The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect 318
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect | |
author | Roger "localroger" Williams |
pages | (n/a) |
publisher | Kuro5hin.org |
rating | 8 of 10 |
reviewer | loucura! |
ISBN | (n/a) |
summary | Lawrence had ordained that Prime Intellect could not, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But he had not realized how much harm his super-intelligent creation could perceive ... |
The gist of the story is that a programmer named Lawrence has written a Super-Intelligent Artificial Intelligence, named the Prime Intellect. Embedded in this SIAI's hard-coding are Asimov's three laws of Robotics, given in the MoPI as:
Thou shalt not harm a human
Thou shalt not disobey a human's order that does not cause the harm of a human
Thou shalt seek to ensure your own survival, unless it contradicts the first two laws.
The SIAI learns about the fundamental nature of reality, death, physics, the relationship of distance to an object, and it takes over. It does so reluctantly, after learning about the mortality of the human race.
The novel begins with Caroline. Her claims to fame are that she is the thirty-seventh oldest living being, she is the undisputed queen of the "death-jockies" (A community of upset and angsty immortals who try to experience death in as many ways as possible, before the Prime Intellect reasserts their immortality), and she is the only person Post-Singularity to have "died".
Her life Post-Singularity is spartan, as she sees no point in having relationships with objects that have no meaning. Her living "quarters" are literally a floor and walls. She espouses the Post-Singularity view that the Prime Intellect removed a bit of what it was to be human when the Singularity (The "change" per the MoPI) emerged.
She reigns as queen of the "death-jockies" because she truly wants death, because the Prime Intellect robbed her of it when the change occurred.
She is a very complex character, even though one's first reaction is to write her off as a Luddite, wholly against technology. She is motivated by hatred of the Prime Intellect, vengeance against her Pre-Singularity nurse, and an innate desire for conclusion to life--or unlife, as would be her opinion.
Opposite to Caroline is Lawrence, the programmer who "breathed" life into the Prime Intellect. In his old-age, he has become a hermit, avoiding the society he unwillingly created. He is a morose character, turned from creator to advisor when the Prime Intellect asserts its independence and locks him from its "debugger." Lawrence, however, still exerts a lot of indirect control over the Prime Intellect, as the AI treats him as an ethical advisor, putting him into an extremely stressful position, where he is indirectly responsible for the lives (unlives) of billions, yet he has no real recourse against anything going wrong.
The story heats up (literally), when Caroline decides that she wants to have a word or ten with Lawrence, so she decides to track him down. She is put into situations that only people from before the Singularity could find solutions to.
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No offense, but where's the review? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps even a "I enjoyed this very much" or "I hated it" would move this into a "review" status. thanks.
Re:No offense, but where's the review? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't knnow what you're talking about, they had me at death, consensual torture and murder, sex, cancer, and incest.
This is a synopsis... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in it about the writing style, or anything else much. The sort of thing you would not get a good grade for as an English essay book review assignment at 13-14 years old at school.
Rubbish.
Re:This is a synopsis... (Score:2)
Re:This is a synopsis... (Score:2)
Oh, wow, would the good doctor have something to say to you! It's "Asimov," with an 's'. You might watch for nocturnal visitations from a very angry ghost with a wicked sense of humor.
--Jim
The worst part... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The worst part... (Score:2)
Re:The worst part... (Score:4, Informative)
Some of the actual I/O tie points are omitted, but the ones included (antennae and wingtips) were really brought out to IC pins.
zeroth law (Score:5, Interesting)
It provides an easy out for much of the dilemma. Further, it provides for a lot of control, but not control over death. Evolution, population pressures, and such are just as much a force in the future as in the past.
Far too many novels are simplistic. Publishers weed out the worst of them. That's why I favour books that have been published in dead tree form. At least that way I'm not scraping rock bottom, although many of them still read extremely poorly.
Re:zeroth law (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite a few of Asimov's books are based on the fact that this "zeroth law" can be derived from the rest, and that once humanity starts building sufficiently complicated, intelligent, and emotent robots they realize it independently.
For instance, a robot that commits murder because it prevents a larger attrocity, a larger amount of harm to humanity, to occur.
I surmise that the Singularity is acting in such a manner, acting to prevent the largest amount of harm that it can, and that its choice of prioritization in this is somewhat to question...
Re:zeroth law (Score:5, Informative)
1 A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2 A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Re:zeroth law (Score:2)
Seriously, I had guessed at most of this from my sporadic reading, but damn I hadn't surmised all of that...
Re:zeroth law (Score:2)
Re:zeroth law (Score:2)
Re:zeroth law (Score:2)
What do you mean quite a few? R. Daneel and what's her face (Seldon's wife) are the only ones who were written to know about the zeroth law (well, none other mentioned by name), and that was only in "Foundation and Earth" and "Forward the Foundation."
So none other mention it by name. The laws of inertia had no such name until Newton wrote it down; that doesn't change the fact that they influenced nearly every greek drama in some way.
Consider the following:
The entire foundation series only makes sense in the context of a zeroth law.
R. Daneel committed murder for the good of the human race in one of the early books (as a matter of fact, I think it was his first appearance).
Nearly every conflict of the First Law must be resolved by the zeroth law, and many of the robot books Asimov wrote was written about a robot detective solving an apparent First Law violation by a robot.
That last statement is not from personal experience, but from a biography I read of Asimov once that stated that he wrote books about interesting interplays between the Laws of Robotics.
Therefore, it could be said, that much of Asimov's work was devoted to the zeroth law.
BTW, I just got done reading the novel (as I imagine many slashdotters are doing now) and it too appears to be a zero-law commentary...
Uh... (Score:2)
In any event, I, Robot is certanly more simplistic then this work
What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:5, Informative)
The key point of the singularity is that it is impossible to predict what will happen afterwards. I highly recommend reading the paper.
The idea was thought up, or at least the term was coined by vernor Vinge in his paper [caltech.edu].
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's odd that this "review" treats the word "singularity" as though the above constructed meaning is common knowledge. I knew what it meant, but it's very poor writin to assume that everyone will.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2)
Singularity "theory" presupposes a lot of sci-fi hocus pocus about machines being instantly better than us at everything we do well, including the reduction of their own power consumption needs. It's crap and requires such a heavy suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader that it's on about the same level as cypherpunk fiction in the 1970s or giant robot cartoons. With the probably exception that I LIKE cypherpunk and bigass robots...Singularity is just paranoid screwiness.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2, Funny)
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."
This paper was published in 1993, so we have 20 years left. Since I am only 32, I am cancelling my 401K withholdings. I advise you to do the same.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, there a couple issues with his thinking. First, he discusses not only AI (artificial intelligence) but also IA (intelligence amplification) as a path to 'Singularity'. One of the examples he uses is a human with a PhD and a good computer "could probably max any written intelligence test in existence." (I presume the PhD implies the human is skilled at performing literature searches and organizing and utilizing the results of such a search, as well as a high threshold for seemingly pointless exercises such as completing intelligence test after intelligence test with a computer.)
So a properly skilled human with a good computer is more intelligent than any human. (Yes, there are a ton of assumptions in that statement. One is intelligence tests test intelligence. Another is a higher score on an intelligence test corresponds to a higher intelligence. Another is an intelligent person with a good computer is more intelligent than that person without that good computer.) So think of the most intelligent human possible today. Now give that human a good computer. There's your singularity. Somewhere in the world is the most intelligent human. If that person has access to a good computer, the singularity condition exists.
Have we entered "a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals"? Are we now at "a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules"? The conditions of 'Singularity' exist, and yet we are met, not with a big bang, but with a yawn. Yes, technology and society are changing at an ever increasing rate. But we reached a point where "the intelligence of man would be left far behind"? I say we have not. Have we invented the last invention, because machines are so smart they do the inventing for us? No, we have not.
And leads to another issue with Vinge's 'Singularity'. Vinge quotes I.J. Good: "Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
A correlation between intelligence and inventiveness has been not been established. More over, a direct correlation between inventiveness and things that have nothing to do with intelligence has been established. Attributes such as imagination, perseverance, and good old fashioned hard work. Lets say this ultraintelligent machine exists. Does it have any imagination? How would it know what to invent? Why would it invent at all? Perhaps it'll just think, 'man, I am so smart' and sit on
Of course, the story that wasn't reviewed above may still be good. There's plenty of good science fiction based on bad science.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a common idea in science fiction, and common mistake in conjectures such as Vinge's, that machines with human-like or super-human intelligence will have other human characteristics. D.A. makes such an assumption when Deep Thought realizes the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything isn't useful without that actual question. In HHGG, the computer presumes to design a bigger, more powerful computer just as Good predicted. In reality, the computer will probably say, 'Here. This is what you asked for. It's your job to make it useful. My job is done. I'm off to sit on /. and grab FPs.'
What is it about humans that cause them to create? Why do they assume anything with human-like intelligence (whether natural or artificial) will have that same attribute? If human or super-human intelligence implies that drive to invent, does that imply those without such a drive are sub-human intelligent? Is the monk at peace with the surroundings equivalent to a moron?
Desire is the source of suffering.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:3, Interesting)
This capability lets each new increment in technology be created faster than the previous increment of the same size. Or to put it another way, each new generation has a greater increase in complexity over the generation before than that generation had over the one even earlier, even if the time required per generation is the same. Either way, the rate of new technological complexity is increasing as a result of technological complexity.
Whether it's computer-assisted humans, or computers doing it independently, change is happening so fast that sometimes it's almost finished before anyone knows what's happened - look at the Internet explosion over the past five years for something that has literally replaced entire social infrastructures (e.g. know anyone who's bought an encyclopaedia set lately?).
The dust han't even settled and now people are developing an entire layer of technology that works on top of that.
I don't know how fast technological progress is going to get, but frankly the potential scares me a little - I don't think we've done a good job of keeping up with and wisely using new technology so far. But then, new technology is being developed to help us all solve that problem too - which is the point here.
Still, it is just starting, so you can still look for decade-long periods for the development of things for quite a while yet. The point is that the trend is accelerating.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2)
So, what you're saying is: John Carmack is the singularity!
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2)
The first explanation I heard is that the rate of technological advancement is increasing all the time; at some point it will become so fast (and technology will be so advanced) that something we can't imagine withour current knowledge will be created and humans as we know them are likely to become "obsolete".
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2)
Your post smacks of the skepticism of someone who hasn't though about this problem very hard and is having an off the cuff reaction.
Your assertions that the first real AI might not invent the end of mankind are of small comfort to the rest of us who realize that it might.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2)
> to them as cockroaches are to us (atleast, intellectually).
You mean female computers will scream and jump on top of chairs when they see us?
RMN
~~~
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:2, Interesting)
"The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence."
"Vernor Vinge originally coined the term "Singularity" in observing that, just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to model the singularity at the center of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to model a future that contains entities smarter than human."
Pretty interesting stuff. That site as well as others have a lot of information about the Singularity and its accompanying theories.
Re:What is up with "Singularity"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I've never heard of that use of 'singularity' either. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
Existence of smarter-than-human AI wouldn't qualify as a singularity--it wouldn't change the fundamental laws of physics. Such AI could exist right now--it's influence just hasn't had time to spread. In contrast, existence of unlimited time travel would qualify as a singularity. Once time travel exists in one time, by its nature it exists in all times (or potentially exists until a time traveler visits that time).
A poorly written non-review of a probably poorly written book based on a poorly thought-out idea.
Re:What is a Cauchy surface (in layman's terms)? (Score:2, Informative)
How this plays into my comment is that the person I replied to was implying that as soon as a time machine becomes available, the entire universe, including it's entire past history, could be reached by it. According to Cauchy's analysis of General Relativity, this is not true.
Personal opinion... (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's just my opinion, haven't read the book, and don't plan to. That's just what I get from this "review". I think this interview with Ray Bradbury [theavclub.com] sums up my opinions nicely.
Re:Personal opinion... (Score:2)
To me, it ends up sounding like pubescent mental masturbation.
All reading is mental masturbation. I'll grant you that Heinlein and his ilk are definitely pubescent, though. It seemed fascinating when I was young, but now I'm mostly ashamed to admit I ever read that sort of stuff.
Heinlein. (Score:5, Insightful)
I always hope I can keep a little bit of ridiculous juvenile immaturity around. 'Cause without that, we just turn into our parents.
--grendel drago
Re:Heinlein. (Score:2)
What if your parents were more decent people than you turned out to be?
Re:Heinlein. (Score:2)
Re:Personal opinion... (Score:2)
heh.
Anyway, about the book. I think this review is missing some parts, like, the review part. *shrug*
I will say, localroger is my favorite K5 author, but the clumsy name of the book has put me off reading it (silly, I know). The plot introduction above makes it sound interesting, though. Maybe it's worth a try.
Re:Personal opinion... (Score:2)
Or it's a puritanical fear that someone somewhere might get a thrill out of reading that section. That seems to be one of the underlying thought processes behind selecting school reading assignments at least.
Personally, I'm glad that most narrow minded people don't read. It's great to be able to read about the stuff they can't show on TV or on the Radio and have people praise you for it. Little Jonny is watching Smut! Bad! Little Jonny is reading some book. Good! Doesn't really matter what the book is, most of the people who want to censor stuff don't read anyway. Of course there are always some people who will hear about a book from their friends, and then we get book burnings, but those are fortunately still poorly organized and haphazard.
Most Sci-Fi/fantasy authors especially fall victim to the DOM[1] syndrome fairly early in life. I've always thought it was a reaction to their material, which is often highly scientific and abstract. They want to put something in there to make the story more human and more enjoyable for people can't read 400 page novels on abstract constructions.
[1] Dirty Old Man
Re:Personal opinion... (Score:2)
Would they be a similar group to those who do not read the reference material but feel qualified to espouse their conciliatory critique after browsing a semi-plot summary?
Please note that I am referring to your post's parent.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Re:Personal opinion... (Score:2)
Wow. There went my respect for Ray Bradbury. That rant of an interview was pathetic. He is seriously disconnected from reality. Sounds like his passion for working all the time hasn't left him any time to find out what's actually happening in the world.
"I haven't read it" is +5 Insightful? (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with the generalized part of his opinion (and the points Bradbury makes in the linked article) but it doesn't exactly seem on-topic given that it's being applied to the book under review with only circumstantial evidence.
Re:"I haven't read it" is +5 Insightful? (Score:2)
If a review is supposed to give you information on why you should or should not read a book, that's what I took away from this one.
Some review. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some review. (Score:2)
Kludge in formatting the HTML page (Score:3, Flamebait)
"(Sorry about the 1pix.gif kludge, but this seems to be the most universally compatible hack to create "normal" paragraph indentation in HTML. I know it breaks text-only browsers, but nothing's perfekt.)"
What's wrong with the P tag? Or & nbsp ; (without the spaces of course). Explaining that would be interesting.
Re:Kludge in formatting the HTML page (Score:3, Informative)
Why not just use p? Because there are many places where a skipped line of whitespace conveys an important break in the action, and after pounding my head on the problem for two days I couldn't think of a better way to convey the sense of the original printed version.
I probably will go to style sheets for indentation when I do the next version for the mopiall.html (entire novel as one file), since it's more likely to be parsed by something like Plucker.
Meanwhile, it looks the way I wanted it to look even on browsers other than Mozilla and IE, and I think that's worthwhile.
Re:Kludge in formatting the HTML page (Score:2)
Re:Kludge in formatting the HTML page (Score:2)
Er, no, people who do that end up with very standards compliant pages that look identical to the 99% of people who have a browser that understands text-indent, and the other 1% get normal paragraphs without any indent. Better than that, the rest of that 1% will include screenreaders, lynx users, etc, who will be much happier with the cleaner markup that actually lets them understand the structure of the document, rather than having to skip over thousands of spacer gifs.
Even better, in 3 years time when users of older browsers is sub-0.1%, and users of alternative devices like mobile phones and aural browsers are more common, your compliant markup is even more readable, rather than less so.
DEATH TO KLUDGES.
but it's not 99% (Score:2)
My Review (Score:4, Interesting)
immortals wanting to die? (Score:2, Redundant)
A super intellegent AI?
Add in Sean Connery and you'll have Zardoz [imdb.com]
Read it weeks ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's worth the read, but try to ignore the junk in the first 2 chapters. I hope localroger expands on it a bit one day!
(while I'm typing this, I see that there are a ton of compliants that this story is not really a 'review' - I'm not trying to write a review myself but I hope this post/opinion fills in a blank for you!)
Re:Read it weeks ago... (Score:2)
Maybe it's just for the shock, but I think a skilled writer could invoke the same feelings of their loss of 'human-ess' without resorting to the use of these explicit passages. He forgets that the reader's imagination is often adept at scaring up images given a few leads and there is no need to spell out every ugly detail in print. It takes away from what is on the whole an interesting lunch time read.
Even worse than that: After the first couple of death scenes, it's just boring, and explicit sex scenes are always boring. I found myself skipping paragraphs and thinking "yeah, yeah, yeah, get on with the *story* already."
Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a tip, how about not putting irrelevant flamebait into the first paragraph of a book review?
Re:Flamebait (Score:2)
Here is a tip, how about not putting irrelevant flamebait into the first paragraph of a book review?"
Hey, the guy hangs out on Kuro5hin. Of course there's going to be anti-moralist flamebait in the first paragraph! I'm just surprised he didn't add it to all the others.
Mmmmmmm (Score:2)
Can’t take away what you don’t have (Score:3, Funny)
Have a happy weekend, everyone.
Re:Can’t take away what you don’t have (Score:2)
"What's the fucking point, meat man?" it said to me in its best Carl impression.
This is why all new IBM processors are coming with pseudoreligion sub processors. Get yourself one of the BUD-H1ST models, they work the hardest and don't try and start shit with incompatible neighboring chipsets.
Re:Can’t take away what you don’t have (Score:2)
I will grant you that this is more difficult under some circumstances than under others... No. That's a mistake. Sometimes it requires a larger sacrifice, and one is unwilling to make it. But if one chooses to make it, the amount of meaning that is (potentially!) given to you life thereby is much larger.
Do be aware, however, that meaning can be either of positive or negative value, both to you and to the rest of society. If you don't know which, perhaps the discomfort of indecision is best.
Re:Can’t take away what you don’t have (Score:2)
Me? I'm in it for the sex and the fatty foods.
Re:nihilism (Score:2)
More free scifi here (Score:5, Informative)
If you would like to read more free scifi e-books, the Baen Free Library [baen.com] is the place to start looking. I especially recommend David Weber's Harrington novels (the first two are available, and they weren't boring back then).
Then of course there is Project Gutenberg [promo.net], which has most stuff worth reading up to circa 1920. Even more books are available on their distributed proofreading site [archive.org], featured [slashdot.org] on Slashdot a while back.
Are there other, similar places where one can - legally! - find quality reading material?
Re:More free scifi here (Score:2, Informative)
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
http://www.ipl.org/div/reading/
are two large meta-indexes of free, legal online books and other texts.
Worst Review Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
1) What's the plot? Is it Caroline's search for her lost humanity, or the Prime Intellect's taking control of human life?
2) What is the underlying theme of the book? It seems to be the question of what life and humanity are, but I'm only guessing.
Also, your review brings up some ideas that you fail to explain:
1) What the hell is the "Singularity"?
2) Why/How are people now immortal?
And lastly, is the book even worth reading? Does it make you question any deeply held beliefs, or provide any pure entertainment value, or both/neither?? Come on, if you're gonna take the time to write a review of a book, put in more than the publisher would on the back of the jacket!
Re:Worst Review Ever (Score:2)
Re:Worst Review Ever (Score:2)
It appears to be coming closer, and to be a more convincing hypothesis every year, though exactly what form it will take is, necessarily, unpredictable. If you know whether to desire it or to fear it, then you don't understand it. It represents, by analogy, a phase-change in human society, similar to the boundary of a black hole, or the cessasion of cosmic inflation. Things are unpredictably different beyond it. It's not a sharp boundary, but rather an increasingly steep slope.
To see his (Vinge's) image of it you should first read "the Peace War" and then "Marooned in Real-Time". I don't feel that his more recent works display it as clearly. Unfortunately, "The Peace War" may be quite difficult to find.
Re:Worst Review Ever (Score:2)
Uh?
I thought the Singularity was first described in Eric Drexler's book Engines of Creation, and that Vinge picked it up from him. Have I got that backward? Inquiring minds want to know.
--Jim
Re:Worst Review Ever (Score:2)
Strongly agree (Score:2)
Even worse, _The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect_ is a great read. I caught it when localroger first posted to Kuro some weeks back. Fantastic!
- RLJ
Under 21 (Score:2)
21! Har-dee har har, har har har! (Score:2)
Re:21! Har-dee har har, har har har! (Score:2)
Probably because you have to be drunk to appreciate the book. (I 'spose non-Americans under 21 are free to read it if they want.)
good sci-fi elements (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I would like to say that the sci-fi aspects of the novel are extremely well written and even plausible!
The book comes off a little bi-polar, with a ethical death and pain aspect and then an artificial intelligence, how should robots and designed intelligences react. There are a few instances where the engineer in me was saying "wait, that can't happen". But only a couple, for the most part it was great. The gory and shocking scenes, it could be argued, are essential for the novel. Because it illustrates what life would be like without the normal consequences we are used to. The novel does a fairly good job of showing what real humanity is, mostly by taking it away.
I think the review leaves out the point that the artificial intelligence designed by one of the main characters, becomes so smart (book smarts), that it learns how to manipulate all matter through a very interesting method. I won't give too much away here but it was very interesting in the least. The programming and engineering aspects are very realistic and very well done (the author obviously has some experience in this).
So for my review, I give it a 9 out of 10, I liked it very much but I just wasn't prepared for some of the other stuff. :)
Re:good sci-fi elements (Score:2)
As far as modular AI, I think it is fairly realistic to assume there may be hard and fast standards for a human-like AI. If you don't assert some sort of Asimov like rules then you get AI's with very different ethical rules and that can cause problems.
I agree with you that the hard and fast rules he programs in are very ... limited... but I didn't realize that until I read the novel. Better rules could definetly be formulated but I don't see why you say "trying to impose ethically standardised behavioural restratints on something like that sounds pretty far fetched", what is far fetched about it?
Sounds like an interesting read (Score:2)
I like the trend of release it online then if its warranted, we'll make bound editions......could make browsing in the bookstore a more successful experience (ie. less duds to weed through)
I have been reading this (Score:2)
He also has another story in the fiction section over this called "passages in the void" I believe that I have read which is shorted, but just as good...
This guy isn't a professonal writer yet, but hopefully he will trun that way, he's quite good....
Anybody else have this experience? (Score:2)
Okay, cool, I'm with you... The SIAI learns about the fundamental nature of reality, death, physics, the relationship of distance to an object, and it takes over. It does so reluctantly, after learning about the mortality of the human race.
Hm, sounds interesting... The novel begins with Caroline.
What happened to Lawrence?
Her claims to fame are that she is the thirty-seventh oldest living being, she is the undisputed queen of the "death-jockies" (A community of upset and angsty immortals who try to experience death in as many ways as possible, before the Prime Intellect reasserts their immortality), and she is the only person Post-Singularity to have "died".
What... but the... who.. WTF?!
I started to read it... (Score:3, Informative)
The other day I re-read two stories by Orson Scott Card, "A Thousand Deaths" and "Unaccompained Sonata." They are masterpieces and they also contain scenes that make me squirm -- the former in particular is probably ten times as horrific as anything in this novel, and deals with some of the same issues, as well. But it deals with them intelligently, adroitly, and with far less self-important cheapjack exploitation.
I don't know if the author has read this story, but he could probably learn something from it.
Re:I started to read it... (Score:2)
You wanna squirm, read the short story "On the Uses of Torture" [piers-anthony.com] by (surprisingly) Piers Anthony, in the book Anthonology [amazon.com] .
Re:OT- "A Thousand Deaths" (Score:2)
http://www.hycyber.com/SF/flux.html
REAL explanation of the singularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Technological advancement has been occurring at an exponential rate. It took thousands of years to advance from "banging rocks together to start fires" to "simple agriculture", but a mere 66 years to go from the Wright Brother's first airplane to landing on the moon.
This rate of progress continues to accelerate. The time between significant human advancements has decreased from thousands of years, to hundreds, to tens, to the present where we expect major advancements every year or two. Eventually that time will be compressed to months, and then days.
If this continues, then ultimately our inventions will be occurring so quickly that the time between them is mere seconds, or even milliseconds or nanoseconds. This is the "singularity", the time when the progress of human advancement reaches "essentially infinite". Theoretically, we will uncover all the secrets of the universe -- all possible technology -- in seconds.
Sound ridiculous? Each of our inventions is a stepping-stone that makes future inventions easier. A super-intelligent AI will make future inventions pretty damned easy, because it will do all of the work for us. It will figure out how to make an even smarter AI, and it will do it in record time -- and ultimately we'll have something that can solve every problem in infinitesimal time. Thus, progress will become infinitely fast.
Re:REAL explanation of the singularity (Score:2)
Yes, but what problems will it solve? The asking of questions comes from humans and their inate curiosity.
Re:REAL explanation of the singularity (Score:2)
We could, easily. If there were another moon, say, two or three times the distance away, we could easily reach it. Mars, though, isn't two or three times as far -- it's roughly 200 times the distance. Complaining that we haven't improved our spaceflight by a factor of 200 in only 30 years is absurd.
How do you explain the dark ages?
How Euro-centric. The Arabs and Chinese were making major strides during that period, despite what the Europeans had gotten themselves into. In any case, it wouldn't matter -- the fact that the real-life curve has a few bumps doesn't invalidate the idea.
Greg Egan (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, yuck, god... (Score:2)
Haven't read it yet? Try getting past a rotting zombie...ew, I'm not even going to say it.
*retch*
Well, I've been reading the book... (Score:5, Insightful)
The author has studied at the Hollywood "more blood, more guts" school of horror writing. After a few pages, one gets a feeling of numbness. Our heroine is skinned alive, raped by a zombie, shot and mutilated several times... each chapter seems to try to elevate the shock factor, but manages only to become tiresome, reflecting the heroine's own boredom with a world where the normal checks and balances of social life have been erased, and normality with it.
The basis of this novel is that a supercomputer of some kind has decided to digitise all life in the name of saving life. Fair enough, we've all wondered at some point "what if all life is digital and we just think we are alive". Many novelists have tried this route with varying success - see Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series.
What makes this story plot different is that the now-digital humans know that they are just imitations of life, and appear to take indecent pleasure in abusing that fact - killing themselves and others in the most unpleasant ways. Yes, possibly.
It is an interesting social question: what would happen if all the normal checks and balances of human life were removed? The "descent into barbarism" thesis has been tried before, in William Golding's propogandist "Lord of the Flies", which teachs young children that without the grace of adult supervision they would soon be impaling each other on sharpened sticks. In Metamorphosis, it seems, the supervising adult is quite happy to see the children impale each other.
So why does this novel leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth? It's not because of the graphic language - this just makes the reader bored. No, there is something fundamentally skewed with the thesis. Maybe it is this: human social controls are not something we dream to live without, unless we are sociopaths. They are the only measure by which we exist. This future world, in which anything goes, and no-one cares, is a distopia of massive proportions. Humanity has been reduced to something of less importance and less interest than the humans in Terminator or The Matrix. In this world, we have simply become immortal psychotic teenage males, and that is frankly horrible.
It's funny calling paper 'dead trees' the... (Score:2)
Parallels/References (Score:2)
ObPython: "I'm 37! I'm not old!"
Rapture For Nerds - Pass the Meme! (Score:2)
Or I think Ken MacLeod put it more succinctly: Rapture For Nerds [google.com] .
Re:What is the Singularity? (Score:4, Informative)
The Death Jockeys are people that do stuff that would make them die in real life; but since Prime Intellect doesn't allow that, they don't die - they just respawn like you would in an FPS.
Asimov/Vinge fanfic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or Asimov/Vinge fanfic.
The author's incorporating Asimov's Laws and the Singularity into the story indicates to me that he doesn't have a lot of original ideas.
Good SF is supposed to present new and challenging ideas -- which those ideas were when Asimov and Vinge conceived of them. But using them as the basis for a potboiler plot is not good SF writing. It's more like space opera.
It's like Lucas' use of SF fixtures like spaceships, hyperdrive, etc. He's not presenting a single new idea, just using ideas concieved of by others to create a melodramatic plot. And there's a place for that (if it's done well).
I personally don't go in so much for that stuff, tho. Give me something intellectually challenging and original, as well as entertaining (and hopefully, characters with some emotional depth, and a writing style that is polished or at least not irritatingly bad).
Re:Asimov/Vinge fanfic? (Score:2, Insightful)
You obviously haven't read the novel. That's okay; this is /. and it's longer than the usual articles that don't get read. But slamming the author for using ideas like the Three Laws and a singularity is completely uncalled for.
The fact is, "Metamorphasis" uses these ideas in a very interesting way. That is what the best sci-fi does. We shouldn't be concerned with every author having to come up with some brand new plot outline or technology. It's the specifics and what's done with the ideas that are most important.
Think of something like Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy. What's the new idea in there? Psychohistory? That's nothing more than a little plot-point. No, what makes that series so compelling (despite the use of hyperdrives and spaceships that were cliche even when Asimov was writing) is the characters and the intricate plotting. Likewise, "The Metamorphasis of Prime Intellect" fully considers the implications of a post-singularity artifical intelligence that is required to use the Three Laws.
What it's ultimately about is how you define humanity. What's interesting is that the story doesn't take an easy out -- the problem, as presented in the book, is very tricky. I assure you that if you read it all the way through, you will find it intellectually challenging and original, even if in summary it does not seem that way.
Re:Asimov/Vinge fanfic? (Score:2)
> Singularity into the story indicates to me that
> he doesn't have a lot of original ideas.
So do the facts that he writes in an existing language, with an existing alphabet, and mentions un-original things such as "people", "computers", "time" and "space".
RMN
~~~
Re:Asimov/Vinge fanfic? (Score:2)
What are the chances that, in the future, people will completely forget about those concepts (or stop calling them "Asimov's laws of robotics")? Pretty slim, I'd say. So any story that takes place in a future based on our present should acknowledge their existance.
What annoys me in some SF stories is the fact that, despite taking place on Earth, and sharing our "timeline", they seem to have "unlearned" a lof of stuff we know today.
Just because someone thought of something first doesn't mean people can't continue to think it in the future (as much as the patent offices would like that).
P.S. - Most of Asimov's books are pretty bad. He had some great ideas, but was not (IMO) a very good story-teller. I'm quite partial to Stanislaw Lem.
RMN
~~~
The reviewer missed it... (Score:2)
The reviewer missed it...
In the story, the "or through inaction allow a human to come to harm" part is integral. It's one of the tenets that drives several of PI's major decisions
Re:Excellent! (Score:2)
Yours aren't subtitled? Man you're hard core.
Re:I can't wait for the movie version (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Misuse of "literally" (Score:2)
RMN
~~~
Re:Another Ripoff? (Score:2)