South Park and Super intelligent Machines

This is a link to a potentially interesting, but not even wrong (because it is ignorant about Capital re-switching problems) Paper (pdf) about 'the microeconomics of cognitive returns' on self-improving machines which thus become super-intelligent- (FOOM)

What philosophical problems does such speculation give rise to?

Suppose there is a single A.I. with a 'Devote x % of resources to Smartening myself' directive. Suppose further that the A.I is already operating with David Lewis 'elite eligible' ways of carving up the World along its joints- i.e. it is climbing the right hill, or, to put it another way, is tackling a problem with Bellman optimal sub-structure. Presumably, the Self-Smartening module faces a race hazard type problem in deciding whether it is smarter to devote resources to evaluating returns to smartness or to just release resources back (re-switching) to existing operations. I suppose, as part of its evolved glitch avoidance, it already internally breeds its own heuristics for Karnaugh map type pattern recognition and this would extend to spotting and side-stepping NP complete decision problems. However, if NP hard problems are like predators, there has to be a heuristic to stop the A.I avoiding them to the extent of roaming uninteresting spaces and breeding only 'Speigelman monster' or trivial or degenerate results. In other words the A.I's 'smarten yourself' Module is now doing just enough dynamic programming to justify its upkeep but not so much as to endanger its own survival. At this point it is enough for there to be some exogenous shock or random discontinuity on the morphology of the fitness landscape for (as a corollary of dynamical insufficiency under Price's equation) some sort of gender dimorphism and sexual selection to start taking place within the A.I. with speciation events and so on. However, this opens an exploit for systematic manipulation by lazy good for nothing parasites- i.e. humans- so FOOM cashes out as ...oh fuck, it's the episode of South Park with the cat saying 'O long Johnson'.
So Beenakker solution to Hempel's dillemma was wrong- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempel's_dilemma- The boundary between physics and metaphysics is NOT the boundary between what can and what cannot be computed in the age of the universe' because South Park resolves every possible philosophical puzzle in the space of what?- well, the current upper limit is three episodes.

Self ownership, Extractive introjection & Jacking it in San Diego.

How does the Libertarian notion of Self-ownership differ from a set of Legally enforceable Entitlements all reasonable people would loosely agree 'amounted to the same thing'?
Ownership unlike Entitlement does not discriminate between animate and inanimate objects- a rock or a stone can own things in Anglo Saxon Law- as can abstract as opposed to concrete things. Since Libertarians tend to have rocks for brains and since their notions of Community are pretty sketchy and utterly abstract, they naturally prefer the notion of Ownership to Entitlement.

There are other differences.  Assignability and survivability (i.e. posthumous rights) characterize something owned. Thus, in America, 'the right to publicity' is considered something assignable and survivable such that my heirs, assignees, or Receiver in Bankruptcy can derive a revenue from the sale of naked pics of yours truly. However, my 'right to privacy' is not similarly assignable and survivable such that though I can claim damages against you for illegally downloading naked pics of me, my heirs or assignees have no such right absent some overt inter vivos  action on my part such that it is clear that I am claiming protection under 'the right of publicity' not privacy.

The concept of 'Self ownership' gives rise to a rabid sense of Entitlement and may, assuming some degree of rationality and sense of Reality- also militate for voluntary recognition of a Legal system of Entitlements with two different types of rights- ones which are justiciable only by the possessor of some corporeal thing, or his agent or assignee- and others which are justiciable independent of the desire of volition of the person in whom the Entitlement is vested. Both types of rights give rise to allocational and dynamic inefficiencies provided the ability to evaluate the value of, or otherwise exercise, those rights are unequal hence giving rise to Agent-Principal hazards. With property type rights, the very fact that it is of the essence of the right that a local monopoly is created militates for allocative inefficiency and strategic behavior. But this does not mean that Entitlement type rights are free of defect.
The law relating to Minors or vulnerable people lacking competency, is an example where the Legal Guardian can exercise rights and claim damages on the part of a person who, it may be, has no interest in pursuing legal redress.

This creates an Agent-Principal hazard- as in Munchausen's syndrome, where the Guardian exaggerates or inflicts injuries for some selfish motive. More generally, there is a type of psychic injury, which the psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas has termed 'extractive introjection' whereby the Agent confiscates the Principals' genuine injury for the sake of Publicity or some other sort of 'Rent' accruing to the role of Spokesman.

Much 'moral entrepreneurship' is genuine but much is self-seeking, strategic or downright corrupt. In the same way that 'extractive introjection' hollows out the vulnerable person- whose pain has been confiscated leaving them with less inwardness and moral agency than before- so too does it 'hollow out' the manicly protesting pseudo-Guardian who ultimately, South Park tells us, ends up 'naked & jacking it in San Diego.'

As regular readers of my blog will know, I only ever advert to such arcane topics as feature in this post when I've gotta killer hangover and the only thing that helps me keep my Cocopops-marinated-in-bloody-mary down is pretending I'm the ghost of John Rawls & Ronald Dworkin just got a sneak peek behind my veil of ignorance and is laughing himself silly. 

Still- to get to the 'kids, what I've learnt today' bit- the fact remains that self-ownership of a property type is vitiated by hysteresis based repugnancy costs (the dead dictate the disposition of living things) whereas, on the other horn of the dilemma, the hyper-inflationary bias of Entitlement theory hollows out the concept of self-hood from within.

Ontology, South Park and the turd in the microwave.

South Park's Imaginationland trilogy solved the problem of Meinongian objects- at least within its own topos- but what does it mean to say that South Park will soon be off the air?  Its last episode, till Fall, yielded the Erigenan epiphany that all things that are are shite- turds in the microwave to be precise- but did so by foregrounding itself as shite. But this raises the problem of what doing Ontology does to that Ontology once done. Especially if its completion and being done with Ontology arises out of its being done with itself- like that turd in the microwave previously referred to.
True, South Park isn't yet off the air- and only once it is will the episode under discussion acquire the property it ascribes to itself- but since, in a sense, every subsequent episode will be posthumous and done after being done with itself- it already is because it isn't.
In this sense, South Park exorcises by backward induction its own hauntology and possibility of deconstruction thus becoming truly outside ontics and hence purely deontic. But precisely for that reason- i.e. its being done with its own topos by having previously solved its own Ontological question- its metaphorical method is turned to pure Metatronics.
In this sense, already, every one of its episodes is that Elijah whose return, in the curious syntax of the conclusion to the Old Testament, turns the hearts of fathers to their sons and the hearts of sons to their fathers, lest God strike the land with a curse.

South Park is dying. If I really love it, I'll let it go.

Honestly, I hadn't heard anything. No rumors of trouble with Studio bosses or artistic differences or some Yoko fucking Ono. South Park is dying. Today's Tween wave thing was the beginning of the long goodbye. Apparently they're contractually obligated to produce 7 more episodes. After that- nothing.

I know I'm supposed to be growing up along with Stan and Kyle and Mr. Marsh and his wife who have come to the final parting of ways. I know, I too should now be able to see that South Park, qua South Park, is just another turd in the microwave and that this has always been its teaching.
Once I see that, I too will be free. Perhaps that's why I've never been in love. Never known I've been in love. Because only now do I understand I didn't just love South Park- I lurved it. It took my virginity. I gave it my whole heart. But, like all composite things, it too must perish. But not before leaving me with this final Erigenian teaching that love- this unexpected gift so close to the end of the middle of my life, or the beginning of its end- love too is shite, for all things that are are shite. And somehow that makes everything okay.

South Park is dying. If I really love it, I'll let it go.