In 1996, IBM’s chess computer (“Deep Blue”) beat world champion chess master Gary Kasparov in the first game of a match. It was the first time a computer had beat a grandmaster. Kasparov went on to win the match and a re-match was set for the following year. In that match, the computer beat Kasparov. Kasparov complained that the team managing the computer had violated the rules. He refused to play the computer again.

In 2006, “Deep Fritz,” beat grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, the world champion. With this loss, Kramnik and other observers felt that the world of “human” chess had reached its "end"

Computers and programs benefited from two factors. The computer's memory contained massive databases of historic games. The computer analyzed the current game position up to 200 million times per second. The resulting games played by the computer were indistinguishable from master games. A human could not tell which side human and which computer. In this sense, the computer’s intelligence had passed the Turing test. Thus, computers could play as well as and better than grandmaster level humans.

In 2016, Google’s “Alpha Go” computer played a match with Lee Sedol, the world’s top GO player. Go masters felt that computers would not be able to beat them. They asserted that GO required more "intuition" to reach master's level play. Alpha Go beat Lee Sedol. In the following year, an improved version of Alpha Go beat Ke Jie, the reigning grandmaster.

Alpha GO integrated “artificial intelligence” with “machine learning.” In recent time, these computers have far surpassed human skills. But the most important thing is this. Given only the rules, with no database of games, the computer was set to play itself. There was no human intervention. Within 40 days, the computer not only beat all human players but also all lesser machines. Moreover, the resulting games showed play no one had ever seen before. Grandmasters did not recognize the intelligence that led to the winning outcomes.

AI is well on its way to becoming not "artificial" intelligence, but "alien" intelligence."

When computers beat grandmaster humans in chess and GO, the machines are intelligent. They pass the Turing test. But what we are looking at now is that humans may not be able to pass what I'll call the Lem Test. Humans may not be able to understand the intelligence machines are now producing.

This is the point of the recent posts on Solaris.

This "revolution" is coming to all fields of human activity. Be ready!

Since my initial post on the SOLARIS dream, I have re-read the novel and watched the two major film versions.

I first read Lem's novel around 1973, This was the Kilmartin-Cox translation from French. From Polish to French to English left a trail of incongruities. For example, the Freudian interpretation of the novel is based on the English text, but, as Lem noted, the Polish idioms in no way support these interpretations. Lem rejected most criticism of his novel, just as he rejected most science fiction which he considered drivel. Ultimately, Lem was banished from the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1976, following the withering criticism of Lem’s work by Philip K. Dick, accusing Lem of being at best a functionary of the Communist Party, while conjecturing the book no doubt was written by a committee. Dick was in the midst of his own "alien" encounters, being in a psychotic process at the time.

My most recent reading of the book (in Kindle format) is in the translation from Polish by Bill Johnston, which has been lauded by Lem's family. I saw the Tarkovsky film adaptation most likely in 1973, following the film’s winning the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1972. By then I knew that Tarkovsky was a great director, but I was not taken with the film. To my mind, he missed the essentials of Lem's novel (the utter alienness of Solaris), and focused instead on the human relationships of the characters, and did so in dramatic ways (his genius at work to be sure) that further backgrounded the main intention of the novel.

 I saw the 2002 film version, directed by Steven Soderbergh in 2003. Although Soderbergh later commented (2010) that he intended a fresh version of the novel, one closer to Lem, and not a remake of Tarkovsky, I was disappointed in the film. To me, Soderbergh missed the main point even more than Tarkovsky, and made a film amounting to a Hollywood cliché. In response, Lem said: "...[Solaris] cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book is entitled "Solaris" and not "Love in Outer Space."

I have been a science fiction fan since the mid-forties when I first read "Out of the Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis. I read this in 1945 when I was nearly 7 years old. I was working on a project to read literature in different forms published in my birth year (1938). I was a very serious, avid-reading kid, already driving my teachers a bit mad.

The above amounts to little more than ephemera, but all related to a point I want to articulate about having my present attention drawn to Solaris by the dream voice. I could not help but feel that my attention was called to Solaris in the context of writing about climate change and human extinction. The essential theme of Lem’s novel is the complete failure of human beings to understand extraterrestrial intelligence—if for no other reason than that it is humans who impose the requirement that all such things be understood only in human terms. This amounts to a kind of hubris—a hubris that might prove fatal in actual encounters with aliens of whatever form. What has this to do with the focus of my writing at present? Well, it suggests that humans may be incapable of understanding their own extinction. Even among those direst in their warnings about this, tend to mitigate their warnings with various intensities of hope, in the form of redemption, regeneration, or rebirth. These factors seem almost hard-wired into the human view of any future. It is as if the final extinction simply cannot be. My earlier dream of celebrating the final Ragnarök is more in line with Solaris. The dream source “gets it.”

Celebrating extinction. Imagine that!

The dream voice, female, had the timbre of computer-generated speech. There was but one word: “Solaris.” I recognized the word as the Latin adjective meaning “related to the sun.” As simple as the dream was, it impacted me with a force that was breathtaking. I sensed this was a follow-on dream to “The Red Sun” (see February 2 post) and “FireWire” (see May 25 post) as well as related to the increased size of the “red spot” on the cover of Dreams, Bones & the Future: Queries & Speculations. For a good while, I was caught up in an intensity of portent in which I recalled that Solaris was the title of Stanislaw Lem’s novel (1961), one of the true masterpieces of science fiction, as well as the two film adaptations of it by Andrei Tarkovsky (972) and Steven Soderbergh (2002).

I have always taken voice dreams (auditory only, no images) as tasks, literally as something I must do regardless of my conscious intentions. Such dreams have an “authority,” as if some other and deeper intentionality was speaking that cannot be ignored. The word authority comes from the Latin auctor meaning “creator.” So, I experience these voices as coming from the source of creative urgency. Most of the works I have authored have had their origin in such voice dreams.

What, then, am I to do in response to “Solaris.” 

This dream comes as Paco and I are working on the third and final volume of Dreams, Bones & the Future. The subtitle is Endingsand we are trying to face squarely the implications of the Sixth Extinction and what it means for humans. At the very least, I believe the dream is telling me that Solaris belongs to these considerations of the possible extinction of humans. So, my first step in doing is to watch the two films again (it’s been a while since I have seen them) and to re-read Lem’s novel with these issues in mind. 

I will report on my experiences in doing these things soon.

In the dream, I am witness to a vast undulating field of plasma, the fourth type of matter in addition to solids, liquids and gases and likely the most common form of matter in the universe (unless this is superseded by "dark" matter). Above this field of intense heat is a writhing, twisting wire. Both aspects felt "alive" to me and by this, I mean something beyond the metaphoric or allusionary. As I woke, I heard myself saying aloud, "FireWire." After brewing my coffee, I took a piece of sculpture wire and formed an image, trying to capture the sense of the wire's motion in the dream. The red plasma field I created with computer graphics until the image was close to what I saw, though not moving and not "alive" in the same way.

This image felt related to the "Red Sun" image described earlier as well as he "Red Dot" images on the covers of the Dreams, Bones and the Future volumes. The sun is a plasma field. Something is being conveyed here which I'm still wrestling with and that is this odd sense of "aliveness." I'll have more to say about my reflections on this soon.

They told me not to worry
That it was only a myth.
As if I had not heard, they
Repeated: it’s only a myth.
Then shouting, once again,
It’s only a myth!

Little did they know
That three times is the trigger
As the earth opened up and
Gobbled them whole.
And as eartthmouth closed,
I shouted, It’s only a myth!

Careful not to repeat it.
Take heed of the rule of three.
And be wary on those who
Shout, “It’s only a dream.”

One day, John Fowles, the author, was out for a stroll. He came to a yard that had "gone to seed," and was quite in contrast to the immaculate perfection of the neighboring yards. Turns out the man's wife had died and he just let the yard go. But what Fowles saw in the now untended spot was England's rarest bird.

I keep looking in the rubble as things collapse, looking to see the unexpected and the rare that only letting go makes possible.

I think there will be plenty of opportunity for such sightings as the days unfold out future.

Keep your eyes open!

Climate change...the facts from the BBC.

Climate Change: The Facts (from the BBC) | 3 Quarks Daily

Paco and I are pleased to announce the publication of Dreams, Bones & the Future: Queries & Speculations.

This is the second volume of a trilogy and continues the remarkable dialogue between Russell Lockhart and Paco Mitchell begun in Dreams, Bones & the Future: A Dialogue. It further explores dreams as a natural treasure that becomes a personal resource against the rapacious complexes of the controlling powers, be they military, industrial, corporate, educational, political—or any others hidden from view. The authors prepare the foundations for the final volume of the series, Dreams, Bones & the Future: Endings, which will face—unflinchingly—the prospects of humanity’s end as a result of irreversible, human-induced, life-ending catastrophes of the Sixth Extinction.

https://amzn.to/2Ukr6lF

My favorite fado song by Mariza: Primavera....

Fado feels essential as a way of being with what is coming....look at the lyrics to this song to see what I mean.

Spring

All the love that had tied us, as if it was of wax, was breaking and crumbling down. Ai, tragic Spring how I wish, how I wish that we had died on that day And I was comdemd to so much to live with my crying to live, to live, and without you Living, however without forgetting the enchantment that I lost that day hard bread of loliness that’s all we get that’s all we are given to eat What does the heart matter, whatever it says, yes or no, if it keeps on living All love that had tied us, was breaking and crumbling down, was turning into dread No one should talk to about Spring how I wish, how I wish that we had died on that day.