Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts—those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence—then why bother existing? Fortunately, computers have yet to match us in music or writing or dancing or even drawing—the lines are straighter, but that's not even the point, and good luck uploading an actual Why this complex, existential, quantum-theoretical, post-modern monolog? First, I find it comforting to think that scientists' efforts to negate themselves (and thus, the rest of us) are doomed to fail in matters that, um, matter. Second, do a
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Which is the most human of thoughts, of course, the concept of meaning. Which is also very predictable of humans. Just wait until quantum computing takes off. Just wait until they find that boson "god" particle. Just wait till they flip unmake existence somehow. Meaning, a human desire, as predictable and probable a pursuit as it is now, will become something they'll try to replicate—meaning, the thing itself, and not the pursuit.
And they'll fail, I think. It should make sense on paper: reality is something humans have yet to fully capture in art or mathematics due to obvious limitations; the right algorithm, then, should produce the most mathematically sound representation of reality and, therefore, meaning, if either of these things exist and are not, merely, human projections. But at least, like quarks and bosons and dark matter, reality and meaning will have an existence in theory, if not by direct observation, in nicely balanced equations, eventually reproducible in text or images via some crafty algorithms.
Here's why I think they'll fail. Aside from the more abstract idea that meaning finding itself negates itself (think of it this way: meaning and proof of meaning are matter and antimatter; when the two meet there is nothing), to produce human art a computer would have to find, feel, absorb reality to the point it is overcome, to the point it sobs for release. A computer perhaps could replicate every possibility but could never transfer the energy art requires to exist in the first place.
Proof? If proof exists of anything, this could be offered up as an example of it. Science Daily's title is apt:
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Automated Content Will Unmake Existence
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