The immediately preceding
post was so comprehensive that I find it hard to follow except perhaps by reiterating that Poul Anderson's ultimate single-volume future history,
Genesis, presents all past and future human history as culminating in post-organic intelligences spreading between galaxies and also readdresses without definitively answering the question raised by the first modern science fiction novel,
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly: is it right to (re)create human life?
I have just returned from a social gathering in a country pub, will now go upstairs to meditate, this evening will attend a public meeting about Venezuela and tomorrow morning should walk to the gym.
Meanwhile, the future waits.
Onward, Earthlings.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think I can guess how Anderson would answer the question GENESIS poses: human beings alone should guide their fate, wisely or foolishly. And true AIs, assuming such things are possible, have no say in the matter beyond the strictly advisory.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But should human beings be brought back into existence after they have become extinct?
Paul.
Paul: well, yes. A universe without human beings to observe it doesn't really exist.
I think that the universe pre-existed observers and that objects continue to exist while not being observed.
Kaor, Paul!
But I was thinking of parts like Chapter Six of GENESIS, where it was made indisputably clear how powerless and helpless mankind had become vis a vis the AI actually ruling Earth. A situation which Anderson would emphatically dislike in the real world. The awareness of how impotent they were was what made an increasingly despairing human race prefer to die out. Extinction was better than continued existence as the and pampered idle pets of the AI.
And, eventually that AI, Gaia, decided it was right to bring the human race bac from extinction--which Anderson (and I) agreed with.
Ad astra! Sean
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