Other Titles > Short Stories & Others
Crash Space
nicodante:
Self-moving souls...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Wilshire:
I missed, the first time around, that the Neorasta at the start was not their friend, but in fact a complete stranger, and Du/Chi a 'futuristic' diminutive of Dude/Chick(or chika maybe)
Madness:
Just fucks their life right up.
Madness:
So... rereading the draft Bakker's got on the blog:
- Bolivar, if you can read CS, you can read Neuropath.
- I don't know if the discrepancy is still there; (It is, though it might simply be me seeing a discrepancy where there is none):
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p2 ---"“What?” Jess asked after a heartbeat, her manner flat affect enough to know she’d dialed back her anxiety slider. “You mean the reset, or the parameters?”
The guy scoffed. “Now who the hell would fuck with the reset?”
I had heard of some. A great many couldn’t stand who they were—perhaps most."
--- End quote ---
I'm not clear on what "the reset is" in context of the greater story nor the last sentence regarding "perhaps most." Is it simply realigning the sliders to your "human OS," or "baseline," as later noted?
- Brilliant one-off by Bakker, of which there are far too many:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p3 ---The Inuitive Google pane popped up, and lo and behold, actually anticipated my curiousity for a change, reminding me that many Neorastas weren't doilies at all, but the disaffected children of investors. I fixed the man with a Sean Connery peer.
--- End quote ---
Lol - Like the IG is buggy.
- Tagging relationship moments for review. Interesting. And generally, the concept of a "highlight reel," which I mention later, real interesting.
- Pretty sure, when Main Character Tim (MCT) starts running Aphrodite, Jess is already running Hitter.
- Lol - "There is was. Happiness. My dear-dear friend" (p5). Like people constantly slide to obsessively fixate on homeostasis. Interesting.
- Swonk towers - Drumpf towers (Trump).
- The ads I assume to be Adonis & Aphrodite appear to come down the towers in "neural-perceptive overlay" (or whichever interesting nomenclature Bakker would use). Another great one-liner: "I had written those ads - well, more like massaged the AI that picked them out of thousands on the basis of neurofeedback polls" (p5). So much grist packed in there. Like are AI are constantly analyzing live-data on consumer experience while interacting with products?
- "So it was a case of sliders maxed out in maxed out circumstances. I was 'double dipping' large, and it was a fucking rush" (p6) - The moment of maximal affect, at the extreme of biology and "parameter" restricted augmentation. Gives an interesting anchor point in relation to the later Hitter-app.
- Discrepancy remains, as far as I read it: "No one who's Rigged has gone back to baseline" (p7). So in contrast to my earlier notation, does this suggest that no one has ever become UnRigged? Or no one has ever "reset," as noted above?
- Also, we are Baselines.
- Tim mentions being unlikely to double double dip a second time, in a short period. Really this whole paragraph on page seven. So much future speculation one might unpack from his words; specifically:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p7 ---"The euphoria menu was locked, my joy fixed to Washington's definition of 'normalcy.'"
--- End quote ---
Intense experience can spontaneously lock your ability to "tweak," based on governmental regulation. Real interesting.
- Fucking Bakker. There are just too many classic Bakker one-liners in this one section. Investor/machine dichotomy; suggesting that investing is the one remaining obstacle for Machine Learning to usurp the special, unique human "je-ne-sais-quoi."
- Highlight reel. Too funny.
- Another one:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p9 ---"Smiles are real now, Du."
--- End quote ---
This is an interesting thought, because it implies that "recognition" is a - seemingly obvious - component of social cuing. So now, as baseline, I might suffer any number of anxieties concerning a lover's smile. But a Rigged knows that their relations are genuinely "happy" (or 'constantly achieving homeostasis,' I suggested before). And that makes it "more real," somehow...
- There's another line in here:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p9 ---It was too risky to the economy, the original industry panel had determined, to give consumers control over consumer impulses.
--- End quote ---
We now have notation on governmental and corporate regulation of experience, which I find... well, interesting and ominous for reasons that Bakker doesn't explore here.
- The sharks (Neuronauts, Neuropaths, Rigged) don't socialize with the other fish...
- Bakker seems to have a particular thought about the "virtual observer" apps, where an AI "suggests" behaviors of best-possible fit to context. It's a difficult section to unpack fully as there are so many layers to it. We have this technology that enables humans to modify certain experiences, subject to governmental and economic regulation, and you have the engineers responsible for programming apps. It's an evolving technology, in a world that is still reorganizing itself to accommodate the Rigged. And on top of it, Bakker drops a little speculative tangent about engineers having trouble modeling moral contexts...
- "What we once were; the prison we escaped" (p11): the parallel Glenn's presence invokes. I'm not honestly sure where I fall in their little philosophic dialogue but the ending did prompt different sorts of questions from me.
- "Humans were eusocial organisms..." (p12): implying that the Rigged still perceive social cues "normally," so that despite their augmented ability to broadcast socially, they still tweak in response to each others behavioral cues.
- "Social domination..." (p13): continuing this social cuing thought, Glenn normally perceives behavioral expression, but the Rigged at full (or beyond full) affect are literal monsters, in the ken of Lovecraft's imperceptible horrors, and so Glenn responds catatonic.
- "Just because you couldn't see the slider didn't mean it wasn't there" (p14): I know Wilshire liked this quote. But sure, the metaphor stands, we all have "sliders," which we tweak constantly, aware or unawares.
- "Violated non-verbal expectations" (p15): it alludes to the Dunyain, who can "tweak" at will, to broadcast whichever behavioral cues that they deem to require and also seems to reflect the perception of their "dropped affect" moments, the dipping in and out of the probability trance. But I really love this quote because it illustrates well another point I've already tried communicating, regarding Bakker's writings on BBT, specifically, and augmentation, generally, in that brain to brain cuing, in many cases, resolves on 'recognition.'
- I loved Moira as "neurocomputational engineer" (p15).
- "personality; written into the human OS" (p16): provides an interesting illustration of nature vs. nurture, though, I think I can make the argument that learning through practice changes the nature "baseline" whereas the Rigged can only further inscribe neural networks based on "tweaking."
- "Extremis of hate and passion" (p18). Great line.
- "It is what it is." - Jeepers. What a fucking haunting line...
- Also, to quote my thoughts from TPB and Bakker's response:
--- Quote from: Madness ---As per the post content and Crash Space, the narrative proper, you mention Tim’s moment of ‘double dipping’ to the proportion of “joy fixed according to Washington’s definition of ‘normalcy.'” You later note that “It was too risky to the economy, the original industry panel had determined, to give consumers control over consumer impulses.”
But might not this ingrained governance and consumerism still host, say, consumers of hunting apps, persons by crux who actually augment behaviors pertaining to cognitive ecologies of proper fit? What pollution, as you use it, might that possible demographic perpetuate?
Lol – also, I’m compelled to ask again, why this propensity for dissolution among “Neuropaths” who join sexuality and violence? As the character Moira might suggest, is it simply an expression of novel augmented dysfunction by exceeding predisposed tolerances or do you see something specifically more nefarious?
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Bakker ---Cool linkage, and even cooler questions. The overarching point is that there is no stable cognitive ecology for any ‘cognitive enhancement’ to track. It’s ‘anarcho-ecology,’ one lacking any of the minimal invariances required by cue-based cognition.
The way to look at it is not a problem of human capacity (which of course can always be upgraded via training and/or technology), but rather a problem of cues, of finding indicators that reliably track the systems requiring solution. Once the cognitive explosion goes exponential, the invariant background cue-based sociocognition requires will not exist.
--- End quote ---
Cheers.
EDIT: Also, "gendered answer" notation. Four women to three men. One homosexual couple. All grappling with the difficult conceptions regarding the narrative-proper, rather than questions of sexual orientation (though, this story certainly raises some interesting questions regarding that).
Wilshire:
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---So... rereading the draft Bakker's got on the blog:
- Bolivar, if you can read CS, you can read Neuropath.
- I don't know if the discrepancy is still there; (It is, though it might simply be me seeing a discrepancy where there is none):
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p2 ---"“What?” Jess asked after a heartbeat, her manner flat affect enough to know she’d dialed back her anxiety slider. “You mean the reset, or the parameters?”
The guy scoffed. “Now who the hell would fuck with the reset?”
I had heard of some. A great many couldn’t stand who they were—perhaps most."
--- End quote ---
I'm not clear on what "the reset is" in context of the greater story nor the last sentence regarding "perhaps most." Is it simply realigning the sliders to your "human OS," or "baseline," as later noted?
--- End quote ---
Those two lines seems oddly disjointed.
I read "the resets" as something akin to a backup system, something that lets one go back to whatever they were before the upgrade... But then that doesn't match with the following sentance when considering the rest of the story that says no one ever went back.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Brilliant one-off by Bakker, of which there are far too many:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p3 ---The Inuitive Google pane popped up, and lo and behold, actually anticipated my curiousity for a change, reminding me that many Neorastas weren't doilies at all, but the disaffected children of investors. I fixed the man with a Sean Connery peer.
--- End quote ---
Lol - Like the IG is buggy.
--- End quote ---
Just a continuation of cookie tracking advertisements, and just as poorly and irritatingly implemented. Seems about right - that it actually working as intended comes as a surprise is entirely unsurprising.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Tagging relationship moments for review. Interesting. And generally, the concept of a "highlight reel," which I mention later, real interesting.
--- End quote ---
Weekly audits on behavior... "BE THE BETTER MAN"
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Pretty sure, when Main Character Tim (MCT) starts running Aphrodite, Jess is already running Hitter.
--- End quote ---
Not sure if she's actually running it yet, but she is looking through it rather than running Adonis.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Lol - "There is was. Happiness. My dear-dear friend" (p5). Like people constantly slide to obsessively fixate on homeostasis. Interesting.
--- End quote ---
I don't know what you mean by homestasis. People like being happy, so it makes sense that you'd tweak the sliders to make your brain settle into your preferred state of bliss. Why bother being upset when you could be exactly what it was you wanted to be?
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Swonk towers - Drumpf towers
--- End quote ---
I thought 'twin towers', but yeah.
Skysraper sized advertisements, how nauseating.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- The ads I assume to be Adonis & Aphrodite appear to come down the towers in "neural-perceptive overlay" (or whichever interesting nomenclature Bakker would use). Another great one-liner: "I had written those ads - well, more like massaged the AI that picked them out of thousands on the basis of neurofeedback polls" (p5). So much grist packed in there. Like are AI are constantly analyzing live-data on consumer experience while interacting with products?
--- End quote ---
I didn't see it as NPO, but that is an interesting thought. It would prevent cluttering the cityscape with ads if they all talked to eachother and were filtered through your brain before they showed up on the conscious spectrum.... I'd run it with an ad-blocker for sure.
I think this is another reference to the above google anticipating his search. Like tracking cookies, except its brain functionality, and its 100% of the time instead of when you are using the computer/phone/device (so up form 85%, not that much of a leap).
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- "So it was a case of sliders maxed out in maxed out circumstances. I was 'double dipping' large, and it was a fucking rush" (p6) - The moment of maximal affect, at the extreme of biology and "parameter" restricted augmentation. Gives an interesting anchor point in relation to the later Hitter-app.
--- End quote ---
And the anchor point being extremely important. Without being tied down somewhere, its easy to go nuts for a little while.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Discrepancy remains, as far as I read it: "No one who's Rigged has gone back to baseline" (p7). So in contrast to my earlier notation, does this suggest that no one has ever become UnRigged? Or no one has ever "reset," as noted above?
--- End quote ---
This is far more clear to me than the above line. No one becomes unrigged. Maybe this is regardless of all those 'everyones' who hate what they have become. They hate, but not as much as they enjoy.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Also, we are Baselines.
--- End quote ---
I rail against the injustice! Rig me up, Bakker!
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Tim mentions being unlikely to double double dip a second time, in a short period. Really this whole paragraph on page seven. So much future speculation one might unpack from his words; specifically:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p7 ---"The euphoria menu was locked, my joy fixed to Washington's definition of 'normalcy.'"
--- End quote ---
Intense experience can spontaneously lock your ability to "tweak," based on governmental regulation. Real interesting.
--- End quote ---
Is that how it works? Or is it that euphoria is always locked, forcing you to seize the cheese, rather than just laying in bed drowning in your own pleasure? I think the latter.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Fucking Bakker. There are just too many classic Bakker one-liners in this one section. Investor/machine dichotomy; suggesting that investing is the one remaining obstacle for Machine Learning to usurp the special, unique human "je-ne-sais-quoi."
--- End quote ---
Without strong AI, traditional computation just can't keep up with stock markets.
The advent of quantum computing will see an end to that.
On that note, I wonder what % of stock market transaction are already being managed 100% by algorithms without human intervention? I'm guessing its already most. They just aren't sophisticated enough to predict short term trends or beat out human hedge fund managers making snap judgement.
Also, Warren Buffet. Just download his brain and make it into an investing computer.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---
- Highlight reel. Too funny.
--- End quote ---
Remembering not trauma, but joy. How different the world would be.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Another one:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p9 ---"Smiles are real now, Du."
--- End quote ---
This is an interesting thought, because it implies that "recognition" is a - seemingly obvious - component of social cuing. So now, as baseline, I might suffer any number of anxieties concerning a lover's smile. But a Rigged knows that their relations are genuinely "happy" (or 'constantly achieving homeostasis,' I suggested before). And that makes it "more real," somehow...
--- End quote ---
Its the same idea as the Argument, rehashed in a different way. Same thing the poor guy later on tries to bring up. What makes 'real' ... 'real'? If the chemicals making up the sensations are the same either way, how is artificially activating the feeling functionally any different than waiting for biology and circumstance to do it?
Same thing as the people who reject Soylent because its 'synthetic'. The disconnect is that there is no difference in the end product, nutrition entering the body, but how the nutrition got to you. Just because it was synthesized in a cell and cooked up in your pan at home, rather than blended and measured in a lab and pre-packaged, doesn't make either one better. The chemicals in are the same. The result is the same.
What matters how you got there.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- There's another line in here:
--- Quote from: Crash Space, p9 ---It was too risky to the economy, the original industry panel had determined, to give consumers control over consumer impulses.
--- End quote ---
We now have notation on governmental and corporate regulation of experience, which I find... well, interesting and ominous for reasons that Bakker doesn't explore here.
- The sharks (Neuronauts, Neuropaths, Rigged) don't socialize with the other fish...
--- End quote ---
Someone is always in control. The farther behind the curtain they are, the more adamant the control. Every system is regulated, usually by the government, this wouldn't be any different. But it always gets fun when people see the rulers make decisions about how you live your personal life behind closed doors. There would be outrage. There would be Hitter, it would only be a matter of time, as it is the human condition to break free of cages, whether its for protection or not.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Bakker seems to have a particular thought about the "virtual observer" apps, where an AI "suggests" behaviors of best-possible fit to context. It's a difficult section to unpack fully as there are so many layers to it. We have this technology that enables humans to modify certain experiences, subject to governmental and economic regulation, and you have the engineers responsible for programming apps. It's an evolving technology, in a world that is still reorganizing itself to accommodate the Rigged. And on top of it, Bakker drops a little speculative tangent about engineers having trouble modeling moral contexts...
--- End quote ---
Often the people that do the creating feel like its not their job to deal with the moral side of it. It wasn't politicians that build the A-bomb, but it was built because they asked for it. If each engineer had to agree to personally use it, to hit the nuclear button, then I doubt it would have ever been built. Separating creation from decision/morality/ethics drives progress.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- "What we once were; the prison we escaped" (p11): the parallel Glenn's presence invokes. I'm not honestly sure where I fall in their little philosophic dialogue but the ending did prompt different sorts of questions from me.
--- End quote ---
Also just before " He wasn’t even sure why he’d accepted Derrick’s invitation to join their party—and how could he be when he wasn’t Rigged, when he had no apps! "
The idea that, without being rigged, you are less than human, begins surfacing. There is no communicative pathways left open for meaningful discourse between the two groups.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- "Humans were eusocial organisms..." (p12): implying that the Rigged still perceive social cues "normally," so that despite their augmented ability to broadcast socially, they still tweak in response to each others behavioral cues.
- "Social domination..." (p13): continuing this social cuing thought, Glenn normally perceives behavioral expression, but the Rigged at full (or beyond full) affect are literal monsters, in the ken of Lovecraft's imperceptible horrors, and so Glenn responds catatonic.
- "Just because you couldn't see the slider didn't mean it wasn't there" (p14): I know Wilshire liked this quote. But sure, the metaphor stands, we all have "sliders," which we tweak constantly, aware or unawares.
--- End quote ---
Being in control changes things so dramatically. If we are in fact 'eusocial', being able to actually align yourself, your thoughts and feelings, with those around you, would create such a profound feeling of belonging. Of being accepted in a way that the Baslines would be entirely unable to replicate. Not only can Glenn not properly read their expressions, but even if he could it wouldn't matter. Their connection is something entirely alien.
The Sliders. The Argument. What to means matter anyway?
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- "Violated non-verbal expectations" (p15): it alludes to the Dunyain, who can "tweak" at will, to broadcast whichever behavioral cues that they deem to require and also seems to reflect the perception of their "dropped affect" moments, the dipping in and out of the probability trance. But I really love this quote because it illustrates well another point I've already tried communicating, regarding Bakker's writings on BBT, specifically, and augmentation, generally, in that brain to brain cuing, in many cases, resolves on 'recognition.'
--- End quote ---
On the witness rather than the actor?
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- I loved Moira as "neurocomputational engineer" (p15).
--- End quote ---
I should show this to my sister-in-law who bares the same name - if only to see the horror.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- "personality; written into the human OS" (p16): provides an interesting illustration of nature vs. nurture, though, I think I can make the argument that learning through practice changes the nature "baseline" whereas the Rigged can only further inscribe neural networks based on "tweaking."
--- End quote ---
Maybe back to the 'resets' - I think that the baseline they use for the Rigged is something that is set by your nature when you get Rigged. As it mentioned later related to Anger. Interestingly, if you believe that people can naturally change their own nature, their own baseline, through repetition and practice, then what would preclude the Rigged from doing that?
On that note, I don't think people can really do that. What you change might in fact be how you deal with your natural propensity for reacting to stimuli, rather than changing the reaction itself.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- "Extremis of hate and passion" (p18). Great line.
- "It is what it is." - Jeepers. What a fucking haunting line...
--- End quote ---
These two just dont strike me as they do you it seems.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---- Also, to quote my thoughts from TPB and Bakker's response:
--- Quote from: Madness ---As per the post content and Crash Space, the narrative proper, you mention Tim’s moment of ‘double dipping’ to the proportion of “joy fixed according to Washington’s definition of ‘normalcy.'” You later note that “It was too risky to the economy, the original industry panel had determined, to give consumers control over consumer impulses.”
But might not this ingrained governance and consumerism still host, say, consumers of hunting apps, persons by crux who actually augment behaviors pertaining to cognitive ecologies of proper fit? What pollution, as you use it, might that possible demographic perpetuate?
Lol – also, I’m compelled to ask again, why this propensity for dissolution among “Neuropaths” who join sexuality and violence? As the character Moira might suggest, is it simply an expression of novel augmented dysfunction by exceeding predisposed tolerances or do you see something specifically more nefarious?
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Bakker ---Cool linkage, and even cooler questions. The overarching point is that there is no stable cognitive ecology for any ‘cognitive enhancement’ to track. It’s ‘anarcho-ecology,’ one lacking any of the minimal invariances required by cue-based cognition.
The way to look at it is not a problem of human capacity (which of course can always be upgraded via training and/or technology), but rather a problem of cues, of finding indicators that reliably track the systems requiring solution. Once the cognitive explosion goes exponential, the invariant background cue-based sociocognition requires will not exist.
--- End quote ---
Cheers.
--- End quote ---
This reminds me so completely of the debut of The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky around 1910, a concert that literally caused a violent riot due to the dissonant cords that the audience was subjected too for so long. It is now believed that people in the audience didn't have the experience to cope with the sound, and it's repetition drove them insane.
So, historical precedence for people turning to violenace when the brain runs out of "cognitive ecological" experience to draw from.
--- Quote from: Madness on March 29, 2016, 04:57:45 pm ---EDIT: Also, "gendered answer" notation. Four women to three men. One homosexual couple. All grappling with the difficult conceptions regarding the narrative-proper, rather than questions of sexual orientation (though, this story certainly raises some interesting questions regarding that).
--- End quote ---
Not sure I graps what you're saying here?
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