More Adams-esque Nonsense

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This was in the Dirk Gently TV show, so I don't know if Douglas Adams wrote it himself or it was inserted by the TV writers, but it is fully in line with Douglas Adams BS:

Dirk at some point "realizes" that a woman he has met is actually his former professor's brain-dead daughter's body operating via a "downloaded" AI.

For the people who like this kind of nonsense, this is an acceptable story line, because it is "scientific."

Ok, let us suppose that "AI" is a real concept, and let us further suppose that human brains are a sort of computer.

Well, then, the original AI would have been a program running on some computer architecture... say, Intel x86... and then program was then "downloaded" onto the professor's daughter... so, wait:

Her brain implemented the x86 instruction set? Intel created human brains? And although it was severely damaged, it was fine again once it downloaded some new program?

The people who love this sort of nonsense would haughtily dismiss a story of demonic possession. But at least such a story is logically coherent: one spirit overmasters another spirit, and takes control of the bodily entity that the first spirit was supposed to control. Whether that has ever occurred or not, the narrative makes perfect sense.

As opposed to "he downloaded the AI created into his daughter's brain."

Which makes sense only to scientism ideologues.

Comments

  1. scineram5:47 AM

    Did they say it ran on a machine before? Maybe they cross compiled it to the human brain ISA. Brain damage could have been transient memory corruption without ECC or simply bit rot in cold storage.

    Just spitballing here.

    ReplyDelete

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