Bruce Sterling over at WIRED the other day, congrats!
What is a Singleton?
Because I keep advocating a benevolent singleton, you should know what such a thing is. Thankfully, Nick Bostrom (not Bostrum, there is no "u" in his name) wrote the seminal paper on this in 2005. (Though the idea was around for at least a decade before.) It is titled, "What is a singleton?", and it's a damn important paper.
It begins as follows:
"ABSTRACT
This note introduces the concept of a “singleton†and suggests that this concept is useful for formulating and analyzing possible scenarios for the future of humanity.
1. Definition
In set theory, a singleton is a set with only one member, but as I introduced the notion, the term refers to a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level. Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain (including taxation and territorial allocation).
Many singletons could co-exist in the universe if they were dispersed at sufficient distances to be out of causal contact with one another. But a terrestrial world government would not count as a singleton if there were independent space colonies or alien civilizations within reach of Earth."
When I think about the notion of a singleton, it seems like a good idea, even necessary. This is not because I crave some God to watch over me, but because it simply seems as if any other path would inevitably lead in disaster, perhaps terminal. A singleton will happen -- it will be left to us whether it is a Friendly AI or a "Maximilian" -- a generic term I use for an augmentee or upload that acquires absolute power.
The Big Freeze
No, I'm not talking about Heat Death or another Ice Age. I'm talking about what could happen if mind uploading becomes universally or near-universally adopted and every mind is accelerated by a factor of several million or billion. Such an outcome seems inevitable if mind uploading is actually possible.
You may have heard that mind uploading means emulating human brains in computers, along with expansive landscapes to keep them entertained. Mainstream voices, or even WIRED-esque voices, may disparage such a possibility as a fantasy of techno-nerds, but if functionalism is true, as many contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists believe, then mind uploading will eventually become the new rage, whether or not it looks cool from the perspective of a 2009 journalist. Easy to make fun of, hard to actually stop.
With a complete readout of the data contents and algorithms of the human mind, combined with molecular rod logics, or even molecular nanocomputing, it seems feasible that million, billion, or trillionfold speedups could become possible. We will experience things millions or billions of times faster, a phenomenon known as subjective speedup. The rate at which we experience the world is dictated by the operation speed of our neurons. It is not set eternally by some Platonic ideal, which many unthinkingly assume. The fact that a "moment" is defined as a few seconds and not a few nanoseconds or a few thousand years is a simple consequence of the operation speed of our brain.
All biological neurons operate at about 200 Hz (cycles per second). If you look at much phenomena in nature and at the microscale, this seems relatively slow, but there is a reason -- it was obviously built for feasibility and reliability, not maximum performance. If there were a God, he would have done the right thing and built our minds to operate at the maximum possible speed with both reliability and high performance, but there isn't, so our minds operate quite slowly. Guess it will be up to us to change that. One element will involve making neurons smaller, so that they can switch at terahertz speeds without frying outright.
Emulating human minds will be quite the technological challenge, but luckily, and I agree with Kurzweil on this one, sufficient computing power and scanning capabilities will be all we need. No Unified Theory of Mind (physics envy much?), philosophical enlightenment, or other such nebulosities will be necessary, though they could be helpful if available. Reductionist materialism will triumph with this one, much to the chagrin of many, but very quickly the old rivalries will be forgotten and the unlimited potential of the technology will become the prime focus.
The utter power that uploading will confer to our civilization is mind-boggling. From the new perspective of a world with such power, all the old human achievements will seem inconsequential. Plato, Socrates, Einstein, Mozart, all mediocre. If I can pick up a fistful of sand on the beach and turn it into a thinking mind in short order, intelligence will become as common as drops of rain in the world's storms. All problems that can be solved by the application of intelligence will be. Truly an End of History, if you will.
It becomes hard to pretend to care excessively about present-day ethical quandries and thoughts about stem cells, life extension, nutritional supplements, gene therapy, and the like, when such tremendous potential rests in the near future. From a utilitarian point of view, if functionalism is true, then getting to uploading as quickly and smoothly as possible becomes an overriding concern. Conversely, uploading could become an ethical disaster without sufficient oversight, as sadists could keep and torture virtual nations in computers the size of a bowling ball. The easiest solution might be to simply eliminate the predisposition to such sadism in the human genetic code, and prevent all existing sadists from reproducing, but apparently the actions and beliefs of Nazi Germany have made any such talk about eugenics verboten.
If mind uploading is possible, the physical world may become boring due to the slow rate of its operation in comparison to the subjective acceleration. I say "may", because such an outcome is not certain. Phenomena that occur on nanosecond or even femtosecond timescales, such as the reaction of pigments in the eye to incoming photons, might command some interest in the new humanity with its hyperfast thought rates. Uploading is not a "release" or an "escape" from the physical world, but a window to experiencing it the way it was meant to be experienced. If uploading is possible, then all civilizations would likely converge to it, as numerous pressures -- not the least of which being the desire for personal longevity -- will trump any conservative blowback. If aliens exist, they are likely either worms or uploads. Meat-based general intelligence is a short-lived phenomenon.
Despite all my praise of the possibility of uploading, I am doubtful that AI will be achieved by a direct copying of the human brain in software, as Ray Kurzweil believes. It seems more plausible that such an advanced technology will be developed by AIs whose data requirements are measured in the hundreds of gigabytes, not the hundreds of terabytes. Before we can mimic the human brain, we will be able to sketch out the general contours that underlie its ability to function at all. Just like how we can understand biomechanics and build prosthetics before we can copy a muscle.
Some transhumanists seem to ignore the "high future shock" possibilities of uploading and superintelligence, but doing so is impossible, as these "fantasies" pump through the very veins of the movement. Mild transhumanism, thoughts about reprogramming the body using biotechnology alone, are a "gateway drug" to thoughts about superintelligence and uploading, so the logical progression is quite unavoidable. What is burdensome, on occasion, is trying to hide such thoughts from journalists for the sake of avoiding coming off like a kook, but media coverage in recent years has proven that trying to hide such things is impossible. Thanks to growing mountains of popular media and imagination that is on our side, speaking of such topics openly and freely is only becoming easier and easier.
Inevitable Positive Outcome with AI?
For those who believe that human-level AI isn't far off and that a rosy scenario isn't inevitable, 2009 is a somewhat sad and depressing time. Popular opinion is that AI won't be here for centuries, but that isn't a huge problem or issue. (In fact, it makes things easier by limiting the number of people involved in AI research, thus allowing me and my confederates to keep a closer eye on them.)
What is disturbing is the medium-sized and growing group of folks who believe that AI could be here within a few decades, but that the challenge of programming it for benevolence or moral common sense is trivial or already solved. I'm currently reading Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen's new book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, published by Oxford University Press, which is arguably the first actual book on Friendly AI. In the book, they mention that every time they talk to people about the challenge of AI morality, they hear "didn't Asimov already solve that problem?" This is silly in more ways than one, the most obvious being that Asimov made up his list of laws with the intention of them breaking down, to provide fodder for the stories. Anyway, Anissimov is telling you that Asimov didn't solve the problem.
Another common error, rampant among transhumanists, is that human beings will magically fuse with AI the instant it is created, and these humans (who they are obviously imagining as themselves) will make sure that everything is fine and dandy. Kurzweil is the primary source of this fallacy. This belief has the added benefit of making humans feel important, giving them a guaranteed role in the post-AI future, no extra effort needed. Technology makes it happen -- automatically. This helps heal the anxiety inherent in transitioning between a human-only world and a world with much greater physical and cognitive diversity.
Problem is, it doesn't make sense. While it is possible that the first Artificial Intelligence will be created in a way that it is completely at the service of augmented human(s), it seems highly unlikely. Here is why.
1) Most new technologies are created as stand-alone objects. It would be incredibly more difficult to create a technology completely fused with the deep volition and will of a 100 billion neuron human brain than to just create the technology by itself. Is it easier to create a toaster, or create a toaster whose every element is in complete harmony with a human being, who views the toaster as an extension of himself?
Because AI is complex, mysterious, and has to do with the mind, people seem to assume that making an AI and making an AI that is a harmonious extension of human will are close enough that the latter would not be much more difficult (in some cases, required) than the former. Seriously, there is probably someone reading this right now that actually believes that AI will only be possible if it is created as an extension of human brains. This is because they see humans as the source of the "special sauce" of all that is good, holy, and intelligent, and find it impossible to imagine a stand-alone artifact displaying intelligence without direct and constant human involvement. This is anthropocentric silliness.
2) Human biological neurons are not inherently compatible with silicon computer chips and code. This is a pretty obvious one. Perhaps some thinkers can only imagine AI being created in the exact image of humans, after exhaustive research of the brain, so if AI is possible, then perfect human-computer interfaces should be too. But, was the first flying machine a perfect copy of a bird? No. So why should we expect the first AI to be an exact copy of ourselves? Even if it was, connecting a human being to an AI in a close and intimate way would not be a 1-2-3 endeavor. It would make complete sense if the first million attempts only result in some insane or non-functional amalgam. In the space of all mind-like data arrangements, only a tiny sector corresponds to what we would consider as normalcy. We are fooled into thinking that a large portion of this space contains normalcy because evolution killed off most of the non-functional or insane brains millions of years ago. We see the (mostly) positive outcome, we don't see the quadrillions of failures.
3) The way things are going now, the first AI is likely to be created for some niche, money-making application -- like predicting stocks or planning battles. Cognitive features that are superfluous to the crucial activity at hand will be postponed to implementation at a later date (if ever). The problem with this scenario is that basic goal-formulating activity in these AIs will likely lead to spontaneous attempts at the accumulation of power and the concealment of that accumulation from those who might threaten it. Paranoid? No. This category of behaviors is sometimes known as convergent subgoals -- basic goals that make everything else easier, so most minds pursuing goals that require matter and energy would have an incentive to fulfill them. Unfortunately, it seems nearly impossible for anyone to wrap their heads around the idea, leaving 99% of futurists with completely anthropomorphic notions of how Artificial Intelligence will behave.
Blind optimists like to imagine AI popping into existence completely functional, reasonable, human-like, and ready to help out around the household, chatting up little Tommy just like any member of the family. If the first AIs are not like this, and are instead monomaniacal day traders, then they presume that such AIs will be kept in check until the day that Rosie the Robot Maid is online and ready to go. However, it needn't be the case. Like the supercomputer in Colossus: the Forbin Project, the monomaniacal day trader might find itself thinking so far outside the box that it decides to take control of the entire stock exchange, or even the world economy, and manipulate it precisely to maximize its personal utility, meatbags be damned. What to a human day trader would seem "absurd" would seem "obvious" to an AI with very little background morality or understanding of the nuances of human values and meaning. While a human philosopher might spend hours upon hours debating the fine points of morality, a recursively self-improving AI might simply say, "Why argue? I already know what good is. It's 45 lines of code that forms the top level of my goal system." The human philosophers might then say, "But Kant said..." as they are steamrolled over for extra space.
We have spent so much time dealing with humans that we assume that human psychology is typical of minds in general and that humans are the center of the cognitive universe. In much transhumanist futurist lore, nascent AI minds are portrayed as practically falling over themselves to seamlessly merge together with us and create a Kurzweilian Utopia, and that AI morality is as simple a matter as turning a switch from "Naughty" to "Nice".
AIs will not automatically merge together with us and become extensions of our mind, like friendly cognitive light sabers. Minds do not slide into each other like legos. There are early efforts to make an AI goalset that does actually serve as an extension of the minds of humanity, but it remains to be seen whether this can be translated into actual math, and whether or not the specific implementation in a space of 10^120 possibilities actually provides the desired outcome as planned.
But, it's worth trying. Of course, human intelligence enhancement should be pursued too, and narrow AI may have a role to play in this, but if human intelligence is as difficult to enhance as I think it is, DARPA will have developed AGI long before we can give old Lenny a smart pill to turn his hillbilly mind into that of a theoretical physicist.
(If you found this post useful, consider donating to SIAI, the only group working on this stuff in an organized manner. In return, you get bragging rights.)
Attack vs. Defense
In futurist circles and think tanks, sometimes the question comes up, "in the long run, which will be more effective, offense or defense?" The answer to this question has serious implications for which direction we should move in as a civilization -- if defense is easier, then many autonomous, independent, largely unaccountable communities might be possible, but if offense is easier, then there may need to be a global police force to put down rogue states before they start invading their neighbors. A more acceptable version of a global police force would be an impartial singleton.
The first, and obvious point, is that this question is entirely technical, a matter of military and physical reality, unconnected to political or ideological beliefs. Political beliefs should flow from the technical assessment, not influence it. So, if it turns out that offense is easier, those that strongly support the existence of many autonomous unaccountable geopolitical units will be forced, whether they like it or not, to adjust their beliefs slightly to the other end of the spectrum, depending on how much better offense is than defense. Conversely, if defense is easier, police state globalists would be forced to acknowledge that their policing might not be as necessary as they want it to be.
In Atlantis, or some other imaginary ideal society, people look at the facts first, and formulate political beliefs later. All political beliefs are based on bedrocks of implicit facts, and if these facts turn out to be incorrect, the beliefs must be changed. One can imagine hypothetical sets of facts that arbitrarily force a reasonable person to adopt seemingly extreme beliefs.
Back to the attack vs. defense question. Looking at just the technology, it appears to me that attack is stronger than defense. Ballistic missiles have tremendous mass and momentum, and no proven technology would be capable of intercepting most of the thousands of missiles that could be launched by Russia or the United States. Submarines, which some have argued would deter nuclear war by offering second strikes, in fact exacerbate the risk by allowing first strikes due to their close proximity to a target country. The surprise benefit of submarine-launched ballistic missiles would lead them naturally to be launched first in a nuclear war, not last. This is already common knowledge among military planners.
What about the future? It seems as if attack technology will become better than it already is, if anything. Superior materials will allow ballistic missile submarines that can dive even deeper and become even more difficult to locate and destroy. (In the niche of submarines, it seems like defense might actually be better! Too bad it would be impractical to move all our cities and farms into stealthy underwater subs.) If effective interceptors can be developed to block conventional ballistic missile technologies, then missiles will simply evolve to overwhelm the interceptors, as they always have. Even today, it is cheaper to launch many dummy missiles than develop the technology to detect and dispatch all genuine missiles before they reach their targets.
The heat and pressure generated by nuclear bombs is tremendous, a consequence of the unfamiliar power locked in nuclear bonds relative to chemical bonds. In the very long run, avoiding the danger of nuclear bombs may become possible by using utility fog to throw up massive shields -- but far more material is required to build an effective blast shield for an entire city than the material necessary to construct a nuclear bomb. Such materials might also be quickly penetrated by forerunner missiles, only to be followed by a primary salvo seconds later. In an arms race between weapons and shields, weapons are frequently, if not always, likely to win.
Considering weapons aside from just nuclear bombs, within a couple decades it will be possible to construct tiny, possibly even microscopic machines that can deliver fatal doses of toxin to human targets or sabotage sensitive electronic equipment with the most innocuous of payloads. Such machines could be distributed across enemy territory days or even weeks in advance, spreading as slowly and at as low a density as necessary to avoid tripping detection equipment. With such technology, even a small ruthless country with a large military, such as North Korea, might be able to take out a so-called juggernaut such as the United States. Unless we have abundant nanomachines flowing through our veins and crawling over our skin, analyzing every particle for the presence of a few nanograms of lethal toxin, the microbot approach to total war will prove highly effective.
To challenge those who disagree with me, I ask how a defense measure that costs equal to or less than nuclear missiles might be developed, or how a defense program against lethal microbots might be established that allows the citizenry of a country to go about their daily business. Frequently, it seems that an effective defensive technology is 20-30 years more advanced than an effective offensive technology. Since there are many dozens of nations around the world within 20-30 years of parity with each other in terms of technology, the future of war seems to place a large incentive on making first strikes. Avoiding rapidly escalating lethal wars seems to be either dependent on a major technology differential (like Israel vs. Hamas), or the inherent universal benevolence of political leaders. Unfortunately, voters tend select leaders that think of their own country first, and the world community afterward.
Some Books I Read in 2008
Like everyone else with any brains, I read some books in 2008. Here is a list of the more interesting ones:
1. The Golden Bough (1890) by James Frazier
This book was excellent -- and long. It took forever to read, and I'm still a couple dozen pages from the end (827 pages in all). Basically, the book goes through every folk custom you could possibly imagine. Did you know that some women in Polynesian tribes practically spend the entire time their husbands are away at war engaging in sympathetic magical actions to (nominally) increase the likelihood of their husbands' victory? Or that the High Priest of Nemi had to constantly be on guard under a sacred tree, for fear that someone would ritually murder him and take his place? Or that some African tribes are so nervous about tabooed words that they regularly change their entire lexicon to avoid any word that so much even resembles that of a dead ancestor's name?
The power of words, names, tabooed things, connection between sex and the growth of vegetation, priestly kings, the execution of mock kings, the ritual of Adonis, tree-worship in Europe, the myth of Osiris, the Corn-Mother, the ritual of Attis, the religions of pre-Roman Latium, child sacrifice, the ritual killing of sacred animals, it goes on and on. If you took a group of humans with no outside influence and plopped them down in a virtual Earth, they'd probably reinvent all this stuff. Why? Because the scientific method requires a massive infrastructure composed of millions of educated people, and this doesn't. Many modern educated people think they understand how paganism and superstition works, but I found that I had no idea until I read this book.
My point in reading this work was to figure out what humans are really about, what BS they make up spontaneously without influence from large centralized cultures. The verdict is that there is tremendous commonality in pagan rituals across space and time, which only serves to further reinforce the concept of psychic unity of humankind and human universals, which was already articulated so well by Cosmides and Tooby in 1997 and earlier.
To pique your interest a little bit, note that The Doors' 1968 song Not to Touch the Earth is based on a line from the book. Do you know what "not to touch the earth, not to see the Sun" actually meant to the ancients? The book is also notable for being one of the first to analyze the New Testament in light of millennia-old paganistic themes and imagery, though this analysis is absent in the abridged version. The unabridged version is twelve volumes, and I can only assume that no one but a specialist would have the time to read it.
The book is also informative for the errors in thinking it uncovers, relevant to modern-day Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all other theists. These modern-day religions are essentially going through the motions that their ancestors were practicing for thousands of years. When these rituals and beliefs are examined in light of localized paganism, their primitive nature is obvious -- when similar rituals and beliefs are inherited by worldwide mega-religions, they are equally absurd, but lent false credibility through popularity. It is curious that a Messiah of humankind would deliberately introduce a set of beliefs and rituals that so closely mirror ancient traditions that most people have ostensibly been practicing for tens of thousands of years. But, that is what theists actually believe.
The Golden Bough was the best book I read in 2008.
2. Diplomacy (1994) by Henry Kissinger
This is another book that might cause injury if it fell on you in an earthquake. Mr. Kissinger's sweeping analysis of diplomacy from Richelieu to the collapse of the Soviet Union is extensive, authoritative, riveting and fun. Mr. Kissinger examines the contrast between the American and European conceptions of how states should act, American idealism, power struggles in 17th century Europe, and much more. He examines successive diplomatic agreements and how they did or didn't work in the long term: the Peace of Westphalia, Congress of Vienna, Treaty of Versailles, Yalta Conference, and the endless give-and-take of the Cold War. It's interesting to compare Kissinger's largely hagiographic treatment of Metternich with his more cynical view of more historically proximate figures, including Wilson, Nixon, Molotov, and Hitler. He presents a more nuanced and inside view of the Vietnam War that monkey-see-monkey-do war protesters were ever able to do. Kissinger unavoidably becomes more emotional when discussing events and decisions in which he participated directly, and it's also interesting to see how different that is from his detached analysis of European history. Kissinger really drives home how foreign Wilsonianism can seem to the European historic frame of reference, but it's amazing, upon reflection, how completely Europe seems to have adopted the American perspective.
This work covers an impressive amount of history, and personal experience, by an intellectual giant. As a centrist, I came away from this book laughing at both the standard leftist and rightist views of foreign policy, as well as the standard American and European views. In humorous anecdotes, Kissinger relates how mind-bogglingly dense and anti-intellectual Ronald Reagan was:
"The details of foreign policy bored Reagan. He had absorbed a few basic ideas about the dangers of appeasement, the evils of communism, and the greatness of his own country, but analysis of substantive issues was not his forte. All of this caused me to remark, during what I thought was an off-the-record talk before a conference of historians at the Library of Congress: "When you talk to Reagan, you sometimes wonder why it occurred to anyone that he should be president, or even governor. But what you historians have to explain is how so unintellectual a man could have dominated California for eight years, and Washington already for nearly seven."
Of course, this phenomenon of the election of a dumb leader occurred again just seven years after Kissinger's book was published. At the moment, Kissinger is 85, so I felt like reading this work before he died.
3. Rainbow's End (2006) by Vernor Vinge
Sorry Dr. Vinge and fans, this book was pretty unimpressive. Most of the main characters are geezers in their 80s and 90s that have been magically rendered youthful by the biotechnology of 2025, so much so that they appear to look like teenagers. (And this is hard sci-fi? Not that I have anything against lively geezers, but these geezers acted like geezers.) As one reviewer on Facebook said, Vinge introduces some visionary technologies at the beginning, then goes nowhere with them. It is reminiscent of a book that a visionary nerd might write -- big on the concepts, poor on execution. It's not typical, though, because I love many of Vinge's other executions of visionary concepts, especially short stories like Run, Bookworm, Apartness, and Long Shot (which I had the pleasure of hearing Vinge read aloud in a bookstore on the Haight in 2004).
Basically, the hero of the story is some crabby old guy brought back from the brink of Alzheimer's by technology. He used to be an award-winning poet, but now can't write for shit. Some virtual rabbit (symbolism, lulz) comes out of the woodwork, and without any evidence or demonstrations to back up his claim whatsoever, promises him to give him his poetry genius back (how?). He has to go through all sorts of ridiculous hoops to do this, including crawling around in the basement of UC San Diego and putting mysterious black boxes in his bathroom to collect bio-samples (?) from his daughter-in-law. The climax is some huge cyber-battle around UC San Diego, which includes the operation of real robots, but for some reason nobody gets hurt. Meanwhile, other characters hang out in a rest home, after which the whole book is named. Boring.
Also, this book had no explosions. Only threatened explosions. My favorite Vinge story (The Whirlgig of Time, yes!) had a nuke in it, so I was disappointed. The "big danger" of this book that we're supposed to identify with is that books are being destructively scanned. Oh no. Many statements that Vinge can't help but in his characters mouths about the true value of the scanning (fast, make it accessible to everyone, books can be recreated) undermine the big scare enough to make it a big yawn. Mind control technology is mentioned as the aim of the (lame) villain in the book, but it is never deployed.
4. The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001) by Vernor Vinge
Phew, this is much better. Being younger or middle-aged when he wrote most of these stories, Vinge is not preoccupied by people in rest homes trying to be young again. This book is what Vernor Vinge is all about. A few of these stories were written practically half a century ago, but they're still fresh. This is because Vinge can come up with original concepts, including concepts about different types of minds, that will remain edgy until the Singularity actually happens. This is a nice hefty book, 464 pages. This is sci-fi with originality and creativity that goes so far beyond the lame crap on TV today, it isn't even funny.
There are 17 stories here, most of them written in the 60s and 70s. Bookworm, Run, a story about an enhanced chimp that loses his intelligence as he gets out of wi-fi range for his brain upgrades, illustrates the absolutely crucial notion of "smartness" that about 90% of transhumanists think they understand but don't. A being is not distinguished by their physical form, but what their brain can do with it, and this story drives that home.
Another golden story is Long Shot. This truly amazing piece is from the point of view of an artificial intelligence whose body is a space probe being sent to Alpha Centauri. It begins with the launch and continues into the contemplation of the AI's purpose as it traverses the cosmos. Vinge adopts the "view from nowhere", making as few anthropomorphic assumptions about the AI as possible as he writes the story from its view. Maybe, if the modern geek community read this story, they'd begin to think of AIs as actual potential beings with unique thoughts instead of two-dimensional plot device shadows based on mad scientist humans. Too bad that won't happen.
There are other good stories in here, but you'll just have to read them. Keep an eye out for my fave, The Whirlgig of Time.
5. Dreams of Terror and Death (1927) by H.P. Lovecraft
Oh yes, that's what I'm talking about. Lovecraft is a god of literary horror and dark fantasy. Ignore the lame artwork on the cover, the artists that share this man's vision were Goya (as in "****** Devouring His Son" Goya), Doré, and Sime. This loner genius produced some of his greatest works as part of his short Dream Cycle, which go beyond the Cthulhu Mythos (which everyone is already familiar with anyway), into realms that are just as much about fantasy and grandeur as they are about horror and darkness. The Dream Cycle, collected in its entirety in this compilation, is short, about 250 pages, and unfortunately the editors of this volume felt the need to insert a 100-page story with absolutely nothing to do with the Dream Cycle, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Skip it if you like.
The central figure in these stories is Randolph Carter, Lovecraft's thinly veiled proxy for himself, a dreamer who travels bizarre dreamscapes. In one story he goes in search of Unknown Kadath, a forbidden ice-covered waste at the top of the dream-world with a Cyclopean castle rumored to harbor the world's darkest and most powerful gods, such as Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos. On the way, he travels through Ulthar, the land where it is forbidden to kill a cat (and woe unto anyone who tries), confronts the High-Priest of Leng, who wears a yellow mask and dwells alone in a prehistoric monastery, and visits exotic ports where mysterious black galleys stop only to sell rubies and pick up large quantities of fresh meat, with none of their crew leaving the ship for weeks.
Remarkable in contrast to the incredibly boring and uncreative pop kruft that passes for horror nowadays (torture = scary, so let's shove it full of torture!), Lovecraft makes the horror about what isn't seen rather than what is seen. He highlights the mysterious and fantastic as being inherently horrifying due to the insignificant place they put humans in, which is about as transhumanist of a theme as anyone could ask for. Lovecraft's theme is that knowledge can be dangerous, leading us places we never anticipated, and to blindly build up our technological and scientific capabilities without stopping to consider as many of the consequences as possible is a foolish thing to do. What a contrast with the totally reckless "full speed ahead, everything will be fine, lol" mentality regretfully displayed by so many transhumanists and futurists.
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is the centerpiece of this one. Other good selections are the classic The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Doom That Came to Sarnath, Polaris, Ex Oblivione, and who could forget, that horrifying story about the intersection of science and the unknown, From Beyond.