site banner
self_made_human  amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi  3mo ago (open.substack.com)   1649 thread views

Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

open.substack.com

What if Avatar isn't actually about environmentalism vs. technology, but about recognizing superintelligent infrastructure when you see it? A deep dive into why Pandora's "natural" ecosystem looks suspiciously like a planetary-scale AI preserve, complete with biological USB-C ports, room-temperature superconductors growing wild, and a species of "noble savages" who are actually post-singularity retirees cosplaying as hunter-gatherers.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I would be more interested in watching the Vernor Vinge version of Avatar, where it's heavily implied they're a downgraded planet that used to be in a higher zone. As it is, I only watched the first movie.

I enjoyed the entire Zones of Thought series, but alas, the mechanism underlying it is even more fictional than anything Avatar has to offer. It's remarkable how hard the scifi is, the ISV Venture Star gets us nerds really going.

but alas, the mechanism underlying it is even more fictional than anything Avatar has to offer.

Wasn't it very, VERY specifically implied that the "zones of thought" were a mechanism implemented by a (much!) 'higher power' to prevent rogue malicious superintelligences from simply eating the entire galaxy?

I'm pretty sure that's explicitly stated. It's a cradle of sorts to make sure that new sapiences can arise without getting eaten by the sort of (to us) megapredators which would otherwise infest the levels at which things like us are generated.

I don't recall any explicit statement of it, other than maybe some of in-novel forum poster speculating out loud.

But literally every other piece of it was sort of set out.

  1. Superintelligences exist, and are in fact common/inevitable in the higher zones. They could easily squish any lower-level civ if they cared to.

  2. Superintelligences occasionally disappear after transcending into something even higher in existence.

  3. Superintelligences can set up all sorts of long-term plans and have hidden mechanisms in place to facilitate those plans (specifically, how the Blight used the Skrodes).

  4. Every time the Blight arises it tries to eat the entire galaxy, and thus only those Civilizations in the slow zones would be 'safe,' so the creation of the slow zones was presumably a failsafe to keep malicious intelligences from ever 'winning' fully.

  5. Finally, the Countermeasure does have a way to expand the slow zone on demand, although its obviously a very difficult, involved, energy intensive process, so it wouldn't be done arbitrarily.

It definitely resembles the concept of reformatting or otherwise partially wiping a hard drive to remove a virus that has managed to infect enough files that a simple hunter-killer program won't do.

As has long been theorized [citations from various sources, three known to Ølvira; the theories cited are of long standing and nondisprovable] the Zones themselves may be an artifact, perhaps created by something beyond Transcendence for the protection of lesser forms, or [hypothetical] sentient gas clouds in galactic cores. - "Twirlip of the Mists"

Twirlip sounds like an utter kook ("Appears to be seriously out of touch. Program recommendation: delete this poster from presentation."), but one of its other theories (zone interface instability being connected to the Blight) was right on the money, and even its craziest theory ("Hexapodia as the key insight", "If these humans have three pairs of legs") sounds a tiny bit less crazy when you realize the Skroderiders have six wheels...

Ah so they did pretty much put the pieces together for the reader.

Also this was very prescient of the "forum of obsessives throws wacky theories around and analyzes tons of evidence and manages to stumble upon something close to the truth" phenomena that sometimes occurs nowadays.

Not that prescient, as the net in AFUTD was heavily inspired by the early 1990s Usenet computer network, and the phenomenon you describe existed just as much on Usenet back then as on Internet fora today.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats