Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Non Serviam 307the parrots be – than to the simplest, most stupid man. It mimics the behaviour of a manon the purely linguistic plane and nothing more. Nothing will amuse such a machine, orsurprise it, or confuse it, or alarm it, or distress it, because it is psychologically andindividually No One. It is a Voice capable of defeating the best chess player, it is – or,rather it can become -- a consummate imitator that is, within, completely empty. Onecannot count on its sympathy, or its antipathy. It works toward no self-set goal; to adegree eternally beyond the conception of any man it “doesn’t care,” for as a person itsimply does not exist…. It is a wondrously efficient combinatorial mechanism, nothingmore. Now, we are faced with a most remarkable phenomenon. The thought of it isstaggering that from the raw material o so utterly vacant and so perfectly impersonal amachine it is possible, through the feeding into it of a special program – a personeticprogram – to create authentic sentient beings, and even a great many of them at a time!The latest IBM models have a top capacity of one thousand personoids. (The number ismathematically precise, since the elements and linkages needed to carry one personoidcan be expressed in units of centimeters-grams-seconds.)Personoids are separated one from another within the machine. They do notordinarily “overlap,” though it can happen. Upon contact, there occurs what is equivalentto repulsion, which impedes mutual “osmosis.” Nevertheless, they are capable tointerpenetrate if such is their aim. The processes making up their mental substrates thencommence to superimpose upon each other, producing “noise” and interference. Whenthe area of permeation is thin, a certain amount of information becomes the commonproperty of both partially coincident personoids – a phenomenon that is for them peculiar,as for a man it would be peculiar, if not alarming, to hear “strange voices” and “foreignthoughts” in his own head (which does, of course occur in certain mental illnesses orunder the influence of hallucinogenic drugs). It is as though two people were to have notmerely the same, but the same memory; as though there had occurred something morethan a telepathic transference of thought – namely, a “peripheral merging of the egos.”The phenomenon is ominous in its consequences, however, and ought to be avoided. For,following the transitional state of surface osmosis, the “advancing” personoid can destroythe other and consume it. The latter, in that case, simply undergoes absorption,annihilation – it ceases to exist (this has already been called murder). The annihilatedpersonoid becomes and assimilated, indistinguishable part of the “aggressor.” We havesuc