Saturday 24 January 2015

Reflections On History

Since I have been posting about AI in Poul Anderson's Genesis, here is more of the same discussion on the Science Fiction blog.

Genesis is a future history that seriously reflects back on historical periods and processes. (Similarly, Olaf Stapledon followed his future history, Last And First Men, with the companion volume, Last Men In London, in which a time traveling Last Man from Neptune summarizes and reflects on past Terrestrial history.)

In Genesis, Laurinda Ashcroft demonstrates the unpredictability of history by citing many instances of historical upsets from the Neolithic Revolution, the Pharaohs and the Persian Empire all the way down to the Cold War, the environmental crisis and the fragmentation of societies by global communications:

"And she gave them history to show it was unforeseeable." (Genesis, p. 50)

Laurinda comments that, when superstitions from astrology to witchcraft coexisted with science and technology, the superstitions were overcome neither by reason nor by the major faiths but by the lesser uncompromising sects which then also lost their dominance. Which sects?

The devastated Earth is rehabilitated by new technologies and economic incentives. This sounds like what happens in Anderson's major future history, the History of Technic Civilization.

The Solar AI, Gaia, emulates historical periods in order to understand historical processes although she must continually make changes:

"...as events turned incompatible with what was in the chronicles and the archaeology." (p. 155)

Therefore, in her emulation of eighteenth century Earth:

domestic servants are underpaid, undernourished and under-respected;
American colonists keep slaves and will rebel;
a corrupt monarchy oppresses France;
a terrible revolution will lead to twenty five years of war.

Thus, she causes a repetition of all that suffering for the sake of knowledge. I think that this is morally unacceptable. She says, "'I do no wrong.'" (p. 136) I disagree. The black magician in James Blish's Black Easter agrees to release all the major demons from Hell because he wants to learn from what they will do. Thus, he also causes suffering for the sake of knowledge.

Brannock and Laurinda learn by dining with emulations of James Cook, Henry Fielding and Erasmus Darwin, i.e., with AI processes that falsely believe themselves to be these historical figures. In Lichfield, I visted Erasmus Darwin's house.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

All these notes and commentaries by you about GENESIS certainly convinces me that should be the next PA book I read. After I finish Brother Guy Consolmagno and Fr. Paul Mueller's (both members of the Jesuit order) book WOULD YOU BAPTIZE AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL? Briefly, the book is their dicussions, in dialogue form, of the connections faith and science have with each other.

Back to GENESIS. You disagreed with Gaia, the AI of Earth, saying she did no wrong despite the cruel things happening to the "persons" in the emulations she created. I do see your point, but I'm sure whether I can agree with you. Can you be cruel to "persons": which don't truly exist?

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
But they do exist. They are conscious. Cogito, ergo sum.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I'm still not sure if the "persons" Gaia creates for her emulations can be truly said to actually exist. Rather, they seem, at most, to be "detached" bits of Gaia herself speaking and acting in those emulations. Analogous to what happens when an AI splits off a copy of itself, except still "within" the original AI. I know, this is not very clear of me. Partly because I'm going by memory of my past reading of GENESIS.

So, it seems to me a bit like what we saw in "Lord of a Thousand Suns" when one of the characters hypnotizes himself to forget he had been hypnotized. These emulations in Gaia were "spun off" from her, even tho they have no memory of that.

So, I still wonder!

Sean