{"id":603,"date":"2025-03-08T00:16:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T00:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/?p=603"},"modified":"2025-03-08T00:16:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T00:16:50","slug":"whats-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/uncategorized\/whats-the-point\/","title":{"rendered":"What&rsquo;s the point?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/ted-chiang-on-superintelligence-and-its-discontents-in-j-d-beresfords-innovative-work-of-early-20th-century-science-fiction\/\">https:\/\/lithub.com\/ted-chiang-on-superintelligence-and-its-discontents-in-j-d-beresfords-innovative-work-of-early-20th-century-science-fiction\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chiang discussing an early science fiction story about a super-intliigent childr \u2013 \u2018 The Hampdenshire Wonder\u2019 (1911)\u2019, \u201cgenerally considered to be the first fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, or \u2018superintelligence\u2019 \u2013 an idea that at the turn of the 19-20 century was an almost inevitable turn of thought as evolutionary thought became embedded, If human evolution kept going, what came next?<\/p>\n<p>From the novel a striking quote:<\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Arial Narrow\">\u201cDon\u2019t you see that ignorance is the means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the solving of the problem that brings enjoyment\u2014the solved problem has no further interest. So when all is known, the stimulus for action ceases; when all is known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect knowledge implies the peace of death.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n<p>And in summary Chiang says: \u201cNowadays we associate the word \u201cprodigy\u201d with precocious children, but in centuries past the word was used to describe anything monstrous. Victor Stott clearly qualifies as a prodigy in the modern sense, but he qualifies in the older sense too: Not only does he frighten the ignorant and superstitious, he induces a profound terror in the educated and intellectual. Seen in this light, the first novel about superintelligence is actually a work of horror SF, a cautionary tale about the dangers of knowing too much.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/lithub.com\/ted-chiang-on-superintelligence-and-its-discontents-in-j-d-beresfords-innovative-work-of-early-20th-century-science-fiction\/ Chiang discussing an early science fiction story about a super-intliigent childr \u2013 \u2018 The Hampdenshire Wonder\u2019 (1911)\u2019, \u201cgenerally considered to be the first fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, or \u2018superintelligence\u2019 \u2013 an idea that at the turn of the 19-20 century was an almost inevitable turn of thought as evolutionary thought became embedded, If &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/uncategorized\/whats-the-point\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What&rsquo;s the point?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}