Deeper Understanding tech notes

[Jorn Barger <barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu>]

woj says: <8911051638.AA16680@clutx.clarkson.edu>
>...Kate states that computers could provide
>another source of information about ourselves, "because they could come    
>in from outside all this." She goes on to talk about the mechanical nature
>of Nature and how a computer might be able to help us to go "through all
>that science..to something very spiritual but very earthy."

>I'm not really sure where she is going with this, and in fact, Kate states
>that she's not really sure what she's saying, but I imagine it *might*
>lead somewhere (maybe we should refer *Kate* to alt.cyberpunk!). Anybody
>care to take this farther?

when i first read the lyrics of d.u. as posted here a month ago, i went
running to my local hounds-pals waving them and saying "see? see? _she_
understands me!!!" because i'm fanatic in my belief that computers can
teach us to understand ourselves... but they laughed and said, "no, she's
making fun of tech-nerds" and i could only lamely claim "well, i bet at
least it's ambiguous"...

so my weekend was made-in-spades when i saw the mm-interview quotes-- kt
is god and kt is the prophet too!

as i read it, and maybe i'm projecting but you'll have to prove it to me,
the spiritual lesson of computers can arise from their ability to
_simulate_ human behavior-- like in turkle's "second self", we are learning
to see ourselves in new ways because the computer provides a perfectly
objective mirror-- we use computer terms like "pop my stack" or "hard-
wired" to describe our own behavior (i wish i had my list with me of more-
impressive examples of this).
too, think of wizardry and its little simulated characters, or ultima,
or balance of power, or chris crawford's new "trust and betrayal"...
as our ability to create game-characters that act human improves, we will
be forced to consider who we are and why we feel and act as we do...

kate says "I think... a lot of the things that we do are very mechanical..."
this teaching goes back to gurdjieff (anyone know how serious her involvement
was there? i just saw the gurdjieff bio-pic "mtgs w/remarkable men" and
thought the dancing at the end was strangely familiar)... if we want to
escape from our mechanical habit patterns we have to learn to observe them,
and computers offer new metaphors and are totally free of selfish dis-
tortions... (kate: "I do feel that, in some ways, computers could take us
into a level of looking at ourselves that we've never seen before, because
they could come in from outside all this...")

i am lucky enough to be working at an artificial intelligence research
center-- the Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern Univ.--
where the very best thinkers on these subjects are concentrated.  The
ILS is headed by Roger Schank whose breakthrough book is called
"Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding"-- he tries to establish a basic
vocabulary of human acts and use it to teach a computer to be able to
read ordinary english and answer questions about what it's read.

we also have Andrew Ortony who has just published the first "computationally
tractable" theory of emotions: "The Cognitive Structure of Emotions".

That KT is intuitively aware of this totally blows my mind and confirms
what we all believe (k.b.i.g.)-- it's a point of view that is so new that
almost nothing has been written on it (i.e. spiritual implications of a.i.)

so do i go too far?  ...tell me!

jorn barger (barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu)
we'd like to bring you love, and deeper understanding... someday!