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The day Gainsville lost its MIND

Manufactured Industrial Nueral Device
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The reason I'm on this subway with my torn up frayed and charred 2 piece suit is not as easy to explain as you want it to be.

I can see you're surprise at stopping in Gainsville in the first place. That's not that hard to explain, I used an insulated rabbit hole command to make the train stop.

You know, the quality of your dress stuns me. We've been told all outside of Gainsville were living in hovels and eating rats.

"Hardly", the taller man in the sand colored suit said, but said nothing more. His physique said more than that.

'Hardly', what a word if you're only using one thought Meyer. Maybe the biobot was right! Maybe I'm jumping from a frying pan out into the fire!

Oh! St.Spurrier! Help me through this tribulation - maybe the MIND was right.

The rest of the world was mad and if - wait! Wait, my own mind or the impulsive parts of it - come back! Whoa!

Does Mr.'Hardly' look like he's underfed?

Does Mr.'Hardley' look to be all that concerned about my point of view?

No. He doesn't.

I am finally, finally safe!

Hey, HARDLEY! I yell. Everyone on the train turns to look, but I make eye conact with Alex Anillos - the guy in the sand colored suit.

Do you know why there's never been any stops in Gainsville - I ask him.

It turned out he was a newsman. I thought they were extinct, but here one was.

I'll let him take it from here.

Alex Anillos reporting from Miami metro. I have the first information out of the Gainsville Protectorate in 4 years.

Though asking for anonymity, we can show you clipcam video of who we must call Mr. S fleeing the Gainsville landing platform to escape to the train.

We apologize for having to blur the video in the area of his face and also for not divulging any information other than the first letter of his last name, but we hope you, as did we, will understand when you hear the terrifying account of a man struggling with a MIND gone wrong.

(Are you with me so far?)

I am breaking this off.

The manufactured industrial neural divice is something that only became possible in 2010.

The fact that cells could be manipulated by computer sequenced dna & coded to function as directed changed the world.

The MIND came into existence and solved everything. The scientist figured out how to make the most massive computer ever conceived of by manipulating cellular dna.

Unfortunately, one of them went bonkers. All across the world they were directing where to spend taxes on what / what to teach to whom - all for a musketeer benifit.

But not in Gainsville.

The researchers, the programers, they were all just clean cut college kids back, way back then.

Who would have figured their university pride and prejudice would have leaked into the massive cellular consruct derived from lab crated dna instructions which was only supposed to be a biological calculator, but ended up becoming a regional tyrant due to repeated comments about Tallehassee in the MINDS infancy / awakening.

Zimmy, Jul 03 2010

The Ultimate Computer http://en.wikipedia...e_Ultimate_Computer
Don't say you weren't warned ... [8th of 7, Jul 08 2010]

[link]






       //one of them went bonkers//   

       You mean, one massive computer, made by manipulating cellular DNA, went bonkers?   

       Do we imagine a dedicated body of cells for this purpose (a bit like the legendary "brain in a vat"), or are we talking about cells already belonging to other living organisms, including Mr S., but being used for data processing in parallel with their normal functions, a bit like SETI@home computers?
pertinax, Jul 03 2010
  

       Oh yeah, and sp. "Neural"
pertinax, Jul 03 2010
  

       Nice writing, by the way. You should try getting published [+]
MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 03 2010
  

       could somebody summarize this? I get into the 2nd-3rd paragraph and I start hearing vuvuzelas
FlyingToaster, Jul 04 2010
  

       Yeah, government by Big Fat Computer - in this case, a BFC who's very transistors are powered by (wait for it) HUMAN DNA! (dun dun deeeeeerr!)   

       Thing is, DNA doesn't by itself 'compute' anything - it just blindly creates proteins. What you need for something to think is a few levels of emergent behaviour above dna generated protein structures, and there's no reason to suggest that it would have any greater computing power than the sort of hardware already provided by human brains.   

       Human brains are brilliant but difficult to harness on specific problems like tax rates, housing allocations and other problems of a governmental nature because they come with all the baggage and distraction provided by wanting to go home, eat out at fancy restaurants and do other interesting things like having meaningful (or not so meaningful) relationships with other human brains.   

       So the dream is to create some sort of disembodied intelligence that can be created in a lab somewhere and then set to certain tasks, bringing all that processing power to bear without having to worry about all the costs associated with maintaining a traditional human body and all its outside interests (not to mention human rights...yada yada yada)   

       One big problem is investing such an artificial intelligence with any kind of *intent* - because without intent, there's no reason for it to do anything "meaningful", no drive to invent, no motivation to solve problems. And without a body to provide simple sense-based cues to encourage it to make sense of the world, fostering those behaviours that maximise pleasurable sensations and discourage unpleasurable ones, it must be very, very difficult indeed to instil any kind of sense of identity or motivation in a dislocated brain. No wonder they always go mental.
zen_tom, Jul 08 2010
  

       // No wonder they always go mental. //   

       <link>
8th of 7, Jul 08 2010
  

       It doesn't make sense to me 'cause it isn't 4:20 yet here.
Cedar Park, Jul 08 2010
  

       //could somebody summarize this? I get into the 2nd-3rd paragraph and I start hearing vuvuzelas//
I had the same problem until I reread and found that I managed to unders
o=============<O BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
gnomethang, Jul 08 2010
  

       ZenTom - thank you for your critique!   

       My own sister thought this was absolutely horrible. She mentioned painful things like grammar and spell check to start with.   

       I feared reading the reviews on the idea until today. I figured (especially after my sister's comments) that I deservedly got blasted for being an idiot.   

       In my imagination, they could compartmentalise the cell functions at first. There is not even the slightest chance of this being done tomorrow or next year. As I understand it the best that's been acheived so far was to turn cells blue.   

       Please forgive my wandering mind. Heinlein's Mike in the moon is a harsh mistress acheived awareness. This is something I doubt could occur on a purely electronic level.   

       When I saw the human genome guy discussing computer programmed DNA, how could I help but drift into an improbable, but maybe possible future where they started using programmed cells to store & manipulate data?   

       In my own life I've seen the calculator become precious, commonplace, obsolete. The PC become rare & misunderstood, tolerated, necessary.   

       I imagine biotech being used / demanded in an area where 0's & 1's couldn't compete before. Data storage, initially. I have a book that I'm somewhat fearful of that claims I am able to remember everything in my life that's ever happened to me. My problem is - do I want to? I've screwed up so, so many times. Will I have to relive them all?   

       I think nueral cells (yeah 50/50 I misspelled nueral & 50/50 I misspell misspell.I am not an Oxford candidate, though my cousin went there)   

       If you can design cells for memory storage by DNA programming - and I suspect I will see that some day, I think you can also program DNA to be actuators / activators - only in this way will we see Mike as described in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.   

       I'm not against Mike, I'm just wondering if there ought to be AI psychotherapists in place for when Mike eventually comes into being.   

       It's probably not at all enough to flavor the concept any more beyond what I'd guess was pretty campy. I tried. Sorry, Zen Tom.
Zimmy, Jul 09 2010
  

       8th of 7 ... Holly Rollers!   

       I never saw that one. I'm 42 years too irrelevant.   

       Bloody hell.
Zimmy, Jul 09 2010
  
      
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