{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3190", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3190, "subject": "Smart Robots", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-04-22T15:00:59+00:00", "last": "2002-04-22T17:26:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-04-22T15:00:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Smart Robots", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "hartshorn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I won't comment on the Pharasees/Saducsees debate, but I will note one\nother thing about Wolfe. Apparently machines - computer, Taloses, \nSolders and chems - are themselves to be redemeed, and become children of God." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:\nFirst of all, redeemed from what, exactly? Original Sin? For a Christian who\nsubscribes to that doctrine (as all, I assume, must; otherwise what need of\na \"Savior\"?), that's a rather queer notion. I mean, the progeny of Eve, even\nunto the nth generation, cut off from the Tree of Life and cursed to live by\nthe sweat of their brows, are all doomed by the nature of their flesh--the\nperils and temptations and foibles attendant upon it--to live out their\nlives as best they may, then to die. After death they are to be judged, and\nrewarded or punished eternally, according to how well they acquitted\nthemselves while alive and in the flesh. That flesh is subject, by\ndefinition, directly to Lust and Gluttony and, indirectly, to others of the\nDeadly Sins. It is very hard, if not impossible, to \"sin\" in any way that is\nnot reducible, ultimately, to the animal nature of the species." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(rest of good points skipped)\n\n In defense of Wolfe, he has said (in the my old interview with \nhim) that he does not take the Genesis account literally. (And, it's really \nthe sin of Adam, not Eve. Adam stood by silently and put Eve up to tasting \nthe fruit to see what would happen. He ate it when she failed to die \nimmediately. He was the first Male Chauvinist Pig in history, but hardly \nthe last. Thus, in the Bible it is always the sin of Adam, not the sin of \nEve, that corrupted humanity. But back to the main topic:)\n This, of course, makes it hard for Wolfe to explain the origin of \nsin. He's not going to want to fall back on some kind of evolutionary \nnotion that human \"sin\" has some kind of \"animal\" and \"pre-rational\" past \nas its root. So, for him the origin of sin has to be some kind of mystery.\n Cordwainer Smith also has \"redeemed\" underpeople-animals and \nrobots, but in his case this is tied to his view of language as an aspect \nof the Word of God. Any creature that rises to the ability to use language \ncreatively has risen to the point where he/she comes into contact with the \nDivinity. For him, the image of God is tied closely to language, and thus \nwhen animals and robots learn to speak for themselves (not just what has \nbeen programmed in), they acquire the image of God also. He could then have \nsaid, if he had chosen to do so, that such creatures are \"adopted\" into \nhumanity, thus receiving both the blessings (language) and curses (sin) of \nhumanity, and also thus being able to receive redemption from the Word \nIncarnate. I think there is enough indication in Smith's works to make a \ncase for this model.\n But I don't see this kind of reflection in Wolfe. I think he's \njust using an SF-trope, and we have to give him permission. It's really no \ndifferent from allowing for time travel, faster than light space travel \n(assuming an Einsteinian universe), etc.\n The same kind of theological problem arises from intelligent alien \nspecies -- which in almost all SF are just human beings in different \nshapes. Christians writing SF either need to have no aliens, or else their \naliens need to be sinless -- or at least to have fallen as a result of \nsomeone other than Adam. But then, if they are redeemed, you wind up with \nan incarnation of the Son and His death over and over on planet after \nplanet -- and this creates many more theological problems that I won't bore \nyou all with.\n My way of taking Wolfe on this is that he is writing fiction, and \nusing some SF tropes in a non-realistic, symbolic way. If he's projecting a \n\"real possibility for the future,\" then all the problems you mentioned \narise. If he's using this mingling of personalities, and intelligent \nrobots, as ways of speaking about the human condition, then there is really \nno problem. It's fiction, after all. Intelligent robots are just symbols \nfor \"other kinds\" of people. Mingling of personalities is a way of \nexpressing the way people share a common life and bear one another's \nburdens; and also the way Christ lives in us and we in Him, and in each \nother. Etc.\n I tend to divide SF into three types: the Science type, the \nFiction (literary) type, and the Adventure type. The Science type moves \ntoward projecting some kind of real future. The Adventure type just wants \nto amuse us with a good yarn, and does not care about faster then light \nspaceships or that his aliens are just like human beings. The Fiction type \nuses SF tropes for literary purposes. Jack Vance is a good example of this. \nHe was asked at the Orlando World Con a few years back why he has so few \nrobots and computers. His answer was that such things did nothing for him \nas a writer. If in the future robots and computers do everything, then the \nkind of things he want to write about become uninteresting and pointless. \nHe affirmed that he was not trying to write some kind of \"real\" future \nfantasy. I think we can agree that Wolfe is mostly also of this second type \nof SF. He's enough of a hard scientist to put lots of hard science thinking \ninto his writing, but ultimately he's writing Fiction about human beings.\n\nFWIW.\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-22T16:51:32+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Smart Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From: \"James Jordan\" \nhartshorn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I won't comment on the Pharasees/Saducsees debate, but I will note one\nother thing about Wolfe. Apparently machines - computer, Taloses,\nSolders and chems - are themselves to be redemeed, and become children of\nGod." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "First of all, redeemed from what, exactly? Original Sin?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To be redeemed AND BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD. Please.\n\nTo be subject to the Fortunate Fault is a blessing, not a curse.\n\nYou may argue that robots can't do this, but in the Lupiverse they can.\n\nAnd this undercuts Nutrias probable smooth arguments about Robot as symbolic\nof different sorts of people.\n\nIt's not just that these robots are marginally human. It is that they have\nthe same spiritual status as people. They are outrageously, flamboyantly,\nhuman - irrational, emotional, lovable, ridiculous.\n\nWolfe is saying something by this, perhaps that the Spirit is immanent in\nmatter and only needs a very little permission to stand up in the image of\ngod.\n\n\n hartshorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-04-22T17:07:24+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Smart Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hartshorn said it pretty darn well:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "First of all, redeemed from what, exactly? Original Sin?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To be redeemed AND BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD. [...]0\n\nYou may argue that robots can't do this, but in the Lupiverse\nthey can." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While I think it may be a stretch to simply say \"they can,\" I\nthink we can safely say \"it appears that they can.\" I would\nsuggest that in the Lupiverse (as quite possibly in the \nuniverse which we are please to call \"real\"), if humans make \nsomething capable of ensoulment, God will provide the soul --\nwhich does not necessarily mean that it is a \"good\" thing to \nmake such an object, other than by the means which have been\nprovided us (i.e., reproduction); but a robot or a clone would\nnot, I think, be punished for the sins of its makers." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And this undercuts Nutrias probable smooth arguments about\nRobot as symbolic of different sorts of people." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Why? Because one thing is true does not mean that another thing\nis not; certainly, these two things don't contradict. Or, if you\nthink they do, please show how. Make sure that it accounts for\nOlivine.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-22T17:26:14+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Smart Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message ----- " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nAnd this undercuts Nutrias probable smooth arguments about\nRobot as symbolic of different sorts of people." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why? Because one thing is true does not mean that another thing\nis not; certainly, these two things don't contradict. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with that. Your pardon, Nutria.\n\n\n hartshorn" } ] } ] }