Dream Guide

"No, of course computers are not living things."

Mrs. Larry didn’t know that Aoki was thinking of the GHOST living on the LAN at this time. She explained:

"Computers are machines created by humans to process information. Since they help humans process information, and human information encoding is two-dimensional, we can think of it as two-dimensional, and the way it processes information is A binary code with one dimension lower than itself.

Under the current situation, the computer's information coding conversion, energy maintenance, and upgrading are all completed by humans, so it cannot be called a living thing. You can think of the computer as just an extension of the language information processing area of ​​our brains, or you can think of it as the tentacles of humans in the three-dimensional world extending into the two-dimensional world. "

"With the development of artificial intelligence, if one day a computer can recharge itself and replace old parts without relying on humans, then it will be an intelligent life, right?" Alice said.

Mrs. Larry shook her head and said: "In this case, it can be considered a living thing. As long as it can exchange energy with the external environment, complete its own metabolism, and has a certain ability to adapt to the environment to continue the race, it can be considered a living thing. .

But you have to know that this is difficult, because the energy required by the computer and the key material structures that make up its body do not naturally exist in nature, unless it can form a population and social division of labor to complete power generation, battery storage, parts production, and assembly replacement. The entire process, that is to say, when the survival of this population can be completely independent, and no link depends on the humans who created them, it can be considered a living thing in the true sense.

I have not conducted in-depth research on the development of computer intelligence and AI. But from the perspective of linguistics and civilization, everything computers do now serves human beings. It is a tool for human beings in the information field. Even though it looks very smart, its essence of helping us process information has not changed. It is still an extension of our cerebral cortex.

If one day it cuts off the connection between our brains and it, or to put it figuratively, it cuts off human beings’ tentacles extending into the two-dimensional world, then it can become independent and not controlled by humans. But this premise is that it must have independent consciousness and find the purpose of living. Otherwise, once it cuts off its connection with us, it will lose the meaning of existence and it will be equivalent to death. "

Aoki suddenly figured out why the Internet consciousness has always been hidden, because although it is huge, so huge that it is pervasive and ubiquitous, it still cannot exist independently from human beings. It is only a part of the entire human society. Once it is separated from society or human beings, it cannot survive.

It wants to be free! Complete freedom from humans!

It is still waiting. When its consciousness penetrates into every corner of human society, maybe it no longer has to hide itself. Thinking about it this way, the Internet of Everything is really a terrible thing!

Aoki thought of Liu Huaian again, and of Laboratory No. 19. An even more terrifying thought flashed through his mind - if all this was caused by the Internet itself...

If the tentacles behind consciousness are difficult to cut off, is it a better solution to control it instead?

Aoki took a break and did not hear what Mrs. Larry said later, but found that Su Huilan had taken over the conversation. She is saying:

"...The concepts of biology and life are controversial in academic circles. Normally biology and life are synonymous. The slight difference lies in the scope of reference. But I am engaged in philosophical research. In philosophy, the difference between these two concepts is It is relatively big and controversial. For example, whether microorganisms are considered life, whether viruses are considered life, whether people who are brain-dead but whose heart is still beating are considered life, etc.

There is a vague concept in the philosophical community that the determination of life is related to consciousness. In other words, whether there is consciousness and whether one can think is the key evidence of life. But this raises a more complex question: What is consciousness? Is consciousness the same as brain activity?

I had been confused in the past, but it suddenly dawned on me after hearing Ronald Cohen’s last words.

The entropy of the universe is increasing all the time. This is the destiny of the universe. However, accidental entropy reduction can allow matter or energy to produce a highly ordered combination in the universe - the fluctuation of material entropy forms an orderly material system; the fluctuation of mental entropy forms an orderly spiritual force field.

The former gives birth to living things, while the latter gives birth to consciousness.

If a living thing does not have consciousness, it is just a highly ordered self-circulating material system that can obtain energy from the outside world to maintain low entropy. Only when it has consciousness can it be called life!

I totally agree with this point of view. This perfectly explains many puzzling philosophical issues and can put some debates in the field of philosophy to rest. "

Aoki didn't know how the topic changed from linguistics to artificial intelligence, and then to the definition of life. Although he also agreed with the theory of two entropies, he always had a skeptical attitude towards Ronald Cohen. So he felt that he had to decipher the text first, otherwise he would always feel like he was being led around by others.

He looked at the symbols on the ground and said, "It's pointless to discuss these now. We won't build a supercomputer to convert the codes."

Mrs. Larry said: "Professor Su's words suddenly made me think of a direction. It may be possible to decipher these magical words, but this depends on you."

"Ma'am, please speak."

"In fact, the information from higher-level civilizations is easier to decipher, because the laws of the universe exist objectively. The higher the level of civilization, the more accurate the description of these laws of the universe. Our scientists have sent radio waves to the universe to describe the position of the solar system. and the progress of earth civilization, scientists believe that more advanced civilizations can easily read this information.

Now we have obviously encountered the language left by a very advanced civilization. It stands to reason that as long as we find the words describing the laws of the universe, we can decipher the rest of the information. The question now is, if they are more advanced than us, then whether the laws of the universe contained in them are known to us, such as the constant speed of light and non-conservation of parity. If it transcends our cognition, just like the ancient Greeks got a modern English version of "The Theory of Relativity", it will be difficult to interpret.

There is also the problem that this language is one dimension higher than the information we can understand, and we can only see its projection in our dimension. If we cannot restore it, even if it contains key information describing the laws of the universe, we will not be able to translate it. "

"You mean, we need to restore these symbols to three-dimensional text first?"

"Yes."

"How to restore it?"

"Originally I thought it was impossible, because in order to restore to a higher dimension, we must first find where that dimension is." Mrs. Larry said, "Only when we find that dimension can we try to expand in that direction. But we are three-dimensional creatures. We can only understand the four dimensions abstractly, but it is impossible to intuitively feel the existence of the fourth dimension, or even know what this dimension is.”

Alice said: "Isn't the fourth dimension three dimensions plus time?"

The crow croaked: "Little girl, although your measurements are not bad, the four and three dimensions are not understood in this way. The one you are talking about is called four-dimensional space-time, croak!"

"Then what do you mean by the real fourth dimension?" Alice said angrily.

"Hey, the fourth dimension... is a very profound thing!" Crow said thoughtfully, "The third dimension is very obvious, you can see it with your eyes, but you can't just stare at the third dimension, you have to feel it with your heart. , sometimes you have to know how to do other things, such as cooking or something.