From: Cliff Stabbert (cps46@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Aug 26 2002 - 14:35:15 MDT
Monday, August 26, 2002, 3:40:04 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote:
<snip>
BG> What seems to have happened in Dick's mind is that the
BG> complex-hypothetical-concept-generator ran amok, generating a huge variety
BG> of funky stuff that would never stand up to empirical testing (and that
BG> didn't really make him very happy either).
<snip>
BG> It's been tried.... Rimbaud is one poet who tried to drive himself nuts --
BG> partly by taking drugs, but also by other means -- in an attempt to put
BG> himself in a state of artistic information. He sought "the systematic
BG> disorganization of all the senses." I guess he succeeded, though he fucked
BG> himself up personally in the process...
See also Dali on Critical Paranoia:
http://www.madsci.org/~lynn/juju/surr/paranoia/CP.html
Tangentially related: hallucinogens are "psychomemetic" drugs, that
is, they are considered to cause symptoms similar to psychosis.
Whether hallucinogens actually makes their users more creative, or only
gives them the illusion of being so, is open to debate; I tend to come
down on the latter side with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (who often had
to deal with questions about 2001's imagery being LSD-inspired):
"I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than
to the artist. I think that the illusion of oneness with the
universe and absorption with the significance of every object in
your environment, and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is
not the ideal state for an artist. It tranquilizes the creative
personality, which thrives on conflict and the clash and ferment of
ideas. The artist's transcendence must be within his own work; he
should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the
mainspring of his subconscious. One of the things that's turned me
against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar
inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting
and stimulating and things that *appear* so in the state of
universal bliss the drug induces on a 'good' trip. They seem to
completely lose their critical faculties and disengage themselves
from some of the most stimulating areas of life. Perhaps when
*everything* is beautiful, nothing is beautiful."
If we build a human-level AI, could we design some set of inputs such
that the AI would "trip"?
-- Cliff
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