Theory of Everything

First off, I must admit that I have never read a science fiction book. My high school physics teacher attempted to introduce us to the genre by making it a class assignment: give a PowerPoint presentation on a science fiction book. Of course, I chose How To Build A Time Machine by Paul Davies, which ultimately concluded that time machines were a captivating improbability. But I do have an appreciation for movies like The Matrix and unsolved astrophysical quandaries (like string theory), so I didn’t feel completely out of the loop.

In fact, during both of the panel sessions I was able to draw a lot of parallels to theatre. Briefly, theatre and philosophy have been at odds since Plato’s time (and thanks in large part to Plato’s The Republic). The conflict fundamentally boils down to the difference between wisdom and knowledge: knowledge being facts and information, while wisdom is learnt through experience. Theatre gives you wisdom through the experience of other characters, while philosophy sadly gives you ineffectual knowledge.

However, intelligence in today’s society suggests a vast accumulation of knowledge. Nathan Schurr, who sat on the first panel, is a graduate student currently funded by the government to research teamwork between artificial intelligence (agents) and humans. As a side note, the term agent for artificial intelligence connotes for me the agents in The Matrix; so when he talked about agents and humans working together I immediately thought “Fat chance!” They might want to consider revising their terminology.
After the panel I approached Mr. Schurr and asked him, “Why aren’t scientists tackling artificial wisdom instead of artificial intelligence?” In short, his response was that wisdom is hard to program. Agents are great at gleaning pertinent information during a crisis, but are unsure as to which strategies to implement. They can’t choose. Inevitably, that’s where the human falls into the equation, to make these decisive decisions. Also, artificial intelligence is versatile; it can be attached to a robot, palm pilot, computer, whatever. Another intriguing question is “Would human/agent interaction improve if the human didn’t know he was communicating with an agent?”

In the second panel, the speakers talked about how science fiction evokes the sublime. Like the images from the Hubble telescope of nebulae, which are basically playful coloring books for scientists, who make numerous aesthetic decisions in choosing their color palette to represent different gases. These breathtaking images of outer space often reflect the paintings of the American west; probably stemming from or feeding the slogan, “Space: the final frontier.”

This dialectic struggle between the individual and the cosmos reminds me of Nietzsche’s Apollonian vs. Dionysian. The idea of being swallowed whole by the divine, a complete loss of individuality, which these images evoke, falls into the realm of the god of theatre, Dionysius. Then again while you’re swimming in the euphoria of nonexistent self-consciousness (proclaiming, “Objective reality is a lie!”), you’ll find yourself only moments later stressing out over a midterm or some boy. In conclusion, when attempting to comprehend the divine, it is a never-ending cycle of hope and despair, originality and rhetoric.