Machines

In haste between social engagements, no time to find quotes, but:

in The Infinite Voyage, Poul Anderson argues that human beings must explore space because machines cannot cope with the unforeseen;

however, in Genesis, written much later, he describes self-conscious AI's exploring space;

now I read that AI will soon be incorporated into military technology so that self-directing weapons systems will decide who and what to attack;

seemingly every country buys the latest high tech weaponry.

Is it too much to ask that even one government might give an international moral lead by announcing, "We will stop buying new weapons and will instead invest only in life-enhancing technology?"

Think what humanity could achieve with existing technology if none of it were to be used destructively. Will there be a change inside human beings, as in HG Wells' In The Days Of The Comet or in Anderson's Brain Wave? I do not expect it. So will there instead be a change in power relationships such that public priorities significantly shift away from continued prosecution of current conflicts?

Changing Motivations

What could be stranger than to look inside yourself and to realize that your basic motivations are changing even as you look at them? This does not happen often either in reality or in fiction but I know of a few examples.

(i) In Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, the intelligence of every animal and human being on Earth suddenly increases many times. Rabbits escape from traps. Apes speak. Morons become normal. Normals become geniuses. IQ's go off the scale. This alone changes motivations. Someone who previously was content to work as an unskilled manual laborer now wants to do Doctoral research at University.

Many people abandon all responsibility in favor of more interesting activities but some realize the importance of cooperating to keep society functioning. They cease to pursue selfish or sectional interests. A former union organizer's role is to help maintain local administration, not any longer to represent employees to management.

(ii) Also in Brain Wave, a second change soon follows. As in HG Wells' In The Days Of The Comet, intellect and will gain conscious control of instinct and emotion. That is indeed a fundamental transformation of motivations, one that we work towards in yoga and meditation. In Brain Wave, as in Tau Zero, Anderson develops his premise to its ultimate conclusion. The two developments are respectively inner and outer.

(iii) Of all the bizarre events in the Smallville TV series, the strangest is when Lionel Luthor realizes that he is no longer motivated merely to increase his own wealth and power at the expense of others. But Lionel needs to learn how to be a good guy. For a while, out of habit, he still uses the discreditable means of manipulation and blackmail although now towards more admirable ends!

(iv) To move from fiction to reality, after thirty years of practicing zazen, I can see some of my own motivations starting to change. A peculiar experience. (Addendum, 27 July 2017: This inner process is real but is also much longer and more complicated than it sometimes appears.)

Emotion And Intelligence In Four Universes

So many connections keep presenting themselves that I feel as though I will soon become one with the Poul Anderson multiverse and will express it all in one Last Post before disappearing into Valhalla - unless I am already there but do not realize it yet?

What do I have to say about "Emotion and Intelligence in Four Universes"?

(i) In The Time Patrol Universe
"The first part of instruction was physical and psychological. Everard had never realized how his own life had crippled him, in body and mind; he was only half the man he could be. It came hard, but in the end it was a joy to feel the utterly controlled power of muscles, the emotions which had grown deeper for being disciplined, the swiftness and precision of conscious thought."
-Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 12.

(ii) In The Immortals' Universe
"'I have the art of controlling sorrow.'"
-The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991), p. 63.

(iii) In The Brain Wave Universe
See here and, more generally, here.

(iv) In The "Flight to Forever" Universe
"'...what I saw in both your minds was good - brave and honest, under the little neuroses which all beings at your level of evolution cannot help accumulating. I will be pleased to remove those from you, if you wish.'
"'No thanks,' said Belgotai. 'I like my little neuroses.'"
-Past Times (New York, 1984), p. 261.

Comments
What an amazing collection of fictional universes!

We all need Time Patrol training.

One immortal has learned emotional self-control over twelve hundred years.

The enhanced humanity of Brain Wave takes psycho-physical self-control further than any of the other groups of characters.

I do not like my neuroses.

I would have preferred if one of the time travelers had accepted the telepath's help.

We would then have learned what difference it made.

The End Of August

I have exhausted what I can post about Brain Wave, Greg Bear's Eternity has not yet arrived at Waterstones Bookshop, I am lying in bed with a cold and I want to finish August with 150 posts so this looks like it.

It is rewarding to compare Anderson's fictions with other imaginative works - his Time Patrol series with the Doctor Who TV series and his prose fantasies with the graphic fantasies of The Sandman and Lucifer. We appreciate Anderson's works more and also appreciate similar or parallel fictional series.

My correspondent Sean recommends SM Stirling as another sf author to read after Anderson.

Paradox In Brain Wave

In Brain Wave, increased intelligence makes manual workers want to quit work. Many do, causing chaos. However:

others realize that the work needs to be done;
still others accept that, in the immediate situation, their work remains their means of livelihood;
meanwhile, increased intelligence generates automation and robotics that make unwanted work redundant.

In fact, economic necessity and coercion cease. After a transition period:

food is distributed free;
no one is attached to property or territory;
scientists, if they want to remain scientists, study whatever interests them;
superior technology is abundant;
there is no competition either for profits or for employment;
there are enough volunteers to administer society, I think until it no longer needs administration;
there is genuine concern for the less mentally gifted;
these individuals are guided to new colonies led by, e.g., a former moron who now has a pre-change average IQ.

My question is: how soon can we reach this stage of social development even without increased intelligence? Continued technological advances should not be a problem.

A Progressive Novel

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave changes as we read it. It is successively:

a contemporary novel of enhanced intelligence;
a near future novel of technological advances, including interstellar exploration;
an ultimate vision of a cosmic future.

This progression and conclusion put Brain Wave alongside other Anderson novels, like Tau Zero, World Without Stars and After Doomsday, that place mankind in a galactic or cosmic setting. In fact, despite the novel's pedestrian beginning, the intelligence inhibitor field emanating from the galactic center had already given it an interstellar context before any of its characters left the atmosphere.

Another hard sf writer who did this was Fred Hoyle. Extrasolar influences reached Earth even though Hoyle's characters stayed on the ground.

Freedom And Transcendence

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

In American science fiction and especially in the works of Poul Anderson, interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom and transcendence - but it can only be a symbol. We can be free and experience transcendence on Earth and could remain unfree while traversing space. In fact, some of Anderson's characters are captured by interstellar slavers! - although they immediately set out to free themselves. How many of Anderson's characters preserve their identities and realize themselves simply by leaving the Solar System?

The enhanced human beings in Brain Wave have clearly passed on to a different level of consciousness. All of them leave Earth to build an interstellar civilization. If they were unenhanced, some would go but others would stay. Yet they expect to maintain such a close watch on Earth that they can arrange occasional "good luck" for those - human beings of normal or lower IQ and enhanced animals - who do stay behind.

Of their interstellar civilization, we are told only that it:

will have its own goals and struggles;
will give opportunities to the many average IQ races;
might meet a few other equally enhanced races;
over millions of years, will embrace all life in an unimaginable final harmony.

All very general and abstract but there were limits to what even Poul Anderson was able to imagine.

God-like or god-like

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

See previous post.

I compared a Community Association overseeing wildlife to the advanced civilization overseeing average IQ races. Although Nat Lewis says that they will be neither gods nor guides but givers, I think that their role will be god-like although not God-like.

"God," in the Biblical-Koranic sense, would be the omniscient, omnipotent creator from nothing of everything else. Such a being would be directly involved with every moment and every detail of every creature. By contrast, a "god," powerful but finite, would oversee one aspect of life, possibly from a distance, e.g., would preserve an ecology incorporating worms, birds and cats but without protecting any worm from a bird or bird from a cat.

They "'...will see that evil does not flourish too strongly...'" (p. 187). So they would have prevented the Holocaust? "'...and that hope and chance happen when they are most needed...we will not be embodied Fate, but perhaps we can be Luck.'" (ibid.) He means that they will cause beneficial events that look like luck, as when Brock's future wife, Sheila, reaches the farm but with their prior knowledge. (A friend of Italian descent reveres the Roman goddess, Fortuna.)

"God" in a mystical, monistic sense is an impersonal unity of all things, not to be confused with the personal God.

The Greater Good

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

The feeble-minded who are wandering about are neither neglected nor rounded up into reservations and are certainly not final-solution-ed, but they are identified and gently guided toward the emerging colonies that will suit them. The colonies in turn are watched and guarded from interference. As far as I can see, this extra effort is made entirely for the benefit of its recipients.

Of necessity, Brock, a former farm employee, now leads a community, one of the "colonies," on the farm where he had been an unskilled manual laborer. The colony committee evacuates nearby towns to give Brock's community elbow room free from the proximity of superior or incomprehensible neighbors. The evacuations are not forced. The town dwellers no longer care where they live. (Relevant Chinese saying: "A rich man thinks of his estates. A sage thinks of the universe.")

When Brock, with some defiance, tells a civilized visitor that his people have been taking what they needed from the towns, he is told that that was the idea and that they are free to move into the towns. The visitor knows Mr Rossman who had owned the farm and who has a friendly interest in Brock's community but who certainly does not want his farm back. Civilization will occasionally help in ways that will look like luck. In fact, a suitable wife for Brock is en route to the farm...

The advanced civilization will similarly help average IQ races throughout the reachable universe.

Near where I live, a Community Association administers some fields for the benefit of the wildlife and of members of the public wanting to follow the footpaths through the fields. Small organisms never suspect that their environment is protected by greater intelligences although, of course, those (human) intelligences never intervene in the lives of particular organisms - who make their own destinies.

Characters In Brain Wave

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

Mr Rossman owns the farm that employs Archie Brock and that becomes a post-change community led by Brock and also the Institute for Advanced Study that employs Peter Corinth, his assistants, Johansson and Grunewald, and his colleague, Nat Lewis, all of whom who study the change. Peter is the husband of Sheila, who cannot cope with the change, and a neighbor of Felix Mandelbaum, who becomes a post-change administrator. Thus, Rossman and Corinth are two unifying characters.

The change gives Brock, formerly a moron, an average IQ. Sheila, unable to cope with enhanced intelligence, restores her former normal IQ with electric shocks to the brain. Thus, Brock and Sheila are able to come together at the end of the novel.

Brock's community includes:

an imbecile, who does not seem to have been affected by the change;
a dog that understands English and can nod in agreement;
two talking chimpanzees, one of whom can play a guitar;
an enhanced elephant;
two ineffectual intellectuals, who ought to be ashamed of themselves - even if they lack all practical skills, can they not contribute to a theoretical understanding of the change and its consequences?

Enhanced human beings (literally) leave Earth in charge of people like Brock. A quiet, graceful airship with no visible means of propulsion lands vertically and Nat Lewis emerges through its shimmering hull. Corinth theorizes that engineering will soon reach a limit imposed by natural laws. Lewis skillfully and sensitively addresses Brock without patronizing him. People have learned a lot more than engineering. With both sanity and technology, there is, for the first time in history, no longer any need for a government or laws. Instead, there is an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Return From Deep Space

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

When someone returns from a long interstellar journey, what has happened to Earth in their absence?

When Dan Dare returned after ten years, the Mekon had conquered the Solar System.
On a later occasion (I think), major centers of population had for some reason been evacuated so that he had the eery experience of returning to an unoccupied London and surrounding countryside.
Maybe that other British comics hero, Jet Ace Logan, had a similar experience?
A spaceship crew in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday returns to an Earth on which all life has been destroyed.
In Brain Wave, when Corinth and Lewis, long overdue, approach Earth but do not receive an immediate response to their radio signal, they wonder whether Earth still uses radio - progress before their departure had been so rapid that this is possible.

Eventually, they hear "'Hello, Star Ship 1.'" (p. 160)

- but it is "'...only a technician...'" (p. 161) who has responded. A small group of friends and acquaintances greets them on landing, not the big public welcome that you might expect for the first interstellar explorers. Earth has changed so that they "'...won't recognize the place. Things are changing so fast...'" (p. 161). One part of the change is that a much bigger and better spaceship is already being built. Space exploration would have continued uninterrupted even if they had not returned.

The Future

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

In the future of Brain Wave:

less intelligent human beings and animals will have Earth;
post-change human beings will build an interstellar civilization;
average IQ races will be covertly helped by that civilization;
a few other high IQ races might be met.

Lewis thinks that every "'...pure logical mind...'" (p. 141) will be "'...just like ourselves...'" (p. 142), even if physically they are like giant spiders. I am not sure about "'...just like...'" but there should be no possible reason for conflict, exploitation, oppression, extermination etc. Corinth replies that he would have no objection to partnering with a giant spider. Higher intelligence has taken them far beyond any prejudice based on bodily shape. Lewis adds that it would be "'Fun to meet them.'" (p. 142)

We want to read a long novel set in that future, as in many others of Poul Anderson's imagined futures.

Galactic Mission

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

One omission: Anderson does not tell us how organized religions respond to the "change." However, I think that it is predictable:

first, that they would split;

secondly, that every possible judgment ("It's good," "It's bad," "We don't know") would be made;

thirdly, that some groups would have to acknowledge that, after the period of transition, the problem of moral evil in human beings had been resolved - this could be interpreted as the arrival, or return, of a Savior in an unexpected form.

What of other races? When an intelligent race has changed its environment, it does not need to develop any greater intelligence, especially since it can augment its intellectual abilities with writing and computers. Because Earth entered the inhibitor field before intelligence had emerged, Terrestrial organisms compensated for the field and therefore became more intelligent when their planet had left the field. Human beings might meet a few other such species but they are like an Elder Race to most of the intelligent beings that they encounter. They will come neither as gods nor as guides but as givers - of opportunity (p. 187).

Some Details

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

The conspirators (see previous posts) assemble on an island but, before that happens, Poul Anderson summarizes that island's history for two full pages.

Coral polyps build an island in the mid-Pacific, near the equator, far from future shipping or airline routes. Seeds blew and coconuts floated. Polynesians, paddling for a thousand miles, steering by stars and currents, found the island and gave sacrifice to Nan (who is incorporated into a Trinity in the alternative timeline of Anderson's Maurai Federation). Returning with women and pigs, the Polynesians built a thatch village and fished.

White men brought smallpox, measles, TB, copra planters, Christianity, imperialism, tobacco and trade. They moved the natives elsewhere to use the island as a naval base or experimental station, then later abandoned it. Wind, rain and vines demolished their buildings. Gulls hovered, fish leaped and a shark patrolled. Then the conspirators arrived. What a fascinating history.

Certain characters or groups of characters appear only once, demonstrating distinct stages of the "change":

the boy who invents differential calculus;
Wato the witch doctor, M'Wanzi the leader and an armed ape;
Vladimir Ivanovitch Panyushkin the resistance fighter, an inventive priest and Fyodor Alexandrovitch the Sensitive;
Wang Kao the villager and Wu Hsi the prophet;
the supermarket attendant who lectures Brock about property;
the people with problems dealt with by Mandelbaum;
most of the conspirators.

The novel ends on p. 189 but begins on p. 9, has blank pages between chapters and empty spaces at the ends of chapters so I think that it could be more compactly packaged with just 160 pages of text - but how much is in those pages.

In his Introduction, Brian Aldiss rightly says that the opening vignette of the rabbit in the trap encapsulates the kernel of the novel.

Longer Term Changes

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

Children are quieter.
Vehicles run on powercast - the air is clean.
New York is quiet and almost empty.
A long silent metal shape passes overhead - antigravity?
People converse in apparent gibberish.
Artificial light pervades the walls or the air within buildings.
Washrooms are now mixed.
Not everyone is clothed.
Sensitives make the postal service obsolete.
With necessities met, those who choose to remain scientists can work on whatever they want and can easily acquire materials.
A small group secretly plots to reverse the change but is easily apprehended by Observers.

Other Planets

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

Here is another logical conclusion from the premise of this novel. Increased intelligence entails early development of a faster than light drive and exploration of other planets.

Venus - wind, sand and a poisonous surface;
Mars - plant life;
extrasolar planets -
green-furred humanoid city dwellers;
tailed barbarian swamp-dwellers;
a gentle gray race growing symbolically significant flowers;
a global atomic war;
centauroids with local interplanetary flight;
three intelligent, hydrogen-breathing species on a gas giant;
an inflexible global civilization where routine is replacing thought;
"...a tropical paradise of idleness..." (p. 140), based on plants specialized to meet all needs;
a nation on a ringed planet pursuing art instead of wealth or power.

None of these races is more intelligent than pre-change humanity. Here is the beginning of an answer to the question: how should mankind use its increased intelligence?

Troubleshooter

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

Competent men derive satisfaction from completing necessary tasks. Felix Mandelbaum, former union organizer, has become a general troubleshooter, coordinator and policy-maker for New York City Council:

when farmers are reluctant to accept (admittedly worthless) city scrip, he gets them to accept four council seats with veto powers on rural policy;

when a port organizer and a political theorist claim to be under-represented, he suggests that they form an alliance to strengthen their respective cases, knowing that they will stab each other in the back;

when the governor wants to reunite the state, he has to argue that, by the time that can be done, the old forms of government will be irrelevant in any case;

between interviews, he must consider the new rationing system, the plans for reintegrating outer Jersey and the latest report on the water situation;

when food factory workers want more leisure time for intellectual activity, he arranges to beamcast lectures, symphonies etc to them at work;

when scientific equipment and materials are being bought, then hidden, he authorizes more Observers to investigate.

The irony is that he knows that all these problems are transitional and temporary. Changes in the people themselves will soon end pettiness and power-seeking. Society is changing rapidly. The city that owes the farmers may no longer exist in a few years. Robots will replace food factory workers. He himself will move his headquarters into the country when the weather-turning force-screens are in full production.

The New Psychology

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

Psychology and psychiatry change when human nature changes. Certain types adjust more easily to enhanced intelligence:

the strong willed;
those with interests directed outward;
those who already think a lot.

Pre-change, Sheila Corinth's life was unintellectual and sheltered. Post-change, she sees through her former world-view but has not found a new one. Worry about her physiological symptoms increases them. She has neither children nor struggle to turn her attention outward. Therefore, Peter departing on an interstellar expedition might be good for her. Her psychiatrist gives her drills on logical processes and general semantics. She is now intelligent enough to deceive him that she is improving.

Many people use their new intellectual power to rationalize old superstitions, prejudices and hatreds. Then the Third Ba'al tells them to abandon thought in favor of an emotional orgy. But these are transitional problems.

The Range Of The Blog

I decision-made as to whether to discuss another author, Greg Bear, on Poul Anderson Appreciation. This was a good move because:

Bear's Eon was definitely worth reading;

there was additionally (secondary point) plenty of scope for comparisons with Anderson and Wells;

the common theme of changing human nature unexpectedly led to a serious rereading of Anderson's Brain Wave.

Human beings change their environments. Science fiction writers speculate about how they might do this in future by:

remaking the Earth;
terraforming other planets;
building space habitats;
creating universes;
etc.

But what could be more important than changing ourselves? Anderson imagines a spontaneous increase in intelligence but then demonstrates that people would need to learn how to use that gift intelligently. Bear asks the moral question whether people should be changed for their good even without their consent. Excellent question...

Reasons For Me To Like Poul Anderson's Brain Wave

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977). 

(i) I enjoy imaginative and speculative fiction.

(ii) I am interested in discussions about how society might be reorganized for the better.

(iii) I do not have enhanced intelligence! - but am an impractical, theoretical intellectual.

(iv) I meditate.

(iv) is relevant. Anderson's characters must cope with an inner change that makes each of them see himself and his life more clearly - clearly enough either to be horrifying or to open new possibilities. Meditation has precisely these effects. I am going through a similar process to Anderson's characters but without any help from an improved intellect.  

Corinth makes the point that:

"'...the IQ concept is only valid within a limited range; to speak of an IQ of 400 doesn't really make sense, intelligence on that level may not be intelligence at all as we know it now, but something else.'" (p. 43)

A quantitative change becomes a qualitative change, exactly as Hegel said. And we see that Corinth and others learn how to use their minds to control their instincts, which is the direction in which meditation takes us although, for most of us, at a much slower rate.