Judas,Originally posted by Judas:
As for my comments of the survival of the Virus in the "Vampire Fleets"... I read that they had robotic helpers, but this did not explain ships that were taken over by the virus that was transmitted by something that could not eventually help it. A ship that "Contracted" the Virus and all it had as "support" was the "machine" that infected it, which turns out to se something like an upload from a Medical computer... How is the ship going to survive?
Seeing as you haven't been able to read Vampire Fleets yet I'll clue you in. Viral ships extort sophont slaves from defenseless worlds. VF didn't introduce the idea, it's suggested in other TNE materials(1), but VF did explain the process explicitly. You'd like the world of Promise.
You've failed to realize that Virus was deliberately engineered to be a weapon and an insane weapon at that. Traveller has no more of a Frankenstein Complex than most sci-fi. Sir Aybee Wan Owen is part of Traveller too.... show that it is just another continuation of the Frankenstein complex that Traveller has been laboring under since its inception...
It was written in 1977, what do you want? The PC revolution happened later and 'current' advances in AI technology are, well, current aren't they?As I have pointed out in other posts, technology that becomes possible becomes imperitive, and considering that Traveller labored under the "Bigger is better" computer model for so long. Comsidering that Traveller completely ignored the current advances in AI technology, and the PC revolution in general...
If you make the changes you want, you fundamentally change Traveller. You also make the older versions obsolete. Seeing how many people still use CT, MT, and the rest, you'd be alienating your customer base - just like TNE did.
Heres' another bit in VF you haven't read yet; the insane AIs Lucan's research team produced did self-improve through both 'evolution' and recursive writing. It's called 'Sandman' and it is the RC's newest friend. It and it's off-spring aboard RC warships will help the RC defeat the Solee Empire.I find it to be unreasonable that an AI did not emerge and then begin to self-imporve through recursive re-writing of its code.
Guess what? Virus was specifically designed to be 'automatically hostile'. It was a weapon, remember? Given the handicaps Lucan's researchers saddled it with, it's amazing that Virus was able to evolve into stable, 'Sandman'-type forms at all.Just like any other intelligence, it is not likely that it will be automatically hostile unless it was created to be specifically thus...
Seeing as you haven't read VF yet, I'd withhold my opinion if I were you.As I have said, this has been one of the major failings of the Traveller Melieu; that it has ignored the FACT that once a question has been asked... It WILL be answered no matter what prohibitions you place upon the exploration for that answer...
I'd recommend that you read more balanced materials about the 'singularity'. Kurzwell and the others are the equivalent of singularity 'fanboys'. Even the creator of the concept of 'singularity', Vernor Vinge, doesn't agree with most of the 'thinking' that has grown up around his idea. He's even retreated from a few of his own earlier claims.I would recommend that people go and read the materials on the Singularity that are available from Raymond Kurzweil's web-site and the Singulairty Institute.
Oh, please. Traveller has a 2D universe, FTL travel, gravity control, psionics, stellar tables that don't match observed data, magic waste heat control, light-second range lasers, and dozens of other techno-goofs but the fact that it doesn't use post-1980 computer advances destroys it? Yeah, right.The really unfortunate thing about these materials is that they effectively destroy the Traveller melieu as it has existed.
Traveller doesn't use the latest theories, suppositions, and guesses(2) concerning AI? So what? If you want that, play Transhuman Space. It's very good.
And I'll pay attention when they finally produce an AI. I may not be from Missouri, but you'll still have to show me.(This is one of the major theories around AI research right now, that it may be impossible to create a fully formed AI that can recursively imporve itself unless it is embodied in a manner that allows it to interact with its environment at least as well as humaniti...
For at least the last 35 years of my life, I've been told that 'fusion is ten years off' and that 'AIs are ten years off'. The weeks slide by, months pass, calendars change, and fusion and AIs are still 'tens years off'. Sometimes, like during the computer boom of the mid-80s, AI was even 'five years off'. I've been waiting since the Nixon Administration and I'm still waiting. I suspect you'll still be waiting after I'm dead.
We still don't understand human sentience and consciousness. In the 80s, PET, CAT, and MRI machines invalidated entire schools of brain theory as new as the late 70s. What future technologies will invalidate the theories the AI-Singularity 'fanboys' are banking on today? How can we model or recreate sentience and consciousness in another system if we don't understand our only example? How easily will we be able to recognize sentience and consciousness when or if we succeed?
We've got a very long way to go. Guesses about whayt we'll find when we get there are just that; guesses.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - The RCES 'Virus Contact Rules' were one example. 'No repairs', remember?
2 - And they are theories, suppositions, and guesses because we don't have any AIs yet, do we?