Firestorm 2034: Chapter Sixty-Five: Gadfly

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Taberah walked up slowly, hesitantly, to the microphone. He looked unsure of himself, but there was still a deep confidence in his walk.

He looked at the microphone for a second, and then out at members of the audience, one at a time. It was a minute of silence, and in his eyes a penetrating gaze grew.

"It was a year ago this day," he said, "that I accepted this award, and I accepted it only because it was politic. I did not and do not think that what I did then merited an award of this magnitude. All I did was look at the problem a bit differently, think a little, and see a way to cheat on the Turing test. This is not a very big deal; it was just an accident. Yes, I know that most scientific discoveries are made by accident, but this does not make an accident a scientific discovery. But this time is different. This time, I am happy to accept the Turing Award.

"This time is different. Earlier, I had merely managed to capture the accidental features of intelligence. Now, God has given me the grace to capture some of its substance, and I stand in awe. It is as if, before, I had received an award for making a statue that looked like something alive, and now, I have succeeded in making something that is vaguely alive. The difference is fundamental, and I wish to ask what lessons we have learned in the discovery.

"The first lesson I can see is that abstract thought is easier than concrete thought. Or, to put things differently, that our minds are so wonderfully made that many of us can handle concrete thought even more easily than abstract thought. (Maybe the first lesson should be that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.)" A chuckle moved through the audience. "There is much more to thought, and rationality, than is easily captured, and I've only scratched the surface of it. It took me a long time to understand that computers are logical and can do math as no human ever will -- excuse me, do arithmetic as no human ever will -- and yet that they could not think. Notwithstanding Dijkstra's dictum that the question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim, computers could not think. If I have managed to make a computer think, I have managed only the barest prototype of what could be done -- like those cave paintings that we can barely recognize as art, I have just stumbled on how the basic principle works.

"Or, at least, part of the basic principle. All I've discovered how to program is how to think abstractly; I still have no idea of how to tell a computer how to deal with sense input. Nobody knows how to make an artificial dog; making the robotics for a body would be easy, and making an internal chemical laboratory capable of taking in food and water and producing slobber, sweat, and the like is arguably possible, but we have no idea of how to do the intelligence. All of the abstraction in the world can't tell our robot dog how to run through a field of children without getting clobbered. We have captured one of the features of human intelligence; there are a number of features of even animal intelligence that we lack. There are other features of unintelligent life that we have yet to touch, as well. Nobody knows how to make machines that heal after they sustain damage."

"The last lesson I wish to mention concerns accident and substance, and..." Taberah closed his eyes, and said, "Mr. Chairman, I stayed up all night thinking of what to say, and manners in the country I come from are a bit less polished. I really can't think of a polite way to say it, but I really think the discipline of artificial intelligence has been running with an albatross around its neck, and my success is in large part because I somehow got on the racetrack without getting an albatross. Do I have your permission to make some polemic remarks that may sting?"

Dr. Bode said, "Mr. Kinsella, you have our full consent to say whatever you think is best suited to the occasion."

Taberah said, "I know, but I am not much older than a child, and one of the things I've learned the hard way is that people sometimes say that when they don't really mean it. Is it really OK?"

The chairman's face held trepidation for a moment; he paused, and then said, "It's OK."

Taberah said, "Thank you. And I do really mean it.

"I will not begin to attempt a full philosophical analysis of accident and substance, any more than I would attempt a full mathematical analysis of logic within this speech, were I able, but I will say this. Accident is the outer appearance of an object, what the senses can receive. Substance is what it really is, its essence, if you will. Our discipline, in this area, is the self-made victim of an incredible legacy of bad philosophy, and has many fruitless endeavors which make as much sense to a philosopher as trying to bring a statue to life by painting it and making its features ever more lifelike. We have asked the question of, 'How can we create artificial intelligence?', but misinterpreted it to mean, 'How can we imitate the features of artificial intelligence that are most computer-like?' With all due respect to the brilliant man for which this award was named, I was shocked when I read Turing's explanation of what he thinks thought is. His interpretation of human thought is like interpreting a game of chess as moving little pieces around on a board. Some of what I have seen in this community reminds me of trying to kink a cable to stop the flow of data on a network, and then switching to fiber optic to make your thinking work. But what has happened is not that you make your thinking work; you only make it stop working. The main thing I would attribute this success to is that I came from another culture and missed this bad philosophy, and I believe that the artificial intelligence community will really begin to mine out my insight when they can really escape from this bad philosophy."

Taberah closed his eyes a moment, and said, "Mr. Chairman, may I take thirty seconds for a personal announcement, as well?"

The chairman sat for a moment and said, "What you have said is a difficult thing to hear, but others have said it before, or things similar. Perhaps we just haven't taken them seriously enough. Yes, you are welcome to say whatever else you want."

Taberah looked, gazed out at over a thousand heads in the audience. All eyes were on him. Slowly, distinctly, loudly, he said, "In this whole room, I doubt if there are more than two or three of you who can hear what else I have to say, but it is something significant. I would like if those two or three would come to my hotel room after the night's festivities so we can talk about it. Thank you, and have a good evening." He closed his eyes and walked hurriedly, almost as if embarrassed, back to his seat.

There was a hushed silence, with murmuring. When he got back to his table, after waiting a minute, one of the people from an adjacent table scooted over to him, and said, "May I join you tonight?" Then another, then another. People began to walk over to him. In minutes, Taberah was at the center of a noisy swarm of people.

Taberah turned to the woman nearest him, looked into her eyes, and asked, "Would you get the chairman for me?"

In a few more minutes, the chairman was next to him.

Taberah hesitated, and then said, "Dr. Bode, there seem to be more people interested in what I have to say than there is space in my room. Would you be so kind as to provide me with a room to speak in, where these people can comfortably be seated?"

The chairman gently laughed, and said, "Mr. Kinsella, why don't you speak here? The whole room is interested in what you have to say."

Taberah picked up his glass, took a long gulp, and said, "Let me take a restroom break first. And would you announce to people that anyone not interested in my tangent shouldn't feel obligated to stay. It'll be a tad long."

When Taberah returned, not a single soul had left. The room was dead silent.

"The discipline of artificial intelligence is about how to impart rationality to computers. This is a question about computers, but it is at least as much a question about rationality. In our endeavor to make computers rational, we have paid scant attention on how to be rational ourselves. I am not saying that we should be Spocks, embodying logic without emotion. A prejudice against emotion, and a belief that rationality and emotion are antithetical, is (thank God) crumbling, but old fallacies die hard. I embrace emotion as much as I embrace being physical and enjoying music and good wine, but I do not wish to deal further with emotion now. What do I wish to deal with?

"Dick Feynman, in his memoirs Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, included a classic speech on cargo cult science. He spoke of aboriginal people who, in World War II, had Allied food and other supplies accidentally airdropped to them, and produce a mockup of an airstrip, designed more and more to look like a real airstrip -- but, however much they worked, planes never landed. Never mind that this is very crude anthropology; there is a fundamental insight there about something that looks very much like an airstrip but just doesn't work. And it provides a key to explain something very disagreeable.

"When I came here, I was shocked at what I saw in intellectual life. It is like the shock that might come to a scientist the first time he goes to a creation science institute and discovers exactly what 'science' means in that context. Pseudo-science can incorporate a lot of material from science, and still not be science. What shocked me when I came here was that I looked for reason and found pseudo-reason."

Taberah said, "A full brain dump of what I have seen would take far too long to deliver in a speech, but I wish to give a sampling in three areas: an instance of bad reasoning I see, an instance of a bad way of thinking I see, and an instance of a possible partial remedy.

"The example of bad reasoning I see is in the area of overpopulation. The general, un-questioned belief is that our world's population is growing exponentially, much faster in the poorer areas of the world, and doomsday will come if we don't curb this population explosion. Speaking as a philosopher, I ask, 'Why?'

"The answer that is given is that people in the third world have large families to support themselves. And that's enough of an explanation to be accepted by someone gullible, but it does not stand up to examination.

"If the world's population is growing exponentially, then it has either always been growing exponentially, or it started growing exponentially at some point. If it has always been growing exponentially, then, as certainly as the future holds doomsday population levels, the past holds dwindling population figures. As surely as the future explodes, the past implodes. This would mean that prior to, say, 1700, all non-European continents would be virtually uninhabited. If the third world population is doubling every, say, ten years, then the population of the third world in the year 1700 would be less than ten. This is ridiculous. All accounts I know say that the poorer areas of the world have been inhabited with at least moderate density for quite some time -- thousands of years easily. This leaves us with the other option, namely that the population of the third world has been basically stable and has recently begun exponential growth. To this possibility I ask the question: why on earth? The cultures of these people haven't changed at any rapid pace (and if they did, I would still be puzzled as to why all of them changed, instead of a handful -- a rapid change of unrelated cultures is about as unusual as the formation of a herd of cats); it is true that most of them cherish children and value big families, but that's been a part of most cultures since long before whenever this population explosion was supposed to have begun. The introduction of new technology to lengthen life and childbearing years? That would certainly account for a population explosion in the wealthy nations, but the average African tribesman has never heard of a Western doctor, let alone received enough medical care to possibly increase the number of children he leaves behind.

"Literature describing a population explosion if the third world birth rate is not curbed has been around for several decades; it used to specify a date for when, for instance, people would all be standing because there would not be enough room for anyone to sit down; those dates are long gone, had passed well before the turn of the millennium, and now there are no more predictions for when doomsday will be -- merely that it is always 'soon'. There are pieces of evidence garnered to support this -- for example, the great poverty by our standards of third world nations; never mind that this is how all nations lived before one civilization happened to stumble on Midas's secret -- but it doesn't stand up to rational examination. And there are many claims like this that free thinkers never question, because to question them is to question rationality or to question reality.

"That is one example among many of non-think; I do not presently wish to give others, nor even to ask who or why would perpetuate such a massive and propagandistic illusion. I am trying to keep this talk short. So I would like to move on to my next example, of an instance not simply of an irrational belief, but of a macroscopic way of thinking that is bad. In this area also, I have a number of choices; I choose to elaborate on the discipline of economics."

Several faces in the crowd could be seen to wince.

"The discipline of economics has had tremendous success at providing the right answer to the wrong question. The question which it answers is, 'How can a culture be manipulated to maximize the economic wealth that it produces?' The question which it ought to answer is, 'How can an economy be guided so as to best support the life of a culture?'

"I spoke with an economist about this; he said several things. The first thing he said is that economics takes people's wants to be constant, i.e. that it doesn't try to reshape people's economic desires. But this is nonsense; the whole enterprise of advertising and marketing is designed to manipulate people into buying and spending far more than even natural greed would have them do. People work overtime and go into debt to have things they don't need and wouldn't want enough to buy if there weren't ads pressuring them into it. As to the others -- there is a naive assumption that the starting point is a consumer who is both selfish and rational. Both have an element of truth, but even the vilest of men is not completely selfish. There is a motivation to do something beyond meeting animal needs that is not gone even in Hitler. Hitler went to incredible lengths to exterminate Jews; such dedication would be called heroic if it were engaged in a noble cause. It was perverse beyond measure, but it was not selfish. Not by a long shot. And as to rational -- anyone who looks at a marketing text, or for that matter pays attention to a few ads -- will see that the means of increasing market share has nothing to do with rational appeal. The real questions that economics could address -- the meaning of wealth, the right amount of wealth (not the greatest) for people to live with -- are brushed aside in the relentless pursuit of more, more, more, more.

"On points like this I could go on -- the death of philosophy, the curse of Babel upon academic disciplines so that, for instance, the work of any one mathematician is incomprehensible to the vast majority of his colleagues -- but I do not wish to do so here. Instead I wish to turn, on a positive note, to how you can think in a better way.

"Larry Wall's classic Programming Perl described the three programmer's virtues: hubris, laziness, and impatience. His points with all three are in one sense tongue in cheek, but in another sense much deeper. The virtue he calls 'laziness' is another facet of the intellectual rigor that takes the one stitch that will in time save nine. It is called 'laziness' because applying that rigor will have the effect of taking less work overall; indeed it is a principle of software engineering that doing something well is easier than doing it sloppily. I wish to focus on that intellectual rigor.

"When you are thinking -- be it listening to this speech, or trying to get technology to work, or figuring out why someone is mad at you -- don't slouch. When you feel a faint intuition in the back of your mind that something is wrong, don't ignore it. Pay attention to it. Try to understand it. Analyze it. Analysis is one tool among a thousand, and you need to be able to let go of it before you can come to the insight Zen offers -- that much is clear to me from reading about it, even though I haven't the foggiest idea whether a Zen master would consider me enlightened or not. You need to also be able to relax, to be able to slide into things, to groove (if I may use an archaic term) -- but different things at different times. And a certain kind of intellectual rigor applies across disciplines, in sciences, in humanities, in humanities that think they're sciences. It applies outside of academia to life.

"I have thought a lot about the three areas these insights are taken from, and written them down in a sort of book. It will be available on my home room at midnight; those parties who are interested and not offended, whom I guess are few, are welcome to read it there. Beyond that, I thank you all for coming, and if my speech has succeeded, you all need time to think as much as I need time to sleep. Thank you, and have a good night."

Taberah slipped out the back door, scurried off to the hotel room, locked the door, and used both noise cancelling ear phones and ear plugs (noise rating 35); Aed had to get the hotel to open the room to pick up a cellular computer he'd left in there, and bring along security guards to see that he was the only person to go in. The traffic on Taberah's book was enough to take down a zuni server, but the Kinsellas' ISP had mirrors up in an hour. The next day, as the Kinsellas stepped into the plane to fly back, Aed said, "Taberah, I hope you're ready to be a celebrity. I've spoken with the chairman of the Turing society, and he says he can ensure us a week of peace and quiet with his clout. Beyond that, be ready for a lot of visitors."

Taberah smiled and said, "I'm not worried about it."

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