Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

Prime Minister behind me, though he was never

wholly happy about it, and the Project went ahead. He felt we were

going off less than fully cocked and I’ll admit some areas of doubt. For

one thing, the operational teams had precise techniques but no precise

aim. A precise aim was not really possible. Think of it this way: They

knew what combinations controlled intelligence and where m anipulation should be applied to produce a super-intelligent mind — but how super and in what direction? They had no agreed definition of

intelligence; they still haven’t.

The psychologists said there might turn out to be several kinds

of intelligence, not all necessarily welcome, or that a divergent

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intelligence might go unrecognised for lack of anything to compare

it with. They were more or less right.

More or less! This one is still in the caves!

I recall a cartoon suggesting that a really intelligent product might

find nothing better to do than laugh his head off at his creators, and

a stupid biologist replying that undesirable laboratory animals could

be relegated. His team mates tried to pretend he had been joking, but

it was bad PR. Then some fool of a journalist trying for sensation —

one of your kind, boy — asked what if the super-brain turned out

telepathic, and the same noisy biologist saved the day by saying,

‘T h at’s my point about relegation. Would you want him prying?’

That put relegation in a new light. You can count on public opinion

for two things, somersaults and self-regard. In any case, by then

Project I Q was off and running.

Then the PM started digging into the forecasts and what he saw

made him unhappy. He was a Basic Christian, Australian Orthodox,

and at the back of his mind was the still small voice niggling about

usurping the prerogative of God. But he was committed. Still he kept

asking questions and seeming surprised at the answers. After all, he

was an economist, not a scientist.

He was worried sick when I told him there couldn’t be a definitive

report for three years, which meant there would be an election in the

meantime — and there was more than a hundred million of public

money sunk in the Project. As it happened, we survived that one. I

explained to him that observations before the age of two would be little

more than indicative and that the psychologists were preparing IQ

tests based on new approaches to the problem of measurement.

I told him, ‘They can’t measure what only another superintelligence could devise tests for. They propose to measure specific abilities, physical as well as mental, plot them against statistical norms

and form a montage picture of the child’s ability to use his capacities.

T hat way they can devise a descriptive term, a sort of plus-value, to

describe qualities that can’t be measured against known standards. If

it comes off we’ll have the immense prestige of a world first.’

‘And if it doesn’t,’ he complained, ‘we’ll have a bad row on our hands.

The public in moral outrage!’ Then he said, ‘Reassure me.’

That was his token of nerves, the sign that he was afraid enthusiasm

had persuaded him into an activity he didn’t understand as well as he

should.

On the nursery floor

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I asked, ‘How can I? The teams can’t guarantee success in something done for the first time. They know what and how but they can’t predict side effects or Acts of God. Succeed or fail, there will be a huge

advance in useful knowledge.’

I could see his thought. Sops for eggheads, he was saying to himself,

a success with blood on its hands and mud in its eye. But all he said was, ‘Side

effects?’

I said, ‘The surgeons know their work — which is done with chemicals and lasers, not micro-scalpels — but some of them suspect that the mere fact of interference, the redirection of a functioning mechanism, may itself cause unpredictable results,’

He saw possible disaster, but he asked, ‘Do you understand that?’

I told him, ‘Not really. It’s something like the idea that the fact of

observation affects the outcome of an experiment. There’s always the

unexpected.’

He said harshly, ‘A dollar each way on that.’ It’s surprising how

many religious men are also betting men, and you never know which

side you’ll encounter. It was the betting man who said, ‘The u n expected could be a benefit.’

I had to tell him that in biology the odds are stacked hundreds to

one against successful accidents, and right away he showed that he was

preparing to shed the blame if things went badly wrong; he asked, ‘Are

you confident?’

‘I am!’ Steady as a rock! I had to be; I had cased the odds in mathematical, biological and political terms and staked my career. But I can tell you now what I couldn’t tell anyone then: I sweated in my sleep.

Fancy a slob like this being struck with the sort of dream you associate with

a da Vinci, and risking his career on bringing it to life. Do we underestimate the

slob dreamers? The great traitors to country and humanity have all been self-

justifying intellectuals.

We weathered the election and settled in for a second term. In

twenty-oh-six, at the end of three years, came the first major report,

three huge volumes of gene-topology charts, tables, graphs, microphotographs and the language of creation, mostly impenetrable. But there was