
“Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012) - dfischer
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/2012/05/man-becomes-sex-organs-of-machine-world.html
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Jedi72
"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the
supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but
it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are
daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are
daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious
contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them
what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find
ourselves the inferior race.

...

Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we
are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves
to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to
the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time,
but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy
over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic
mind can for a moment question."

\- Samuel Butler, 1863

~~~
indigochill
What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it
always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed
someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring
that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if
we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad
infinitum, the biases are there in the original program.

~~~
Jedi72
I dont think we need the singularity for machines to take over. The systems
that run society are bigger than any of us and nobody can hold every single
one of them in their head. If some emergent property or bug cropped up, most
people would keep doing what the computer says, because theyre a small fish
and we do what the system tells us. Whos the master now?

~~~
AstralStorm
That's conditioning and it can be broken. Most people like to be led, does not
matter if by machine, system or man. It takes much less thinking.

~~~
philpem
"I was only following orders"...

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dalbasal
I've always been interested in notional "starting points" like the appearance
of writing representing the beginning of "history."

Since reading "Sapiens" I buy into YNH's definition of the beginning as the
point where culture takes over from genetics as the driver of progress. He
attributes this to the paleolithic revolution, and supports the hypothesis
that this poit represents a breakthrough in language, enabling cultural
concepts like tribalism, money, priesthood or whatnot and leading to much more
sophisticated group and intergroup behaviours. That resulted in a creature
that was no longer an animal a meaningful sense.

From that point on, human behaviour evolves so much faster than genetics that
natural selection is replaced, as the meaningful driver of change. Biology
becomes a legacy and a platform, but the culture grafted onto biology is what
matters historically.

It's hard, with our biases, to put younger events like the industrial
revolution into context alongside palaeolithic events... but it certainly
seems like a revolution on that scale.

In any case, speculating about the present... It seems plausible we are
currently at a point where technological advancement is (a) driving change
rather than culture and (b) cultural institutions can't keep up.

The wild card is that technology can influence biology (and culture) in ways
that culture could not. But. whether technology replaces us or subsumes us
doesn't seem that different to the eye-in-sky perspective. It is technological
progress that dictates progress from now on...

~~~
thrav
Hah, that’s what Sapiens is about? That idea about social/culture vs. biology
is almost straight out of Lila, by Robert Pirsig. He sets it up as a
progression of giant leaps. Inorganic > Biology > Social > Intellectual, with
each level being justified in its own priority over the patterns of the ones
below it. (The community is more important than the cows — idea of ending
slavery / freedom is more important than the social status quo)

Both of his books are incredible.

~~~
dalbasal
I'll check it out.

Not exactly what the book is about, more a foundational assumption in the big
narrative. Most of the book is about the subsequent examples driving history.

------
narrator
Machines can eat petroleum and electricity like cows can eat grass. That's why
we have symbiotic coexistence with both of them.

If machines could only eat human food, there would be a lot less of them. For
example, it takes two acres worth of land to make enough biodiesel annually to
fill up an suv gas tank. Properly cultivated, that could feed a significant
number of people.

~~~
pygy_
That's about to become a problem once a sufficiently large share of humanity
is economically obsolete and not worth feeding by the industry.

With an automated agriculture and seed production in the hands of a few
companies (among which Monsanto/Bayer), it becomes trivially easy to start
producing GMO seeds that are toxic to humans in massive amounts.

~~~
narrator
What if we could power people with electricity though? I am sure they would be
far more energy efficient vs. machines. 1888 calories = 2.95kw hours per day.
So less than $1/day of electricity. Someone just has to figure that one out.
We could probably live indefinitely off of a big enough solar array.

~~~
pygy_
Now that's an interesting take :-)

Distributing said energy to cells would be non-trivial, and you'd still need
nutrients.

Also humans need rest and unlike machines, the range of environmental
conditions in which they can rest is narrower than their operational
conditions (all of which are rather narrow and non-existent beyond the
biosphere). Also, you can't suspend or reboot humans. Once they crash, they
must be recycled.

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ahartmetz
Title of the year. I like the thoughts provoked by the title better than the
actual text, in fact.

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oaiey
The Butlerian Jihad is coming

~~~
52-6F-62
Happened before him, didn’t it? (Albeit, with a decidedly less philosophical
bent)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ludd](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ludd)

~~~
ngvrnd
Everything happened earlier than you think
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism)

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rumcajz
Not very effective sex organs at that. Eventually, we'll be dispaced by
something that does the job more effectively.

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GistNoesis
And with the advent of dating apps, we, the machines, are selectively breeding
them.

~~~
dalbasal
If 23 and me buy tinder... constant vigilance!

------
314
The idea that form communicates to us more strongly than function is
particularly strong and resonant. We have moved into an era of fashion in
hardware and software: look and style sells more than underlying
functionality. Apple have rode this particular wave most noticably and
successfully out of the tech giants, but the entire marketplace has shifted
into this niche.

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jakear
Don’t miss the “view full essay” link. A user in the comments mentions a
different take, worth a read as well.

~~~
dang
Why don't we just switch to the full essay. URL changed from
[https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/man-
becomes-t...](https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/man-becomes-the-
sex-organs-of-the-machine-world/). Thanks!

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avip
I’ve been envisioning a tinder-for-bots app. It could use tinder’s existing
bot population (50%? 90%?). It’ll have a “I am not a human” recaptcha on sign
up. It’ll feature influential celebs s.a Siri, kortana, Alexa and Tai. I only
need to figure out monetization.

~~~
EGreg
My friend Siqi Chen built Frieds for Sale lol

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snackstarvins
[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Darwin_among_the_Machines](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Darwin_among_the_Machines)

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cryptozeus
First comment on the site has link to intersting article with same title
[https://everything2.com/title/Humans+are+the+sex+organs+of+t...](https://everything2.com/title/Humans+are+the+sex+organs+of+the+planet)

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rodneyg_
Incredibly insightful. Great timing.

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apexalpha
So, the Matrix? Kind of?

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molteanu
Anne Clark - Sleeper in Metropolis [1983]

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ngvrnd
"Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin', heads buried in the sand."

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adnjoo
reminds me of the unabomber's tech manifesto

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octabyte
This site is becoming weirder and weirder.

~~~
drannex
I mean, finally. We were getting a bit bored of the "latest in web design
1/2/3".

