Interlude March, 2017
Back in 1969, I appeared in Grenoble, France, eager to start on my Ph. D. in Computer Science at what was then the leading IBM research center in Europe. It did not go well.
At the time, the idea of "Time Sharing" on a computer was in its infancy. Very few people had access to the big mainframes using slow text-only terminals. Yet, I imagined a time when everyone would have access to the same computer system. All of human knowledge would be accessible. People could share their projects and extend that knowledge together, online. The group mind of humanity would be implemented in a vast computer network.
In short, I imagined the Internet. World Wide Web 3.0, a bit beyond what we have now. Artificial Intelligence (my field) played a big role in this vision. I called it the "Spirit System".
The idea quite literally blew my mind. Weakened by days without sleep and culture shock I had the first of my numerous "nervous breakdowns". My hopes of an academic career were over.
Even now, after a dozen or so of these episodes, I quibble with health care workers over what to call what happened. For years, I was "schizophrenic" and medicated as such. Eventually, I was re-classified into to the newly-fashionable category of "bipolar", even though I did not "check all the boxes" - specifically not being subject to the depressive side of the condition and therefore not swinging between two states, as the word "bipolar" and the definition of "Bipolar I" requires*. Nonetheless, treatments for "bipolar illness" were more or less successful (Lithium and Prozac). The problem was that, over the long term, they were destroying my kidneys. I switched to another medication, but that's another story.
So if I don't like the "bipolar" term, what is going on with me? It's pretty much textbook mania. When I'm sick, I score "off the charts" on the mania test. Normally, such as now, I'm "normal". So there is nothing strange about what's happening. There is something wrong and it has a name. I like the test I referred to because it hints at what mania feels like from the inside.
Mania is an affective disorder. Mania gives its sufferers a unique glimpse into the importance of affect - the way you feel about what you are experiencing. I'm encouraged to write about this right now because I recently ran across the writings of Antonio Damasio. To make a very long story short, Damasio uses extensive research into the way the brain works to support his theory that feelings are the very root of human experience in the world. Everything we experience is "marked" by feelings. In the case of mania, the world is basically painted in technicolor feelings. It's just an amazing, exciting place. As an episode unfolds, feelings overwhelm "rational" perception and the sufferer slips into psychosis - the endpoint of quite a few mental disturbances, including the one that afflicts the current President of the United States (malignant narcissism).
There is a philosophical issue with the definition of psychosis since it involves the idea of "reality" and the failure to grasp it like the rest of us do (so-called "objective reality" which probably doesn't exist). But in practice, the condition is crystal clear.
Damasio is relevant to me and this blog in several ways. For one thing, his writings fit into a much wider set of ideas that support and extend the concept behind this blog - the "superorganism" or "dragon". For another, it's important that I watch out for the feeling of elation as the last few pieces of this theory snap into place. In the past, this kind of situation has lead to a "manic break" where great ideas drive me off the cliff into psychosis. Not this time. I'm feeling fine and I'm very aware that there is a ton of work that remains to flesh out these ideas, connect them, document them and explain them. There is nothing crazy or spooky here - just a lot of notable thinkers talking around the concept of the superorganism groping for words to describe it - the appropriate set of analogies.
To kick off a new phase in this project, I have changed the title of this blog slightly, from "programmable ape" to "supermind" (URL "emergentsupermind). Of course, this choice is limited by the titles available, but the shift also reflects the fact that the "programmability" of humans is just one way to see the emergence of the supermind. Another key concept is the loss of individual identity, exhaustively documented in Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence", which provides not only an expert analysis of the phenomenon but also a harrowing account of the suffering caused by this loss. There is also a shift in metaphors from a "superorganism" to a "supermind". As organisms ourselves, we are attracted to thinking of something "superior" as like us, an organism. This thinking is behind the old idea of God: the old man in the sky. The supermind is not smart: primitive rage and cruelty are more common that the "wisdom of crowds". Sen provides an essential ingredient to my project: a reason to care. It's not just a new way of seeing things: it's a way of seeing a danger that poses an immediate threat us all, precisely by crushing the individual human being into "little boxes" of "identity".
I have not failed to notice the similarity between the 2017 "supermind" and 1969 "Spirit system", but there are many, many differences between the two ideas. I have not been thinking of this for 48 years for nothing.
-------------------------------
* "Old timers" with a hard-won experience with mental illness are constantly annoyed with the professionals are unaware of the history of their classifications - which often dance to the tune of drug companies who have a pill that "treats" a previously un-classified condition. Prozac being the best-known example ("treating" mild depression). Valium and Viagra are another. There is some evidence that "treatment" for whatever it was that afflicted me in Grenoble actually caused the epidemic what was eventually called "bipolar illness". All that can't distract us from the fact that mental illness is real, serious and debilitating. But we are not very good at treating it, nor do we have a convincing explanation of what causes the majority of common problems. That said, we are a lot better off than we were even in 1950.
At the time, the idea of "Time Sharing" on a computer was in its infancy. Very few people had access to the big mainframes using slow text-only terminals. Yet, I imagined a time when everyone would have access to the same computer system. All of human knowledge would be accessible. People could share their projects and extend that knowledge together, online. The group mind of humanity would be implemented in a vast computer network.
In short, I imagined the Internet. World Wide Web 3.0, a bit beyond what we have now. Artificial Intelligence (my field) played a big role in this vision. I called it the "Spirit System".
The idea quite literally blew my mind. Weakened by days without sleep and culture shock I had the first of my numerous "nervous breakdowns". My hopes of an academic career were over.
Even now, after a dozen or so of these episodes, I quibble with health care workers over what to call what happened. For years, I was "schizophrenic" and medicated as such. Eventually, I was re-classified into to the newly-fashionable category of "bipolar", even though I did not "check all the boxes" - specifically not being subject to the depressive side of the condition and therefore not swinging between two states, as the word "bipolar" and the definition of "Bipolar I" requires*. Nonetheless, treatments for "bipolar illness" were more or less successful (Lithium and Prozac). The problem was that, over the long term, they were destroying my kidneys. I switched to another medication, but that's another story.
So if I don't like the "bipolar" term, what is going on with me? It's pretty much textbook mania. When I'm sick, I score "off the charts" on the mania test. Normally, such as now, I'm "normal". So there is nothing strange about what's happening. There is something wrong and it has a name. I like the test I referred to because it hints at what mania feels like from the inside.
Mania is an affective disorder. Mania gives its sufferers a unique glimpse into the importance of affect - the way you feel about what you are experiencing. I'm encouraged to write about this right now because I recently ran across the writings of Antonio Damasio. To make a very long story short, Damasio uses extensive research into the way the brain works to support his theory that feelings are the very root of human experience in the world. Everything we experience is "marked" by feelings. In the case of mania, the world is basically painted in technicolor feelings. It's just an amazing, exciting place. As an episode unfolds, feelings overwhelm "rational" perception and the sufferer slips into psychosis - the endpoint of quite a few mental disturbances, including the one that afflicts the current President of the United States (malignant narcissism).
There is a philosophical issue with the definition of psychosis since it involves the idea of "reality" and the failure to grasp it like the rest of us do (so-called "objective reality" which probably doesn't exist). But in practice, the condition is crystal clear.
Damasio is relevant to me and this blog in several ways. For one thing, his writings fit into a much wider set of ideas that support and extend the concept behind this blog - the "superorganism" or "dragon". For another, it's important that I watch out for the feeling of elation as the last few pieces of this theory snap into place. In the past, this kind of situation has lead to a "manic break" where great ideas drive me off the cliff into psychosis. Not this time. I'm feeling fine and I'm very aware that there is a ton of work that remains to flesh out these ideas, connect them, document them and explain them. There is nothing crazy or spooky here - just a lot of notable thinkers talking around the concept of the superorganism groping for words to describe it - the appropriate set of analogies.
To kick off a new phase in this project, I have changed the title of this blog slightly, from "programmable ape" to "supermind" (URL "emergentsupermind). Of course, this choice is limited by the titles available, but the shift also reflects the fact that the "programmability" of humans is just one way to see the emergence of the supermind. Another key concept is the loss of individual identity, exhaustively documented in Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence", which provides not only an expert analysis of the phenomenon but also a harrowing account of the suffering caused by this loss. There is also a shift in metaphors from a "superorganism" to a "supermind". As organisms ourselves, we are attracted to thinking of something "superior" as like us, an organism. This thinking is behind the old idea of God: the old man in the sky. The supermind is not smart: primitive rage and cruelty are more common that the "wisdom of crowds". Sen provides an essential ingredient to my project: a reason to care. It's not just a new way of seeing things: it's a way of seeing a danger that poses an immediate threat us all, precisely by crushing the individual human being into "little boxes" of "identity".
I have not failed to notice the similarity between the 2017 "supermind" and 1969 "Spirit system", but there are many, many differences between the two ideas. I have not been thinking of this for 48 years for nothing.
-------------------------------
* "Old timers" with a hard-won experience with mental illness are constantly annoyed with the professionals are unaware of the history of their classifications - which often dance to the tune of drug companies who have a pill that "treats" a previously un-classified condition. Prozac being the best-known example ("treating" mild depression). Valium and Viagra are another. There is some evidence that "treatment" for whatever it was that afflicted me in Grenoble actually caused the epidemic what was eventually called "bipolar illness". All that can't distract us from the fact that mental illness is real, serious and debilitating. But we are not very good at treating it, nor do we have a convincing explanation of what causes the majority of common problems. That said, we are a lot better off than we were even in 1950.
Comments
Post a Comment