It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I'm a huge science fiction nut (and that this has been the case for practically as long as I can remember). I grew up being exposed to Star Trek (both the original series and the Next Generation series when that came out), Star Wars (which I became utterly obsessed with at the age of eight), and other miscellaneous media.
Still, I don't watch a lot of television. I don't have cable in my apartment, and the only channels we do get here come in fuzzily at best (and I have zero interest in having a zillion channels to flip through -- it actually drives me nuts when people do that, so I'm certainly not going to enable it in my apartment!). Much of my science-fictional education (if you can call it that) has been through books. As a kid I started off reading whatever books my father happened to have lying around (a favorite was Roger Zelazny's Amber series), and I'd have slept in the library if I'd been allowed to.
But I do like a good movie now and then, and I am always pleased to find a fun series to watch episodes of on DVD with my dinner. And since I managed to exhaust the available Joss Whedon catalog last year, recently I went in a slightly different direction and started watching the science fiction series Farscape on DVD.
So far, what I've seen of Farscape has been delightful. The first few episodes were a bit rough (in terms of both dialogue and special effects), but the show rapidly picked up momentum and is definitely carving out a special niche in my brain as I move into the latter half of the second season. Nobody could argue that Farscape is exactly hard SF (there's a ridiculous amount of hand-waving at times with regard to how particular technologies and manifestations of alien biology work), but it doesn't need to be in order to be very good at being what it is: a fun space-fantasy that is equal parts imaginative romp and comfortable, familiar territory.
There are some aspects of Farscape that remind me of Trek, some that bring Firefly to mind, some that invoke visions of The Fifth Element, and some shades of Stargate SG-1, but the show certainly has plenty of distinguishing elements in its own right.
One of the more intriguing elements of Farscape is the ship the main characters fly around on -- a "biomechanoid" creature known as a leviathan. "Living ships" are nothing new as far as science fiction goes, but I haven't seen very many of them on television outside various anime series, where there often isn't any clear line between meat-based life and metal-based life at all.
Now, of course the definition of "life" varies a lot depending on who you ask, but in the context of Farscape, the leviathan (named Moya) is sentient, capable of experiencing emotion, capable of reproduction, and able to self-repair to some extent. She can also communicate fairly directly with her Pilot (who is, quite literally, bonded to her through a network of neural and other physical connections), though non-Pilot crew members must communicate with the ship through the Pilot since their connection to her isn't as direct.
I realize that "living ships" are most certainly confined to the realm of science fiction as far as the world as we know it goes. But as a character in Farscape pointed out early on in the series, humans have long had functional/"contractual" relationships with other animals, such as horses (albeit with some complicating ethical problems; I personally don't like the way humans often assume that animals are here for our "use", but at the same time, I do believe humans and nonhuman animals can reach states of mutual understanding and friendship).
The idea of a "living ship" to traverse space with might be fantastic now, but it's still fascinating to think about in terms of what the various implications might be of this arrangement.
In Farscape, the leviathans are "created beings" -- their race was brought into existence by another alien species who intended them to act as "emissaries of peace". They are not equipped with weapons, they develop symbiotic bonds with their Pilots, and they grow to better accommodate their crew over time. They can feel happy and sad, they can experience loyalty and disappointment, and they possess a survival instinct and a drive to protect their young. They seem to enjoy providing passage to those aboard, but they also have minds of their own -- they don't so much "take orders" as go along with what the crew wants (since it allows the leviathan the opportunity to continually explore), unless the crew's wants conflict with the leviathan's own desires, agenda, and sense of self-preservation.
Now in looking at the ethics surrounding leviathan-crew relationships, two models are presented in Farscape. One model sees the leviathan as something that is simultaneously a tool and a friend (i.e., another conscious being to be treasured and related to on his/her own terms). Here, the leviathan is given the opportunity to bond with a Pilot and carry a crew and explore, while fully conscious and autonomous. In this model, the relationship between the leviathan and everyone aboard is basically symbiotic; the leviathan provides life support and transportation for the crew, and their whims and goals provide the leviathan with new experiences and the opportunity to help others and (hopefully) advocate for peace and other positive notions.
The second model, however, is one in which the leviathan is "captured" and rendered either unconscious or semiconscious, and fitted with a "control collar" which allows the crew to direct him/her at their whim. Pilots in this second model are still present, but instead of being allowed to undergo the bonding process (which can take a rather long time, but which ultimately results in a painless and more effective communicative link), they are painfully and forcibly grafted to the living ships -- and then subjugated by the crew, which leads to their being threatened with everything up to and including death as penalty for not following orders.
As I've watched Farscape, though of course I fully understand that I'm watching fiction, I've found myself feeling very sympathetic toward the leviathan. The second model described above pretty much enrages me, and whenever Moya sustains damage on the show, it makes me flinch a little bit. Call it silly if you like, but that's just the way it is for me.
When I was little, my overall view of the world vaguely resembled panpsychism -- that is, I didn't really distinguish between "people" and "objects" in my environment, and consequently I saw everything as potentially "alive".
I've read some studies that interpret this tendency in autistics as indicating that we view people as essentially inanimate, but I'm really curious as to whether my experience could actually be the more common one. Basically, I didn't prioritize people over books or trees or cats in the sense I was expected to (I was often lectured for reading -- or wandering around looking at things -- in group settings rather than "socializing").
However, this does not mean that I ever saw people as hollow or empty; as far as I was concerned, nothing was hollow or empty; everything, from the smallest piece of broken crayon to the largest lichen-crusted rock, was suffused with a kind of unique character. People just didn't always stand out as the most interesting things in the immediate environment.
One reason I suspect I've always been drawn to science fiction and fantasy to some extent is because these genres often present worlds in which nonhuman forms and intellects are more accepted as a matter of course. When I imagine what it might be like to fly around on a living ship, the thought is strangely comforting.
That aside, I've been aware of for a long that while many people think of conscious awareness as one of the most "advanced" attributes an entity might possess, there really isn't any push to make all the machines humans use conscious. Certainly, there's plenty of motivation to create more "intelligent" systems (i.e., self-navigating cars), but when it comes to things being designed primarily as tools, I'm not sure most people would welcome self-awareness as an attribute of those tools.
Historically, humans have tended to create things (or enable/nurture their existence) for two major reasons: because we need a new tool to help us accomplish a task (the tool, in that case, is basically a means to an end), or because we want to bring something into existence for its own sake. Of course one could argue that everything humans do is a means to some fundamental end (like "replication" or "happiness"), but this kind of argument seems to me a bit arid and limiting. Regardless of what our dopamine levels are doing, the experience of making or acquiring a tool to accomplish a specific task is a qualitatively different one than the experience of making or acquiring something that is going to be treasured as opposed to merely used.
Now, some people do actually treasure their tools (I and my dad are both extremely averse to throwing things away!), but even those of us who will keep the broken remnants of a favorite piece of hardware usually have a list of items we do consider "disposable" and/or interchangeable with other similar items. These items are things we expect to fulfill a specific purpose reliably, with minimal demands on our time and attention. People don't necessarily want their obsolete computer hardware to "know" they plan to replace it once it wears out, and they don't want their dying device batteries to demand Christian burials. In short, many prefer the tools they use to be tools, not friends or pets.
Your mileage may vary, of course. But I wouldn't call it entirely premature or ridiculous to suggest that people start thinking about what increasing levels of computational complexity in their tools might imply, philosophically speaking. I'm not suggesting that our toasters and calculators are on the verge of "waking up", merging with Google, and initiating an Appliance Revolution, but rather that it can't hurt to at least imagine what nonhuman or even atypical-human consciousnesses might look like. At the very least, you might get a good science fiction story out of it!
4 comments:
I tend to see tools as extensions of the self. Tools are not friends or pets, but ME. You may command and own your body in that same fashion as you might "ruthlessly" dispose of tools. We see that as fundamental right.
It's common for people to confront the concept of robots as others, as, literally, autonomous automatons (auto meaning "self"). But personally, they made much more sense when I started conceiving of them in the traditional sense of extensions of their users. And indeed, the most prominent uses of robots we have today, before we really have any generally competent software to make them useful as truly autonomous entities, is in capacities where they are remotely controlled as untethered extensions of the bodies of remote operators.
It's the telepresence aspect of robotics - and also, avatars, in virtual worlds - that currently seems to be the most useful kind of application. I think more people will pick up on that as new applications come on the scene. Once it does, I wonder if that will have an effect on how people relate to actually autonomous software, if and when it arrives.
I enjoyed this post.
I've never actually seen Farscape, but a few years back (this gets a little involved), I saw a fanvid of a song by Vertical Horizon set to Farscape, and, not having the foggiest idea what Farscape was, I googled the term, and basically learned everything that pertained to the basic story line.
Your childhood experience of considering everything as being infused with personality doesn't strike me as the least bit unusual. I don't know if my brother (who has asperger's) views this world in this way or not, though I guess one could probably make a case for it. I certainly recall viewing both inanimate and animate objects as somehow living, breathing, and somehow communing with clearly personality-infused animals, from humans to cats to frogs. I didn't go quite so far as to view my scraps of leftover paper from an art project or the dead computer as being utterly devastated if I tossed them (actually, now that I think about it, I viewed them as having actually passed away, and that in a sense, I was burying them, though with out a tombstone or in actual ground. It was as if I considered the trashcan the inanimate version of the Unknown Soldier, if you will.
My family--my mother's family in particular--is rather famous for passing on the gene for pack rat, and as a result, my parent's house is chock full of furniture, books, photographs, and dinnerware that have been passed down the family for as many as 250 years. As you might imagine, this only encouraged my view of furniture and bowls as living their own separate adventure, and viewing the whole world from their own perspective that they will never be able share with us. Some books and plates and tables might in a way be able to tell us of their journeys through chemical analyses or just the way they are built, but I thought of them as having seen a world of use, seeing people and their interactions, and recording them in some abstract realm of thought reserved just for teacups. I personified everything. Think The Red Violin, and the long and fraught adventure that it has lived. I can't even begin to imagine some of the things that my own violin (made of separate parts that were bought off of Ebay) may have experienced, though remains of a bright cobalt blue paint might hint a little towards some kind of swing/jazz type past.
I've tried reminding myself sometimes that my favorite stuffed animal is made of cotton and synthetic thread, but the idea is virtually incomprehensible for me. The same goes for my books, and my favorite characters within those books--Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), for example, bears a fair amount of resemblance to my own personality, and I identify with her to the point that I think that she and her fellow characters must have their own beliefs and perceptions of the story she lives in, like she is a real person who somehow found herself sucked into this book, but has a life outside the novel. This mindset is probably best exemplified by Tuesday Next (I think that's what the series is called, I think they're by Jasper Forde or something like that) or Inkheart (similar idea, but is a YA book from Germany).
It never occured to me that imagining what two stones that are lying side by side with eachother might be conversing about today (well, maybe not that exact scenario, but something along those lines) might be somewhat unusual. It's probably because, as a hard of hearing little girl who had a reading level that was on par with College Seniors by the time I was in 6th grade, I was never interested in spending time with people my age. I much preferred libraries and bookstores (eagerly encouraged by my academic parents), which is probably why I personified the characters I met there with such an intensity, along with my pet cats and hamster. I had some friends my age, but I preferred to be alone. Up until very recently (as in the past two months or so), I used to got to sleep with at least twenty books neatly aligned against the side of the bed against the wall, piles catagorized by subject, easily within reach for reading when I wasn't interested in working on my chemical formula questions. Now, I pile them in these neat piles in front of me during the day, and tuck them away into a bureau drawer before going to bed.
As a result, your remark that you understand perfectly well that Moya is a work of fiction is somewhat baffling to me, who has grown up surrounded by beds who accept me and comfort me when I'm tired and restless so that I can sleep, a section of the car who is perfectly willing to put up with the usual frenetic energy of an average 6-year old, and a bedroom who perfectly understood my personality and housed and protected me when I was lonely or hiding from society as a whole (which is not always known for being patient with deaf students).
To me, Moya sounds like my old bedroom, a calm personality that was patient and willing to put up with the usual antics and varying experiments of human beings. I love that whole idea of a pilot being someone who works in conjunction with the ship, instead of controlling the ships movements. The whole idea that there are two ways of controlling a leviathon sounds to me like the ethics of using a work horse, or circus animals, or zoo animals. You can be patient and earn their trust (skybax! dinotopia!)or you can muzzle them and give no thought to their misery (Redwall).
The idea of living machines is an enchanting one for me, not in the least because they would then be able to share their experiences and feelings on a topic (hmm, the life of a semiautomatic owned by your average assassin would be very interesting to hear...), but it would able to guide you in the best way to use the skills that lie within the machine. And to have actual personalities within those machines--it sounds almost like having friends--and I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean like you make friends with pets like cats and dogs, only these friends can talk to you and give you insights that other humans might not be able to give you.
But sometimes that's exactly what I'm trying to get away from, and sometimes I really don't want to be around things that act just like humans because human personalities can get really really irritating sometimes. Well, then you can shut off the machine, but then if you need to use it, you have to contend with another personality, when you just want to commune with a machine.
I'm not sure...living machines seem to have their pros and cons, like most things in life (exceptions include books and chocolate, of course). But a living torture machine with actual morals and beliefs might actually be kind of funny--like, it refuses to be used because it hates the sound of people (humanoid or otherwise) screaming. It would certainly confound washington!
I definately don't like human's view as everything created to be their tools and/or developed for their sole use. It goes against the way I viewed (and still view) the world as a multitude of lives that interacted with eachother constantly. The whole concept of "use" implies that it's a one way communication with no room for negotiations on the other side.
This is an aspect of my childhood that I've never really thought about for, hence my long and involved "comment". Once I start writing, it's not so simple for me to just stop (ask my parents. My brother starts talking and goes on and on and on and on. I start writing, and I go on and on and on and on!). So, I apologize for the length. But thank you for the insight!
I would be uncomfortable with constructing sentient creatures as tools, even if they were treated as friends. There doesn't seem to be much room for intraspecies diversity and self-determination in that paradigm; to some extent, it reminds me of the practice of selectively aborting children who are perceived as lacking future usefulness to society. In that way of thinking, individual lives are not appreciated as having value in themselves, but are seen as valuable only to the extent that they conform to others' expectations.
The analogy doesn't quite work because the existence of new engineered species would increase the overall diversity of sentient beings, rather than reducing it as eugenics does; but it would reflect a similar view of life as subordinate to socially determined purposes, rather than existing for its own sake.
I also enjoyed the Amber series. :)
Nato: Your comments here have inspired a whole new post...detailed responses are there.
kakalina: Thanks for sharing your thoughts -- you said a lot of stuff I want to respond to, but it will have to wait until I have a bit more time.
abfh: A lot of what you say is actually addressed in the new post I just made (which I was apparently writing as you were posting your comment).
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