"The main difference between what Ridley views this all in terms of and what I view it all in terms of is as follows. To me, the replicants (or androids, if you will) are deplorable because [inaudible] they are cold, they are selfish, they are heartless, they are completely self-centered, they have no empathy, they don't care about what happens to other creatures, and to me this is essentially a less-than-human entity for that reason. Now, Ridley said that he regarded them as supermen who couldn't fly. He said they are smarter than humans, they are stronger than humans, and they have faster…
I saw 2049 when it came out. I didn't like the original film much but of course was still curious about the sequel since I liked the original novel. One problem I have with both these movies is that the whole "memories" thing doesn't have anything to do with the point the original novel was making. The main point of the original novel is that the replicants are fake human beings which are not only deplorable due to their lack of empathy but are also rather dangerous, and that real human beings will likely become dehumanized ourselves in our eventual efforts to eradicate them. I'm…
Looking at this thread, it's pretty obvious that most folks here haven't really given any thought as to the nature of consciousness. There are people who are thinking, really thinking about what it means to be conscious. Thought experiment - if you create an indistinguishable replica of yourself, atom-by-atom, is the replica alive? I reckon if you met it, you'd think it was. If you put your replica behind a keyboard, would it still be alive? Now what if you just took the neural net and modeled it? Being personally annoyed at a feature is fine. Worrying about how it might be used in the…
“At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I…
But bullshit hallucinogenic output and fakery at colossal scales doesn't just pollute the pool of static information available on the web. It also warps the minds of the humans you're relying on to verify reality on the next training loop. Not only that, but we can also see the emergent breed of humans who believe that writing is similar to arithmetic - an unnecessary skill that can be handed off to a calculator. Or that making a movie shouldn't require knowing anything besides asking for what you want to see. How is someone like that - someone who wants to rely on bots - going to tell a bot…
I deserve to be downvoted by the literature snobs, but if you liked Blade Runner the movie (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then you may very well enjoy K. W. Jeter's three written sequels to the MOVIE Blade Runner (not the BOOK DADOES), "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", "Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night", and "Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon". There is no book "Blade Runner 1" -- that's the movie. The irony is that Philip K Dick was offered a whole lot of money to write another book entitled "Blade Runner" based on the screenplay of the movie, but he insisted on maintaining the…
In the novel, Deckard considers that he might be an android; he encounters a man who suspects he's not human, and even encounters an entire fake police force. But he isn't, and the point of the novel would be less effective if he were. A major theme in the novel is the idea that there's a significant difference between the real and the fake. The major characters are depressed, stuck in a world where almost all animals are fake, and there are even fake humans. In the novel, Rachael and the other androids do not have empathy; she throws his sheep off the roof of his building as revenge. The…
An odd question for the article to pose really. The art of telling a story involves change which is far more compelling if it creates at least some conflict and confusion[1], and if AI or artificial mind enhancements are key, they're more interesting as a cause than a solution to the problem[2], and you'd have to be writing for an audience of pretty hardcore nerds to bother pointing out the background music was composed by a creative computer. When it comes to assessing how people might react when blessed with superaugmented intelligences, there are plenty of cautionary examples of people…
>soft sci fi is the usual boring eternal "human condition" story thats been told a million times before, but maybe if I put space ships in as my gimmick I can sell more copies. This is a pretty unfair description of the category. Soft scifi is a story that has fantastical tech/physics that aren't completely explained. The tech is usually crucial to the story in some way, but the how of the tech's functioning is left unsaid. I find it unlikely that you've somehow lived through the entire range of events and emotions that can comprise the "human condition", but that aside: a lot of the soft…
The Android Sisters answer questions about Androids and Electronic Sheep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP8bOqTAco0 Album: Songs Of Electronic Despair (1984) THE AWESOME FUTURISTIC KITSCH OF THE ANDROID SISTERS: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/songs_of_electronic_desp... >Since 1982, the ZBS Foundation (ZBS= “Zero Bullshit”) has been producing a sci-fi/detective hybrid radio drama called Ruby, the ongoing adventures of Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe. The show is a fun listen, and since its history is documented elsewhere, we shan’t dwell on it here, as the series itself doesn’t concern…