2015 — 20 January: Tuesday
To add aural insult1 the BBC has just played "Marching Strings" (aka the theme tune to "Top of the Form"). And it's damnably frosty out there, but a walk is to be walked so a walk will be walked. After breakfast. It's a cool 18.8C in my living room. Perhaps I should close the window?
I've been wondering...
... what would be the choice of next annual question asked at "Edge.org". I have my answer. Actually, I've been pondering this question, on and off, (like binary logic?) since acquiring the life-long addiction to SF that the back cover of my copy of the book I noted (in passing) here had warned me about. And that was now over 50 years ago, back in the days when the theme tune to "Top of the Form" was a lot fresher than it seemed this morning.
What do I think about machines that think? Nothing. I confidently expect to be long-dead before the issue raises its positronic head.
Golly!
Sounds like a sensible chap.
Oh, hang on. He still rules out 'artificial' contraception. A man of such sweet contradictions.
It's still -4C out there as time of departure approaches. Must be mad.
My lunchtime...
... reading while my core temperature slowly recovered was that "Edge" piece. About halfway through the items came this one, from a Professor of Asian Studies who made altogether too much sense:
Natural selection produced our rich and complicated set of instincts, emotions and drives in order to maximize our ability to get our genes into the next generation, a process that has left us saddled with all sorts of goals, including desires to win, to
dominate, and to control. While we may want to win, for perfectly good evolutionary reasons, machines could care less. They just manipulate 0s and 1s, as programmed to do by the people who want it to win. Why on earth would an AI system want to
take over the world? What would it do with it?
What is scary as hell is the idea [of] an entity possessed of extra-human intelligence and speed and our motivational system — in other words, human beings equipped with access to powerful AI systems. But smart primates with nuclear
weapons are just as scary, and we've managed to survive such a world so far.
Makes me shudder almost as much as the incredibly bitter grapefruit I've just had as my "pudding".
Contact?
Just askin', is all. (Link.)
I was back...
... in plenty of time to catch Mr Postie. "Groomsmen" is my second try for this title. It not only just about completes my collection of Edward Burns titles, but — by a process of deductive elimination of other deliveries — is what should have been delivered instead of the ghastly (and unwanted) "Nativity / Nativity 2" pack that showed up recently... and is available, still shrink-wrapped, to a deserving home.
"The Horse Whisperer" will (if my Oppo behaves) allow me to resume my recently-interrupted viewing of this long-unwatched film, possibly as early as this evening. Unless anything else pops up to distract me.
Five years...
... to the day after first spotting it, I'm no nearer to being able to afford the "Alice" globe!
[Pause, of 169 minutes, plus or minus]
Good film, but not a short one... Next, it's time to re-watch Zwigoff's marvellous "Ghost World", methinks. But not tonight.