simsa03Since Freud we talk about the three narcissistic wounds (I'd rather call them "insults"):
• cosmological: Earth is not the centre of the universe • biological: Man arose from the animal realm • psychological: The majority of personality rests on subconscious factors beyond conscious control.
There have been a lot of further "insults" suggested. I'd add to the list:
• communicative: Communication cannot give Man the assurance that the agent he communicates with is as human as he is.
A lot can be said to elaborate. Three points may suffice:
1) Response behaviour is not a sign of human-likeness; instead human-likeness is already presupposed and actualized (case by case) when the agent the human interacts with displays a certain complexity of response behaviour.
2) The point is not that a machine is "intelligent" when a human observer cannot distinguish its responses from that given by another human being (Turing Test). The point is that we cannot but project animateness and rationality onto all that gives a sufficiently complex response behaviour
3) That furthermore means: If we cannot but presuppose humanness when attributing intelligibility into response behaviour, then we cannot be sure that in self-ascription we can know that we are human instead of being a machine. (We may be machines that feel like being humans.)
I think that this "fourth narcissistic insult" has major consequences, and people already sense them, which is why they feel uncomfortable (even terrified) as well as fascinated when it comes to #AI and LLMs. (Soon) people cannot tell the difference between machines and Man.
At they same time they feel strangely Promethean, with the sting of having created a golem (Mary Shelley). But not the issue of his creation that stands up and rebels against its creator is the issue, but that he himself becomes indistinguishable from the tool he created. It is the disillusionment in the ability and peculiarity of Man that is the insult. That it takes so little to make Man, in brief: The Banality of Man.
• cosmological: Earth is not the centre of the universe • biological: Man arose from the animal realm • psychological: The majority of personality rests on subconscious factors beyond conscious control.
There have been a lot of further "insults" suggested. I'd add to the list:
• communicative: Communication cannot give Man the assurance that the agent he communicates with is as human as he is.
A lot can be said to elaborate. Three points may suffice:
1) Response behaviour is not a sign of human-likeness; instead human-likeness is already presupposed and actualized (case by case) when the agent the human interacts with displays a certain complexity of response behaviour.
2) The point is not that a machine is "intelligent" when a human observer cannot distinguish its responses from that given by another human being (Turing Test). The point is that we cannot but project animateness and rationality onto all that gives a sufficiently complex response behaviour
3) That furthermore means: If we cannot but presuppose humanness when attributing intelligibility into response behaviour, then we cannot be sure that in self-ascription we can know that we are human instead of being a machine. (We may be machines that feel like being humans.)
I think that this "fourth narcissistic insult" has major consequences, and people already sense them, which is why they feel uncomfortable (even terrified) as well as fascinated when it comes to #AI and LLMs. (Soon) people cannot tell the difference between machines and Man.
At they same time they feel strangely Promethean, with the sting of having created a golem (Mary Shelley). But not the issue of his creation that stands up and rebels against its creator is the issue, but that he himself becomes indistinguishable from the tool he created. It is the disillusionment in the ability and peculiarity of Man that is the insult. That it takes so little to make Man, in brief: The Banality of Man.