Imaginary Magnitude Read online

  A computer at this (linguistically very low) level of development knows no limits to its word formation, and the economy of expression characteristic of machine thinking, which subsequently created nonlinear deduction and the so-called "star" concepts of terraphysics, here appears as a proposal for putting the resident terms of a language, such as "word" and "wordy," on an equal footing with the like of "wordwork" (verse), "wordiot" (graphomaniac), "wordsteal" (plagiarism), "wordlouse" (cad), etc. For these very reasons the lexical generator proposes that "dogmobile" should denote an Eskimo sledge team, and "disc-comfort" the pain occasioned by a slipped disc.

  Formerly known as monoetes, the one-word creations cited above were produced in part by imperfect programming, and in part by the intention of programmers interested in the word-formative expansion of machines; yet it is only proper to observe that many such neologisms only seem to be of machine provenance. For example, we cannot be certain whether "lunatic asylum" was christened "dimocracy" by a computer, or whether it was a human humorist's joke.

  Monoetics is an important field because we can discern in it those creative features of machines which disappear from our field of vision in subsequent phases. It is the threshold of bitistics, or its kindergarten. This output has a reassuring effect on many a student who, prepared for contact with texts concise to the point of incomprehensibility, is relieved to discover such innocent and amusing works. But this satisfaction does not long suffice! The unintentional humor arises from a collision of categories which we consider to be permanently separate; the reinforcement of programs by categorial principles carries us into the next sphere of bitistics (though still called prebitistics by some researchers), in which machines begin to unmask our language, tracking down in it turns of speech which are the consequence of man's bodily structure.

  Thus, for example, the notions of "elevation" and "abasement" derive—according to the machine interpretation, not ours!—from the fact that every living organism and therefore man as well has to counteract universal gravitation by means of active muscular exertion. The body appears as the link through which the gravitational gradient leaves its impression in our language. A systematized analysis of speech, laying bare the whole extent to which similar influences have been uprooted not only in the world of ideas but even in syntax, can be found at the end of Chapter 8 of Volume II. In Volume III, on the other hand, we introduce models of languages projected bitically for environments different from that of Earth, as well as for nonanthropoidal organisms. One of them, invart, was used by mentor II in composing Lampoon upon the Universe (mentioned below).

  B. Mimesis is that field of bitic production which has revealed to us hitherto unknown mechanisms of intellectual creation, while also becoming a truly formidable invasion of the world of man's intellectual works. It arose historically as an incidental and unforeseen phenomenon during the machine translation of texts. The latter requires the processing of information step by step and in various ways. The closest contacts ought to occur between systems of ideas, and not of words or sentences; machine translations from language to language are superb nowadays because the aggregates which carry them out are not collective but merely "aim," as it were, at the same original text from various sides. The text is subjected to "extraction" in machine language (the "go-between"), and it is only from these "pressings" that the machines make a projection into "inner conceptual space." Within it an "n-echo Body of Abstractions" emerges which is to the original as an organism is to an embryo; the projection from that "organism" into the language of translation gives the expected result.

  However, this process takes a more intricate course than we have described here, because, for one thing, the quality of translation is constantly checked by re-translation (translation backward from the "organism" to the language of the original). So the translating aggregate is composed of machines which are able to "communicate" solely through the process of translation. H. Ellias and T. Semmelberg made the astonishing discovery that the "n-body of Abstractions," being a text already interpreted—that is, assimilated seman-tically by a machine—can be seen as a whole if that abstract creation is put into the requisite electron appliance (a semascope).

  Visually, the "body of abstractions" nestled in its conceptual continuum appears as a complicated, many-shelled, aperiodic, and variably synchronous mass, woven of "burning threads"—that is, billions of "significant curves." These curves together yield the plane of cuttings of the semantic continuum. Turning to the illustrations in Volume II, the reader will find a series of semascopic photographs which produce a rather striking effect when brought together and compared. As they demonstrate, the quality of the original text has a definite equivalent in the "aesthetically" of the geometric "semature"!

  Furthermore, even with little experience one can distinguish at sight discursive texts from artistic (belle-tristic, poetic) ones; religious texts almost without exception strongly resemble artistic ones, whereas philosophical ones reveal a wide diversity in this, the visual, aspect. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that projections of texts deep in the machine continuum are their expansively set meanings. Texts which are strongly collective as regards logic appear as tightly bound bundles and clusters of "significant curves." (This is not the place to explain their connection with the sphere of recurring functions, which is discussed in Chapter 10 of Volume II.)

  Texts of literary composition of an allegorical character present the most original aspect: their central sema-ture is usually surrounded by a pale "halo," and at both its sides ("poles") one can see "echo repetitions" of meanings, recalling at times the interferential images of luminous rays. As we shall mention again, this congealed phenomenon made possible the criticism of constructs—of all of mankind's intellectual structures and his philosophical systems first and foremost.

  The first work of bitic mimesis to gain world renown was a novel by Pseudodostoevsky, The Girl (Devochka). It was composed during a phase of relaxation by a multimember aggregate whose assignment was to translate into English the collected works of the Russian writer. In his memoirs the distinguished scholar of Russian literature John Raleigh describes the shock he experienced upon receiving the Russian typescript of a composition signed with what he took to be the singular pseudonym of hyxos. The impression which the work created on this Dostoevsky expert must have been truly indescribable in its intensity, if, as he admits, he doubted whether he was in a conscious state! The authenticity of the work was for him beyond a doubt, although he knew Dostoevsky had not written such a novel.

  Despite what the press disseminated on this topic, the translating aggregate, having digested all of Dostoevsky's texts together with his Diary of a Writer and the literature on the subject, had in no way constructed a phantom, a model, or a machine reincarnation of the personality of a real creator.

  The theory of mimesis is very complex, but its fundamentals—as well as the circumstances which made possible that phenomenal display of mimetic virtuosity— can be expressed simply. Neither the person nor the personality of Dostoevsky was of any interest to the machine translator (nor could they be, after all). It comes about that, in the space of meanings, a work of Dostoevsky's develops into a curved mass, recalling in its overall structure an open torus, that is, a "broken ring" (with a gap). Thus it was a relatively simple task (for machines, of course, not for people!) to close that gap, inserting the missing link.

  It may be said that a semantic gradient runs along the main thoroughfare of Dostoevsky's works, and that The Girl is its continuation and at the same time its termination. It is precisely because of these interrelations of the great writer's works that the experts have no doubt whatsoever as to where—between which novels—De-vochka belongs. The leitmotiv, already marked in Crime and Punishment, intensifies in The Possessed, and between this work and The Brothers Karamazov a "gap opens." It was a success as well as a happy coincidence of mimesis, for later attempts to stimulate the translators to analogous creation as regards other author
s never again produced such magnificent results.

  Mimesis has nothing to do with the biographically detectable sequence in which a given writer's works originated. Thus Dostoevsky left unfinished manuscripts of a novel, The Emperor, but the machines could never have "thought it through" or "got on its track," because in this novel he attempted to exceed his own capabilities. As for The Girl, apart from the original version by hyxos, there now exist variants prepared by other aggregates, though the experts consider them less successful; the differences in composition have naturally turned out to be considerable, though in all these apocryphas there is an identical problem—one leading to a heart-rending climax characteristic of Dostoevsky —that of holiness grappling with the sins of the flesh.

  Everyone who has read The Girl is aware of the reasons which would have made it impossible for Dostoevsky to write it. Of course, having said all that, we are —by the standards of the traditional humanities—uttering downright blasphemy, inasmuch as we are equating machine forgery with authentic creation. But bitistics is an inevitable infringement on the canon of classical values and evaluations, wherein the authenticity of the text is of paramount importance. We are contriving to prove that Devochka constitutes a work of Dostoevsky's to a higher degree than his own text, The Emperor.

  The general rule of mimesis is as follows: if a given author has completely exploited what is for him the central configuration of creative meanings (the "life obsession")—or, in bitic nomenclature, "the space of its sematures"—mimesis will supply nothing further on this axis save derivative (decadent, echo) texts. If, however, he has left something "unsaid" (e.g., for biological reasons, because he died prematurely, or for social ones, because he did not dare to), mimesis can produce the missing links. To be sure, the final success will also be decided by the topology of a given writer's sematures; in this regard we differentiate between divergent and convergent sematures.

  The ordinary critical study of texts gives no firm grounds for judging the likelihood of mimesis in a given instance. Thus literature specialists reckoned on a mimetic continuation of Kafka's authorship, but their hopes were frustrated; we have obtained nothing except the final chapters of The Castle. Anyway, for bitists the Kafka casus is cognitively especially valuable, since an analysis of his semature shows that with The Castle he had already reached the limits of creative possibilities: further work carried out at Berkeley on three occasions revealed how the machine apocryphas "drown" in the falling, multishelled, "echoed reverberations of meaning" which constitute the objective expression of the extreme position of this authorship. In point of fact, what readers instinctively take to be "felicity of composition" is the result of an equilibrium termed semas-tase; if the allegorizing is too preponderant, a text tends to be unreadable. The physical equivalent is a space so vaulted that a voice resounding in it undergoes distortion to the point of being smothered in the torrent of echoed reverberations from every direction.

  Such limitations of mimesis are undoubtedly favorable to culture. After all, publication of The Girl created panic not only in literary circles. There was no lack of Cassandras predicting that ''mimesis would crush culture," and proclaiming that the "machine invasion" into the heart of human values was more destructive and nightmarish than any imaginary ' 'invasions from outer space."

  These people feared the use of a creative services industry, turning culture into a nightmare paradise where any consumer, acting on any whim whatsoever, could receive masterpieces instantly produced by machine succubi and incubi unerringly transformed into the spirit of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Dostoevsky, as a result of which our hierarchies of values would have collapsed, since we would have been wading through masterpieces as through trash. Fortunately we need give this apocalypse no credit at all.

  Once it had become an industry, mimesis led to unemployment, but solely among manufacturers of trivial literature (sci-fi, porn, thrillers, and the like): there indeed it supplanted humans in the supply of intellectual goods—which ought not to cause an honest humanist too much despair.

  C. The critique of systematic philosophy (or sopho-crisis) is recognized as a transitional zone between areas of bitistics designated cis-human and transhuman. This critique, based in principle on a logical reconstruction of the writings of the great philosophers, is derived (as already mentioned) from mimetic procedures. It is only right to remark that it has earned itself a reputation for vulgarity, thanks to the use made of it by certain profit-hungry manufacturers. So long as the ontologies of the Aristotles, Hegels, and Aquinases could be admired in the British Museum alone, like glittering ''cocoon masses" set (luminously) in blocks of dark glaze, it was difficult to detect any harm in this spectacle.

  Now, however, when the Summa Theologica or Critique of Pure Reason can be purchased in any size or color, this amusement has acquired an offensive aftertaste. It behooves one to wait patiently until the fashion passes, like thousands of others. Obviously, anyone who has bought Kant Set in Amber cares little for the revelations with which the bitic apocrisis has provided us in philosophy. We shall not summarize the results here, but refer the reader to the third volume of the monograph; suffice it to observe that semascopy indeed constitutes a new aptitude for looking at the great intellectual totalities—an aptitude unexpectedly bestowed on us by the spirit of the machine.

  Nor should we disregard the fact that the assurances of the greatest scientists concerning the role of the guiding star which the pure aesthetics of a mathematical construct played in their exploratory efforts—assurances to which we have hitherto had to give blind credence—can now be verified visually, taking their congealed thoughts in hand, to bring them closer to our eyes. Of course there are no automatic consequences for the further development of thought from the fact that ten volumes of higher algebra or the age-old war between nominalism and universalism can be crystallized into a fist-sized piece of glass. Bitic creativity impedes human creation as much as it simplifies it.

  One thing, however, can be said with absolute certainty. Before the use of machine intelligence no thinker or author ever had such ardent, unfailingly attentive, and uncompromising readers! That is why, in the cry that burst from the lips of a certain first-rate thinker when he was offered, by mentor v, a critique of his work—"This one has really read me!"—there was so much of the frustration typical of the present day, when humbug and perfunctorily acquired erudition replace genuine knowledge. The thought that has haunted me while writing these works—that it is not human beings who will be my most conscientious readers—is indeed full of bitter irony.

  D. The term apostasy given to the last bitic sphere appears felicitous. Never has deviation from that which is human gone so far, nor has it been incorporated into a line of reasoning with such cool passion. For this literature, which has taken nothing from us apart from language, humanity appears not to exist.

  The transhumans' bibliography surpasses all the other domains of bitistics already mentioned. It is the meeting point of paths secretly marked out in earlier fields. We can in practice divide apostasy into two levels, lower and upper. Access to the lower level is generally well maintained; the upper one is barred to us. That is why our fourth volume is a guide to the lower state almost exclusively. This volume is a meager extract from an enormous body of writing, hence the difficult position of the foreword writer, who is supposed to introduce even more concisely something which is already essentially an abridgement. Yet such an introduction appears necessary, as a view from above; otherwise, lacking a broader perspective, the reader will easily get lost in the difficult terrain, like a wanderer in mountains whose highest summits cannot be properly judged at short distance. Keeping in mind such recommendations and doubts, from each of the divisions of apostasy I shall take a single bitic text, not so much to interpret it as to attune the reader, as it were, to the process of apostasy.

  We shall therefore confine ourselves to samples taken from the following provinces of the lower state: an-timatics, terraphysics, and ontoma
chy.

  As an introduction to them we have the so-called Cogito paradox. The first person to pick up its trail was Alan Turing, an English mathematician of the last century who recognized that a machine behaving like a person cannot possibly be distinguished from a person in mental respects—in other words, that a machine capable of conversing with a person must by necessity be credited with consciousness. We consider that other people have consciousness only because we ourselves perceive it. If we did not experience it, we would be unable to imagine anything under this concept.

  During the course of machine evolution it became evident, however, that an unthinking intellect can be constructed: it is used, for example, in an ordinary chess game program, which as we know understands nothing, does not care whether it wins or loses the match, and (in a word) unconsciously but logically beats its human opponents. What's more, it has been shown that when a primitive and undoubtedly "soulless" computer programmed to conduct psychotherapy asks a patient appropriate questions of an intimate nature in order to make a diagnosis and offer treatment, this machine makes a profound impression on its human interlocutors, as if it were a living person after all. This impression is so intense as sometimes to be felt even by the person who has done the programming—a professional who knows perfectly well that the mechanism in question possesses as much soul as a gramophone. The programmer may still take control of the situation—that is, may tear himself away from the growing delusion of being in contact with a conscious individual—by giving the machine the kind of questions or replies with which, given the limitations of the programming, it couldn't possibly cope.

  In this way cybernetics embarked on a course leading to the gradual extension and improvement of programs, through which, with the passage of time, it became a harder and harder task to "tear off the mask"—that is, to discover the mindlessness of the procedures emitted by the machine and, by precisely this means, to discover the projection compelling man to react. (This projection occurs unconsciously according to an assumption, ingrained in us by force of habit, that if someone consciously refers to our words and addresses himself to us sensibly, then that someone must be endowed with conscious intelligence.)