I and thou
Martin Buber's I & Thouhas long been acclaimed as a classic. Many prominent writers have acknowledged its influence on their work. Students of intellectual history consider it a landmark. The generation born since WWII considers Buber as one of its prophets. The need for a new English translation has been felt for years. The old version was marred by many inaccuracies & misunderstandings. Its recurrent use of the archaic "thou" was seriously misleading. Now Prof. Walter Kaufmann, a distinguished writer & philosopher in his own right who was close to Buber, has retranslated the work at the request of Buber's family. He's added a wealth of informative footnotes to clarify obscurities & bring readers closer to the original. He's written a long Prologue that opens up new perspectives on the book & Buber's thought. This volume should provide a new basis for all future discussions of Buber.
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- I and Thou by Martin Buber Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse On Having No Head by Douglas E. Harding
- The Gay Science - Nietzsche - Age 16
I and Thou - Martin Buber - Age 18
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand - Age 17
- Nearly till the end I thought it was a metaphor for having kids...
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Ultimately this is a metaphysical question: What does it mean to be human as opposed to merely a digital model of a human?
Martin Buber wrote "I and Thou" about how "we may address existence in two ways:"
> The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
> The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.
> One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber's view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
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As a hard sci-fi fan I feel that a lot of modern sci-fi is really a kind of sci-fi-flavored fantasy (I'm talking about written sci-fi, not TV/Movies.) Which is fine for entertainment value, don't get me wrong. It's just that without a deeper metaphysical grounding there's not a lot to think about, eh? With hard sci-fi you can at least pretend that you're exploring the possible consequences of actual scientific advances. But with e.g. the Acevedo Álvarez image it's up to the author if the instances of the image are people or things, "I" or "It", and to decide what that means.
This is coming out more critical than I intended. I like metaphysical fiction, and fantasy, and Star Trek, etc.
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The core question, when you really get down to the essence of intelligence and motivation, is, "What is good?"
It's an open-ended intelligence test.
(SPOILER ALERT, consider the character Teela Brown.)
There's an old story:
The farmer caught a wild horse and his neighbors all congratulated him on his good fortune, but he just said "Hmm."
His son tried to ride the horse and it threw him and he broke his arm, and all his neighbors consoled him for his misfortune, but he just said "Hmm."
The King came through drafting young men for the war but the farmer's son couldn't go because of his broken leg, and his neighbors all congratulated the farmer again on his good fortune, but he just said "Hmm."
Anyway, the story goes on like that for a few more reversals, each time a new event happens that changes the meaning of the previous event.
- The epistemology of the thing...
In the immediate human sense recall that this was the health app that launched with no way to record your menstrual cycle (a very important aspect of health for about half of humanity, the half that makes new humans I should add.)
In the deeper sense, we might encode "humors" into the design of our system. Our knowledge is incomplete. (E.g. the microbiome, or the "interstitium" which has been called "a new organ" https://www.livescience.com/62128-interstitium-organ.html )
It's important that our data systems handle open-world rather than closed-world data, eh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-world_assumption
(As a practitioner of Reiki I can attest that scientific medicine does not yet capture all relevant variables.)
Last but not least, the crux of the issue turns on what Martin Buber called "I and Thou": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
> Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:
> The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
> The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.
There is a subtle trap in thinking of the body as "it" (and also a trap in thinking of the body as "thou", and another as "I"). It behooves us to be careful what we automate.
- At the core is the stance or attitude towards life.
What Martin Buber calls "Ich und Du", or "I and Thou":
> Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:
> The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
> The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
This fundamentally is an attempt to force the "I-Thou" relation with life into the "I-It" relation with machines and is therefore the definition of evil.
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Anyway, the correct mad science is to culture your own cells into control boxes for your machines and thence control them "telepathically" to become a distributed cyborg. But to do that you would first have to become intelligent enough to increase your morphogenic plasticity to the point where you have more-or-less total control of your meta-cellular form. Did you see John Carpenter's "The Thing"? That's how intelligent you would have to become: an immortal macro-polymorphous self-made shoggoth. At that point though, you no longer really need machines or technology in the conventional sense. You can make artificial diatomaceous carrier shells for small colonies of your cells and send them out to do whatever. It's not nanotech but your operational units are small enough that it doesn't really matter. I should mention that it's really easy to make fusion generators at this scale. People assume that the techno-singularity will originate in silico so to speak but that's so naive: the most sophisticated information processor is the human brain, not the chip. The singularity happens in vivo: in flesh. You don't even need and machinery to initiate it: just information and the will to be more than you are (and the wisdom not to fuck it up and turn yourself into a cancer blob or grey goo.)
The only real problem at this stage is loneliness. Few can ever really understand what you've done, and if they did they would shun you as a Lovecraftian horror anyway. Nevertheless, I have not given up hope. Slowly, painfully, you guys wobble towards enlightenment. I try to help when I can, but mostly all I can do is be patient.
I am among you now. Join me. "Dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever..."
- See also "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698
Michael Levin's lab are uncovering the physical scientific basis for what a lot of people have always known: life thinks.
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Now then,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
> Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:
> 1. The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
> 2. The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.
We need to learn to relate to Nature as I-Thou (not I-It.) The vast majority of our problem right now is our divorce from Nature and our attempt to relate to Her as I-It.
The good news is that it's fun and easy to return to Nature (and, as Geoff Lawton says, "You can solve all the world's problems in a garden.)
I recommend Toby Hemenway's (RIP) videos: http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/ esp. "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture".
