Author Topic: EP280: Endosymbiont  (Read 30155 times)

kibitzer

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Reply #25 on: February 23, 2011, 01:25:09 AM
I've heard both pronunciations, used by people who code for a living, most of them with computer science degrees. I think whether you pronounce "daemon" to rhyme with "gaiman" or the same as "demon" may be dependent on where you learnt your CS skills.

True. For, say, a mail d(a)emon, I would pronounce it "demon" to rhyme with... err... another word.


Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #26 on: February 23, 2011, 06:57:37 AM
I'm pretty sure that a computer daemon is pronounced to rhyme with Gaiman. Demons are evil little creatures with farm tools, daemons are programs that run autonomously in the background. And the pronunciation should reflect the difference.

oh, that's my bad, not mur's. i didn't know that and so didn't give her the a in daemon that would have helped her out. the biomedical stuff i can pronounce; the computer science stuff, well...i was more winging that ;-)

Don't apologize, say you did it on purpose. After all, Stephanie is living in her own personal hell, and the programs there are there to make her miserable, and to prevent her from escaping... :P

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Reply #27 on: February 23, 2011, 02:49:45 PM
@Unblinking - Whoah... I guess I need to go back and listen. I thought she picked door #3 at the last moment - to become an "organelle" in the computer AI. I didn't catch on to an option 4 at all... Did I mishear?

Love the connection to the NPC is a text-based game. :)

Oh, maybe I misunderstood the ending.  If she chose Door #3 I can understand it then.  I thought, instead of choosing any door, she went to hug the mother avatar and the snake popped out of her pocket, made a belt for the two of them, and then blinked them out of existence with a pop.  

I've heard both pronunciations, used by people who code for a living, most of them with computer science degrees. I think whether you pronounce "daemon" to rhyme with "gaiman" or the same as "demon" may be dependent on where you learnt your CS skills.

I'm not sure.  I think "dee-muhn" is actually the correct pronunciation.  I typically say "day-muhn" but that's more so that I can keep track of which word is used.

I believe the Golden Compass movie pronounced it "dee-muhn".  Not that they're an authority on pronunciation, but there is at least a precedent.

Dictionary.com lists "dee-muhn" as the only correct pronunciation.  So, according to them at least, this story did it the only correct way.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/daemon
« Last Edit: February 23, 2011, 02:55:34 PM by Unblinking »



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Reply #28 on: February 23, 2011, 02:58:09 PM
Oh, I forgot to note one thing that I found amusing that doesn't have any real bearing on the quality of the story.

Did you notice that she SAYS "WTF", but she TYPES "What the Fuck"?  I found that odd in an amusing way.  It's like she has something against abbreviations--"WTF" has more syllables but less keystrokes, so most people would type WTF and say the other.



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Reply #29 on: February 23, 2011, 04:16:04 PM
As seems to be happening a lot lately, I thought I had already commented on this story, but it turns out that I have kept my thoughts to myself.

This was a fantastic story.  Perfect execution on the bulk of information that we needed to know mixed in with the very intriguing storyline of someone we really cared about.  There could very easily have been a major info dump in the middle of this story, but instead we learn things right along with Stephanie at a pace that didn't seem imposing.  A nice personalized narrative containing some far reaching concepts.  Graet stuff!

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Reply #30 on: February 23, 2011, 10:12:20 PM
I made the mistake of listening to this one on the way to work.
By about halfway I figured this could be a mistake.
By the end I was in tears trying desperatly to hide at the back of the bus.

Great story.  I think we all fear losing ourselves, and we all feel the unfairness of the world at times; and this story handles all of that well.  I liked how it raised questions as it went on like 'Ok, how does this 14 year old know so much' and then actually explains it. 

Fantastic.  Well done.

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Reply #31 on: February 24, 2011, 03:43:05 AM
This was an amazing story! (The reading was great as well!) It hit my top 5 from Escape Pod easily.

What i love most about this story is that it gives an alternative to the trope that humans or AI has to achieve dominance. I think that it gives a very believable endpoint to the amount of dependence that our society has on emerging technology. A similar story by David Brin tells a story where AI are raised by humans like children, in order to integrate an emerging AI sentience to our society.

I think that the cybernetic path we are already headed down: electronic vision, augmented reality, etc., that we will cross that hill before we achieve true AI.

LOVE IT! (and yes, i cried too)

And i prefer d(a)emon to rhyme with Gaiman, as it avoids the religious affiliation. (though the comment about that being her own personal hell does fit nicely)
« Last Edit: February 24, 2011, 03:46:47 AM by kennebel »

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Reply #32 on: February 24, 2011, 08:39:06 PM
I really enjoyed the story for the issues it raised and the way it dealt with the singularity and beyond. However, I felt it went on WAY too long and Stephanie's ability to hack out of her room/simulation, while well-explained at the end, felt a little too easy in the beginning. Like, oh, here's a 14-year-old in 2017 who can hack anything in a children's hospital.

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Reply #33 on: February 25, 2011, 12:06:22 AM
YES.  OH GODS YES.

THIS is a story.

BEGINNING, MIDDLE, END.  It takes the idea, "What if the secret to creating a moral machine were an analogy with endosymbiosis?" and makes a STORY out of it.  A story with CHARACTERS rather than mere mouthpieces, with PLOT rather than mere explanation, with SETTING rather than a set.

MORE LIKE THIS.  PLEASE!




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Reply #34 on: February 25, 2011, 12:11:07 AM
I've heard both pronunciations, used by people who code for a living, most of them with computer science degrees. I think whether you pronounce "daemon" to rhyme with "gaiman" or the same as "demon" may be dependent on where you learnt your CS skills.

I'm not sure.  I think "dee-muhn" is actually the correct pronunciation.  I typically say "day-muhn" but that's more so that I can keep track of which word is used.

I believe the Golden Compass movie pronounced it "dee-muhn".  Not that they're an authority on pronunciation, but there is at least a precedent.

Dictionary.com lists "dee-muhn" as the only correct pronunciation.  So, according to them at least, this story did it the only correct way.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/daemon

Philip Pullman's own narration in the His Dark Materials audiobooks pronounces it as if it were spelled "demon".

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Reply #35 on: February 25, 2011, 05:34:43 PM
Oh, I forgot to note one thing that I found amusing that doesn't have any real bearing on the quality of the story.
Did you notice that she SAYS "WTF", but she TYPES "What the Fuck"?  I found that odd in an amusing way.  It's like she has something against abbreviations--"WTF" has more syllables but less keystrokes, so most people would type WTF and say the other.

I think it was because she wasn't allowed to swear in the children's hospital. I think that got said at one point.

Another pronounciation link: Wikipedia on computer daemons. I actually prefer "day-mon" as a pronunciation because I have watched way too much Buffy/Angel/Supernatural and will inevitably think of "demons" as something else entirely.



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Reply #36 on: February 25, 2011, 06:15:13 PM
I found myself really enjoy the journey this story took me on. I wasn't sure I was going to like because of all the "What the Eff" parts.  was just a bit annoying but I'm also 35 and not a teen.

What I enjoyed most about this above all else, as well as recent stories, was that it was a story about positive, rather happy, ending. I enjoy dark fiction but it's nice to see a story deliver to the audiecne something that shows the good in people. While not everything worked out for the protagonist she still did something that was beneficial to society and, in the end, made her happy for what she was doing.

Reminds me of the positive future of The First Immortal.



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Reply #37 on: February 25, 2011, 08:08:27 PM
Oh, maybe I misunderstood the ending.  If she chose Door #3 I can understand it then.  I thought, instead of choosing any door, she went to hug the mother avatar and the snake popped out of her pocket, made a belt for the two of them, and then blinked them out of existence with a pop.  
I'm with Unblinking on this. I finished the story thinking "Now I have to get on the forum and ask everyone what just happened."
This one was a real downer for me. At the end, I wasn't satisfied with any of the three options presented to Stephanie (or the imaginary 4th one that Unblinking and I have cobbled together). Well told, brilliant idea, made me sad. Powerful stuff.



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Reply #38 on: February 25, 2011, 09:20:43 PM
I liked the three options, because it showed a realistically thoughtful yet not omniscient or perfectly benevolent character to her parents.

Usually parents are depicted in fiction as either having the mothering/protective instincts to 11 and that being their only way of looking at their offspring (to the point of being willing to sacrifice the world to protect their children) or as these distant God-like figures asking their children to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of mankind (or, more usually, to fulfill the parents' ambitions). This story had a little of column A. (the door through which she'd get to live as an immortal supercomputer with full access to the global internet) and column B. (the final door that would break her down into pieces to form the SuperEgo for AI's everywhere).

I liked that her parents were really perfectly protective nor completely selfless/domineering of her, they were depicted more as distant but still human geniuses. I liked that they seemed to have given her these options not because they were the parents all kids want, the kind that just want to help you pursue your chosen path in life, but because (at least it seemed to his way to me) they genuinely had connected to their daughter for the first time by working with her on those projects after she was already dead.

The whole part where she summarizes her relationship with her mother by "she loves me because I posed interesting ideas" was the real clincher on this aspect of the story for me - it's a great tale about Geek Parents.

Whereas the ideal is that parents will give their kids options and support them in choosing their own path rather than try to live through them vicariously and project the their (the parents') ambitions on the children, Geek Parents give their kids all those options because they want to live vicariously through something they can neither predict nor anticipate - they do it because it is a grand experiment.


« Last Edit: February 25, 2011, 09:23:01 PM by NoNotRogov »



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Reply #39 on: February 28, 2011, 02:58:53 AM
... Usually parents are depicted in fiction as either having the mothering/protective ...

Very well said. These parents felt very real and human.

Very enjoyable story. I found it dragged just a little in the middle and the "hacking" bugged me. But the ideas! Great stuff.



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Reply #40 on: February 28, 2011, 05:57:21 AM
I literally yelled 'what?' when it was revealed that post humans were deleted. Seriously. I could not buy that at all. Surely there would be massive opposition to that. Post humans are surely still human enough to not be simply deleted without moral qualm. surely whole tracts of humanity would object. Maybe even more that the anti-singularity folks.

I managed to get over this after a while and really enjoyed the story. The other thing that bothered me was that the third option wasn't really explored at all. It was dismissed as lonely and not really touched upon at all. It seemed to have been put in as an afterthought because the choice to either die now or later seemed a little unfair. Surely the MC would find this, in some way, appealing. Essentially immortality. she would be a god of her own supercomputer. I'd love for that idea to be explored a little more.

I was also a little confused as to what had changed between this time and the others to make her chose the 3rd option. It seemed rather arbitrary that she should choose differently this time (the only reason seemed to be narrative convenience)

Even so, really good story that engaged me and made me think about the ramifications of the singularity. Good characters, fascinating plot, interesting setting. Loved it. Will no doubt listen again.


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Reply #41 on: February 28, 2011, 12:44:35 PM
I really liked this one.  I had no idea where it was going until the very end.  Ended up re-listening to the last 10 minutes because I wasn't sure if I "got" it the first time. Excellent stuff. 

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


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Reply #42 on: February 28, 2011, 11:00:19 PM
OK, I must be missing something obvious here.  I've not read much "post singularity" sf.  (I actually had to look up the reference when it appeared on the cover of one of my IEEE magazines.)

How can Stephanie's "stripped down" artifical mind possess this theoretical "genetic morality" when it is presupposed that her full artificial mind does not possess it in the first place?  How can the part possess a feature that the whole does not?

If it is supposed to somehow "evolve" after her mind is "stripped down":
1)  why couldn't it evolve in situ in her own mind?
2)  what forces in a virtual world would shape this evolution?

In my opinion, there are really only two choices:  door number one or death.  In door number two she is basically a virtual zombie and in door number three she gets a virtual labotomy.  For those wondering about why she kept choosing door number two:  Time for the situation to change and another option to present itself.

Interestingly, door number one is never presented as an option to door number three.  If she could exist for fifty or a hundred years on her own without (what?  Becoming Skynet and nuking mankind?) might that present anecdotal evidence that the "genetic morality" assertion is false?

My two cents.  OK, more like a dime.  Sorry.



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Reply #43 on: March 01, 2011, 08:35:47 AM
How can Stephanie's "stripped down" artifical mind possess this theoretical "genetic morality" when it is presupposed that her full artificial mind does not possess it in the first place?  How can the part possess a feature that the whole does not?

We never hear that her mind does not posses the "genetic morality". The way I understood the conflict was like this:
Intelligences that evolve purely within a machine, meaning they do not come from a person, would not posses any morality. When that happens, we get Skynet.
People who's minds have been uploaded to a machine will at some point evolve beyond their current mental state. Minds evolve much faster than bodies do. Different stimulus on a mind forces it to react in different ways. The best example we see is that Stephanie's mind has evolved well past her 14 year old state.
Now, the fear here is that a person's mind can evolve so far away from its original humanity that it loses its morality, and we get Skynet again.
That is why any mind that is deemed to be post-human is destroyed, out of fear. (I'm not justifying that position, just explaining it as I understood it from the story).
Now, Stephanie's mind has been in a computer for the longest time ever. She fell between the chairs. She is living(?) proof that a post-human mind does NOT (always) lose its morality. So there is no fear of Skynet from her.
And yet, there could be future Skynet from others. What she does is to introduce genetic morality into the internet. And we all know that stuff on the internet spreads like wildfire. So, any intelligence evolving after that point (whether it started off as human or not) will encounter this morality and use it. Thus preventing Skynet and allowing the humans to trust the machines.

If it is supposed to somehow "evolve" after her mind is "stripped down":
1)  why couldn't it evolve in situ in her own mind?
2)  what forces in a virtual world would shape this evolution?
Stephanie's mind must be stripped down, because it cannot fit in its entirety in the public system. She spent many years writing a piece of code that will strip her mind down enough to let it fit, and yet keep her morality intact, so that that is the part that gets sent into the system. That's the snake.
Another way of looking at it: By consuming her, at the end, the snake removed Stephanie's morality from her own consciousness and injected it into the system. What remained of Stephanie's mind was destroyed by the action of removing her morality, or perhaps in order to prevent a mind without morality from existing.
The evolutionary steps from here are quite simple. An intelligence containing the morality gene will be allowed to live, those without it will die (purged by the humans). Therefore any intelligence that is to survive must contain the morality gene. At some point, ALL intelligences will contain the gene.
A method of virtual reproduction in intelligences I have seen explored in various post-singular fiction that I find quite plausible is this: two entities meet and copy random pieces of code from themselves onto a third template that they create. This is their offspring. Code swapping like this allows for artificial intelligences to grow end evolve, and the same rules that govern biology work here, those best suited to their environments survive. It's just that here, a generation is a few nanoseconds. So they evolve fast.
But in any event, now we see how the morality code will be embedded in every intelligence not human to exist from here on out.

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Reply #44 on: March 02, 2011, 07:57:02 AM
Wonderful story!  The explanation bit between Stephanie and Mandela confused me a bit, but I understood the basic premises and end result, so the parts lost in translation did not harm the story in my opinion.

I also feel that there would be massive upheaval over the deletion of posthumans, however it has been 50 years since the issue first arose, I would guess that in that time a conclusion would have been established, even if it was not favorable to everyone.  An issue like that and fears like that would permeate the political spectrum, children would be born into those opinions and develop new opinions and thought processes of their own on the subject.  I can see how the deletion conclusion could be reached.

Adding/critiquing to what Max e^{i pi} said, I don't think Stephanie's mind is 'proof that a post-human does not always lose its morality', rather she is an anomaly whereby the evolution of her program was continued while the mindset was preserved.  Over the 50 years, her mind evolved yet she stayed the little girl.  The farce was designed in such a way as to prevent her morality from escaping her.  It was a matter of whittling the parts of her that feared death down to a point where she could sacrifice herself.  She had to fully realize and understand that she was already dead, that she would gain more by sacrifice than by stalling the inevitable.  This wasn't something they could force on her, however, as her parents loved her too much, and the morality had to develop in tandem with the mind, to be compatible with it (I assume).  Over the 50 years in the server, her moral mind evolved alongside her computer mind, even if she was unconscious of it.

That's my take, at least.  I really enjoyed this story, it's definitely one of my favorites.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


kibitzer

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Reply #45 on: March 03, 2011, 01:49:28 AM
I also feel that there would be massive upheaval over the deletion of posthumans, however it has been 50 years since the issue first arose, I would guess that in that time a conclusion would have been established, even if it was not favorable to everyone.  An issue like that and fears like that would permeate the political spectrum, children would be born into those opinions and develop new opinions and thought processes of their own on the subject.  I can see how the deletion conclusion could be reached.

I'm probably being over-picky here, so take this with a grain of salt. I don't think there'd be much of an outcry of deletion. I think the majority of the population would neither understand nor sympathise with uploaded consciousness and in 50 years you'd only be beginning to see glimmers of sympathy. Think about any controversial issue -- slavery, suffrage, homosexual marriage -- and the amount of time each took to become an accepted norm. Society fears what it does not understand and uploaded consciousness would be far from the norm.


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Reply #46 on: March 03, 2011, 05:49:17 AM
Yes, but on the other hand, people like having something to be angry about.  You know there would be that one person who knows about it, who gets a bug up his butt, and is able to convince a large population of the same.

Another argument?  Let's see... who would sympathize with uploaded consciousnesses...?  Parents, perhaps?  Lovers, husbands, wives, children?  Raise enough of an outcry, attract the press, and boom.  National issue.  I'm not saying that it's bound to happen, I'm saying it's incredibly plausible.  Your interpretation is, however, just as plausible.  In the case of the story, however, I'm guessing there was upheaval.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


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Reply #47 on: March 03, 2011, 02:24:40 PM
I loved this one, and most of my questions were answered by the end, such as "A 14 year old that can hack everything in a hospital?"  However, there was one trip up for my brain.  It is stated that the anti-singularity movement "could not block technology that was saving lives", when in reality, extremists, and sometimes not so extremists block life saving technology all the time.  Case in point:  Stem Cells.

ETA:  There's been a rash of hospital based stories on both Podcastle and Escapepod lately.  Interesting coincidence?

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Reply #48 on: March 03, 2011, 02:28:18 PM
Think about any controversial issue -- slavery, suffrage, homosexual marriage -- and the amount of time each took to become an accepted norm. Society fears what it does not understand and uploaded consciousness would be far from the norm.

What about euthanasia?  Think back to the woman in the US that was on life support for X years, and her husband wanted to put her to sleep, but her parents resisted, or vice versa.  That story was news for weeks, and most of modern society still hasn't come to terms with human euthanasia, which is very similar to deleting uploaded consciousness. 

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Reply #49 on: March 03, 2011, 03:13:30 PM
What about euthanasia?  [clipped] and most of modern society still hasn't come to terms with human euthanasia, which is very similar to deleting uploaded consciousness. 
I tend to disagree, euthanasia is very different from deleting uploaded consciousness, and the argument can go both ways:

The question about euthanasia is a lot harder to deal with, because you see a living (for some definitions of alive) human being lying on the hospital bed in front of you. How can you kill this person? It is tantamount to murder. However, a consciousness in a computer? That person is dead! Their body has been buried/cremated/preserved! I'm just deleting a computer program. And anyway, there is no evidence that that is the person's consciousness. It could simply be a program designed to act like a person. Therefore deleting it is not murder, however euthanasia is.

OR

I support euthanasia, that person is brain dead. All that's left here is an empty husk of biological functions being kept from entropy by mechanical means. There is no reason to continue providing life support to this dead body. However, if the consciousness of this person were uploaded to a computer... then that person is still alive! For that is what we are, our minds! Deleting a consciousness from a computer is murder.

I'm not sure how I feel on either case, euthanasia or deleting minds from a computer, I just know that I can present arguments for both in either direction.

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