Cosma Shalizi believes that this is the case. The Singularity (he says) has already happened, not merely in the vague sense that fire/printing/the industrial revolution/computers/whatever have changed things beyond recognition, but in the stronger sense that we are now in the grasp of “vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing” with “an implacable drive … to expand, to entrain more and more of the world within their own sphere”, and so on. UFAI (he does not use this term) is here, and we are living in its torture chamber. More here. See footnote 1 of the latter for a brief indication of where he’s coming from on this.
A similar trope is present in pop neuro-/ev-psych. The inhuman system of information-processing that imprisons us while duping us into the illusion of freedom is our physical substrate and the evolutionary processes that created it. “We” can do nothing of ourselves, “we” are mere epiphenomenal scum on the surface of forces vaster and more alien than we can comprehend. We are as rats are in the world of humans: we can never amount to anything of real consequence, never have, never will.
It is also present in some forms of Christianity. God and the Devil are warring UFAIs and we are merely pieces in their incomprehensible game. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, They kill us for their sport.”
Which is simply to point out that the idea that we are epiphenomenal scum on the surface of forces vaster and more alien than we can comprehend pops up in multiple contexts. Strangely, though, the alien forces are completely different each time.
Cosma Shalizi believes that this is the case. The Singularity (he says) has already happened, not merely in the vague sense that fire/printing/the industrial revolution/computers/whatever have changed things beyond recognition, but in the stronger sense that we are now in the grasp of “vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing” with “an implacable drive … to expand, to entrain more and more of the world within their own sphere”, and so on. UFAI (he does not use this term) is here, and we are living in its torture chamber. More here. See footnote 1 of the latter for a brief indication of where he’s coming from on this.
A similar trope is present in pop neuro-/ev-psych. The inhuman system of information-processing that imprisons us while duping us into the illusion of freedom is our physical substrate and the evolutionary processes that created it. “We” can do nothing of ourselves, “we” are mere epiphenomenal scum on the surface of forces vaster and more alien than we can comprehend. We are as rats are in the world of humans: we can never amount to anything of real consequence, never have, never will.
It is also present in some forms of Christianity. God and the Devil are warring UFAIs and we are merely pieces in their incomprehensible game. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, They kill us for their sport.”
Which is simply to point out that the idea that we are epiphenomenal scum on the surface of forces vaster and more alien than we can comprehend pops up in multiple contexts. Strangely, though, the alien forces are completely different each time.