will our world be locked in the box?

People who believe that innovation is the real key to economic growth often talk about the need for some folks to "think out of the box."  I still remember the moment when Joe Bordogna, then Director of NSF, was talking to a reporter, saying "It is so hard, like pulling teeth, to get those folks to think out of the box," and then he pointed at me, saying "except that guy. He doesn't seem to know the box is even there." 

As someone who REALLY knows about thinking out of the box, at a world class level (acknowledged by the head of NSF)... I am very worried about trends in our world which have already begun to stifle creative thinking. My last blog post on science fiction WAS very far out of the box, and it aroused really extreme reactions from "the swamp".

Here is the analysis I sent this morning on a list including many folks, a few of whom went into high orbit emotionally (who get lots of money for doing so literally, which they have no idea how to do): 

========================================================================
=============================

I am very sorry for whatever level of pain I unintentionally subjected people to on this list, by reference to a light, short, heavily caveated science fiction story, and my response to their attacks. But perhaps it could be useful as a learning experience, as it connects to issues which David Brin spoke about with great intensity on this list. Issues like the importance of privacy and transparency in the development of new IT systems for the world.

Unless we start building killer AIs, terminators (or are we already doing it), you might argue that this is not a direct extinction issue, or a lifeboat to keep life going after a direct episode like massive nuclear war or H2S breakout in the process of climate change. But in fact, the practical issues in all those sectors depend critically on what kind of new platform is being deployed around the world for the Internet of Things (IOT). In my view, the design issues for IOT (see 6 slides attached) will have a direct bearing on what actually happens with the extinction issues. It is ironic that cybersecurity is a major, most urgent part of that, and that I have to send you the slides themselves instead of a URL because I got hit myself by something yesterday. (I apologize... but I did at least save as minimum size pdf. That also affected my mood yesterday.) 

The privacy and transparency issues Brin was debating here relate directly to cybersecurity, for which I am supposed to leading a position paper "as soon as possible." (Fortunately not my usual three-day deadline). Brin argued that we must face up to the fact we live in a world where the State (ALL states) WILL have full access to everyone's email

and telephone calls, and more. Brin suggested that we simply face up to the new reality... and cope with it by giving EVERYONE access to everything, a "world of glass houses", and learning how to live with it.

--------

But is that realistic? COULD we learn to live with it, and what would the price be?

-------------------------

We often ask "How intelligent will this IT system be?" Give a system of drones TOO much intelligence and autonomy, you risk real Terminators. Give it too little... there are risks of Artificial Stupidity (AS), like drones deciding whom to kill based on fuzzy inexact profiling algorithms. (These are not science fiction, but better  not to discuss in detail here.) A key design issue for the coming Internet of Things (IOT), which will control every vehicle, factory, financial network and medical device in the world in an ever more integrated manner relatively soon, is WHAT LEVEL of intelligence will be inserted where and how.

But equally important is the question: "How much intelligence will our human organizations have" (not only for big decisions but for everyday life) under different scenarios, under different new business process reengineering (BPR) scenarios?" (BPR is also inescapable, with potential for good and ill. Please forgive -- but just as Trump has called himself the "King of Debt", Elizabeth Warren might be called the :"Queen of Bankruptcy" and Romney the "King of BPR." They are all relevant to a realistic appraisal of our future.) BUT PLEASE focus on the question, not the side notes. The question is extremely important. 

So how much intelligence would our human organizations have under the David Brin world? Or under top-down world, like new organizations in China and elsewhere, taking a more direct centralized role in IT systems?

In both cases... I really wish the designers of those kinds of IT system actually knew more about real intelligence.  

One key property of a high level of intelligence (like a mammal brain, versus reptilian) is a more powerful EXPLORATION (and cognitive mapping) system. In nature, even after many millions of years of very tough tooth-and-claw natural selection, we see the survival of something called "play". In modern RLADP design, the issue of exploration and effective stochastic search is one of the core areas for the most powerful designs. In neuroscience... there is a nice recent popular book by Levitin, The Organized Mind, reviewing lots of research showing the importance of MULTIPLE tracks, from high stress focused thinking to more relaxed. (Though focused exploration should also have a place.) 

This is a big and important topic, so maybe I should just pull out a few key points. as I think about how this works in human societies and in my own life, I think of useful metaphors like the gear of a bicycle, or improving music in public or in private. Brin's world of glass houses is like a world where every note you play is played in public before billions of people. It is a world of high stress.. and LOW exploration. Could it be that a major reason for gross dysfunction in the world of DC lobbyists (or Chinese cyber practitioners?) is exactly the kind of high stress which tends to ossify and reduce intelligence? 

To "learn to live with" a glass house world, we would have to be more conscious of the distinction between standards we need to follow when in a high stress instant decision situation, and an exploration situation. For high collective intelligence it is essential that we have both. We need to be able to flag operational versus exploratory messages... and not act like a gaggle of crazy peck chickens whenever folks actually relax and explore and think outside the box of ultra political or conservative correctness.

We need to learn BOTH how to "be here now" and how to "be there then" and, above all, how to shift between them, even as we can shift between gears of bicycle.

Can we humans actually learn that? Starting here and now?

====================

===================

Are efforts to bury our heads in the sand or shoot the messenger just input data arguing for "pulling the plug"?

Maybe. But for now, for me, just shifting the bicycle to lower gear... But I am not the most important player.

=======================
===================

Added later in email to more trusted people:

Well, I was planning to relax and read some science fiction today anyway... 

Best regards,

    Paul 

P.S. Please forgive a little reminiscence. I have often cited the experience which shifted me, in March 1967, from almost-Amazing-Randi skepticism about psi to 50-50 open-minded. (When I quoted a speech from Mao in detail the day before he gave it.) On the list, I mentioned my second shift, when two folks in the Vedanta Society at Harvard regularly responded to my thoughts before I thought them, as you mention with maharishi.  

The third was at the start of the summer of 1969, when I had a very weird feeling as I entered a new apartment... called my mother to ask did she think I was going crazy... and walked a mile in the dark searching for a new place to live... only to read the next morning a local headline "murder in Main Street" exactly where I was supposed to be. 

A couple of years later, I tracked down the person who ordered the hit, and asked "WHY???" He said :"Because you knew too much." 

We still do seem to be living in that kind of silly world... 

And I have to gauge what gear to use in my bicycles, not to push too hard but not to spin uselessly (like SOME folks on the Vedanta list).

========

By the way, since that murder attempt (plus actual murder) involved national security (as well as my own life!), I visited the Boston office of the FBI at one point, and spent over an hour giving very detailed names, places and other references, much more than I could remember today, speaking to an agent and a tape recorder.