Did anyone else just watch the last three days of Jeopardy? My big brother assures me it's not the singularity, but it's still pretty cool to see a computer giving questions to answers. WATSON had a definite buzzing advantage, but I thought Brad and Ken hung in there pretty well. It's kinda painful, because you can see those guys both know all the answers, except that they can't buzz in fast enough. But what I really wanted to talk about was this certain, I-don't-know-what in human nature that makes us do stuff like this. I wonder if those dudes at IBM have seen the Matrix. I mean, I'm sure the singularity is way off. I'm also pretty sure we'll get there, and maybe it already happened like was suggested in QC. I can't help but think of the tower of babble. It always seemed to me God was a little unfair here, putting the slant on cooperation, ambition and achievement in one fell swoop. But I think the story is more about the danger of this drive that is in people. Scientists are gonna keep trying to find out more junk. Business dudes are gonna keep trying to make more money. Some guy in Utah is gonna keep trying to build a rocket car that will beat the land-speed record. Even though all this stuff can ruin them, or even the human world. Well, maybe not that guy in Utah, keep at it. Kudos. But I think this is also what makes humans so ruthlessly successful. To be able to ignore the things that can't be reconciled in the mind and go and live your life
anyways. Ah, that reminds me of 'The Year of the Dog', a movie about a woman who becomes obsessed with saving animals and basically goes crazy and ruins her life trying because she is unable to just shrug and say, "That's too bad." Man that movie was sad (and it had Molly Shannon!). Or how the planet is getting warmer and in a few years there will be mass flooding and population migrations and no one will be able to breathe our atmosphere. But no one does anything and I still drive my car to work. Oh well, "that's too bad." I figure, I better get my hot showers in now. I guess I'm hoping the computers take over before it gets to that. Keep it up IBM.
No comments:
Post a Comment