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+--- Thread: Survival of the Mediocre Mediocre (/thread-5670.html)
Survival of the Mediocre Mediocre - C C - Jul 4, 2018
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/24/survival-of-the-mediocre-mediocre/
EXCERPT: I have a theory about why the notion of an arms race between human and machine intelligences is fundamentally ill-posed: the way to survive and thrive in an environment of AIs and robots is not to be smarter than them, but to be more mediocre than them. Mediocrity, understood this way, is an independent meta-trait, not a qualifier you put on some other trait, like intelligence.
I came to this idea in a roundabout way. It started when Nate Eliot emailed me, pitching an article built around the idea of humans as premium mediocre robots. That struck me as conceptually off somehow, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on the problem with the idea. I mean, R2D2 is an excellent robot, and C3PO is a premium mediocre android, but humans are not robots at all. They’re just intrinsically mediocre without reference to any function in particular, not just when used as robots.
Then I remembered that the genesis form of the Turing test also invokes mediocrity in this context-free intrinsic sense. When Turing originally framed it (as a snarky remark in a cafeteria) his precise words were:
“No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”
That clarified it: Turing, like most of us, was conceptualizing mediocrity as merely an average performance point on some sort of functional spectrum, with an excellent high end, and a low, basic-performance end. That is, we tend to think of “mediocre” as merely a satisfyingly insulting way of saying “average” in some specific way.This, I am now convinced, is wrong. Mediocrity is in fact the sine qua non of survival itself. It is not just any old trait. It is the trait that comes closest to a general, constructive understanding of evolutionary adaptive “fitness” in a changing landscape. In other words, evolution is survival, not of the most mediocre (that would lead to paradox), but survival of the mediocre mediocre....
MORE: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/24/survival-of-the-mediocre-mediocre/
RE: Survival of the Mediocre Mediocre - Magical Realist - Jul 4, 2018
8 signs you are becoming mediocre:
1) Apathy towards the state of your society and your world.
2) Repetition of pat phrases, cliches, and learned talking points.
3) Lack of originality in any thought or observation you make.
4) Obsession with being like everybody else, doing the same things, and buying the same products.
5) Consumption-driven life, towards the endless accumulation of status symbols and faddish displays and popular trinkets.
6) You find conversation about ideas boring, but find conversation about people fascinating.
7) Overriding concern about what other people think of you.
8) The inability to be alone and without attention.