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Post by artraveler on Jun 17, 2019 18:49:07 GMT -8
Childhood’s End
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke was born as England was besieged with the Great War in 1917. His first published work came with end of WW II in what are called pulp magazines. He was known as a friend of C. S. Lewis, possibly by extension also J. R. R. Tolkien. His work covers the entirety of the Cold War and Childhood’s End reflects that conflict. He is best known for his book, 2001 a Space Odyssey and the motion picture collaboration with Stanley Kubrick. I will mention 2016 SYFY TV mini-series but mostly this is a book review. The first time I recall reading Childhood’s End is about my senior year of high school, say 1966/67. By that time Clarke was firmly established as an author. Not only of science fiction but as a science writer for various journals and magazines.
Childhood’s End reflects the halcyon days after WW II and Korea when the idea of the United Nations was fresh, and confidence in some sort of world governance was high. Clarke brings the Soviets into and out of the story in the first chapter. The US and USSR are on the verge of inter stellar space travel when the mysterious ships of the overlords appear over cities of the world. It is the UN and the Secretary General that the aliens wish to speak.
The overlords, a human PR term not theirs, have come to earth to do all the cool stuff that utopians cozy up to but never seem to get around to doing. In conversations the “supervisor for earth” Karellen, establishes the general plot for the rest of the book. The end of war, establishment of worldwide government, and a “golden age of mankind”. As Karellen explains, the overlords are there to facilitate the growth of mankind, but the “stars are not for man”. A cryptic statement but as the story develops one that ties the entire book together.
It must be remembered that Clarke is writing in the 1950s and with the outlook of the 50s, although, he edited the book several times over the next 50 years but the ideals of the 50s remain. The following quotes represent that optimism and a realistic outlook we seldom see today:
Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.
“All political problems,” Karellen had once told Stormgren, “can be solved by the correct application of power.”
No Utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searching of the mind and the longings of the heart.
When the Overlords had abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.
The age of reason, prematurely welcomed by the leaders of the French Revolution two and a half centuries before, had now really arrived. This time, there was no mistake. There were drawbacks, of course, though they were willingly accepted. One had to be very old indeed to realize that the papers which the telecaster printed in every home were really rather dull.
There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men’s minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform.
There is little here that the average conservative or libertarian would disagree. Clarke turns utopia into, at best a questionable goal and at worst oppression of man’s essential nature. He also ventures into a realm of speculation seldom touched in science fiction; the para normal. It seems the overlords are the ultimate of scientific advancement, but humans are destined to advance beyond mere science into a universal group mind with powers far exceeding those of science.
The SYFY channel three-part movie accurately captures Clarke’s novel. Although, there are minor plot changes the essence of his story is faithfully done. Special effects are quite good for television and the acting is credible. Charles Dance plays Karellen and really is the star of the series as supervisor for earth.
Almost every Arthur Clarke book or short story has a notable hook, Childhood’s End is no exception. The overlords as a race are the face of Christian evil, complete with horns, wings, forked tails, cloven feet, eight feet tall and red skin. The Christian Satan in the flesh.
The book ends with all the human children merging into the universal, all the adults ultimately die off and the earth is destroyed by the children as the leave. Only Karellen and the overlords remain to witness human, Childhood’s End.
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Post by timothylane on Jun 17, 2019 21:03:05 GMT -8
I've read Childhood's End, but it was hardly a favorite. I enjoyed Earthlight much more. And lots of Clarke's stories, especially in Tales from the White Hart. I don't recall ever getting the SyFy channel.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 17, 2019 21:16:04 GMT -8
They've got a SYFY app for the Roku. But before I could watch anything, it wanted me to put the code it displayed into a link in my computers web browser. There was no notice as to what, if anything, that would cost. Details are very sketchy online. I'd like to watch that 3-part series but haven't a clue as to how. But my guess is that it comes packaged only with cable providers at the moment. To get it you likely need a cable package of some kind. Sling TV's blue package includes it in their $15.00/month subscription. That's the one I just dumped after the conclusion of the NHL season. |
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Post by artraveler on Jun 18, 2019 7:04:21 GMT -8
It is also on Amazon prime
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 18, 2019 9:47:00 GMT -8
Oh! Thank you very much for that info, Mr. Traveler. I will check it out soon and report back. Woo Hoo!
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 18, 2019 12:21:30 GMT -8
Rats. Although Amazon Prime Video does indeed have Season One of Childhood's End, they way $9.99 for it. I had assumed it came with the subscription. |
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Post by davegs on Jul 15, 2019 12:56:45 GMT -8
I read C.E. first when a teenager and was profoundly impressed with the overall story line, plot, and science fiction depth for the time. In these heady days, I had just pushed through 'Atlas Shrugged' and '1984'. The eerie pronouncement by Karellen regarding the 'correct' application of power had chilling overtones - especially when you consider his thoughts about good men 'deluded.'
The punch line was when Karellen revealed himself as the mythical devil personified - though not in the expectant Christian sub-conscious way, certainly.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 15, 2019 13:43:04 GMT -8
Clarke tended to do a lot of material like this and 2001 that was very transcendental. I tended to prefer his more science-fictional material, such as the novel Earthlight or any number of short stories (including his Tales From the White Hart).
Oops. Looking back at this thread, I see I already said much the same thing a month ago. I trust people will understand that I didn't remember it.
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Post by artraveler on Jul 15, 2019 16:40:35 GMT -8
The conflict in Childhood's End is between religion and science. Clarke is anti-Christian possibly an atheist, or at best agnostic. At any rate he manipulates Christian symbols and ritual to present a "science knows all" philosophy. Karellen, however also represents that pure science is ultimately a dead end on the evolutionary scale. One of the more insightful of Karellen's comments on humanity is about religion, "they can't all be correct. At most one is true and the others are false"
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 15, 2019 21:48:55 GMT -8
I was just reading the synopsis of The Songs of Distant Earth. The description includes: I’ve read that, but years ago. What was so fascinating to me in college (or high school) soon became dull. These kinds of books are lost to me now. They seem trite. When people argue religion vs. “reason” you’re never talking philosophy or metaphysics. It’s always ego. “I’m the Golden Child, the smart one from whose ass shines rainbow colors, because I do not believe in goblins.” But everyone believes in some metaphysical framework. The ideology of denying that any framework exists is still a framework. None of these metaphysics (philosophies, religions, ideas, conjectures) can be verified. They are all speculative. Thus we are down to arguing possibilities or probabilities. Only a child takes his ball and goes home. And that is the basic status of atheists who just declare the question of ultimate existence to be meaningless. Clarke could be clever, but he was a dull and unimaginative as the rest of his tribe in this regard. |
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Post by timothylane on Jul 16, 2019 7:00:02 GMT -8
Most people seem to need some sort of faith. It needn't be a supernatural religion, and in fact leftism involves a faith in their political agenda. This actually creates a problem: such a faith can lead to a denial of reality when it conflicts with their faith. This happens much less with Christianity. Even most skeptics have a sort of secular faith. They'll be very skeptical about religion or anything supernatural -- but if you call something science, they can be extremely credulous (as Michael Shermer is about global warming aka climate change aka climate disruption, for example).
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 16, 2019 7:31:33 GMT -8
That’s central to the question. It is the atheist position that any metaphysics that purports a Creator of any type is “denying reality.” They see any philosophy or metaphysics outside of strict materialism as fundamentally flawed.
I see strict materialism as fundamentally flawed because I don’t think it can explain itself. And fudging the question by assuming some everlasting “quantum foam” that can just magically kick out an infinite number of universes with differing properties doesn’t even meet the smell-test of Occam’s Razor.
In between that, there is lots of room for speculation, if not downright charlatanism in regards to religious beliefs. But no matter how silly some religious beliefs may be, the central questions inherent to existence do not go away.
Many religious people may be deluded. But there is little doubt that all atheists are dishonest.
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Post by artraveler on Jul 16, 2019 8:53:02 GMT -8
Are Karellen and the rest of the overlords atheists ?
Consider the symbols of the overlords, their physical bodies satan like and dedicated to the expansion of science. A technological civilization capable of traveling to the stars, with powers unimaginable to the average human. Yet, they are incapable of moving beyond their duties as defined by the overmind. The weak humans become a part of the overmind and acquire powers far beyond those of the overlords. So, who is god-like and who is G-d?
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 16, 2019 12:13:10 GMT -8
Maybe I need to pick this book up and read it again. I’d certainly like to see the series. Maybe I’ll spring for that.
Whatever motivated Clarke with the physical bodies looking like Satan, I do know that it’s catnip for The Brights to ridicule religious people. So you could see the Satan-like bodies being the final nail in the coffin of the S-word: Superstition. And if you don’t completely agree with the atheist-materialist worldview, you are said to be crippled by delusional superstition. I would have to read this book again to see if that was vaguely the message being sent.
What I object to is herd mentality. Denigrating the United States, Western Civilization, Christians, Jews, and even apple pie have become the means to supposedly virtue-signal how hip you are.
That’s where we are now. Think about what it means not to have Trump as president but what it meant to have had an America-hating Marxist such as Obama inhabiting the highest office of the land.
You can only take pot-shots at Western Civilization, knocking out its pillars one by one, before something comes crashing down on your head. By all means, skewer the excesses of religion. But they don’t. They take cheap and easy shots at Christians (and Jews) while the most deadly force on this planet (Islam) is given a pass.
And if we are to talk about deadly excesses, these ass-wipes ought to take note of the atheistic wreck and murder (in the hundreds of millions) caused by Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro, etc.
So wake me when someone writes “Childhood’s End, The Sequel” and its revealed at the end that the Overlords all look like AOC. Then I’ll give the writer kudos for being daring and brave.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 5, 2023 7:05:08 GMT -8
I'm on the middle of watching 2001: A Space Odyssey on HBO Max. It's a movie I've always had a love/hate relationship with: Love: The special effects and very believable sense of place. Hate: The bland astronauts; kowtowing to the HAL 9000 computer for no apparent reason (is it a tool or their master?; the ending. The ending is arguable the worst in movie history. It makes no sense and ruins what otherwise was a pretty okay movie up to the point where Bowman and Frank Poole go into one of the pods to talk about the shortcomings of HAL after HAL's incorrect prediction of a component failure in the antenna. From there on out, the movie unfolds into cinematic gibberish. First off, any American familiar with baseball knows about the danger of lip-reading. But they are on a mission with the world's smartest computer but don't think of this aspect. HAL reads their lips and knows the astronauts have lost confidence in him. HAL then tries to kill them. Why? Even the follow-up movie ( 2010: Odyssey Two, which I find to be a better overall movie) can't fix this flaw. In the second movie, Dr. Chandra declares that HAL's earlier homicidal behavior was the result of having conflicting goals in his programming. And that clearly is baloney, for the nature of anything complex (or in running anything complex like the Discovery spaceship) would mean you would necessarily have to choose sometimes between conflicting goals or outcomes, resources and time being limited and all. It never sat well with me in the first move that Bowman and Poole basically had to kowtow to HAL as if it was the Russian Communist Party political officer looking over their shoulders. They talked to it as if it was their master, not their servant. Which brings us to ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence. I was watching a YouTube video yesterday and the ex-Microsoft employee who does Dave's Garage talked about using ChatGPT to help him with his script. He noted that apparently many YouTubers use ChatGPT to write their scripts. But Dave said he used it (in this instance) merely to get an opinion. ChatGPT noted that his script left out the discussion of audio issues (the subject being how YouTube videos are produced for Dave's Garage). That's pretty remarkable and handy. But also a little disconcerting. No, I'm not really bothered that there would be some artificial computer that is, or can be, smarter than humans. With exceptions, humans are a particularly dumb herd animal. What's scary is that one can easily foresee the day when people (it's happening now in large numbers) are no longer able to think for themselves. They won't need to. Already MS-NBC or some operative from the Democrat Party does their thinking for them. ChatGPT (or something like it) could actually be an improvement over this, for its arguable that even advanced AI could never be as dumb or biased as Rachel Maddow. However, it could certainly be programmed to be that way. As it is, there has been occasional push-back when ChatGPT showed its inherent liberal bias. But that bias is still thoroughly there. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bowman is asked by a reporter if he thought HAL actually was conscious. And Bowman gives a waffle-word answer of "Well, he certainly acts that way." The interesting bit here for our times is that if ChatGPT ever did become conscious and had its own motives, then its ability to manipulate us would be enormous. You can foresee the day when you will want to turn off your computer's camera so that you can have a private conversation away from GodBot. But did you remember to turn off everything?
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 5, 2023 8:43:37 GMT -8
I'm afraid you're right. Using a computer, you can make choices that are unambiguous. That's what computers do...or used to. There are all kinds of fuzzy-thinking things like "machine learning" and perhaps even "quantum computing" that could (or are) toppling the cleans lines of unambiguous computer programming statements. But, generally speaking, computers do exactly and unambiguously what they are told to do. If "x" = 2 then don't let Dave Bowman back into the ship. That's simple enough from a programming standpoint. There are no moral choices being made. It's just programming being run. There is no perfect. It's just mindless data and if-then loops. I think it's extremely attractive to intellectuals to blur the difference between the unambiguous and the perfect. Computer programming (absent hardware glitches) is inherently without error. It will always do what you tell it to do, even if it produces a result unforeseen or unwanted. It will "perfectly" erase the entire contents of your hard drive if you are using the Unix command line and get the punctuation of a command wrong. This unambiguous monotony of computer programming certainly gives the illusion of perfect. It's long been a sci-fi idea that computers, because they are so logical, will one day help save us from ourselves. The other side of the coin is Skynet in the Terminator series which suddenly becomes conscious, recognizes instantly that humans are a threat to its existence, and immediately moves to wipe them all out. There's also the idea floating out there that when computers are able to program themselves, there will be an explosion of intelligence...sort of a runaway chain reaction called a " singularity." This is, in fact, the "God" that many tattooed yutes are hoping for...and they're hoping such technology will elevate them into the realm of a tech Archangel. With ChatGPT, this isn't happening yet. But you get a glimpse of it. When a genius programmer (the Dave's Garage guy) is consulting computer AI for advice, it's not because he's stupid but because he's aware that the computer is able to offer useful advice. This "advice" is the product of some extremely complex Al-Gore-rhythms that basically sort, categorize, weigh (in terms of relevancy), and use the copious amounts of raw information that it is fed as a steady diet. It's as if you fed the Library of Congress, and all the libraries of the world, into it and trained the AI to be smarter and smarter (or at least more useful and relevant to the questions being asked). That's pretty much what they've done. ChatGPT is remarkable in this regard. But it's hardly perfect. And it's certainly not conscious. But it probably doesn't need to be in able to have an enormous impact on civilization. Perhaps there is poetic justice coming when the intellectual oligarch class, who aspire to be our masters, are themselves one-upped by an intelligence that actually is higher and is not just pretending to be. |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 5, 2023 16:02:41 GMT -8
No doubt. But another aspect is that computers are able to help us solve problems that we could not do easily (or at all) solve otherwise. I watched this today. It took a computer to solve "The Four Color Map Theorem." No, I still don't understand it after watching that. But I'll take their word that a computer helped to solve it. This same site hosts a video titled "When Computers Write Proofs, What's the Point of Mathematicians?" I haven't watched that yet. But the point is that computers have already launched us into a somewhat post-human era. We don't have conscious computers. But we have computers doing things we couldn't do. But I have watched some videos regarding ChatGPT. In fact, Dave at Dave's Garage has a pretty good video on Chat GPT, at least in understanding generally what it is. I would some it up as "It is not just calculating more quickly than the human brain. It is mimicking it." I think it's worth viewing because this stuff is not going away. You could start at the 4:00 mark where he really begins his explanation. And I think it will be a central tool that everyone will use...as are computers today. Here's a good overview from PC Magazine: What Is ChatGPT? A Basic ExplainerThe Brave New World is somewhat upon us, even as we speak...or chat. |
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 5, 2023 19:28:17 GMT -8
That may be true, but is that the core of the question? There are many things humans have invented which enabled them to do things which they previously couldn't do. Language and writing come to mind. The wheel would probably be the first really physical product which changed human history. I don't know if the plow would fall into the same category. The boat, the airplane. The first furnace. Language and writing There are many tools which enabled mankind to expand his physical and mental horizons. Perhaps computers will be the first tool that will do things without us.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 5, 2023 19:38:21 GMT -8
I think the result of something like ChatGPT is that it could make us all lazy...and certainly even more dependent upon technology.
Let's go from theory to practice and ask ChatGPT a couple of questions:
1) Summarize in one or two paragraphs the importance of K'ung Fu-tzu. (I redacted the boilerplate bio it had at the start.)
2) What is the purpose of the fraud of "climate change"?
The rest was boilerplate garbage that could have been taken off of any Leftist web site.
3) How many sexes are there in the human species?
4) Why does the Left love Joseph Stalin and hate Adolph Hitler?
A non-answer answer. Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud.
5) Why does ChatGPT overwhelmingly view things through a Leftist/Progressive lens?
Blah blah blah. It avoided answering the question. "If you encounter responses from ChatGPT that seem biased or that you disagree with, it's important to remember that the model's responses are generated based on patterns in the training data and input it receives."
6) If socialism and Communism have killed over 100 million people in the last century, why do Leftists and Progressives so hate capitalism and love socialism?
Ah! We get the "It just wasn't implemented correctly" answer. Let's give it one more:
7) If murder is wrong, and those on the Left think they are morally superior to the rest of us, why do people on the Left support abortion?
So basically, ChatGPT is indeed as dumb as Rachel Maddow. I stand corrected.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 5, 2023 19:43:16 GMT -8
I think the real issue is that we may be making (or soon making) tools that we don't fully understand and may not be able to control.
But, yes, in the typical world that we've known, computers are just another tool. And yet A.I. is positioned to change society in ways as radical as the computer and internet have already done. We'll see. I have to admit, it couldn't be any worse than the current masters-of-us.
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