Reading between the lines, I'm thinking some kind of neuralink interface that enables the AI to collate input from the population and adjust policies on the fly, but also has the ability to edit memories.
As our good narrator said, some things changed dramatically! Though AI-facilitated VR-enhanced representations of actual ghosts and HDs is a pretty good theory.
Neuralink/etc will never be able to edit memories directly. Perhaps by swinging emotion while a memory is active, but even then, it's quite crude like the "shock the part of the brain at the right time" of Delgado with the bull and whatever other psycho crap he did.
I think that was the intent of the electro convulsive "therapy", to help people get past their traumas. Instead, it destroyed their personalities and memories.
Why memories cannot be directly accessed:
If you and I look, hear, smell, etc anything we store it differently. Why? Because our past experiences are different, so we have different ways of coding and categorizing senses.
You could say that it is a form of encryption in that there is no hard standard of how you experience things vs others do. My key to read my memories is who I am. Even if I dumped raw data from my brain, you cannot decode it without "me".
The transhumanists still haven't figured that out. Perhaps because they themselves lack the ability to see themselves. After all, Dracula couldn't see himself in mirrors, right? I remember Nixon said it one time too. I used to be afraid of those crazies but these days I see that they are struggling to be alive. That's why they are desperate to find more control.
And the Dracula metaphor is apt in many other ways as well (the moral inversion, the allergy to light (transparency), the parasitism, etc).
I imagine the at the core of tranhumanism is two-headed species of narcissism and atheism so extreme that the fear of death drives its proponents to madness, the external projections of which we see everywhere now via the egregore of digital networks. Like all madness, one of the key features is the inability to conduct basic, logical thought experiments from first principles, and to invert simple cause-and-effect relationships at the atomic level. Ergo, you get a quest for "eternal life" that involves an absurdly simplistic metaphor (brain as computer) supplanting the real deal in their imaginations.
When you sprinkle their cultish tendencies, we're in for a real wild ride of Lovecraftian horrors in the near future. Thus far, force-feedback experiments with Neuralink have mainly succeeded in causing lab monkies to chew off their own fingers and toes.
You're not wrong. It isn't at all obvious to me how neuralink would do something like that, or even whether it's possible to do.
With any new technology, before it matures there's a general tendency to be wildly optimistic about its capabilities, whether for better or for worse. As its limitations become apparent this moderates, and often the worst effects arise not due to the technology itself, but second-order effects from unforseen use cases. Predicting traffic deaths in automobile accidents was easy; predicting lives spent stuck in traffic while commuting from distant suburbs was not.
The most happily annoying one of the lot. Aside from the honest jabs and pokes, there are clever layers here of allegory and metaphor that readers will miss, that I know I've missed. Kudos H.
I would refer you to my own attempt along this line, written in 2018-2019. I don't know that it fits will with your subjects matter. I was very into Permaculture at the time.
I didn't know you had it in you, Harrison. Very well done. The only one I found myself smiling trough. If you don't have a sense of humor about the future, the future probably won't be very fun whatever it brings.
Harrison, yours was the last one I had to read, wasn't disappointed. You seemed to touch on most of today's nonsense and blend it into a good cohesive story that Grandpapa could tell Billy. I think all six of you did a great job. Kudos to all of you!!!
Reading between the lines, I'm thinking some kind of neuralink interface that enables the AI to collate input from the population and adjust policies on the fly, but also has the ability to edit memories.
The former is probable. The latter could be. Or Old John is a wily old SOB. Or both.
I'm also curious about the spectrals. VR ghosts? AIs? Hyperdimensional? All of the above?
As our good narrator said, some things changed dramatically! Though AI-facilitated VR-enhanced representations of actual ghosts and HDs is a pretty good theory.
Neuralink/etc will never be able to edit memories directly. Perhaps by swinging emotion while a memory is active, but even then, it's quite crude like the "shock the part of the brain at the right time" of Delgado with the bull and whatever other psycho crap he did.
I think that was the intent of the electro convulsive "therapy", to help people get past their traumas. Instead, it destroyed their personalities and memories.
Why memories cannot be directly accessed:
If you and I look, hear, smell, etc anything we store it differently. Why? Because our past experiences are different, so we have different ways of coding and categorizing senses.
You could say that it is a form of encryption in that there is no hard standard of how you experience things vs others do. My key to read my memories is who I am. Even if I dumped raw data from my brain, you cannot decode it without "me".
The transhumanists still haven't figured that out. Perhaps because they themselves lack the ability to see themselves. After all, Dracula couldn't see himself in mirrors, right? I remember Nixon said it one time too. I used to be afraid of those crazies but these days I see that they are struggling to be alive. That's why they are desperate to find more control.
Exactly correct.
And the Dracula metaphor is apt in many other ways as well (the moral inversion, the allergy to light (transparency), the parasitism, etc).
I imagine the at the core of tranhumanism is two-headed species of narcissism and atheism so extreme that the fear of death drives its proponents to madness, the external projections of which we see everywhere now via the egregore of digital networks. Like all madness, one of the key features is the inability to conduct basic, logical thought experiments from first principles, and to invert simple cause-and-effect relationships at the atomic level. Ergo, you get a quest for "eternal life" that involves an absurdly simplistic metaphor (brain as computer) supplanting the real deal in their imaginations.
When you sprinkle their cultish tendencies, we're in for a real wild ride of Lovecraftian horrors in the near future. Thus far, force-feedback experiments with Neuralink have mainly succeeded in causing lab monkies to chew off their own fingers and toes.
You're not wrong. It isn't at all obvious to me how neuralink would do something like that, or even whether it's possible to do.
With any new technology, before it matures there's a general tendency to be wildly optimistic about its capabilities, whether for better or for worse. As its limitations become apparent this moderates, and often the worst effects arise not due to the technology itself, but second-order effects from unforseen use cases. Predicting traffic deaths in automobile accidents was easy; predicting lives spent stuck in traffic while commuting from distant suburbs was not.
Harrison, will be linking all six articles today in a special edition of https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Will be reading all over the next few days when I get some time.
Thank you, good sir!
The most happily annoying one of the lot. Aside from the honest jabs and pokes, there are clever layers here of allegory and metaphor that readers will miss, that I know I've missed. Kudos H.
As a student of David Lynch, I take this as the highest of compliments! lol
Thanks, GC.
I would refer you to my own attempt along this line, written in 2018-2019. I don't know that it fits will with your subjects matter. I was very into Permaculture at the time.
https://landofdeadtrees.wordpress.com/
Sure John is purely incidental 🤸
I'm not sure I know what you mean, but I think I agree.
after the poleshifts?
very original.
I didn't know you had it in you, Harrison. Very well done. The only one I found myself smiling trough. If you don't have a sense of humor about the future, the future probably won't be very fun whatever it brings.
Glad it made you smile, Hunter! I got my ideas by daydreaming and then writing down the ones that made me lol.
Keep daydreaming and writing down the good stuff!
Harrison, yours was the last one I had to read, wasn't disappointed. You seemed to touch on most of today's nonsense and blend it into a good cohesive story that Grandpapa could tell Billy. I think all six of you did a great job. Kudos to all of you!!!
I aim not to disappoint! Thanks, TW.
Jesus, Harrison. This one had me in stitches the whole way through. Great stuff, brother!
Personally, I get the feeling Old John is a lot slyer of a customer than he appears to be at first glance... hmm...
Excellent. I was hoping I wouldn't be the only one laughing at my jokes. ;)
Love your sharp wit in this piece - MemeSpace is here, the PresBots are coming!
PresBot is One. All PresBots are One PresBot.
Ah, yes, sorry "Something PresBot This Way Comes".