Dream Guide

Dickinson and Mei Yiqiu talked about some interesting things about their youth in Princeton, and then hid in the room, not knowing what to say.

Huang Liang had no choice but to sit in the living room with Hou Biao and wait.

Most of the decoration and furniture in the house are outdated items from the last century, but the computer is new, and it looks different from ordinary computers at first glance, giving it a sci-fi feel.

Huang Liang doesn't think there's anything wrong with this. After all, it's normal for someone who can bring Mei Yiqiu to visit, even if he has some black technology, not to mention it's just a computer.

He glanced at Hou Biao sitting next to him and knew that this bald man was Mei Yiqiu's bodyguard. He never talked much, so he didn't plan to start a fight.

He stood up out of boredom, stretched his muscles, and saw a few magazines on the computer table, so he walked over, picked them up, and flipped through them.

There are three magazines in total, "Science", "Nature", and "Cell", all of which are authoritative magazines in the scientific community. There is also a thick "Science Citation Index" next to it.

Most of the articles in these magazines were difficult to understand, and to Huang Liang, they were like sacred texts, so he just looked at the titles and passed by.

However, one of the articles, "The Possibility of Spontaneous Consciousness Generated by Mechanical Things-like Neural Networks," caught his attention because the article's signature was Charlie Dickinson.

The article covers a wide range of knowledge, covering almost all fields of physics and life sciences. Fortunately, it only proposes a hypothesis without using any formula to prove it. The general idea is that when information flows in the Internet of Things, as the number of network nodes and information increases, the chaos of the information will increase, and a lot of information will be randomly annihilated, and corresponding new unknown information will be generated, which will cause information out of control, thus generating active consciousness outside the program.

Huang Liang knew nothing about the physics and informatics theories, but it did not prevent him from understanding what the article was saying. It can be said that Dickinson's writing was very strong, and he explained it in a simple and easy-to-understand manner.

Huang Liang is very interested in the origin of consciousness. If the fluctuation of information itself can give birth to consciousness, then are there still many independent primitive consciousnesses in the world that humans have not discovered and recognized? For example, a TV or a computer, with its use, has actually produced a very primitive consciousness, but it is too low-level, so we can't see it?

For some reason, he suddenly thought of his mobile phone and quickly took it out of his pocket and took a look. The folder named GHOST is just on the screen, lying quietly, as if it is just an ordinary APP abandoned by the user.

He thought about the time before the jailbreak, and thought that this thing might be connected to a computer somewhere in Wuzhong. Maybe there were many computers there, forming a local area network, leading to the wide area network, and even entering the closed interior of the prison. network.

In the past, he thought it was just an advanced virus program, similar to the legendary agents using encrypted communication technology, but now he thought it was far from that simple.

Huang Liang flipped through other articles. Except for a few articles about medical breakthroughs published in "Cell", most of the others had nothing to do with him and he couldn't understand them.

He finally opened the Science Citation Index, which is the world's most authoritative scientific citation database. It is called "Science Citation Index" in English, or SCI for short.

Huang Liang knew this when he was a student. Although he was not yet integrated with the world at that time, he already paid great attention to international influence academically. Generally, graduates of science doctoral programs are required to publish at least one SCI paper, and some schools now require more than two. Whether papers have been included in SCI is the most important or even the only evaluation criterion for unit ranking and project review in all scientific research fields.

But now that they are all cloud databases, only these old scientists will buy paper index documents and keep them at home. Apart from collecting them, what else can they be used for?

Huang Liang shook his head, closed the book and turned on his phone. He originally planned to use a search engine to find Dickinson's paper, but when he saw GHOST on the desktop of his mobile phone, he opened it and entered a line of text in it:

Help me find Charlie Dickinson's papers published in SCI.

He wasn't sure if he would get a response, he just wanted to try it out on a whim. In the past, he had always regarded GHOST as a special way to contact Aoki, but Aoki had not contacted him for a long time.

After finishing typing on the phone, he sat back on the sofa, took a sip of tea, and found that the tea had gone cold.

He saw Hou Biao still sitting there motionless, like a sculpture. He thought of the professor's beautiful assistant. If he were here at this time, the atmosphere would be much more harmonious. But for some reason, Mei Ziqing, who had always been inseparable from the professor, didn't come.

Just when Huang Liang felt bored, his phone vibrated.

There is one more message in GHOST. He opened it and saw a long list of paper titles as well as the publication time and publication name——

"The Fluctuation of Information Entropy and the Generation of Consciousness"

"The relationship between the dividing line of infant intelligence and the input of information"

"The Non-Equivalent Relationship between Intelligence and Logical Thinking"

"Misunderstandings about Artificial Intelligence and Computer Algorithms"

…

Dickinson's research field is very broad, but the direction is still very clear, mainly focusing on the intersection of informatics and life sciences. As can be seen from the titles of some articles, he has unique insights into the emergence of consciousness.

Huang Liang originally planned to ask GHOST to send over a few specific papers for a look, but it must not be a pleasant experience to read pictures of papers on such a small screen, or difficult articles that he does not understand very well.

The screen of this phone is not big and the style is old. Originally, he wanted to change it a long time ago, and the organization also bought him the latest mobile phone, but because of Aoki and GHOST, he still insisted on using this one.

He gave up the idea of ​​letting GHOST pass on the paper, but after finally getting a response from GHOST, he wanted to say something more, as if he had met an old friend.

He asked inside: Where did Aoki go?

About two seconds later, GHOST responded: South Pacific.

Huang Liang asked: Can I contact him?

GHOST answered: No, we have lost contact for a year.

Huang Liang was surprised. He had a premonition before that something had happened to Aoki, and he also found some special channels to find out. Of course, he couldn't ask Qingmu openly and openly, so he could only inquire sideways and heard some rumors. But the information obtained from GHOST is undoubtedly more accurate.

If Qingmu disappears, it means that Huang Liang can only fight alone and become even more lonely from now on.

Another thing he was very worried about was that last time, he tricked Aoki into the closed dream corridor. When Aoki came out, the complete life he had experienced disappeared like a dream. He was pulled Back to the moment before Aoki entered the dream corridor.

That real and fake life was always indelible in his memory, and it almost caused him to have a schizophrenia. He spent a lot of time letting his memory distinguish reality from that life.

Now that Aoki has disappeared again, will he come back one day and bring the world back to a certain time point in the past? The key is that Aoki's disappearance this time has nothing to do with Huang Liang, and his return has nothing to do with Huang Liang. So even if Huang Liang goes back in time, he will not be able to bring back the memories of this life. For him, when Aoki returned, the world collapsed and was destroyed. Just like that time, when he came back, the rest of the world was unaware of it.

Huang Liang prayed in his heart that something like that wouldn't happen again.

He asked GHOST again: So who are you?

GHOST said: I am GHOST.

Huang Liang asked: Are you a spontaneous consciousness on the Internet?

He waited for a long time, but GHOST did not reply again.