What if we get used to simulation?!
This article is a translation of a preceding one in german language, doing someone a personal favour.
In science there has been a paradigm since some time. It stated that meaning is created in mind or arises in it. The context of linguistic turn turned out to even intensify the paradigm. It was assumed that meaning and our world just originate from the use of language. Language was meant not to be deceived; the only way of accessing our world, it was a linguistic fixation. A whole branch of a particular discipline at first thought of a depiction theory. We were meant to have those depictions in our brains/minds which we just had to retrieve and rearrange them according to certain schemes (cf. for example Noam Chomsky). Today we got rid of that assumption, on the contrary we think of meaning being produced practically dealing with things themselves (cf. Ellrich 2005, p. 351).
Different quality of simulation
For some time now, Cybernetics, AI research and other disciplines eagerly try to assimilate mental performance and machine ressources. Not only (did) we have hope to produce computers one day which are able to merely simulate the human brain or immitate its efficiency but outbid it. While dealing with the topic those became aware of the fact that – at least up to now – even the most intelligent computer simulation cannot compete in terms of quality regarding reality.
Realism depends on habits
Nelson Goodman was not the first one to tell us that realism is a variable category. It has nothing to do with similarity (cf. Realismus ist…, german). Whether we think of something as realistic or not it depends heavily on our cultural background we grow up in. We could illustrate that fact by looking at our history. We would then discover that drawings we thought of to be realistic in the Middle Ages, today only appeal to us in a grotesc way. We remember experiences from the very beginning of cinema. People that had not been used to photography for years and the first moving images, they fled from projection rooms, screaming, because they had anxieties a train on the silver screen moving into their direction could perhaps pop out of the canvas. We could either take a diachronic look to the category of realism and will find that defining what is realistic and what is not is not to determine definitely.
Will we accustom ourselves to simulation?
We know photography and while dealing with the medium we discover that it is able to show something to us that actually does not correspond to reality. Among other things, the technique of photography makes use of elements of the central perspective (it is the same with realistic painting). Imagine a photograph of a huge building. Geometric relations, as they are depicted on the photograph, do not correlate those ones which we percept with the combination of eyes and brain, when we would stand in front of the building ourselves. We are virtually outwit. But we are outwit in a very superior way – would we not know about that, we won’t be able to detect deception of our senses.
Just this particular fact, with others, makes me believe that one day we will accustom ourselves to simulation and the quality of it. We will no longer be able to distinguish between simulation and our real environment. Processes which comprise many areas of life and which, along centuries, proceed in the same way. On the one hand we tend to become accustomed to things, even if we dismissed them at times of their introduction. On the other hand, on the way, in search of perfect simulation (illusion) we produce a bunch of commodities which in the first place enable us to accustomisation. I do not evaluate procedures but rather I determine, and I believe that our notions of the future often fulfil themselves because we spent so much energy on their occurence (cf. this article, german). Much of our world appears to us as a question of belief and accustomisation if far away from religion. I believe it is not even risky to formulate it like this: One day, things like disembodied sex (cybersex which substitutes real sexual intercourse) or different matters will substitute todays status quo.
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Tags AI, brain, Chomsky, Cinema, Computer, Cybernetics, Cybersex, depiction, future, Goodman, Kurzweil, language, linguistic turn, linguistics, meaning, Medium, mind, paradigm, philosophy, Photography, Realism, research, Simulation
Kategorie Media, Science · Autor Alexander Trust · Keine Kommentare
