Thought I'd visit and heave a large *sigh* after my literary exertions.

Just recently, as you probably know, I've been contemplating Zelazny's Roadworks, but then moved onto <Good Intentions> by Paul Craig Roberts and <The Road to Hell> subtitled <The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity>. Maybe tomorrow I'll move onto Bill Shakespeare's tragicomedy <All's Well That Ends Well>.

<twinlark> I have a feeling I need to do some serious Zelazny rereading... too much had been forgotten. :\ I have 'Lord of Light', 'The Last Defender of Camelot' and 'Roadmarks' sitting on my bedside table now.

Continuing the Amber talk from your place, I also love the first two books of the series most. I actually started reading the series with 'Guns of Avalon', because I happened across it and didn't realize at first that it was the second book of a series. Next I found and read 'Sign of the Unicorn' (part 3), and only after that did I manage to find a copy of the actual beginning, 'Nine Princes in Amber'. Afterwards, I reread the whole set in order, and moved on to the rest of the series. I think that, even though not intended, Guns also makes an excellent entry point to the world of Amber, with its fantastically vivid descriptions. :)

(A very similar work, btw, would be Philip Jose Farmer's 'World of Tiers' series...)

<Visayanbraindoctor> - hope you'll manage to find your way over here ;) - I agree that the Amber series may not be as profound as some of Zelazny's other works, but it's probably the most memorable, mostly for three key ingredients: the brilliantly original idea, the extraordinarily vivid scenic descriptions, and Corwin's fascinating, highly complex and flamboyant character. When the series switches to young Merlin, it does lose some of its appeal; although the youngster is a no less likable protagonist than his father, he is a simpler, less developed, character, lacking Corwin's... glamour, one might say. :)

The whole demigod human upload/machine download theme that Zelazny loved exploring takes an twist with this vignette of science fiction authors PC's taking over their lives.

The machine develops a sentience node - highly unlikely premise given the state of PCs today let alone back then, but it is light hearted and it is science fiction...anyway, once it does so it hides this fact from the author who is too dim to notice his drafts being re-written and equipment being shipped in to increase the machine's reach.

When the show down finally comes the machine intelligence has a <physical> retreat thanks to all the additional equipment it secretly ordered in and had installed while the author was away.

Regardless of how the machine intelligence arises, it has the capacity to autonomously manipulate the environment, which has to be a measure of intelligence, and the capacity to increase it's reach.

Which means it has a body.

Now, it strikes me that speculation about disembodied intelligence is actually off the mark, as whatever medium the intelligence occupies, however diffuse or apparently discrete, is its body by definition, a bit like changing homes.

A homeless person isn't really homeless in the technical sense, as they exchange a house or an apartment for say a box or under the bridge. Much less desirable, but it's a definitional issue.

Home is the Hangman, sure, and Home may be where the heart is, but Home is also where the Mind lives.

Dreadsong doesn't say anything new, just says it better and quicker. How will we and alien intelligences understand each other when the time comes if our most fundamental points of reference are radically different. Which of the distinctions that construct language would be common to all languages, regardless of which planet it is they originate? I suspect the answer is pretty similar in sparseness compared to the linguistic question of which phoneme is common to every human language...only one, it seems: the undifferentiated schwa <ə>.

I agree completely - in the use of figure of speech and metaphor to highlight the description of his settings and the highly imaginative and suspenseful plot, the Amber series ranks among the very best in sci-fi. Corwin IMO is the longest running and most memorable character that has come out of the sci-fi world.

Are you familiar with Eric Frank Russell? I think you'd like him a lot. :)

I tend to agree with <twinlark> about intelligence not being actually disembodied, any way we look at it. Even the least corporeal of descriptions, 'an energy matrix', is still a form of "body". An intelligence has to have a sense of identity, even by definition, doesn't it?

I didn't know Judit was on Twitter?

<I tend to agree with <twinlark> about intelligence not being actually disembodied..>

<<I tend to agree with <twinlark> about intelligence not being actually disembodied..>>

Zelazny did not only explore this theme in 'For a breathe I Tarry'. It's also a major theme in 'Lord of Light'. When Sam's consciousness was circling around the planet's radiation belts, he experienced something akin to bliss, and he had difficulties adjusting to his new body when his allies forced him into it for the sake of their cause. In his state of disembodies bliss, Sam's cause became alien to him. He only re-committed himself when he got used to a new body again.

When the demon occupied Sam's body and began to engage in hedonistic pursuits, Sam also was carried along with it.

The glandular nature of the human condition no doubt affects human emotion, so the inference is that an uploaded intelligence would no longer be in touch with an important formative influence that kept it human, namely its emotional responses and compassion and empathy,

I wonder, though. If the brain's functions are quasi-digital as noted by <visayanbraindoctor> in my forum, then wouldn't that include not only the intellectual brain-based mentation but also the sensations accompanying the body and its emotions?

In which case they would all be uploaded in a package of information and for want of a better term, execute files, that could generate emotions. Ultimately, everything consists of information that's constantly interacting and rearranging itself so maybe it would be more of a technical issue that a game-breaker.

Neurons firing or not firing is digital. However, they are also arranged in parallel - the brain then is also a powerful analogue computer I think.

Emotions are supposed to be a function of the limbic system, basically groups of interacting neurons 'wired' to each other deep in the telencephalon, with lots of output 'wires' to the cortex, though with relatively fewer input wires from the cortex. This is supposed to explain why we have a difficult time controlling our emotions with thoughts supposed to be formed in the cerebral cortex (the 'cover' of the supratentorial brain made of billions of neuronal cell bodies).

Puppet or not puppet - that is the question. And it's a tough one. But I think we may need to backtrack on this; it can be uncertain even with actual humans. People can go through their entire lives simply "performing as taught", without ever, or hardly ever, stopping to reexamine, reevaluate, or rethink anything. Is living out a routine actually self-awareness, just because the subject is a biological human?

SF digression: speaking of puppets reminds me of Jack Vance's 'Emphyrio'. :)

Neurons firing or not firing is digital. However, they are also arranged in parallel - the brain then is also a powerful analogue computer I think.>

Sorry, I misinterpreted.

<...for reasons I wrote in your forum, I am not certain if such an artificial brain would be self-aware or can experience subjectivity. It could well be just a highly sophisticated puppet that is programmed to act as if it were self-aware, passing the Turing test, but is not.>

That's the problem isn't it - but then the main reason we know human beings are not programmed puppets is because of our own organic self awareness - and even then, most of our behaviour is subconscious at best, frequently ruled by the values, rules and mores handed to us by our parents, our culture, our religion, our society - somewhere in all this mess, we might get to make an original decision or two if we have the wit to create our own personal values that are an indigenous expression of <self>, whatever that is.

In a famous Star Trek Next Generation episode <The Measure of a Man>, the android officer Commander Data has to argue his case for self determination otherwise he'd be carted off by Starfleet for deconstruction and scientific study. It's one of the few Star Trek episodes worth watching, getting right down to existential bascis. Here's the captain (played by Patrick Stewart) eloquently arguing Data's case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PMl...

But the question of whether something is acting as if it is self aware or is actually so may be a moot question. What's the difference, if we can't tell the difference, much like the question about whether an exact copy can't be said to be the original (beam me up!)? The complexity of such an android brain would be as great as our own, and as likely to experience many of the same chaotic quantum effects. I think what would be lacking from an android brain, unless it was damaged or deteriorated, would be the characteristic irrational behaviour of organic humans rather than self awareness, although I can't see why an "emotion chip" couldn't be built in.

Interesting question, as it hits uncomfortably close to where we live. But seems to me that the alternative of not living out a considerable amount of routine is to be constantly doing something new and original, stretching and expanding one's capacity for mental and possibly physical activity.

Even risk taking, no matter how extreme, could become a habit which, although it may keep us somatically aware and feeling "alive" (eg: BASE jumping, fighting on the front line of a war) as only a brush with death can engineer, may still not trigger awareness to the extent for which we as organisms have potential. (I'm not about to test this proposition out by jumping off a cliff with a wing suit and a parachute.)

Maybe full awareness could only be said to occur when every moment is a moment of creativity informed by an ever-expanding knowledge of one's environment which in turn is fueled by an insatiable curiosity?