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Thanks! That's it! I found this PDF of the Starfish book.

At page 198:

"There is no pilot. It's a smart gel."

"Really? You don't say." Jarvis frowns. "Those are scary things, those gels. You know one suffocated a bunch of people in London a while back?"

Yes, Joel's about to say, but Jarvis is back in spew mode. "No shit. It was running the subway system over there, perfect operational record, and then one day it just forgets to crank up the ventilators when it's supposed to. Train slides into station fifteen meters underground, everybody gets out, no air, boom."

Joel's heard this before. The punchline's got something to do with a broken clock, if he remembers it right.

"These things teach themselves from experience, right?," Jarvis continues. "So everyone just assumed it had learned to cue the ventilators on something obvious. Body heat, motion, CO2 levels, you know. Turns out instead it was watching a clock on the wall. Train arrival correlated with a predictable subset of patterns on the digital display, so it started the fans whenever it saw one of those patterns."

"Yeah. That's right." Joel shakes his head. "And vandals had smashed the clock, or something."

Google still won't bring up the book even with "smart gel" instead of "AI" in the search terms...

By Peter Watts (author of Blindsight), due out this summer. There are excerpts on his blog going back a decade, some found here by character search: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?...

Imagine being this guy, born without much brain at all, and yet not knowing it until much later in life:
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?...

The human brain is very good at doing the things a brain does, sometimes even when all of the parts we think are necessary are not there in the proper proportions or even there at all.

I find it Interesting that you introduced Helen Keller. I thought of her as well. My assertion is that how we define consciousness is conflated with the development of recursive thought, which is directly related to language development. The two are intertwined because to even define something is to presuppose the possession of language. And, in having language one also acquires recursion as a part of their thought process.

We see consciousness through the inalienable lens of thinking about thinking about ourselves, our experiences, our memories, sensations, and even our internal state. That consciousness can exist without the ability to observe itself is antithetical to our observation and communication about consciousness because to know you have observed it and to communicate about that observation requires meta-cognition and recursive thought. It is the water we swim in, without knowing water exists. We are, in essence, biased against any form of consciousness that does not include recursion because it is so intrinsic to our own experience of everything once we attain it. The author even points to this by using the terms "meta-consciousness" and "re-representation" which I feel point directly to my assertion.

At some point the definition of consciousness starts to look like a tautology, circularly reinforced by its own observation of itself, defined by what it is because it does what it does. The piece that is missing is the acknowledgement of the underlying components that inform, and in many ways form, the observations that lead to the definition itself.

In the case of Helen Keller we have the analysis and remembrances of a post-recursive consciousness who can now relate to us in language the experiences of her own pre-linguistic and possibly pre-recursive existence. I am now inspired to go back and re-read some of her writings. It has been decades and I feel it is overdue in light of this discussion.

(Shameless plug alert!) Peter Watts wrote a great book, Blindsight (Direct link to the book, available free: http://www.rifters.com/real/Bl...) which explores some very interesting angles on consciousness vs. self consciousness. Go read it. You won't be disappointed.

Right now I'm re-reading Echopraxia by Peter Watts, the sequel to Blindsight ( <-- link to the full book online under a CC license!), which I just re-read. Blindsight is fantastic (I've read it twice now, both times I did it in one sitting), I didn't enjoy Echopraxia quite as much, but it's still pretty damn good.

Or we could end up like the soldier character Amanda Bates in Peter Watt's Blindsight, a human inserted into a network of AI driven machines, each quicker and more lethal than her fragile human self. Yet she has the final say and utmost authority over the decision to kill.

The unfortunate implication? Her AI team becomes far more dangerous once the slow-thinking and squishy human dies, and they get let off the leash. Meaning that she has as much to fear from her superiors as from her enemies.

Intelligence is only observable in connection with consciousness. Any sane person would conclude that there likely is a strong link between the two or that they may actually be faces of the same thing

Doesn't necessarily have to be. Great novel about a non-sentient super intelligence: Blindsight by Peter Watts. And it's free online!

I know what you mean, I'm in much the same situation - I read a whole lot less than I used to. My excuse is that I spend lots of time reading for work. But it is mostly just an excuse, truth is that re-watchinig Babylon 5 DVDs is easier. Luckily I got through the Dune series when I was young.

I could talk at great length about books 4-6, and why they're better than books 1-3, but I would hate to spoil anything. All I will say is: don't expect book 4 to be set immediately after book 3, there's a 3500 year gap, and likewise a 1500 year gap between books 4 and 5. If book 4 is difficult, stick with it, it pays off IMHO. Though I have heard that some people despise it. It's a unique book, perhaps a love-it or hate-it affair. Apparently the first draft was written largely in the first person. I'm sure that book 4 was written in the period when Frank Herbert had a big stash of the best LSD ever. But book 5 is awesome and 6 is a worthy sequel to it. Don't mind the cliffhanger, it just gives you something to think about.

I periodically think about joining a book club. This usually culminates in watching more B5. ;)

I did manage to get totally sucked into Blindsight by Peter Watts (full text available free online) recently, based on a recommendation here on slashdot. Read it in one mammoth sitting. Hard sci-fi + vampires = win.

1) Planet with liquid water and a magnetic field. Those seem a touch rare.

2) Sex slaves. Aliens love butt probin'.

3) They're dicks. Some kids burn ants with magnifying glasses.

4) Entertainment. Some interesting documentaries have been made about the phenomenon.

5) We're annoying the shit out of them. (Great, chilling book. And free online!)

Your comment reminds me of a novel called Blindsight by Peter Watts about an alien species that threatens Earth and humanity despite not having any individual or group consciousness. The author makes a claim that our consciousness slows us down and puts us at a severe disadvantage compared to other species (like the aliens) which can think much faster than us because they don't have an additional processing layer of consciousness to slow them down. I thought it was a really good book, and worth reading in my opinion.

Almost 10 years ago, in Behemoth. http://www.rifters.com/real/Behemoth.htm

Looks pretty consistent with the kind of view of human conciousness, as forms the core of Peter Watts' "Blindsight". The body can do most anything without being conscious of it, we just put a rubber stamp on all the actions and call them our own.

If the subject interests you I highly recommend reading the book. It's available free from author's homepage: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

This is the last book that managed to change my world view. The ideas that the author probes as to the nature of human conciousness and the resulting human condition are extremely provocative and which is even better, completely plausable. I don't remember the last time when I suddenly started laughing in the middle of reading a book, not because it is funny (which Peter Watts' books certainly are!) but because the idea that was proposed goes so hard against my intuition that I have no better way of parsing that then to laugh. If you haven't read it, you have no good excuse not to now: It's available free from Watts' homepage at http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm Also what probably boosted up my like for that book is that the author doesn't do hand waving but bases all it's information on actual cold hard science. I am quite knowledgable about current research in cognitive and neurosciences, in biology and other basic sciences and unlike a lot of Sci-Fi books, "Blindsight" does not rub me the wrong way.

Starfish and Maelstrom by Peter Watts are also hugely depressing. The characters are unsympathetic, hardened, dysfunctional; the stories bleak. I ate them up.

Starfish and Maelstrom by Peter Watts are also hugely depressing. The characters are unsympathetic, hardened, dysfunctional; the stories bleak. I ate them up.

Any author considered too dark for the Russians gets my vote. Do yourself a favor and skip his books. Think of the money you'll save on therapy.

Peter Watts did an engaging job of describing how alien an alien can be in his books, notably Blindsight and The Island. Most of his books are available for free online from that page.

Peter Watts did an engaging job of describing how alien an alien can be in his books, notably Blindsight and The Island. Most of his books are available for free online from that page.

I suggest building the Icarus Array of Blindsight.

In benign environments technology is a stunted, laughable thing, it can't thrive in cultures gripped by belief in natural harmony. What need of fusion reactors if food is already abundant, the climate comfortable? Why force change upon a world which poses no danger?

In short, would you say most technology or formal civilization comes from tropical, comfortable climates, or from colder and harsher ones -- Silicon Valley being an exception :-).

editors, working for publishers, are behind a lot of the great literary works of the united states.

philip k dick's "a scanner darkly" comes to mind. there are many others.

publishers also deal with libel and defamation lawsuits for you.

they also set up junkets so you can market your book.

im not saying theres no point to self publish, but there are many differences between music industry and book industry.

It's certainly true that publishing companies server useful purposes... But so do recording companies. Different useful purposes, but useful none the less.

In publishing you've got an editor to trim things down, streamline, bounce ideas off of you, and basically get your book into proper shape. In the recording industry you've got various mixing engineers who do similar work with the music. Both industries have lawyers to protect their clients. Both industries do a lot of PR work for their clients.

There certainly is a reason to work with a publishing company...

But they've gotten complacent. For quite some time now, if you wanted a book published you had to go through some publishing company. You didn't have a choice. They were the gatekeepers.

This has meant that not only can they charge what they want, but they're had some rather marked control over what actually gets published. Just look at Peter Watts' book, Behemoth.

But the availability of viable self-publishing options means that the traditional publication companies are going to have to start playing ball... Or they're going to stop being relevant.

Sure, they provide useful functions... But there's no reason why I couldn't start up some ebook publishing company and hire editors and PR people myself, and then only take 50% of the proceeds, instead of the 80% that traditional publication companies are apparently taking. Or the authors can go with some other self-publication service and keep 70% of the proceeds and hire their own editors, lawyers, and PR people.

Competition is usually a good thing.

Or like the one in this book: 100% happy at all times and 100% unaware of the real consequences of its decisions. By the way, the link is to the full text of the CC-licensed book, by Peter Watts.

Y'all remember that Canadian writer who got convicted of getting beat up at the border, Peter Watts?

He wrote a terrific novel called Starfish (you can read it for free here under a CC license) in which a microbe with non-compatible biochemistry is discovered at an ocean-floor volcanic vent. It metabolized sulfur, IIRC, and the concern was that it would out-compete everything at the bottom of our food chain if it got loose on the surface.

"Technology implies belligerence." - Blindsight, by Peter Watts.
http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Blindsight is my new favorite book after 3 reads this year. Outstanding hard science fiction, very well written, fun to read, incredibly smart and well researched, and truly scary and thought provoking.

Could be that we simply are tired of some busybody using "think of the children" as a trump card:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1488

Check out Blindsight by Peter Watts. Aliens come to snuff us out because we essentially wasted their time with our endless radio chatter.

I'm considering hiring a coyote to smuggle me and my family across the border.

Don't worry, the US Border Patrol very rarely beats and arrests people for trying to leave the USA. Mostly.

Check Peter's history. He has a previous conviction for being belligerent to a cop.

From Peter's blog: I do not have a criminal record in Canada. I have never been convicted of anything in Canada; those of you who want to find evidence to the contrary, knock yourselves out and good luck.

So cite proof or retract.

I owned (and had read) first editions of all five (or four and a half) of his novels before the first story about him, so I don't think that he's that obscure. There are plenty of more popular authors whose books aren't as good. And now, because of a felony "non-compliance" conviction, he will be unable to enter the United States again. That's quite a hefty punishment for getting out of your car at a border checkpoint (especially with a superfluous beatdown in the bargain). Is that the result of a "good" law? You might see him at WorldCon 2010, but he'll be SOL if he wins a Hugo in 2011 (Nevada). A felony conviction will fuck over an American citizen.

Most importantly (for slashdot), he has released all of his novels and a number of shorts for free on the web under a Creative Commons license. That makes him as slashdot-worthy as Hans Reiser.

He was convicted of obstructing/resisting, not assault.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1193

Having just read Dr. Watt's latest post I'll stipulate that the conviction was not on the original charge. But the docket is most confusing.

“The Times Herald continues to print that Mr. Watts was found guilty of assault. HE WAS NOT!!! He was found guilty of obstructing/resisting, and that was due to the time that transpired between him being ordered to do something and him actually complying with the order. We were forced to decide what was a reasonable amount of time for him to comply with an order. Mr. Watts, in my opinion, was treated unfairly by Customs and Border Protection. But, unfortunately, they were not on trial.”

• 1. The incident occured as Watts was exiting the US. He was stopped by US border patrol for a random "exit inspection"
• 2. Watts initially got out of the car and requested an explanation. At that point, one of the border patrol officers told him to get back in the car. He did so
• 3. An officer named Beaudry rushed over to the scene, got into the car with Watts, struck him in the face and told him to get out.
• 4. Watts exited the car and Beaudry ordered him to get to the ground.
• 5. Watts did not comply, but rather demanded an explanation.
• 6. Beaudry pepper-spayed watts and threatened him with a baton. At that point Watts lay down, was handcuffed, and placed under arrest.

At no point did Watts engage in a physical confrontation with the CBP officers. Upon cross-examination the "choking" accusation and the "aggressive stance" accusations were shown to have been fabricated.
The conviction stemmed solely from point #5 Here are a couple of post-trial juror statements. One was posted on Watts own site. The other was posted as a comment to the Port Huron report on the verdict; see
http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20100319/NEWS01/3190308/Jury-remains-out-in-Watts-trial?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:e3d49247-c265-47a6-9721-5713e32cc7ed



As a member of the jury that convicted Mr. Watts today, I have a few comments to make. The jury’s task was not to decide who we liked better. The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts “obstructed/resisted” the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He’s not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge.



Peter,

I believe your description of the trial and deliberations is more accurate than you could know. As a non-conformist and “libertarian” (who has had some experiences not unlike yours) I was not comfortable with my vote, but felt deep inside that it was consistent with the oath we took as jurors. I believe nearly all the jurors searched for a legitimate reason to vote differently. In the end it came down to the question “Was the law broken?”. While I would much rather have a beer and discussion with you than Officer B. I never the less felt obligated to vote my conscience. I also believe most, if not all, the jurors sincerely hope that you are handled with a great degree of leniency, we, unfortunately have no say in that matter.

Peter Watts describes in much more detail events of the trial and conviction on his blog.

It would be nice to know if there was some evidence besides the accounts of the officer and Watts.

In a previous blog entry Watts mentioned there was video surveillance of the incident that would be used in court, but now he makes no comment on it. Maybe the video wasn't as helpful to him as he first said it would be (or maybe there wasn't any after all).

The way he shut up about it, seems as if the video showed him being a total ass.

From Watts' own blog:

Here at the Sarnia Best Western I don't have the actual statute in front of me but it includes a lengthy grab-bag of actions, things like "assault", "resist", "impede", "threaten", "obstruct" -- hell, "contradict" might be in there for all I know. And under "obstruct" is "failure to comply with a lawful order", and it's explicitly stated that violence on the part of the perp is not necessary for a conviction. Basically, everything from asking "Why?" right up to chain-saw attack falls under the same charge. And it's all a felony.

Making Light put it more caustically:

Peter Watts has been found guilty of being assaulted by a border guard. The actual charge was obstructing a border officer. The other charges were refuted in court, but there remained the fact that Watts, having just been punched twice in the head, did not immediately drop to the ground when ordered to do so, instead asking what the problem was. Apparently, this is a felony.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186

Peter Watts describes in much more detail events of the trial and conviction on his blog.

It would be nice to know if there was some evidence besides the accounts of the officer and Watts.

In a previous blog entry Watts mentioned there was video surveillance of the incident that would be used in court, but now he makes no comment on it. Maybe the video wasn't as helpful to him as he first said it would be (or maybe there wasn't any after all).

Peter Watts has put up a new post on the event. All emphasis mine:

"I'm at the point now where I can't talk a whole lot about ongoing proceedings. I am seeing a few common misrepresentations making the rounds, though, that I'd like to set straight:

1. Some are concluding that, when I was "dumped across the border in shirtsleeves", I had to walk across the Blue Water Bridge in a snowstorm without my coat. No. The bridge is on the US side of the border, which they had to drive me across to dump me on the other side of; and Canadian Customs was on that other side. This was no Starlight Cruise; I was not exposed to the weather unprotected for an inordinately long time. Still. It's winter. And they have my coat.
2. Others have warned me to delete my previous post, lest the bad guys seize upon it and twist it to their own dark purposes. Having had erroneous quotes attributed to me in the past, I know this is good advice (which is why I won't be commenting in too much detail upon some of the arcane blow-by-blows of the case in question). But my lawyer vetted that post before I put it up; I stand behind it.
3. Thanks to whoever posted the link to the Times-Herald story. I have three comments about the allegations therein. Firstly, the story claims that I was entering the US, not leaving it: this is empirically false. Secondly, I find it interesting that these guys characterise "pulling away" as "aggressive" behavior; I myself would regard it as a retreat. And thirdly, I did not "choke" anyone. I state this categorically. And having been told that cameras were in fact on site, I look forward to seeing the footage they provide.

That's it for the technical items. I have only two more things to say. Firstly, I am absolutely flabbergasted by the online reaction to this story, and by the support (both moral and financial) that's inundated me over the past few hours. I don't have a hope in hell of answering even a fraction of the incoming traffic at this point, so for the moment let me just say I'm humbled and a little bit scared. I did not start this campaign; it actually started when I was still in jail, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. But to the catalytic folks who orchestrated it, know that I am looking into having my vasectomy reversed so that I can sire a firstborn son and sacrifice him to you.
Secondly, I'm going to bed.

"We're also hearing second-hand from Watts and the other people in the car. We're not yet hearing the guards' account. Maybe Doctorow et. al. are completely right, but let's not assume so right off the bat, eh?"

Watts himself has now commented directly: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

Nobody will hear the guards' account until a trial, if there is one. May not hear it even then.

I think this sums it up fairly well:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886

Peter Watts explores this subject (among many other interesting topics - including existence of free will, the chinese room, and the nature of empathy and sentience) in his newest book, 'Blindsight'. It's a pretty good read.

The book is available online here: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm. It's published under Creative Commons license.

In general, sentience without egoistical or similar motives tends to be completely neutral in relation to other beings, and what will most likely happen is that we give the machines incentives other than the human-evolved ones to keep it going, and thinking. This is an immense task.

There's a nice scifi books where this very concept of biological machines built from neurons but without the "emotion engine" play a central role at the ending: Starfish, by Peter Watts (BY-NC-SA 2.5 licensed).

In the novel these machines aren't programmed, they're taught to follow certain patterns, what in turn requires a behavior reinforcement mechanism to exist. The questions is: what happens if you take such a completely amoral biocomputer, highly optimized at processing certain kinds of data (in the case, cleaning viruses from live Internet traffic), and replace the IO system allowing it to deal with things such as ecosystems?

Let's say the result is pretty troublesome.

Peter Watts Has his Rifters series as well as Blindsight up on a CC license. Good series for those who haven't read it.

Blindsight is available online, too.

Along with several of the rest of his stories: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

Along with several of the rest of his stories: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

If you read Watts' Vampire Domestication PDF, it should answer most of your questions, and let you decide if you are going to read the book or not.

Not to take anything away from Vinge and Rainbows End, but Blindsight was just simply amazing. From the characters to the technology to the plotting style, it took everything good about a first contact story, and then added to it. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to (and the associated Vampire Domestication presentation.) Best of all, Peter Watts has made it, and his previous Rifters trilogy, available online under a Creative Commons license at his website, and it's well worth just downloading and checking it out. I read it CC, and then bought the book. Haven't bought the Rifters set yet, but I probably will my next Amazon order.

Seriously, Blindsight took vampires, transhumans, uploaded minds, and alien contact, and made it into something incredible with the narrative devices, character development, setting and dialog. You need to read the book, and since the first one is free, why not?