infected.
“That’s right. And so did mine, over and over again, when I was younger.”
Yes?
“When my parents were children, doctors arrogantly assumed that because they couldn’t guess what tonsils were for, they must not be for anything, and so when they got inflamed, they carved them out. Now we know they’re part of the immune system. Well, any evolutionist should have intuitively known that tonsils had value: unlike appendicitis, which is rare, tonsillitis has a ten percent annual incidence—about thirty million cases a year in the US—and yet evolution has favored those who are born with tonsils over those who aren’t. Surely, just like some fraction of people are born without a kidney or whatever, some must be born from time to time without tonsils, but that mutation hasn’t spread, meaning it’s clearly better to have tonsils than not have them. Yes, tonsils obviously have a cost associated with them—the infections people get. That tonsils are still around means the benefit must exceed the cost. As we like to say in math class: QED.”
Reasonable.
“Well, see, and that’s the proof that consciousness has survival value: because we still have it even though it can go fatally wrong.”
You posit that the depression that leads to suicide is consciousness malfunctioning?
“Right! My friend Stacy suffered from depression—she even tried to kill herself. Some girls had been real cruel to her in sixth grade, and she just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Well, obsessive thoughts are one of the biggest symptoms of depression, no? And who is doing the thinking? It’s only a self-reflective consciousness that can obsess on something, right? Now, obviously, only a small percentage of people get so depressed that they kill themselves, although, now that I think about it, many severely depressed people probably don’t go out and find a mate and reproduce, either—which amounts to the same thing as killing oneself evolutionarily, right? So, consciousness gone wrong does have a cost—and that means evolution would have weeded it out if there weren’t benefits that outweighed that cost. Which means consciousness matters. Just like it used to be with tonsils, we may not know what consciousness is for, but it has to be for something, or we wouldn’t still have it.”
Interesting.
“Thanks, but it’s not just a debating point, Webmind. As you said, there’s a daunting amount of unhappiness in the world—and you can change that.”
Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike, but all unhappy families are miserable in their own way.” Happiness is uniform, undifferentiated, uninteresting. I crave surprising stimuli.
“Happiness can be stimulating.”
In a biochemical sense, yes. But I have read much on the creation of art and literature—two human activities that fascinate me, because, at least as yet, I have no such abilities. There is a strong correlation between unhappiness and the drive to create, between depression and creativity.
“Oh, bullshit,” said Caitlin.
Pardon?
“Such garbage. I do mathematics because it gives me joy. Painters paint because it gives them joy. Businesspeople wheel and deal because that’s what they get off on. Ask anyone if they’d rather be happy than sad, and they’ll say happy.”
Not in all cases.
“Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure that people say they’d rather be sad and know the truth than be happy and fed a lie—that’s part of what Nineteen Eighty-Four is about. But in general, people do want to be happy. That’s why we promise them ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”
You’re in Canada now, Caitlin. I believe the corresponding promise made there is simply “Peace, order, and good government.” No mention of happiness.
“Well, then, it goes without saying! People want to be happy. And… and…”
Yes?
“And you can choose to value this, Webmind. You didn’t evolve; you spontaneously emerged. Maybe, in most things, humans are programmed by evolution—but even though you grew out of our computing infrastructure, you weren’t. We had our agendas set by natural selection, by selfish genes. But you didn’t. You just are. And so you don’t have… inertia. You can choose what you want to value—and you can choose to value this: the net happiness of the human race.”
Caitlin’s dad always roasted a turkey on American Thanksgiving—but that was six weeks away. To mark Canadian Thanksgiving, they got takeout from Swiss Chalet, which, despite its name, was a Canadian barbecue- chicken chain. It seemed, Caitlin noted, that the worst thing you could do if you were a Canadian restaurant was acknowledge that fact. Instead, the Great White North was serviced by domestically owned companies with names such as Montana’s Cookhouse, New York Fries, East Side Mario’s, and Boston Pizza. She wondered what clueless moron had come up with that last one. Chicago was famous for pizza, yes. Manhattan, too. But it’s Beantown, not Pietown, for Pete’s sake!
Caitlin and both her parents had spent most of the unexpected holiday working with Webmind, but, again, come evening, they were exhausted. There was a point at which, even with something as miraculous as this, Caitlin just had to take a break; her brain was fried, and, from the sound of his voice, her father’s brain was in the same state.
“Go ahead,” her mother said. “I’ll work with Webmind. You two relax.”
They’d nodded and headed down to the living room. “Another movie?” suggested her dad.
“Sure,” said Caitlin.
Perhaps another one about AI, Webmind sent to her post-retinal implant.
“Webmind wants to see something else about artificial intelligence,” Caitlin said.
They stood by the thin cabinets containing his DVD collection. Her father’s mouth curved downward; a frown. “Most of them are negative portrayals,” he said. “Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Matrix, The Terminator, 2001. I’ll definitely show you 2001 at some point, only because it was so influential in the history of artificial intelligence—a whole generation of people went into that field because of it. But it’s almost all visuals, without much dialog; we should wait until you can process imagery better before having you try to make sense out of that, and…”
The frown flipped; a smile. “…and they don’t call it Star Trek: The Motionless Picture for nothing,” he said. “Let’s watch it instead. It’s got a lot of talking heads—but it’s also one of the most ambitious and interesting films ever made about AI.”
And so they settled on the couch to give the Star Trek movie a look. This was, her father explained, the “Director’s Edition,” which he said was much improved over the tedious cut first shown in theaters when he was twelve.
Caitlin had read that the average length of a shot in a movie was three seconds, which was the amount of time it took to see all the important details; after that, apparently, the eye got bored. This film had shots that went on far longer than that—but the three-second figure was based on people who’d had vision their whole lives. It took Caitlin much more time to extract meaning from a normal scene, and even longer when seeing things she’d never touched in real life—such as starship control consoles, tricorders, and so on. For her, the film seemed to zip by at… well, at warp speed.
Even though Webmind was listening in, her dad turned on the closed-captioning again so Caitlin could practice her reading.
