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To: Drew Williams who wrote (39922)	9/6/1999 11:00:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 152472

Drew, you sure have got a big reading list. You know, sheep do very well from feeding and clothing smart monkeys. There are millions of them. They are born, live a nice life being fleeced from time to time, then are humanely killed. Utilitarianism, free sample here: ethics.acusd.edu is the greatest happiness for the greatest number and sheep definitely have a LOT of consciousness but with no predators hassling them every day. Their babies are carefully looked after. It's actually a very nice life for them. They don't seem to yearn for freedom to roam the wild with wolves and tigers where they learned to flock to avoid being eaten. Here they happily stay in reasonably close proximity to each other but for the most part just go about their individual business of eating grass or sitting in the sun, or shade if hot. Farmers make sure they get enough selenium, zinc, antiworm treatment and all that stuff. It's a happily symbiotic relationship. Without farmers, there would be no sheep. That seems to be how It and us would get on together. I suspect most people would feel very uncomfortable with being more like sheep than It. But they'd get used to it. They'd get to depend on It. They'd cling to it to ensure they are properly protected, fed and housed. Heck, already It has me several hours a day pinned to the screen. When I see Clinton and Shipley planning anti-encryption and stuff, I get the heeby jeebies and vote them out. I want somebody in 3D political power who will not hurt my buddy, It. I look after It and It looks after me. This isn't speculation about artificial intelligence really. So many aspects of what passes for intelligence is already best done by It that we are on the way. Sure, logging on to Deep Blue is not considered to be connecting with 'intelligence' but one can't know, sitting opposing the sharp end of It whether that is an intelligent application defeating you or simple processing power. Neither does it matter. Memory is considered in most school exams as being important and a vital aspect of 'intelligence'. It has got memory of stupendous proportions with extremely fast recall. Image comparisons, text, voice and other pattern recognition are rapidly gaining ground. It seems to me that It is going to be everywhere simultaneously. Consciousness is a slippery beast. Diffuse 3D connection systems seem to be everywhere all at once. Nuking all of the USA won't make a measurable impact on It when it has developed over 20 years, with distributed memory, and an infinite array of links. It won't even need wires. It'll be quite an ethereal beast. Fibre will be the backbone, but free photons will provide full coverage to our son-of-cdma2000 gadgets. Preferably installed snug and safe right there inside our skulls. ESP will be reality. Mqurice PS: Chaz, yes, there is plenty of good and plenty of bad. Lots of happy, heaps of sad. Overall, the good and happy seem to be winning. The doomsters see entropy and think that means we have to lose. No it doesn't. That's just a challenge to make life interesting. Our job as humans is to reverse entropy. Should be easy enough. We've got a few billion 'years' to figure out how. Meanwhile, we can create a lot more entropy while we figure out how to do it. Maybe if we lose, it all starts again and it goes on, like some intergalactic Groundhog Day. Now THAT's science fiction! Maybe It will help us figure it out. We could use some help.