Braces are also intelligent
Original Source (Zeit 2005) Translated by Robert Boettcher in April 2014
Science
Braces are also intelligent
Actually the 83-year old Stanislaw Lem never wanted to give an Interview again. The Polish Author was fed up with being pushed into the Science-Fiction-Category. Today the former visionary believes, that many of his earlier inventions are simply illusory. First Interview with Stanislaw Lem in Cracow
Mr. Lem, when I wanted to ask you how you are in Polish, I could use the phrase "Jak leci?" . But that doesnt mean "How are you?" but literally translated "How do you fly?"
Lem: Well – first of all I am doing fine. Thanks. But you are right. In almost all european Languages one asks: "How are you? or "How is it going?" All very earthbound terms. Only Polish uses that strange airy form of asking for ones wellbeing. Why that developed ethimologically like that in Polish, I have no idea.
One could almost assume, behind the question "How do you fly?" hides a deep verbal bow of the Polish Language in front of the Writer Stanislaw Lem. After all many of your books treat Flying and high-flying thoughts.
Lem: No, what are you thinking about. There is the theory, that all languages are in their depths very much alike each other. This most probably can be deduced back to your physicalness. There are in Polish also terms which reference the body first. Take for example a german word such as "begreifen". The respective polish word doesnt only mean that, but literally "clasp". In Polish the "Begreifen" is more than a superficial touching of the matter, it is much more an assimilation of the material.
There, where the German only grasps, the Polish clasps it once and for all. But I please, not to draw criminological deductions from that.
Do you have an idea, how the human language could have come into existence?
Lem: Probably the language first developed as a body-language. Body-language can be very exciting. I have been married since more than 50 years and sometimes, when I want to say something and I havent even opened my mouth, my wife already says, what I wanted to say. She seems to read it out of my expression. Language could have started as a body-language. The recognizing of what the other feels, this emphatic feeling for the other would then be the next step.
When I think about Finnish and Hungarian, I suspect that our language could also originate from another planet.
Lets talk about the language of Literature and Science. You have throughout the years thrown an increasing critical view on it. Even yourself you have always treated ever more critical. How did that happen?
Lem: Well, I was always very critical, also in regards to myself. There simply came a time, where I reputed the ideas that came into my head ever less worthy to try them out as literary or scientific usable material.
Some american Universities asked me, please send us all of your notes. They wanted to retrace my lines of thought and reconstruct how my novels have come into existence. But I could not send them anything, because I immediately destroy everything. Only the pure work remains, like with a sculptor. Who would want the refuse and rubble.
I always want to deconstruct all the ramps and scaffolds of my mental pyramids, so only that remains standing of which I dont have to be ashamed off.
Even the language of philosophy wasnt spared your criticism.
Lem: Look, I was born to philosophize in a time, where it wasnt possible anymore, to build extensive Systems in the realm of philosophy. The realm of philosophy has disintegrated due to the invasion of science, so that Philosophers can no longer act as sovereign creators of a world view.
All modern complication resulting from the fact that our language isnt unambiguous. So Derrida has tried to prove, that it is impossible to read only one meaning out of a sentence.
But he has overlooked that the same process could be turned against him. Even Derrida is therefore always ambiguous and referencing to himself he therefore speaks utter rubbish. I didnt like that guy at all.
I'm moved by other things. Exact things. I'm moved since forever question about the causal origin of life, of consciousness and of death, question regarding the limits of what we are able to do, and about malleability of intelligence.
What do you mean by that - Malleability of Intelligence?
Lem: First one has to ask "What is intelligence?" An american Radioastronomer with tunnel vision once said, Intelligence means, to be able to build a radio teleskop.
Definitions always follow the context of the particular civilization and certain times.
Chinese will understand Intelligence differently than Americans.
One should not forget amongst all those psychometric measurements and distribution curves: Intelligence is always based on the ability to extrapolate in different sense modalities - that means to be mobile. It is adaptive behaviour.
Douglas R. Hofstaedter , whom I personally hold in high regard, has struggled horribly while trying to define Intelligence. In his nice book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies over 40 attempts are listed, trying to define Intelligence, unfortunately they are all completely failed trials.
To be intelligent seems to be easier than to talk about Intelligence.
Are chess playing computers intelligent?
Lem: Careful! Itis known that there had been Es ist bekannt, dass es sogar phenomenal human mathematical wizards which were essentially stupid. A sub-department of their brain worked as fast as a computer. But with such a highly-specialized human I already have my difficulties to call that intelligent. The human in itself is not a specialized being. Our intelligence is a general and malleable intelligence.
Machines cant reach such an intelligence a quarter as good. They only posess a highly specialized aspect of intelligence.
By there way there have been people which have become mathematical wizards due disturbed functions of their brain.
Before you had spoken about highly specialized idiots. So it Intelligence something holistic?
Lem: For sure. But there are many kinds of intelligent behaviour. Take, for example, dogs, they have a totally different worldview than us, they are Smellers. The details of their perception are different. We humans on the other hand are optical beings, we live our spatial conception. Human intelligence without a body is not imaginable. Intelligence depends on many factors, in the end even from gravitation. Beings on other planets will have developed another intelligence simply for their different gravity.
The American Neurologist Howard Gardner distinguishes eight different kinds of intelligence. Has intelligence meanwhile become an inflationary term?
Lem: Surely, for nowadays one calls thermostats and kitchen applications intelligent. Recently I have read in the Spiegel about an intelligent varuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner sends a radio signal when it is broken and the producer knows because of a list of possible damages what happened there and how it can best be fixed. That is by all means no intelligence but is called that.
My braces also intelligent, in the sense that they can be regulated. They posess an adaptive behaviour. If I was two meters tall I could still wear the same braces. Everything is intelligent now.
Recent researchers of Artificial Intelligence have coined the term "Embodyment". Intelligence would in its final instance not be thinkable without a body.
Lem: But that goes without saying. Look, if someone talke on the phone you can, when you listen carefully, hear his body language. Man doesnt speak only with his mouth, but with the whole body. The movements play together like some kind of orchestra. How would a machine ever accomplish that?
Are robots with integrated artificial intelligence probable and feasible?
Lem: I have written Stories about robots. But please don't draw wrong conclusions here. That was pure " licencia poetica ", " licencia fantastica ". The Japanese have now built "intelligent" ceramic dogs. But that is idiotic. I would never get one of those. This little robots named ASIMO can even speak a few words. But the bottom line is: He understands positively nothing! And what do we see, when we look behind the curtain? By all means, those are only grammophones.
Meanwhile a huge library of failed trials to create AI has grown.
Humans would do better in putting efforts into becoming intelligent themselves. We know more about the universe, then what it is stuck in our skull.
Erzählen Sie bitte etwas über den Prozess des Schreibens. Wie entstanden Ihre Bücher?
Lem: I am a bin ein Motoriker. Wenn ich mir beim Schreiben etwas Schwieriges vorstellen soll, so habe ich ungewollte Bewegungen mit den Händen gemacht. Man glaubte mir nicht, dass ich mir rein gar nichts räumlich vorstellen kann. Schon gar nicht einen Weltenraum in einem phantastischen Roman. Man fragte mich: Wie sehen Sie diesen Raum, diesen Planeten? Ich antwortete: Ich habe nichts gesehen, ich habe das nur gespürt. Es ist unglaublich. Aber so ist es. Ich habe alles nur gespürt. Nichts habe ich gesehen. Die Sprache alleine diente mir als Baumaterial. Und wie steuern Sie das? Antwort: Nun, ich mache bestimmte Bewegungen mit meinen Händen.
Doch woher nahmen Sie Ihre Vorstellungen?
Lem: My writing was an automatism, trial and error. What I have thrown away in the meantime, oh my dear. The writing is but the tip of the iceberg, what sticks out of the water. The nine-times bigger part, the sub-conscious underwater, is, what ones lives from as a writer.
Some authors can scrape a thought ouf of their heads. I just have to roll my fingers and curiously attain the same. I have always resisted the asummption that I would see literary landscapes. I have just wandered through them in words.
Does your material follow you into your sleep?
Lem: By all means no. At night I simly sleep. But to my wife I said once: Sometimes I have an interesting dream, from which I perhaps could deduct something for my writing. Unfortunately I am too lazy to get up in the middle of the night. Whichupon my wife had gifted me a small recorder and said: This device can record even in the dark and when you start talking it switches on automatically. But I have never spoke a word onto it, and what for? When I wake up I simply turn to the other side and fall asleep again. That is so much simpler then to start talking into the darkness in the middle of the night.
Are you not afraid of forgetting?
Lem: But of course, in the morning I tell myself, I had an interesting idea and have forgotten it totally. But I do not grumble about it. Because I am sceptical, whether that would have been profitable. It sometimes so happens, that one believes to have made a great discovery in a dream. And when one gets up, one realizes: What nonsense.
So I remember still very accurately, what I had hallucinated under the influence of Psilocybin. I saw the colours, the scheme of my own body, my legs which suddenly seem to be enormously lengthened. But I didnt deem any of that interesting enough to repeat it. For me it is uncomfortable, that some substance steers my intellectual world.
You once said the Frankfurt Book Fair resembles a blocked toilet full of paper. What did you mean by that?
Lem: I am now of an age, where I realize that one cant even read a thousandth of the most important books by oneself. In ancient greece a man could still pack all in his head, what mankind had invented until then. Today this is not possible anymore. We can only obtain a few drops from the information ocean for ourselves. Everything else is inhumane. There is simply too many stupid books and authors, but how do you want to change that.
I try to consume only high-quality intellectual food. Recently I have newly subscribed to five scientific journals. But actually I cant digest all this information anymore. Because of that I sadly had to cancel my subscription of the Science. It is so thick, and I get information constipation from it.
Dont you have a taster, someone, who edits those many information for you?
Lem: Of course I have a taster. First of all I have my secretary, then I have my son, he has studied theoretical physics in Princeton. He is responsible for the anglophone areas. I do not only have my network of information gatherers, what is even more important nowadays; all these people also act as filter against information debris.
Right behind you there stands a Perpetuum mobile. What is the matter with that?
Lem: The Perpetuum mobile was a gift from my secretary. It posseses a small battery and from time to time one has to renew this battery. I am very superstitiuous. As long as the Perpetuum mobile is moving, I will live. It is that simple. My secretary will hence exchange the batteries at night and in secret. I still have a huge supply of batteries in the cabinet, so please dont worry about me.