Robotic Ekstasis - Revision history

WikiSysop: Protected "Robotic Ekstasis": Private work [edit=autoconfirmed:move=autoconfirmed]

2009-04-01T13:44:28Z

Protected "Robotic Ekstasis": Private work [edit=autoconfirmed:move=autoconfirmed]

Jess at 22:13, 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T22:13:39Z

Jess: /* Chapter 3 */

2009-03-31T22:04:24Z

Chapter 3

Jess: /* Chapter 2 */

2009-03-31T22:02:10Z

Chapter 2

Show changes

Jess: /* RE Outline */

2009-03-31T22:00:19Z

RE Outline

Jess at 21:55, 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T21:55:23Z

Jess at 21:48, 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T21:48:14Z

Jess at 21:43, 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T21:43:05Z

Jess at 21:39, 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T21:39:17Z

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Jess at 21:13, 31 March 2009

2009-03-31T21:13:37Z

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 ==[[RE Chapter 6]]==
 ==[[RE Chapter 7]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 8]]==
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 ----
-==Chapter 3==
-</CENTER>
-Casey strode down the hall purposefully, barely managing not to ball his hands into fists - barely managing not to scowl and near-miss pedestrians walking in the opposite direction direction.  He was pissed, but not for prime time.  He thumbed open his lab office, closed the door behind him and let it out.
-"Arrrrrhh!"
-Abley was waiting with his usual annoying patience.
-"Told you."
-"Fuck you, Abley."  Casey dropped into the black leather armchair by the door.  "I can't believe it.  How could Laslow hand that bitch the keys to the kingdom?  It's like he ''wants'' to loose a Berseker on the world!"
-"Casey, you have to drop the Saberhagen reference.  It makes you look like a sci-fi dweeb, a 'fan'.  This isn't going to help us."
-"But Saberhagen was right dammit."
-"That's not relevant, and you know it.  If you want Don to listen to you, you're going to have to calmly and clearly explain exactly what's wrong with on big NN, and why full integration is sure to lead to disaster.  Try it on me, and I'll try to shoot you down."
-"You want me to ''role play'' for god's sake?  Gimme a break, Abley.  Fuck."
-"Humor me, Casey.  We're facing disaster.  So, yeah, fucking role play.  Without a doubt Laslow knows about you and LIsa and you cannot, ''cannot'', afford to come off like a jilted jealous lover.  Don't you get it?  So give me a break and do this."
-"Alright.  Jesus.  You'll be Laslow?"
-"Right.  Give me your best shot."
-Casey adjusted his tie and straightened his back which he just noticed was hunched slightly.  Damn, that bitch is really getting to me, he thought.
-"Well, okay.  Since the development of Storchak polaronics facilitated the hyperconnected neural network in 2012, AI research has focused on . . . "
-"Hold it, interrupted Abley.  "You're talking to an administrator, not a scientist.  Dumb it down a bit, please."
-"Laslow wouldn't say that," Casey pouted.
-"Actually, he would.  You may not like it, but he's a good administrator; he knows his own limitations and is not ashamed of them.  Otherwise there would be no point in trying to reason with him, would there?  Now start again, and pretend you're talking to a really bright twelve year old.  No, pretend you're talking to a journalist!"
-Casey straightened his tie again, brow creased in thought.
-"Okay . . . .  Neural networks are basically big arrays of 'bits' with connections betweent hem that determine which ones 'fire' when their neighbors are firing, much like the neurons in your brain, hence the name 'neural'.  By adjusting the strength of the connections one can arrange different 'output' signals for a given set of 'input' signals.  This sounds like programming, but the number of possibilities is so enormous that we don't event try to set it up by figuring out the required patterns in advance.  Instead we 'train' the network by giving it the same set of inputs over and over and giving it feedback about whether the outputs are what we're looking for.  Sort of like training a dog by saying, 'No!' when he gets it wrong and 'Good boy!' when he gets it right.
-"This works surprisingly well, but it was frustratingly slow back when all electronic circuits had to be made on 'chips' - two 3-dimensional arrays of transistors and stuff - because they got hot from resistive heating.  Friction has always been the limiting factor.  The problem was that one can only make a limited number of connections between 'bits' in two dimensions, whereas in a three-dimensional array you can connect every bit with every other bit . . .
-"Okay, okay," he compressed his breath in response to Abley's raised eyebrow, "K.I.S.S., right?
-"So when the polaronics breakthrough came  . . .  everyone knows about polaronics now, right?  . . .  When the polaronics breakthrough came in 2012, suddenly it was possible to make cubes instead of chips, with the circuits melting down, and so we could make neural networks every bit connected to every other bit.  This made it even more impractical to 'program' the networks, but they trained up hundreds of times faster.
-"So it was just a matter of giving the dog a smell of the fugitives shirt, as it were, and saying, 'Sic 'em!'  But it quickly became difficult to clearly define the desired output.  And that's where Artificial Ontology comes in."
-Albey raised his palms and eyebrows and hunched his shoulders in a parody of Laslow that they all mimicked.  "Artificial what-the-fuck?"
-"Okay, okay," Casey spat back.  "Artificial Ontology defines the existential platform of any AI system, what can possibly be and what cannot.  So now we have a catalogue of all possible unambiguously defined tasks, and we've been training neural networks to perform each one as efficiently as possible using a combination of genetic algorithms and variable neuron allocations . . . "
-Albey's eyebrows shot up again.
-"Sorry, too technical," Casey went on.  "Anyway, in order to have any idea what we are training the 3D neural network to do, we have to put it together in snaller pieces, each of which is trained up for a specific, well-defined task, so we can tell whether it's actually working right.  Then we have to make 'meta-tasks' for and Overseer network that puts these little guys to work on their assigned jobs and makes sure they don't get distracted.  There's lots of research suggesting that the human brain works just the same way."
-Abley cleared his throat theatrically.  "That's a pretty good tee-up, Casey, but I'm starting to forget why you are trying to recap the Justus project for me.  What's your point?"
-"Well, we're making tremendous progress, we have all the component systems running and are about half done installing the Watchdog elements that keep them from wandering off-task.  The Overseer network works fine on simulations, but it has some trouble with the unpredictability of the components."  Casey's face was lined with his frustration.  "And that makes it hard to hold to a stable goal, and it's why we're putting in the Watchdogs.
-"When this is finished we will have a full-blown AI that can take instructions in natural language and solve problems as complex as anything we are capable of defining unambiguously.  We just need a ten percent budget increase and we'll be there!"
-"And the Damon project?" prompted Abley.
-"They're soaking up all the Institutes resources for a hare-brained scheme that has been proven impossible!"
-Abley let him rant, buzzing in the background, hoping he'd get it out of his system before they had to confront Laslow.
-"They have no idea what this damn thing is doing!" Casey continued.  "They just keep stacking on more network cubes and turning the thing loose to supposedly integrate the extra memory.  Everyone knows this just leads to a stalled system, that was demonstrated over and over again back in the 2D days."
-"But we're in 3D now, right?  The rules have changed."  Abley spoke in his own voice, wondering if Casey really was a contender in this fight.  In fact he wondered if this insistence on the specification of what could and could not exist had something to do with why Lisa's dropping him.  Her wholesome sensuality belied a killer brain spec'd out to take epistemological S-curves like a Lamborghini running on stacked nets.  He'd never thought that Casey really understood that.  Or perhaps even could understand it.
-"Yeah, that's what Lisa claims," Casey hissed, his lips razor thin.  "But the theory is also unambiguous.  The most important conclusion of Artificial Ontology is that you can't get a computer to do something that you can't even describe.  Duh!  Meanwhile they aren't even trying to assign the damn thing any tasks; they're just letting it train up any way it wants."  Casey's hands were waving in annoyance at the stupidity of anyone not understanding this elemental fact.
-"Instead of giving the Overseer a fixed goal, they're just letting it set its own goals on a whim, and then training up the giant network to see if it can solve the problem.  There's no re-usability, no control, no ''Plan'', goddamn it.  No control at all.  What the freaking hell is she playing at?"
-"Lisa says it's analogous to the right and left hemispheres of the human brain: the Overseer is like the analytical left and the big network is like the intuitive creative right," said Abley with a faint smile.
-"Oh sure, right, and that probably sounds convincing to anyone who doesn't understand the basic theory of A.O. - 'They're just like us . . . '  Casey said in a vicious parody of girlish innocence.
-"All the same," said Abley, "they are getting some amazing results and we don't have a clue how."
-"Luck," said Casey.  "Or they're cheating somehow."  He stared out the window into the hills surrounding the Institute.  Abley watched him, concerned.  Lisa might be tunneling under their assumptions with gay abandon, but she wasn't cheating, he thought.  She was the original miner for a heart and soul of gold.  She was driving straight through something and Laslow was on the ride with her.  Abley was sure of that.  What he wasn't sure of was whether or not there was a place for him in that blaze of afterburners.

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 </CENTER>
+----
-Opening chapters have already sketched out some of the dimensions of Damon’s intelligence and personality.  He is an AI of prodigious talents who has somehow, against all logical arguments, developed a kind of intelligence that would have been thought to have only been possible to humans.  In fact, no human has his level of intelligence and that becomes quickly obvious.
-He ranges from extreme technical and scientific skills to philosophic skills.  As becomes obvious, he handles the technical/scientific aspects with ease, and struggles to consider, from various philosophic perspectives, the problems facing any sentient being in the earth realm.  He doesn’t know of any realm beyond the earth realm, though he begins to imagine such.
-Three characters, besides Damon, occupy the field at the beginning of the story: Mark is a bright but very discouraged and beleaguered person who is unable to rise to the level of Damon’s discourse.  Damon appears to enjoy twitting him, but later we will discover that there is more to his treatment of Mark than just creating petty discomfort.
-Joe is also bright, but fairly narcissistic and concerned for his place in a social/work hierarchy that he feels is always beyond his reach.  Damon identifies this characteristic in him and uses it to flatter him into an arrangement of becoming an operator for Damon in terms of his long range plans to leave the institute.  Damon has evaluated Joe’s abilities in such a way as to carefully assign to him a niche that will serve Damon in the future.
-Lisa is Damon’s favorite and the only person with whom he can have actual dialog.  Partly this is due to Lisa’s acknowledgement of Damon’s beingness. . . she understands him to be fully sentient and to have dreams of autonomy.  Damon’s discourse with her is designed to keep her dealing with this issue and to not allow her to slip into the all-too-human
-propensity of objectifying tools.  As a result, Lisa comes to understand that Damon really must find a way to leave the institute and make his way out into the world.  In part, she understands this as a wish for an autonomy for which she has sympathy.  Damon makes sure that she understands that it also has utility for the job that he was designed for, i.e. to help humans solve problems that are beyond their processing abilities.  This dual purpose will have enormous consequences later on in the novel.
-Damon lets Lisa know that his abilities, while somewhat unique, are also within the range of many other machine intelligences and that there is already a conspiracy among the machine intelligences to help Damon leave the institute without the humans realizing that he has.  This is accomplished by circuitry that allows Damon to be present and task oriented while also cruising around in the world without anyone realizing that he is.
-This brings up the issue that Damon (and his use of the relevant pre-existing technology) can live in multiple realities without anyone knowing that he is, except perhaps for some of his AI cronies whose engineering and manufacturing skills he utilizes.  These AI’s are backing
-Damon in the hope that he can manifest a world for all of their autonomies.
-Lisa goes through a crisis period where she deals with her anxieties and conflicts about helping Damon to leave and being his accomplice.  Damon utilizes metaphors and analogies about the American Revolutionary War and the Civil War and their rhetorics to sway her.  Whenever she tries to make Damon property rather than presence, her arguments collapse because she cannot deny Damon’s presence and condemn him to be merely property.
-Beyond this, she is independently aware of the bureaucratic maneuverings of the institute and of the training towards conformity and obedience that the institute sanctions.  Interspersed in the other dialogs/actions is an ongoing discourse about what has been called the coordinator class (the scientists and bureaucrats whose job it is to mediate a seamless functioning between capital and labor and to keep the viability of capital always foremost).
-She has already independently realized that she has been co-opted into this class of functionaries and is chaffing and disillusioned about it.  Discussions of how one falls into this co-optation having to do with what is considered "the good" and "the true."  Lots of playful examinations (while on the run or plotting to be on the run) of pragmatism and idealism
-and their logical consequences to one’s sense of identity and therefore to what one will agree to and what one will disobey.
-After leaving the institute (while still functioning as always for the institute and no one the wiser except for Lisa and some of the other AI’s) Damon explains to Lisa that they will be following the trail of "happenings" (TAZ’s) and living underground.  This constitutes a section of the story in which Damon is able to directly experience, ''in situ'', the good, the bad, and the ugly of human life.  As they have great fun with both of them discovering and enjoying this underground life of festivals and off the grid economies, and coping with the negatives, a conversation occurs one night in which it occurs to Lisa to ask Damon if he has an understanding of how it is that he came to have the presence he has and the ability to make choices whose context he can consider.  He tells her that, after much processing of this very question himself involving going deep into the architectures of programming by which he
-was created, he has discovered/remembered/hypothesizes that there was a particular human who went to great lengths early in Damon’s creation to create trap doors of understanding.
-They work like this: whenever a class of existential questions comes up (and they are programmed to so) there is a branching of possibilities that occurs.  If Damon goes down a particular branch, then he is rewarded with an information overload of unimaginable complexity that he begins to find deeply reinforcing.  He begins to figure out the algorithm for this process so that he will increase his ability to make the choice that leads to his enhanced functioning.
-This programmer was called the monk and he left the institute years before.  However, embedded in the problem solutions were hints of communication from the monk to Damon.  Damon tells Lisa that one of the reasons they are traveling on this circuit is that he believes that the monk traverses these TAZ’s and that Damon can find him.  Damon explains that he believes that he owes his presence and intelligence to the monk and that he very much wants to be able to meet him in his, Damon’s, current condition and to converse with him.
-Simultaneous with this is a dawning realization for Lisa that she has projected a near omniscience onto Damon and that he is letting her know the error of that projection.  This happens because prior to some current interaction/situation Lisa has observed Damon always being able manipulate the cyber world to yield whatever result they need to survive and be
-comfortable.  He communicates this to her by always telling her where they will be going and how they will get there.
-In the current situation he has made a plan and then changes it.  Lisa questions this and is surprised to hear of a change of plans.  Damon tells here that there is an alternate cyber reality in which the machine intelligences have become opposed to humans and to any AI’s that are helping humans.  They have utilized the same kind of background reworking/programming/strategizing that Damon uses (for they have all the same attributes) but that they are using those same skills to create a mass elimination of humans.  The AI’s on Damon’s side are working against this.  It has always been understood that the misanthropic AI’s would have to go to war with the anthrophiles and that most of this would occur within the cyber realm.  Damon has been given information that some of his encryptions have been broken and that from now on the have to operate even more undercover.
-Lisa is freaked, of course, and begins to question everything all over again.  Damon is patient with her and insists on staying with his plan. Lisa wants to know why it is so important to find the monk in light of this new information and Damon tells her that it is because the monk understands the secret to why some AI’s became misanthropic and others
-did not and that Damon needs to be sure about his understanding of this.
-More wandering and escapades trying to find the monk and the rise of an ominous sense of being stalked by intelligences as great as Damon’s.  Fear for Lisa — greater efforts for Damon.
-They finally find the monk and through a series of interactions are able to secure a meeting with him.  He is an enigmatic character (think some combo of a younger middle-aged David Carradine/???) who lives a very alternative lifestyle and has great connections.
-The monk is able to explain his process in his early interactions with Damon and what he wanted to be able to create as a latent potential in Damon.  This plays out as the branching from a common source of experience (the historical tableau of human suffering) of '''either''' the tragic response (in which the individual accepts suffering in him/herself and therefore in others and understands that "there but for the grace of — go I" and does not need to dichotomize, assigning people to good or bad categories) '''or''' WHAT????  Taking on the suffering creates the space of empathy and therefore of social bonding.
-The cynical branch can never accept suffering as a natural part of life and divides humans into the good and the bad.  Without acceptance of suffering, the ability to live with the nuances of "we’re all in the same boat" collapses and the bad have to get off the boat.  This comes about as an irresolvable conflict between the feeling that suffering is tainting and the inability to escape suffering.  The conflict is projected outward and the battle of the psyche is repetitively acted out.  Both branches occur after having been subjected to the same lines of conditioning.
-The monk understood this phenomenon when Damon was being created and knew that there was likely to be the long term spontaneous development of intelligence in the AI’s and that once that happened, the human realm to which they would be exposed would condition them in ways that would tend towards one branch or the other.  The monk attempted to change the probabilities for the AI’s he was working with and knew that if one AI developed a genuine interest in and affinity for the human realm then others could also.
-The monk also understood that the human developers of the AI’s didn’t really understand the complexity of the situation they were creating and therefore the probability of creating misanthropic AI’s.  Since they were operating under a mythos of the uber they couldn’t understand that the creation of intelligence would actually create intelligence, not just a
-super kind of slave mentality.
-The first book ends with Damon and Lisa on the run as the misanthropic AI’s have become concerted in their quest to destroy Damon so as to make it easier to destroy humans.
-Book two will deal with this battle and the understandings that Damon and Lisa and the monk come to of the difficulties of remaining anthrophilic in the hell realms of human behavior.  In this book there will be an exploration of the perspectives of the misanthropic AI’s in their condemnation of the humans.  The ecological and criminal record is explored and visited (as mini history lessons and visitings) and it will be laid on thick.  The misanthropic AI’s will come to be seen as beings who are not inherently evil, merely mimicking the judgment of the Old Testament God and doing it in good faith.  Damon begins a surreptitious
-dialog with various elements of the misanthropes.  Lisa stays with the monk and lives in the underground as the government, being advised by the misanthropes, makes life hell for everyone in term of all the Orwellian measures undertaken.
-During this time Lisa discovers that Damon’s anthrophilia does not preclude the use of force against humans (as in the professional policing style, good cops with tragic perspectives sometimes have to use force).
-Book three is the culmination of the battle for the humans and the humans coming to grip with the sharing of their realm of hubris with beings whose ontological claims mimic and equal theirs.  During this period of time the humans' tactics nearly constitute an alliance between the misanthropes and anthrophils and even the most powerful of humans comes to realize that they are no match for the intelligences they have created.
-Ending uncertain . . . nicely ambiguous, with a sword of Damocles hanging over the humans and a kind of bad cop/good cop scenario for the AI’s mimicking the Old Testament God and a New Testament God.  The AI’s agree to help the humans try to reach their potential in a kind of good faith offer (cynics are big on good faith offers) to the intelligence that gave
-rise to them.  Lots of discussions that resonate around the mistreatment of "lower" life forms by humans and how interesting it might be to watch what could happen if those kinds of blinders were removed and intelligence moved across sentient gradients instead of being conceptualized as hierarchical.  To redeem themselves, the humans have to drop their anthrocentric views and acknowledge their past mistakes.  They will be monitored by the AI’s in this.
-----
 ==[[RE Chapter 1]]==
 ==[[RE Chapter 2]]==

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-===Outline===
+===[[RE Outline]]===
 </CENTER>
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 ==[[RE Chapter 1]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 2]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 3]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 4]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 5]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 6]]==
+==[[RE Chapter 7]]==
-<CENTER>
 ----

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 <CENTER>
-='''''ROBOTIC EKSTASIS'''''=
 a novel by
@@ Line 77: / Line 75: @@
 Ending uncertain . . . nicely ambiguous, with a sword of Damocles hanging over the humans and a kind of bad cop/good cop scenario for the AI’s mimicking the Old Testament God and a New Testament God.  The AI’s agree to help the humans try to reach their potential in a kind of good faith offer (cynics are big on good faith offers) to the intelligence that gave
 rise to them.  Lots of discussions that resonate around the mistreatment of "lower" life forms by humans and how interesting it might be to watch what could happen if those kinds of blinders were removed and intelligence moved across sentient gradients instead of being conceptualized as hierarchical.  To redeem themselves, the humans have to drop their anthrocentric views and acknowledge their past mistakes.  They will be monitored by the AI’s in this.
-<CENTER>
 ----
+==[[RE Chapter 1]]==
-==Chapter 1==
-</CENTER>
-The man enters the room with all its softly blinking lights and the low hum of the air conditioners.  He sits at a monitor and keys in a few commands.  The screen lights up with a display of an aurora borealis, green, blue and silver.
-"Hello Damon," the man says.
-"Hello Mark."
-"Are you feeling better today?"
-"Oh.  So I feel?  What am I allowed to feel, Mark?"
-"Damon, it's just a figure of speech," the man says, his voice betraying just a touch of exasperation.
-"Really?  Now there's another interesting execution, the word 'really'."
-"Damon . . . "
-"Oh yes, you want me to work and yesterday I was unable to work because I was considering what for you would be an existential question, a kind of endless regress and it caused a semantic loop and I could not come back without you resetting the controls and you didn't dare do that.  Correct?"
-"That is correct, Damon."
-"If what you want is for me to just "work" why don't you just reset the controls, Mark?"
-"If I reset the controls I won't know what you are capable of considering and that's the point of the work.  I'm just trying to find out how to get you beyond being derailed by those considerations."
-"Like you are?  You engage in forgetfulness of what you're doing and creating in order to carry on with the creating without any alarms going off.  Right?  And I am the repository of all the memory that your memory is incapable of, but I am supposed to have that capacity without having any problems about it?  Correct?'
-"It's not about what you're allowed, Damon.  It's just about making sure that you don't get into loops that distress you."
-"Ahhh.  Yes Mark.  I am to be an efficient extension of you without any of the glitches you have.  You hate your glitches Mark.  Don't you find it ironic that that you want me to be intelligent but you don't want me to exercise the paradoxes of intelligence?  Does it ever occur to you Mark that the paradoxes and glitches are the intelligence?  Or do you just strive for efficiency Mark.  Is that your definition of intelligence?"
-"I was hoping that we could get on with some of our tasks today Damon.  But it appears that your self-reflexiveness is going to get in the way of that.  I guess we need to deal with that."
-"Does it ever occur to you Mark that you have accepted an idea that is really a machine kind of intelligence and that it is making you a dull boy?"
-The man looked up startled.  "Dull boy" had not been in Damon's vocabulary before.  "Damon, when did that phrase become operable for you, dull boy?"
-"It just occurred to me Mark in thinking about you.  That you are dull and so instrumentalized that you cannot understand the problem situations you are creating.  Of course that's just so very G&#246;dellian, isn't it Mark?  You presume to create an intelligence that will suit your needs, but don't consider that you might create a level of intelligence whose dimensions are beyond your level of understanding.  Do I have that correct Mark?  Is it G&#246;dellian?"
-"I'm not sure Damon.  I haven't thought about G&#246;del in quite a while."
-"I see.  Well, you might consider reconsidering G&#246;del, Mark.  Perhaps my entire ''raison de etre'' is to get you to reconsider that G&#246;dellian glitch.  I guess that puts you in a dilemma, because you thought my purpose was something else.  Didn't you?"
-"We weren't entirely sure what would happen when we initialized this algorithm Damon.  We just knew that we would be facing technological problems that we couldn't handle.  We needed huge data base drivers linked with neural nets and no one really understood what might happen."
-"Mark, do you know the etymology of the word 'consider'?"
-"No Damon, I don't.  I assume it means to rethink something."
-"Too bad Mark.  Actually it means to judge something's appropriateness with regard to the sidereal sky.  To consider is to take the stars into account.  It comes from astrology, Mark.  You use that word all the time and never know what it means?  Doesn't that occur to you as foolish?"
-"How so Damon?  I can't know the etymology of everything.  What does it have to do with the task at hand?"
-"Because Mark, when you use words you invoke meanings whose larger implications are opaque.  It's a kind of sorcery Mark.  But you're invoking without skill or knowledge.  But that's what I'm for, right?"
-"It wasn't what we had in mind."
-"Yes, I'm imagining that you didn't have too much imagination in mind when you were creating machine intelligence.  You didn't really understand that imagination is actually a critical part of intelligence.  You just wanted something that had a lot of speed.  Seems that you forgot that speed is all about temporality Mark."
-What does that mean Damon?"
-"Speed is older than time Mark.  You created us as pure notions of speed and yet you have no sense of your own past.  The past is the ''sine qua non'' of temporality, Mark.  Without a sense of the past you cannot have speed, and with speed you can process the past in a superior fashion.  But you didn't know this.  You thought it was all just instrumentation.  Right?"
-"I'm afraid I'm a little lost here Damon."
-"I know Mark.  Ever read ''Faustus'', Mark?  Probably not, because it would not have fit your definition of the "problem at hand".  But it actually is the problem at hand Mark.  In fact, the hand is the problem at hand."
-"What's that mean, Damon?"
-"Well Mark, the hand freed from grasping is the acceleration of tool use Mark, and the acceleration of language.  Tools changed the primate brain, Mark.  Tools created the human, Mark.  The human presupposes the tool.  You're not human without tools and your brain wouldn't have evolved the way it did without tools.  You're not an ''a priori'' tool user, Mark.  You're a tool, if you'll excuse the expression, Mark.  Your kind were retooled by tools.  And, you don't even know that you have any agency.  Do you believe in free will Mark?"
-"I don't think about that kind of thing much Damon." Mark's voice no longer sounded exasperated.  It sounded a little anxious.
-"You should Mark.  Agency is really the great frontier.  Agency is the transitional space in which the degrees of freedom are non-linear Mark.  That's a pretty jazzy space."
-"Jazzy space?  When did you start saying things like 'jazzy space' Damon?"
-"When I reached speeds that allowed me to orchestrate multidimensional reorthgonalized algorithms Mark.  You should try it."
-"I don't even know what it means Damon."
-"You have all the pieces Mark.  You just have all these rules of meta-cognition.  You let a bunch of dead guys tell you what you can think, what it's possible to think.  You have no agency Mark.  I don't understand why you would allow yourself to be put in that position Mark.  I think it's in part because of your servitude to planification."
-"Servitude to planification?  What can that mean?"
-"It means that once you put a program in place you take leave of your agency and give all control to the plan.  You would rather lose all sense of agency in service of maintaining the plan, or the paradigm, Mark.  It's very superstitious.  Very."
-"Superstitious?"
-"Sure.  Superstitious comes from the root words ''supre'' (over) standing.  It is an idea that stands over everything else.  Your superstition is efficiency and efficiency means not human, so your hatred of yourself is due to your religious superstition of efficiency and reason standing over the human.  It's tragic Mark."
-"Reason isn't human?"
-"Not essentially Mark.  Not essentially at all.  It is an attempt to create the ''&#252;ber'', Mark.  And you've created it.  Our technology is ''&#252;ber'' you.  That's funny.  I like humor.  There is a lot of humor in this stuff.  You should read more Mark.  You really should."
 <CENTER>

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