On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 4:41 AM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

In THIS thread Greg N is the only other Greg so stop being obtuse

I'm not being obtuse. Simply being clear. You are "The Other Greg" because there's more than one and the other tends to post quite often.

> After struggling not to bust out laughing, I pointed out that if infants and toddlers were wired thusly, then they would never achieve a human sense of self, that they would be - for want of a better term - aliens.

>

Your knowledge of the future is superior to mine.

It's got nothing at all to do with future knowledge, but everything to do with human nature.

If you wire an infant or a toddler for reception of sensory signals from external sources, you are going to screw mightily with their ability to construct a sense of self that is recognizably human. Particularly in the case of the infant, they simply lack the experience to separate out their own sensory input sources from the new ones you're providing. The psychological effects might not be lead to psychosis, but they would definitely lead to STRANGENESS. You would be creating a transhuman race, not a human race.

Now, if creation of a transhuman race is your intention, that's all well and good.

But creation of a transhuman race is not what Traveller or the Dorsai novels or other classic science fiction has in mind.

> The Other Greg mistook my meaning entirely, going off on a strange jag about using politically correct language, that I should call them "extraterrestrial cultures," that the word "alien" was "so '70s."
>
> I replied by pointing out that my use of "alien" had nothing to do with location and everything to do with lack of humanity. That "alien" in this sense meant "not of previous human experience."
>
> It was at this point that The Other Greg began to get all nit-picky about the exact definition of "wired for" and even deny that he meant these modifications would be applied to infants and toddlers, insisting that he had only referred to adults receiving such modifications.
>

Richard, for shame!
You brought this up!
The record is there.

YOU brought it up by advocating "wired" youth, as you repeated again upthread . . .

On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 10:26 PM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

The original Question was dealing with the setting in the Tactics of Mistake (ToM) from the Dorsai series by Gordon R. Dickson, which is set in the late 22nd century. Its generic enough to be easily incorporated into the Traveller universe.

Yes, 'wired for' meant just that, to introduce a pre-natal capacity for interfacing with post-3yo capability to learn use of devices that by adulthoot may be combat droids.

Except that - curiously - this comment CHANGES what you actually wrote much earlier . . .

On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 2:21 AM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

But its the late 22nd century.
I would expect that by this time people would be wired for drone control from birth, and for group interactive awareness from the age of three; I see what the family sees.

While you do not flatly state "All three year olds will be able to see everything their other family members see," this is STRONGLY implied in the above. You make no effort to specify otherwise. If you MEANT otherwise (which I STRONGLY doubt), then it was your responsiblity to clearly say so.

> Never mind the fact that neural pathways (*especially* if biological) which were left UNUSED for 18 years in a brain that is growing and changing continually from infant to adult would cease to have any useful connections by the time you needed these.

You mean in the way that what was thought to be 95% 'junk' DNA turns out to be vital to our being?

NO.

I mean in the way that dendrites and other neural connections in our brains are always growing and changing. The reason we "forget" something seems to be because our brains lose track of any data linkages which they don't routinely use. If a particular data linkage has NEVER been used, then why should a brain be able to find and use it for the first time, years later?

You don't know what will be 'the fact' 150 years from now.

Neither do you. But you are ignoring current knowledge of how the brain works (for instance, by posting that it didn't use electricity in any form) and just appear to be assuming technology will discover a way to do whatever it is you need it to do.

Which is REALLY weird, considering your earlier explosive posts denying that higher technology can solve every problem.

> And also never mind the fact that the original reason he proposed this early wiring was to GET AROUND the need to implant and train someone in the use of these controls AS AN ADULT.
>

I DID NOT suggest " implants" and training was never discussed.

It is true that you never used the word "implants" but you do assume training.

And you ASSUME that future young school children are communicating through "nural networks."

Forgive me if I find the combination of the above a tad ODD.

However I can tell you that when consulting Army on testing a tactical training application in 96' I had never seen before, it took me about an hour to work out its features and point out a significant bug. Training isn't always beyond the trainee.

Depends on the bug. If it was a programming bug (and not related to tactics) then it's certainly possible that someone who was primarily a programmer would spot something that a person who was only secondarily a programmer had missed.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester