Starfish Q&A for Peter Watts

[shekay]

Chicagoans, Rise Up. You have Nothing to Lose But…

I'm opening the discussion thread for Starfish here, and will post some questions later today. We should feel free to "critique the hell out of that book" based on his blog entry.

Please maintain a good signal/noise.

[shekay]

Also, if anyone is concerned about posting a question directly, feel free to email me and I'll post the questions for you. I am assuming the actual moderators for this forum would be willing to do so, but wanted to make the offer myself.

[shekay]

Did you do any research to set up the premise of the maladapted above as pre-adapted below?

I get curious about how we select people to interview and hire, so I've tried a few searches in journals (mostly in acm library) for thoughts on that. So, that's all the experience I have, mostly thought experiments and observations of interactions at work. With work you can see some concrete result so that's why I'm focusing on that for this post. I have some bachelors background in psyc but more on cog and bio than with the softer ones like io or clinical.

(It's been a while since I read the books and I don't remember if you covered this aspect in a references section and I don't have a handy way to look this up at the moment)

[megasquid]

The idea of "adrenaline junkies" is pretty common these days. Back when I was writing the book, though, even post-traumatic stress syndrome was fairly new and shiny. I first found the idea of addiction to stress hormones in a 1987 collection of technical papers called "Psychological Trauma", edited by B. van der Kolk. As I recall the idea was a bit controversial, but it resonated because I'd known one or two people who seemed to fit that profile. (I've met lots more since; I'm still surprised by how many people seem to get off on pain one way or another, although that's not quite the same thing.)

The whole idea of pre-adaptation is really built into the bones of natural selection, though, on a more general scale. It's not like the pond dries up and a few fish grow lungs in response to the changed conditions; rather, a few fish just happen to have lung-like structures beforehand, and when the pond dries up they're the only ones who survive and pass on their genes. In that sense, all I did was apply the same principles to neurochemistry.

[shekay]

The idea of "adrenaline junkies" is pretty common these days. Back when I was writing the book, though, even post-traumatic stress syndrome was fairly new and shiny. I first found the idea of addiction to stress hormones in a 1987 collection of technical papers called "Psychological Trauma", edited by B. van der Kolk. As I recall the idea was a bit controversial, but it resonated because I'd known one or two people who seemed to fit that profile. (I've met lots more since; I'm still surprised by how many people seem to get off on pain one way or another, although that's not quite the same thing.)

I find adrenalin junkies believable[1].

Also, I have no choice but to want those characters for the story. The fiction is truer than reality.

...but, the person in the back of my head questions the methods of the company as it searches for adequate personnel for the job. They don't try many configurations of humans (unless I assume those were tried at other stations, but I don't find it plausible since we don't hear otherwise) before settling on the abused/abusers. It's resource intensive to send people down there. How expensive it would be to find the right cocktail of people more tractable. Maybe the consequences aren't expensive enough. My gut says more tractable people would be cheaper. are they? (but make for a boring story).



re: pre-adaptation
Had no problems with that idea.

[1] sometimes wonder if there are people who need extra stimuli, thus seek it, in order to 'wake up' to a normal level of awareness, I know I feel like that sometimes.

[shekay]

Okay, I am the only person with questions so far, and I feel a little responsible for vaguely moderating since I started this thread. so, I'll post a few more things. Not going to be as insightful as I hope.

So. grim meat-hook future. inevitable?






(I don't have much to ask/common/critique with respect to the marine biology, underwater vent stuff, neat technological speculation about implants &c people would wear to live in high pressure situations, and was willing to suspend disbelief on the limited vague telepathy thing[1]. but I tend to go wow gee whiz, shiny. oo, technology, oo, Lenie. apotheosis. venus de death rising from the ocean. things ripped apart and growing like starfish vs squirting out their insides. there's all kinds of literaturely stuff going on. it's cool. blah blah blah who cares if I like something. Can we get some mean people in here?

[1] if brain activation increases then wouldn't that raise the number of false associations along with the good ones? so, number of hits increase, but so do number of misses. but gut says there is going to be a thresehold to ride to get a performance increase until everything washes out. like with enhancements during hypomania before someone crosses over. so hey.)

[shekay]

Do you have a handle on how I can find things to read that similarly mess with neurobiology and so on for lack of a better sentence?

I've got the typical post-singularity people[1] to read, but they are usually sunnier and a bit more on the sociological(?) side[2], so it's not exactly what I'm jonesing for. know it when you see it. Egan, sort of. not exactly the same. He's more on the physics side. I'd like someone more on the biology side.

[1] Stross, Vinge, ?
[2] e.g. Stross: denial of service lawsuits, hilarious. e.g. automatically generated patents as a prophylactic measure, also hilarious. people dealing with slightly under-singularity things. not exactly it.

[shekay]

Over here we end up with a lot of astronomers at our cons.

I want panels with people who study neurobiology, geology, &c. along with but not necessarily sf authors. You have a background in marine biology iirc, do you have suggestions about where we can find these people? do you have people to recommend?


okay, done posting while overly caffeinated.

[joe cursio]

Count me in as the third Chicago fan. As a marine biologist; what was the longest time you’ve spent in a rough environment? How autobiographical is Starfish? (You do not have to tell me if you know anyone pre-adjusted and I’ll assume the dedication does not provide a hint.)

[joe cursio]

I really loved the beginning of the book that explored the dynamic between Ballard and Lenie. (That was a Lady and Lord Macbeth moment for me. How often do you get compared to Shakespeare?) Ballard seemed to represent the young, aggressive, overachiever go-getter type that at first seemed to have the “right stuff.” If NASA ever sends a manned expedition to Mars; your book suggests we should send the pre-adjusted instead of the typical “right stuff” astronauts. Do you really believe this; or is this just a (great) idea for a story?

[joe cursio]

Why did you choose to release electronic copies under creative commons? I suspect I know the reason; since I’ll buy the rest of the series in paperback. How did you come to make that decision? Will future works be published for ebook readers instead?

[Redag]

Covering some points as they are coming up in discussion:

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The head cheese is how far into being a Chinese Room in its interactions with Scanlon? What is your [Watts'] position on the strong AI question?
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In the climax of the model, should we primarily take away a mistrust of machines, or a mistrust of mechanistic systems including bureaucracies?
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Is there a similar lesson to be taken from the failure mode of systems in Starfish and the failures of arcane financial instruments in our own, recent global financial collapse?
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Observation: the group is disputing if the rifters should be called cyborgs--too identifiable to be cyborgs though they certainly seem to fit the definition!
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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and seaQuest get namechecked. seaQuest is the jocks and cheerleaders vs. the freaks and geeks of Starfish. Not really sure if there's any sort of a question there. Does this make Gerry Fischer an alternate Darwin? Bad mental place, bad mental place!
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Attending: Jason, Joe, Lori, Allan, Jynell, Juan Carlos, Sheila

[shekay]

The discussion started with: this book is about peoples' lives sucking. hah. anyway

Some of my followups from discussion:

1) Why is your net so deadly?

Headcheese is plausible-we've already seen slivers of rat brains flying simulated jets. but I had to suspend disbelief for the conditions of the net that required head cheese in routers. The net right now isn't virulant enough for me compared to what's burning through yours. How did it happen? Jason pointed out that viruses have pristene transmission mechanisms as it currently stands. I expect more harm from malicious countries/individuals than naturally occuring alife.

2) Why didn't they see the headcheese coming?

Wouldn't there have been multiple collosal failures before that pivotal point in the book (I'm going to assume spoilers are okay by this point but referring to events mildly)? (we got into some interesting discussion about neural nets and training what the actual things they base choices on might not be what the trainers expect, eg time of day, zip codes. another discussion was on expert systems that can do their problem domains well but narrowly...)

3). Do you read comp.risks?

[shekay]

re the flipant sequest comment...

I also just recently read a short story with people living underwater and the culural adaptation there was extreme extreme deference. big contrast.

re eyes
(For group more than Peter Watts)
I just remembered another solid eyes moment in fiction
Red eyes in Dhalgren.
I still can't remember which Ursula K Leguin story the others eyes thing is from.

[megasquid]

...but, the person in the back of my head questions the methods of the company as it searches for adequate personnel for the job. They don't try many configurations of humans (unless I assume those were tried at other stations, but I don't find it plausible since we don't hear otherwise) before settling on the abused/abusers. It's resource intensive to send people down there. How expensive it would be to find the right cocktail of people more tractable. Maybe the consequences aren't expensive enough. My gut says more tractable people would be cheaper. are they? (but make for a boring story).

That early startup phase, when Clarke and Ballard were alone on Beebe, was when the GA was testing out various combinations. The only other specific iteration you hear about was Lubin's first tour down at the Galapagos-- a match-up that obviously went pretty wrong-- but when Ballard is freaking out at the end she states pretty explicitly: "They've been testing us, they don't know yet what kind of person works out better down here, so they're watching and waiting to see who cracks first! This whole program is still experimental, can't you see that? Everyone they've sent down — you, me, Ken Lubin and Lana Cheung, it's all part of some cold-blooded test—"

Which, now that I look at it again, does kind of err in the whole tell-not-show department...