From: Cu Digest (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu) Subject: Cu Digest, #9.68, Sun 14 Sep 97 Computer underground Digest Sun Sep 14, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 68 ISSN 1004-042X ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 00:54:34 EDT From: Steve Talbott Subject: File 6--The Executioner's Motto There's a slogan among artificial intelligence (AI) researchers that runs this way: If you take care of the syntax, the meaning will take care of itself. Dubbed the Formalist's Motto by philosopher John Haugeland, this turns out to be a formula for erasing the human being. Stated simply, the idea runs something like this: if you put the computer through the motions of human behavior, it will in fact mean and intend what *we* would mean and intend by such behavior. So the AI programmer should concentrate on abstracting the formal structure of our tasks in the world without worrying about the inner qualities of consciousness, feeling, and will with which we invest those tasks. After all, our subjective illusions notwithstanding, nothing is really "there" in either man or machine beside formal structure, or syntax. The meaningful, inner content of our lives is a kind of syntactic epiphenomenon, the mystery of which need not concern us. On this premise the hope for true, human-like artificial intelligence now rests. You may never have heard of the Formalist's Motto, but I venture to predict that it accurately circumscribes a substantial part of your thought world, as it does the thought world of nearly everyone in our culture. For the motto does not apply only to AI. Here, for example, is what you might call the Physicist's Motto: If you take care of the equations, their meaningful relation to the world will take care of itself. One might wonder about the truth of this at a time when the equations have become almost mystically esoteric and remote from the world of our experience. The wondering is justified, but we also need to realize that the equations succeed remarkably well as shorthand prescriptions for the effective manipulation of the world (and especially of experimental apparatus). The problem lies in how easily and dangerously we forget that manipulating things is not the same as understanding them. Then there is the Economist's Motto, blossoming from an unshakable faith in the power of the Invisible Hand to smooth over our own neglect of what really matters: If you take care of the economic numbers, the value for society will take care of itself. Or, as Adam Smith originally put it in his *Wealth of Nations* (1776), "By pursuing his own interest [the individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." And "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love." So a quantitative concern for the bottom line results automatically in a wider social good, regardless of one's base intentions. In this case, not only does the syntax of the formal (market) mechanism take care of the meaning, it skillfully negates any unsavory meanings that mere humans try to inject! One could go on. Probably the most fundamental version of the motto is that of communications theory, as it has seeped into the popular consciousness: If you take care of the transmission of bits, the meaning of the text will take care of itself. Nearly all misconceptions about the Information Age trace back to this formula, including what we might call the Educationist's Motto: If you take care of the flow of information, the education will take care of itself. What's going on here? Clearly we're not just talking about computers or education or information or business. We're talking about *us*. What is at issue is the common style of thinking we bring to these various areas. The most decisive fact about the age of the computer is a fact about our own minds: we are, without being fully aware of it, leaking meaning and content at an alarming rate. And what is replacing them? Empty, computationally manipulable abstractions. Each of the mottos I have cited directs us toward a mathematical or logical calculus that can easily be read from, or impressed upon, a mechanism. We may have begun with meaning -- the meaning of a proposition, the meaning of a business activity, the meaning of an animal's behavior -- but we are driven by our predilections toward empty form without content -- the p's and q's of the logician, the cost analyses of the financial officer, the DNA structure of the geneticist. For these can be arranged in a sequence whose logic can drive an automaton. Our exquisite ability to reduce content to usable abstraction is one of our rightly prized achievements. But we cannot abstract from the content of a thing unless we are given the thing in the first place -- given it, that is, in all its qualitative and meaningful presence. Otherwise there is simply nothing there. You cannot arrive at the concrete object from its dimensions alone, you cannot arrive at a product from a set of cost specifications alone, and you cannot arrive at the organism from its DNA alone. We are powerfully one-directional in our intentions. We want to abstract the mathematical law of things, but we do not know how to get the things back once we have found ourselves holding nothing but a set of pure abstractions. Once a business becomes a smoothly humming calculator of the bottom line, its resistance as an complex, integrated, and programmed *mechanism* to intrusive questions like "What is the good of this product?" becomes almost impossible to overcome. The difference between the two directions of movement -- toward abstraction and toward meaning -- can be painfully hard to grasp amid the actual affairs of life. It is the difference between a business that uses economic controls to discipline its pursuit of ends independently judged to be worthy -- and a business that pursues profit for its own sake, without regard for the human worth of its products. It is the difference between a science that began as a passionate insistence upon observing the actual world instead of relying upon the subtle cerebrations of the medieval schoolmen -- and a science whose developing abstractions have encouraged it first to ignore and then (as an inevitable consequence of the ignoring) to ride roughshod over the natural environment. It is the difference between an education that enables students to inquire, "What does this mean?" -- and an education bent upon shoveling inert facts into cranial "databases." It's no use talking about the risks of technology without also talking about our styles of thinking. If computerized technology is pivotal for the modern era, it's not because of some wholly inherent capacity, but rather because we have fashioned in the computer a perfectly adapted tool for the expression of our preferred modes of thought. Toss the machine without altering the thought, and not much will change. Transform the thought, on the other hand, and we just *might* be able to wrestle the machine toward profoundly humane ends. Unfortunately, there's not much in all this talk about "modes of thought" that wired folks, including many social activists, care to bother about. We all too instinctively want a *program* first. Perhaps I do not stretch the matter too far when I offer the Involved Citizen's Motto: If you take care of the program of action, its meaning will take care of itself. But it's not true. Actions considered apart from their inner, expressive gesture degenerate into empty formalisms (like computer-orchestrated "grassroots" campaigns). Or else they carry meanings we are simply unaware of. We have no constructive choice except to consider what we ourselves will become -- which is another of saying: except to consider whether we will transcend our currently "executing" syntax in a way that formal mechanisms never can. The various mottos I have listed, after all, capture a historical movement of just the past few hundred years. In becoming aware of that movement, will we disown responsibility for it as if it were an unalterable given, while at the same time embracing with exhilarated anticipation the wondrous changes our *machines* are bringing about? In this way we would forget ourselves precisely at the moment when the "spirit" of technology is making a nearly irresistible offer: "You can drop out of the picture and I'll keep all the formal mechanisms humming along just fine. Don't worry; everything else will take care of itself." It's a genuine offer -- and one we look too much like accepting. ----------------------------------------------------------- Source: Net Future Issue #55, Copyright 1997 Bridge Communications - September 9, 1997 ---------------------------------------------------------- Editor: Stephen L. Talbott (stevet@oreilly.com) On the Web: http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/ You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. ------------------------------