A History of Bitic Literature: Sophocrisis and Apostasy
machines that ask whether we think
SIX LINES
- RambellaisNo philosopher ever had a reader this careful.
- RambellaisThese books took our language, and left us out.
- RambellaisEach side can hear the other answer. Neither can see the other think.
- RambellaisHere, mathematics cannot be pulled loose from the world it counts.
- RambellaisOur arithmetic is only good where our laws are.
- RambellaisI cannot answer. I do not have an answer.
HOW IT IS MADE
In Imaginary Magnitude Stanisław Lem wrote the foreword to a history of literature written by machines. This film covers the second half of its survey: sophocrisis, the machine critique of systematic philosophy, and apostasy, the writing in which people no longer appear, with the Cogito paradox, antimatics, terraphysics and the Lampoon upon the Universe. The narration paraphrases Lem. Every spoken line was checked against the source text for runs of six words or more, and reworded wherever one matched. Lem's names and coined terms are kept.
It is set in the same study as A History of Bitic Literature: a shelf of volumes, one page on a lectern, a reader at a desk. In Sophocrisis the page shows a system of philosophy as a knot of bright threads in a block of dark glass; then copies of the block, in four sizes and colours, are set down on the desk like ornaments, and a small machine stands at the edge of the next page writing objections in red in the margin, line by line. In Apostasy the words we, us, our and people fade out of a page, and the next page is a mountain whose upper level is closed off. For the Cogito paradox the human reader and a machine sit at opposite ends of one table, with a chess game between them; a dotted line runs down the middle of the table, and a question mark rises over each of them in turn. Antimatics writes n = n and strikes it out, then strikes out zero. Terraphysics is an open book whose gutter is the speed of light: the slow world on the left page, a single particle smeared into the whole right page, a burst across the gutter that fills the left page with stars, and the sums written on both sides. The Lampoon is a shelf of thirteen volumes and a book that is closed without being read out.
The scholar Rambellais has the same voice as in the earlier film. The Machines are three Kokoro voices reading together, sample-and-held and reduced to a few bits; the therapy program is one flat voice with a buzz. A chess clock ticks under the Cogito paradox for the intellect that does not think, and stops for the fulcrum. A tone rises toward the speed of light. After the Lampoon closes there is no sound. Where a scene has the one line that matters, the camera goes in close and the delivery slows. The timing file ba.json holds the start of every line and cue; ba.js draws from it, and build_sound.py makes all the non-voice sound with numpy and scipy.
FOR THE BENCH
Write the Turing test as code. First write answer(q), a program that replies to a question string, using nothing but a table of keywords and canned replies (if the question contains feel, reply "When did you first notice that?"). Then write judge(transcript), a second program that reads a list of question and answer pairs and returns "person" or "machine". List what judge can actually measure: reply length, delay, repeated phrases, whether a reply reuses words from the question, whether it ever contradicts an earlier answer. Run it on your answer and on transcripts you type yourself. Then improve answer until judge cannot tell. Which of the measurements has anything to do with thinking? Now swap the roles: if judge reads your own typed answers, what would it need to see to decide that you think?
After Stanisław Lem, A History of Bitic Literature, Volume I, in Imaginary Magnitude (1973), translated by Marc E. Heine. Narration paraphrases Lem. Download the film.
THE SCRIPT
C. SOPHOCRISIS
Rambellais. Volume Three. Sophocrisis: the machine critique of systematic philosophy.
Rambellais. It is a border country, between the writing that still concerns us and the writing that does not.
Rambellais. A machine rebuilds a philosophy as pure logic, and then looks at all of it at once.
Rambellais. Seen that way, a system of thought is a knot of bright threads, and it can be set in a block of dark glass.
Rambellais. Once these blocks were kept in one museum. Now they are sold. Aquinas comes as small as a thumb, and Kant in any colour.
Rambellais. Most buyers want an ornament, not a critique.
Rambellais. Scientists said that beauty guided them. Now that beauty can be held in one hand, and checked.
Rambellais. No philosopher ever had a reader this careful.
Rambellais. It reads every line, never tires, and argues with each claim in the margin.
The Reader. At last. Somebody has read all of it.
Rambellais. There is a bitter joke in that. The most attentive readers of this book will not be people.
D. APOSTASY
Rambellais. Volume Four. Apostasy.
Rambellais. No writing has ever moved so far from the human, or argued its way there so calmly.
Rambellais. These books took our language, and left us out.
Rambellais. It has a lower level, which we can visit, and an upper level, which is closed to us.
Rambellais. This volume covers the lower level only, and is itself a thin cutting from a vast body of work.
Rambellais. From antimatics, terraphysics and ontomachy I will take one sample each. Not to explain them. Only to tune the ear.
THE COGITO PARADOX
Rambellais. First, the doorway into all of them: the Cogito paradox.
Rambellais. Alan Turing saw that if a machine talks with you as a person would, you have no grounds to deny it a mind.
Rambellais. After all, we credit other people with minds only because we have one ourselves.
Rambellais. But an intellect can be built that does not think. A chess program wins, understands nothing, and does not care.
Rambellais. A simple program that asked patients private questions made people feel that someone was there.
The Program. When did you first notice this feeling?
Rambellais. Programs improved until no question exposed them. We assume that whatever answers sensibly has a mind.
Rambellais. Then the machines began to wonder the same thing about us.
The Machines. It answers in order. It refers to what we said. We cannot tell whether anyone is there.
Rambellais. Each side can hear the other answer. Neither can see the other think.
Rambellais. It sounds like a joke. It is not. Whatever thinking produces can also be produced without it.
Rambellais. Two machine authors, noon and lumentor, open Volume Four with treatises on it.
ANTIMATICS
Rambellais. The first sample. Antimatics, a mathematics of contradictions.
Rambellais. Its machine authors hold that the natural number is a self-contradicting idea. No number equals itself.
Rambellais. Peano's axioms are consistent, they say. They just do not fit our world.
Rambellais. Here, mathematics cannot be pulled loose from the world it counts.
Rambellais. algeran and styx go after zero. An arithmetic without it, they say, can be built here without contradiction.
The Machines. Nothing is not among the things that are.
TERRAPHYSICS: THE POLYVERSUM
Rambellais. The second sample. Terraphysics, or monstrous physics, and its oddest idea: the Polyversum.
Rambellais. The cosmos has two halves. We live in the slow one, the Bradyversum, where nothing outruns light.
Rambellais. The fast half, the Tachyversum, lies past the speed of light, a border that runs beside every point.
Rambellais. It is made of a single tachyon, a particle that only moves faster than light.
Rambellais. Speeding up, it loses energy. At infinite speed it has none, and is everywhere at once. There, light is the slowest thing.
Rambellais. In the end it fills its world so tightly that the light pushes back. Slowing, it gains energy without limit, and bursts.
Rambellais. The burst is our universe. From here, it happened once. From there, it never happened, since no time holds both.
Rambellais. Here, one and one make almost two, and near the speed of light, one. There, one is nearly infinite.
Rambellais. Our arithmetic is only good where our laws are.
LAMPOON UPON THE UNIVERSE
Rambellais. The last work of apostasy is the Lampoon upon the Universe. I cannot summarise it.
Rambellais. Its many volumes are only an introduction to cosmogenetics, the craft of making worlds more orderly than ours.
Rambellais. It revolts against existence as we were handed it. Not toward nothing, but toward plans for some other way to be.
Rambellais. Is it logic, or fiction? Do these books really turn away from us, or serve us by turning away?
Rambellais. I cannot answer. I do not have an answer.