Rob—that’s because The Wire is more like real life than real life.
I can see the link to the Chronophone here Eliezer. What would Benny F have found most shocking about today? How can we extrapolate that forwards?
Surely the most scary changes will be in ethics and the way we think of the human condition and personal identity.
I’m currently most of the way through The Mind’s I, and if Hofstadter’s (very plausible) musings on identity are anything like accurate, we’re going to have to start thinking very differently about who we are, and even whether that question has any real application. My shocking prediction for 100, 500, 1000 years’ time? There won’t be any individuals, any notion of ‘I’.
The repercussions don’t really need spelling out or analysing here, and I’m not going to try and predict how things will work. That’s all I’ve got. Human history is a list of examples of our intuitions being exploded by our observations. Individual personal identity over time is an intuitive illusion, and one that’ll become increasingly transparent, and less useful, as time goes by. This scares the living hell out of me—I can’t think of any way I could possibly feel more out of place.
And I’m certainly not going to write any fiction set in that world.
Rob—that’s because The Wire is more like real life than real life.
I can see the link to the Chronophone here Eliezer. What would Benny F have found most shocking about today? How can we extrapolate that forwards?
Surely the most scary changes will be in ethics and the way we think of the human condition and personal identity.
I’m currently most of the way through The Mind’s I, and if Hofstadter’s (very plausible) musings on identity are anything like accurate, we’re going to have to start thinking very differently about who we are, and even whether that question has any real application. My shocking prediction for 100, 500, 1000 years’ time? There won’t be any individuals, any notion of ‘I’.
The repercussions don’t really need spelling out or analysing here, and I’m not going to try and predict how things will work. That’s all I’ve got. Human history is a list of examples of our intuitions being exploded by our observations. Individual personal identity over time is an intuitive illusion, and one that’ll become increasingly transparent, and less useful, as time goes by. This scares the living hell out of me—I can’t think of any way I could possibly feel more out of place.
And I’m certainly not going to write any fiction set in that world.
I’m not sure it’s possible, if fiction has to have characters.
I’d be willing to give it a try, once I’ve gotten another year of writing practice in.
Now, writing something like that in first-person present...