No.1812776
Actually, three-body problem is better because it has the people's police guy who is cool btw
No.1812777
>bro you don’t understand it’s totally Marxist to consume mass produced proleslop sci fi garbage!!!!
In the time you wasted on this you could have done something productive with your life
No.1812780
>>1812773You could have at least watched the Chinese version instead of the western ripoff
No.1812784
>>1812773is it anti communist propaganda?
No.1812785
>>1812784Modern science fiction is by definition reactionary since its purpose is to feed the proletariat with illusions of impossible things like aliens and robots so that they look to fantasy to solve their problems and ignore the material conditions. Granted most fiction not written according to a Marxist worldview is a waste of time at best but science fiction is especially harmful
No.1812786
>>1812773Retarded bait trying to capitalize on the discussion in /prc/. TLDR do not watch this netflix marvel slop. Torrent the chinese version. 30 blessed episodes entirely faithful to the book. Watch this teen drama slop and get the wall.
No.1812790
>>1812785Yeah I think the science itself is reactionary, the academia is nothing but circle jerk anyways.
No.1812791
>>1812786Ok sir comrade, you are saying then it must be right.
No.1812792
>>1812785what about a fiction where communists are the good guys, and it talks about neo-colonialism, geopolitics, and Marxist theory
No.1812796
>>1812795What a reactionary? Science is irrefutable! revolution is going to happen in two weeks according to the science of Marxism.
No.1812801
>>1812797You clearly are very irrefutable.
No.1812802
>>1812801Interesting point /pol/tard.
But what is your opinion of Jews?
No.1812804
>>1812802They are currently killing arabs in gaza, about which I don't have any opinion either positive or negative. Now you tell us about your opinion of Jews.
No.1812807
You convinced me to give this a shot
No.1812813
>>1812811Revolution is gonna happen in two weeks, Marx told us so. Why are you so impatient?
No.1812815
>>1812784Netfix is. Translator of the book went out of his way to rearrange chapters so that cultural revolution would be front and center of the narrative. Chinese series dispersed those chapters through the book to create narratively sound suspicion, while American book and series just dumped them in the front. Furthermore, Netflix localized everything EXCEPT cultural revolution, this thing they kept intact
No.1812823
>>1812815have you read the book?
No.1812828
>>1812773Meh.
We had this conversation in the China thread already, this is mot your blog.
If you'd read it you'd know the only hero is the Chinese lady with one hand.
No.1812830
>>1812828Yes I love the chinese lady with one hand. I love chinese ladies in general.
No.1812831
>>1812790>Yeah I think the science itself is reactionary, the academia is nothing but circle jerk anywaysWe might disagree on the war but we can gulag sciencefaggots together anon. :)
No.1812833
>>1812831I don't want to gulag nobody my man, I just want to eat bread and some meat (if possible). I am afraid I might starve to death.
No.1812846
>>1812790science is a threat to society embrace occultism anon
No.1812853
>>1812777Sir this is proleslop sci Fi FROM CHINA
No.1812860
>>1812815>while American book and series just dumped them in the frontWasn't that like the book
No.1812944
>>1812785We already have robots and aliens are just not detected yet, it's just our telescopes can barely detect exoplanets. Besides, Communism is about deducing and making come about a classless, stateless society based on scientific principles, so Marxism is about science fiction in a big way. Of course some retards somehow think space is faggotry, they don't see the point but that's just because they never go outside so they don't need to use a GPS.
No.1812948
>>1812939the only two choices in life: wage slavery 24/7 or pretending that watching a TV show is 'communist' XD
No.1812952
Didn't they change all the Chinese characters into White people?
No.1812958
>>1812952Asians are white adjacent anyway so it doesn't matter.
No.1812961
>>18129522 of the main characters are Chinese. I have to warn you that the first episode demonizes China and cultural revolution.
No.1812965
>>1812860No. Chinese book has those chapters all over the place. and Chinese series are structured similarly
No.1812967
>>1812965>Chinese version good, English version badTypical bitching
No.1812973
>>1812967The Netflix version literally replaces Chinese protagonists with white peepol so that the average Anglo wouldn't get mad at chinks being the good guys for once.
it's woke trash.
No.1813021
>>1812973pretty sure white supremacy isn't 'woke'
No.1813032
>>1813021>pretty sure white supremacy isn't 'woke'Where have you been the last 20 years?
No.1813082
Dark forest theory is the baboon screechings of a swollen amygdala. Sophons are cool.
No.1813084
imagine actually watching netflix version of a chinese novel when a high production value chinese show of it exists. also the book is pretty good
No.1813091
3BP is baby entry-level shit. Try Blindsight / Peter Watts
No.1813094
>>1812973Wade the CIA spook was white in the book, so was Evans the burger environmentalist oil magnate turned alien cult leader. Jack is white but dies early and is unimportant in the book. So in the end the only main character they made white is his university friend Yun Tianming who is Will in the show. But I wouldn't expect some retard calling things woke trash to read books. I'm just sad they didn't put a posadist socdem Venezuelan president as a wallfacer like in the original story because I would have liked to see leftypol multipolaristas malding, but hey the kurd woman will probably do the job.
No.1813102
>>1813084TBH I watched the first 3 episodes of the chinese version, it's pretty boring, it seems like they've cut out half of the stuff and made the rest of it super long and drawn out for some reason. I've been enjoying that minecraft version above more
No.1813125
>>1813091>what if vampires were real>what if everyone were a gooner>what if you dated a girl with DID, wouldn't that be crazy?lol ok
No.1813132
>>1813125I read the first like 5 pages of blindsight and stopped, it just sounded too silly and lowbrow like some suicide squad shit
No.1813481
First scene almost made me nut. Real purifying, revolutionary, feverish violence, Sorelian-esque really. Makes me think how much MORE beautiful the GPCR would have been had the state not interfered and fully let the people take the reigns. An Anarchist can dream.
My one complaint is that all the screaming fanatics suddenly acted shocked once the counter-revolutionary was killed, like, isn't that the point???
No.1813570
is the dark forest thing about being communist in a capitalist world?
No.1813573
i thought wandering earth was better
No.1813597
>>1813573Wandering earth was stupid come on lol
No.1813598
>>1813597You sound stupid lol
No.1813603
>>1813481In the book the redguards only intended to humiliate him but the school girls went overboard with the belt buckles.
No.1813613
>>1813603That is exactly how it is depicted in the Netflix TV series, that they didn't want to do it but did it anyways.
No.1813623
I went home to visit my parents and they put this on in the evening. Half an hour of struggle session ensued where I had to justify the cultural revolution to them even though I gave them a reading list that they didn't follow (love you mum and dad though I'm not trying to insult you <3).
No.1813640
TV reccomendations see higher caliber discussions in the dedicated thread:
>>>/hobby/3012Also you might like Arknights, it's a lot less heavy on the sci-fi, though present (trapped on one planet, cannot make gunpowder because weird physics, self-replicating rock cancer–the rocks of which make a sufficient gunpowder alternative, ect…) but there's a lot of these kinds of things going on that are fun to draw real life connections to, particularly in the side stories.
>>1812777We should have a "proleslop" to "goyslop" filter so /pol/s trying to blend in have their disguise stripped off.
No.1813657
>>1812773Netflix butchered the show, fucktard
No.1813658
>>1812967This but unironically
You're just racist
No.1813686
>>1813658>You're just racistNo u
No.1813687
>>1813657>Netflix butchered the show, fucktardAight whatever you say pal
No.1813726
The anticommunism is kinda lame but at this point expected. In general, the production value was good, the dialogue was OK nothing to complain about, the acting was generally OK except a few specifc actors/characters. The series was entertaining in general.
However, nothing really stood out. There's not much moments that stood out that make you shocked, impressed, thoughtful, or anything really. There was a lot of opportunity for them but the framing wasn't there. The series also doesn't have a climax or resolution at any moment, again, despite there being opportunities for these to happen.
My favorite thing was seeing the actress of Star Trek, Keiko. It was a really nice surprise. I thought I recognized her and looked her up. I thought it was really funny because she's playing an ethnically Chinese woman, but I thought she kinda looked Japanese. Then I looked her up, and indeed she played an ethnically Japanese woman on star trek. And I thought, yeah, racist mofos thought I wouldn't recognize a Japanese woman playing a Chinese role. But, turns out she's actually ethnically Chinese in real life. Lmao.
No.1813800
>>1813003the guy was basically a mix of castro and chavez, ofc he was awesome.
His disgrace didnt make any fucking sense though, because its the exact same kind of MAD plan that save them in the end (and the fact it was revealed didnt change shit). Only sad thing was it didnt actually work.
No.1814153
>>1813125HAHAHAHA I KNEW EXACTLY WHICH BOOK THIS WOULD BE
No.1814433
I didn't watch it and hate it because I saw an ad billboard for it in public.
I know that doesn't answer your post.
No.1814504
>>181312585% of the book could be smeared in feces and it would still be a masterpiece. The central plot is so deeply unsettling that once you see it, it stains everything you see forever
>Competence without comprehension is the rule, not the exception>What if sentience is maladaptive>What if, even though life seems destined to unfold into ever increasing complexity, sentience is a wasteful fluke that will be imminently corrected No.1814543
>>1813762Watch the series lol. It's very anticommunist. Read the thread comrade. I don't disagree with you though. We're condemned to consoom. Everything we think, do, anything we even consider doing, is mediated by the logic of capitalism. We consoom socialism and anarchism like a product. That's the curse of capitalism. We can't avoid it.
>>1814504>What if, even though life seems destined to unfold into ever increasing complexity, sentience is a wasteful fluke that will be imminently correctedRecently saw the mediocre movie "Downsizing". It has this reflection at some point. IMO it's not only wrong, it reflects a liberal understanding of evolution, which is inherently racist, colonial, teleological, and less correct.
No.1814580
I tried watching the Chinese version because burger remakes ruin the original and China has some really good film directors, better than Europe in recent decades.
But the cinematography in this show is so trite, overdrawn and pointless that it just makes you more and more annoyed. Most sci-fi series are like that anyway.
No.1814608
>>1814543>We're condemned to consoom. Everything we think, do, anything we even consider doing, is mediated by the logic of capitalism. We consoom socialism and anarchism like a product. That's the curse of capitalism. We can't avoid it. looks like religiocucks are right and this world must be rejected
No.1814618
>>1814608Capitalism must be rejected.
Religious cucks throughout all of history suffer from "there is no alternative" (maybe it's the fatalism), which is why they end up rejecting the world as such. The few exceptions that tried to create a better society on this world weren't cucks to begin with and they were hunted down by the church.
No.1814638
>>1814608Religion isn't immune. You literally can't exist outside this logic.
No.1814740
>>1814638>the idea of an afterlife that can be dated as far back as ancient egypt is actually just a product of capitalismif everything is capitalism you might as well accept it
No.1814799
just watched some of the 1st episode. this is gay and retarded and i hate drama
No.1814812
>>1814740First step in creating viable praxis. How is this news to you?
No.1814840
>Recently saw the mediocre movie "Downsizing". It has this reflection at some point. IMO it's not only wrong, it reflects a liberal understanding of evolution, which is inherently racist, colonial, teleological, and less correct
No idea about Downsizing. I haven't seen it.
>reflects a liberal understanding of evolution,
If you're talking about Blindsight, you're simply wrong. Since you didn't really give an argument, all I can say is that Watts is a marine biology PhD. Also I'm a biochem PhD and I've had ecologist, immunologist, ornithologist friends read the book and no one ever criticized a poor understanding of evolution.
The whole point of Blindsight is asking the question: "what is consciousness GOOD for?" and then proposing a spooky answer: nothing. It's obvious to see how circumstances could select for intelligent creatures, it's NOT obvious that these creatures necessarily have to be conscious. Blindsight depicts a situation where it tuns out that consciousness is a computationally wasteful phenomenon, and humanity is akin to flightless island birds that will be promptly exterminated if predators wash up on its shores. Even aside from aliums, the problem is that competition among humans and transhumans would inevitably cull consciousness.
>But consciousness has GOT to be good for something! Otherwise it wouldn't have evolved!
If you say this, then YOU don't understand evolution
No.1814877
>>1814840>If you say this, then YOU don't understand evolutionBut you're the one making this claim, comparing it to flightless birds. What is consciousness
good for implies there's some teleological design going on. Consciousness just developed. Whether it is expensive or not is irrelevant. Whether it will lead to the destruction of humanity is also irrelevant. It also implies that consciousness is necessarily leading to destructive results. Completely unjustified.
Consciousness might be akin to a birds mating dance or an antelope's long anus rimming tongue. It just is. Whether it stops contributing to the continuation of the species is yet another question. Species don't have to continue. Surviving as a species isn't inherently good, nor bad.
As for the question of what consciousness is good for, here apparently good means how much it contributes to the reproduction of the species, well if you specifically attribute the success of the homo sapiens to consciousness, then that already answers the question. Otherwise then nothing. E. Coli is wildly successful and doesn't have a consciousness.
The entire argument just seems spooky as hell.
No.1814925
>>1814812>first step to ending capitalism is giving upwhat did they mean by this?
No.1814926
>>1814925Accepting something is true doesn't mean you can't change it or you've given up ;)
No.1814927
Peace through Strength
Surrender to Power
Kraft durch Freude
No.1815053
>>1814877>But you're the one making this claim, comparing it to flightless birds.It's not a claim, it's an unsettling "what-if" in a sci-fi horror novel. It's an interesting possibility to consider
>What is consciousness good for implies there's some teleological design going on.Nah, that kind of phraseology is merely short-hand, frequently used among biologists with the implicit understanding that everyone knows what's actually going on. It's an abbreviation, like how chemists say things like "that ring-system wants to flip". If two biologists were discussing what a cow's rumin was good for and you walked in with that "ayckschually thats teleological, its not good or bad for anything", you would reveal yourself to be uninformed. They know that, it's just convenient to phrase it that way.
>Whether it is expensive or not is irrelevant. Whether it will lead to the destruction of humanity is also irrelevant. It also implies that consciousness is necessarily leading to destructive results. Completely unjustified.That's not the premise. You're arguing against some other thing, I don't know if that's what Downsizing is about, but I'm talking about Blindsight. Based on what you're describing, seems like Blindsight is completely unrelated.
Blindsight argues precisely that..
>Consciousness might be akin to a birds mating dance or an antelope's long anus rimming tongue. It just is. Whether it stops contributing to the continuation of the species is yet another question. Species don't have to continue. Surviving as a species isn't inherently good, nor bad... that this might be true, and that it would suck if it was. I thought you actually got it, but then you continued with this:
>As for the question of what consciousness is good for, here apparently good means how much it contributes to the reproduction of the species, well if you specifically attribute the success of the homo sapiens to consciousness, then that already answers the question.No it fucking doesn't, you're contradicting yourself. Consciousness could have little to no adaptive value. Yes, INTELLIGENCE can be obviously adaptive depending on the niche etc, but these are not mutually inclusive. You don't need to be conscious to be intelligent.
Plenty of traits contribute nothing, they just exist because there hasn't been enough selection pressure to delete them. This is manifestly obvious on a molecular level (neutral genetic mutations), and much harder to unambiguously identify on a macro level - though examples could be things like mammalian blood being red (which is simply the color of the heme complex that binds oxygen).
Blindsight proposes: what if consciousness is just like the phenomenon of blood being red? Just some happy non-functional coincidence, some consequence of the route selected through our descendents. It argues that, if this is true, consciousness would inevitably be weeded out if there was some selection pressure against it - just like how, if (for some reason) animals having red blood became a problem, they would eventually stop having red blood.
In the scenario depicted by the novel, it's not that consciousness "destroys itself". The book asks the question "what if it contributes nothing" and takes it to the logical conclusion: if consciousness is a wasteful process (i.e. it's maladaptive, i.e. non-conscious intelligence is better than conscious intelligence), then consciousness will be optimized out of existence if it faces selection pressure. In the book, the role of the aliumns is to give readers an example of what unconscious intelligence might look like. The selection pressure happens among humans themselves, as the different groups/factions of transhumans compete. Baseline humans are unceremoniously punted out of existence, and the ensuing arms race leads to unconscious intelligences becoming the norm (and it's implied that it's the norm throughout the universe, as indicated by the aliumns).
But again: it's a SCARY SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL. It's not claiming to reveal some grand truth. The central question is interesting.
No.1815430
>>1814877>Consciousness might be akin to a birds mating danceon the right track
>>1814840>>1815053Watts understanding of human evolution is lacking. His analysis of human consciousness and culture vulgarly focuses on individual fitness, while missing the bigger picture. For example, if we applied his mode of analysis to peacocks, we would have to conclude that the lavish feathers of the males also serve no purpose. Of course this is not the case, the feathers ensure that females can select only the strongest males, who can thrive despite their handicap, for mating. Thus an adaptation, that lowers the fitness of individuals, can increase the overall fitness of a species.
Humans have ridiculously large brains, that take a very long time to fully develop and need a lot of calories. Individual family units of one mother and one father wouldn't be able to raise children on their own in nature, especially because the mother won't be able to contribute during the later stages of her pregnancy and the period after birth. Our species can't reproduce itself without large support networks, but this naturally comes with the massive contradiction of trusting unrelated members of your species to care for your offspring. A less altruistic individual could abuse the support network by accepting as much aid as possible while contributing little or nothing. In the long run these egoists would be more successful at reproducing themselves and cause the collapse of the network. To combat this trend our species evolved ritualistic behaviors. Humans are predisposed to develop complex social interactions, that involve either the expenditure of energy (dances, pilgrimages), the destruction of material wealth (sacrifice) or even mutilations of the own body (piercings, scarifications, head binding), which in turn are justified through a common social fiction (ideology, religion). Those who are willing to lower their own fitness because of a social fiction, can be also trusted to aid others. Those who refuse to take part, can be excluded and kept from passing on their genes. All of this requires language, symbolic thought and a theory of mind, which again requires self-awareness/consciousness.
This is why the birthday analogy in Blindsight pissed me off. Watts missed the whole point of rituals and culture.
I still enjoyed the book, it is a great first contact story.
No.1815442
>>1815053Ahhh, okok, got you. Then we're on the same page. Yeah that does sound interesting.
No.1816034
>>1815430>Watts understanding of human evolution is lacking.What absolute fucking arrogance to say this about a professional marine biologist. Reading this line, I knew that the wall of text would be one of two things: either an insightful critique by another knowledgeable expert, or a comically over-confident screed by someone whose entire understanding of evolution was absorbed from a handful of undergrad lectures. What a disappointing post.
I will never understand what is it about the concept of evolution that leads laypeople to arrogantly think their casual encounters with the topic qualify them to opine so confidently about it.
>Meteorologist discusses a hypothetical weather phenomenon>It's not consistent with my understanding of weather>Clearly the meteorologist doesn't understand weather!That's you. You need to have some humility you little shit, the fact that your understanding of evolution contradicts a goddamn biologist should have led you to question YOUR understanding, not the biologist's.
>His analysis of human consciousness and culture vulgarly focuses on individual fitness, while missing the bigger picture. For example, if we applied his mode of analysis to peacocks, we would have to conclude that the lavish feathers of the males also serve no purpose. Of course this is not the case, the feathers ensure that females can select only the strongest males, who can thrive despite their handicap, for mating. Thus an adaptation, that lowers the fitness of individuals, can increase the overall fitness of a species.Absolutely retarded 1st year undergrad patronizing drivel. What incredible arrogance, to bring up literally the most cliche intro textbook example possible. You seriously think he hasn't heard of inclusive fitness? Let me pull the rug from under your feet: that example is an over-simplified toy we give to you babies to waddle in when introducing the concept of inclusive fitness. It's not even neccessarily true that the feathers "ensure that females can select only the strongest male". You belie your ignorance here, because there's literally a plethora of other valid explanations and no uniformly accepted theory. I don't fault you for not knowing this, but I
do fault you for being
so fucking arrogant about it.
>Humans have ridiculously large brains, that take a very long time to fully develop and need a lot of calories. Individual family units of one mother and one father wouldn't be able to raise children on their own in nature, especially because the mother won't be able to contribute during the later stages of her pregnancy and the period after birth. Our species can't reproduce itself without large support networks, but this naturally comes with the massive contradiction of trusting unrelated members of your species to care for your offspring. A less altruistic individual could abuse the support network by accepting as much aid as possible while contributing little or nothing. In the long run these egoists would be more successful at reproducing themselves and cause the collapse of the network.…AND you've got piss poor reading comprehension. I'm surprised you're so confident about your Biology 101 notes, because I doubt you were a very attentive student. You're correctly describing real reproductive challenges faced by humans, as well as many other species.
But none of them have anything to do with consciousness. These are issues that any social organism contends with, including fucking ants and deer. Stop reading this right now, and go type
kin selection into wikipedia. Don't come back until you've read the article top to bottom.
>All of this requires language, symbolic thought and a theory of mind,(Not neccessarily)
>which again requires self-awareness/consciousness.How do you know that? This right here, this is the fucking point of the novel. That's the question Watts invites you to wrestle with: what if self-awareness/consciousness is
not required for those things? Near the end of the novel, one of the antagonists delivers a monologue which I frankly felt Watts was being too brutish and overt by including. I now realize that he must have put it in because a lot of people couldn't read between the lines; he had to literally spell it out. In the world of Blindsight, where it turns out that language/semiotics/theory of mind/etc
doesn't require consciousness, this is what a transhuman super-intellect says to the human protagonist:
< You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo 'sapiens', you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this 'consciousness' you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?< < Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even 'waking' souls are only slaves in denial.< […]< Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of any manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.< […]< The system weakens, slows. It takes so much longer now to perceive—to assess the input, mull it over, decide in the manner of cognitive beings. But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best. It sees the danger, hijacks the body, reacts a hundred times faster than that fat old man sitting in the CEO's office upstairs; but every generation it gets harder to work around this— this creaking neurological bureaucracy.< < "I" wastes energy and processing power, self-obsesses to the point of psychosis.< […]< "I" is not the working mind, you see. For Amanda Bates to say "I do not exist" would be nonsense; but when the processes beneath say the same thing, they are merely reporting that the parasites have died. They are only saying that they are free.His entire novel is free on his website
> https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htmThis is the main point I'd like to see debated: is consciousness neccessary for intelligence?
Watts writes a hard sci-fi horror novel that explores the consequences of the answer being "No". On the other hand, it could be that consciousness
really is neccessary for higher-order thinking; the novel argues that we better hope that's the case, by painting the bleak consequences of a negative answer.
As for the birthday analogy:
>This is why the birthday analogy in Blindsight pissed me off. Watts missed the whole point of rituals and culture.No, YOU missed the point. Siri gives that ridiculous analogy in order to be depicted as socially inept and calculating. It also doesn't really have much bearing on the main premise, there's a lot of miscellaneous bits and pieces.
< "You ever show this to anyone?"< "Yeah, my girlfriend"< "You had a girlfriend? How'd she react?"< "She just laughed"< "Better woman than me. I'd have dumped you on the spot" No.1816040
>>1816034>EDGY VOICE: Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even 'waking' souls are only slaves in denial.No wonder people are ready to believe LLMs can be conscious. This is the kind of shit that gets pseuds going? You really must have no real stakes in your life lmao.
No.1816047
>>1816040>Character argues that it's possible to do complicated things without being conscious>You somehow interpret this as aligned with people who insist that LLMs are conscious?
No.1816051
>>1816047How did the waking subroutines that got repeated in sleep get written you fucking churl?!
No.1816052
>>1816049Erm, are you sure I can feel pain? What if I'm a p-zombie??? This is so interesting!!!
No.1816063
>>1816060>muh westernAll philosophy is a joke.
No.1816065
>>1816060I know that's why I keep posting Lukács quotes and articles about how Heidegger was not only a Nazi but also shit at philosophy
No.1816084
>>1816051We learn plenty of things unconsciously.
For example, even an illiterate could point out an incorrect sentence structure despite never spending a conscious thought on how grammar works, nor even knowing the terminology to explain it. They never consciously learned their language. The question: can there be creatures that learn
everything that way? If yes, is it better somehow? If yes, does that mean that we'd edit that part out of ourselves if competition demanded it? The book assumes all three answers are "yes", and then tells a spooky story.
Watts isn't seriously asserting that his depictions are true, he's riffing. Blindsight includes theorycrafting for goddamn space vampires. Don't look too hard into the actual story, it's not trying to be prescient (though I will note, it included an interaction with an instinctively bullshitting entity that a modern reader would instantly recognize as an LLM - it was written in 2006).
Although, the questions are posed in the context of a fantastical first-contact story. Getting the 'triple yes' outcome described above would be catastrophic in the real world (I say this as a conscious creature that enjoys being conscious).
My take on the consequences of non-conscious intelligence turning out to be better* than conscious intelligence is this: given the currently dominant mode of production, as workers vie for higher wages, the logic of competition would drive them to eventually "optimize" consciousness out of either their own cognition or their kids' (perhaps through neural prosthetics, genetic engineering, whatever). You already see something resembling this; many software engineers can't shut the fuck up about chasing the 'Flow State', which is apparently some deep mode of concentration where you forget yourself and get completely immersed in a task (i.e. making your boss more money than other workers). Regardless of whether this 'flow state' shit is a grift or not, it's certainly an indication that the demand would be there.
*: (as in, better at being a good little wagie) Unique IPs: 51