For a long time, science fiction or science fiction movies are a kind of imaginary thing about the future in the eyes of the public. Science fiction has long been out of the question. Verne's science fiction is more about spitting out a bold and exaggerated but practical imagination, with a romantic and interesting temperament. But modern science fiction can no longer be written in this way. The core reason here is that writers such as Einstein Planck have profoundly changed the human view of time and space. The solemn and regular universe under Newtonian physics has been Broken, the universe becomes more mysterious, deep and incomprehensible. Not only that, the development of psychology has also had a huge impact on the creation of science fiction, and the basic problems of human nature, human consciousness, and human thinking have become complex and unsolvable.
Some of the more mediocre science fiction still use the current way of thinking when describing the future of the universe, but the great science fiction will break through all this, and he will try to solve the philosophical problems left by Einstein and others, The relationship between the existence of the universe and people's thinking, 2001 is exactly this movie, although on the surface this is a very long and slow-paced movie, but there are only three key segments of him, these three segments It also represents the three questions that the author tries to clarify.
At the beginning of the first clip, "the down of man" is written, which is probably the meaning of the dawn of mankind. Here, the ancestors of human beings are on the road from animals to humans. At this time, humans are not fundamentally different from most animals. , In the face of powerful predators, they are helpless, they can only report to the group to keep warm and hide together. Suddenly, an obsidian appeared in the sky, and they touched this obsidian, and some chimpanzees realized something and picked up the bone blocks on the ground as a weapon to attack. The bone then rose into the air and became a spaceship. Obviously, the author here wants to express that the first breakthrough of human beings is to break through the limitations of thinking and use tools to solve problems for the first time---that is, this fragment wants to express the purpose. Once humans have such a breakthrough in thinking, it will only be a matter of time before the creation of spaceships.
Of course, this "breakthrough in thinking" is just the use of tools on the surface, but there is a deeper connotation behind it. Before exploring this connotation, we can first think about the difference between non-life and life, and then think about the difference between ordinary animals and humans. The difference between life and non-life lies in an instinct and motivation. The initial life is There is an instinct to keep away from death and to pursue more food or resources to ensure the continuation of life. With evolution, this instinct gradually changes into an instinctive brain. Those low-end reptiles do not think and have no emotions. Change, but they will be afraid, they will feel comfortable, they will also recognize what is harmful to them and what is not harmful to them, they will instinctively court, instinctively eat, etc. The second breakthrough in life mainly occurred in some mammals. They gradually developed emotional brains, just like cats and dogs in the house will love people. Although they do not have specific thinking skills, they still You can love, depend, and even hate. This kind of feeling is purely based on a short-lived brain current, so there is no place for thinking and judgment in the emotional brain stage of life, let alone independent consciousness. After the emotional brain, the rational brain really distinguishes humans from other animals. This is also a crucial step for human ancestors to move from animals to humans. Apes picked up bones , Apes realized that bones were useful, apes killed other apes who attacked them with bones, and the precious gift brought by obsidian was this kind of tool to break the ignorance of thinking, and the future of mankind was also illuminated a little, and the sun will rise higher and higher.
Of course, the author does not think that this is the final stage of life, and I will talk more about this later. Let's first look at the second clip in the movie, which is also the most shocking part of the movie. The artificial intelligence Howl seems to have independent consciousness, and in the end, the protagonist kills Hal in Hal's calm and suffocating calls for help.
We often take it for granted that there is an essential difference between machines and life, but it seems that science does not think so. Science tells us that human thinking is still essentially the connection between neurons, that is to say, if the computer is given such finely detailed Design, then he can also generate consciousness like a human being.
Then there is a very terrifying question: what is "consciousness"? Howl's structure is so complicated that he can handle the test of various situations, and the Turing test is no longer difficult for Hal. But if we still insist that humans and machines are fundamentally different, it means that we do not believe in science in our bones, and the things we believe most are still intuitive things. But if we think that machines have thinking, we will still fall into another predicament-------The thinking of a machine is just the processing of various signals by a complex program designed by humans, and the same is true of human thinking. The essence of human thinking It is still the processing of various signals, so here you should be aware of the problem---------The consciousness of human beings is just self-deception. The laws of physics, the image of the universe at each time point in the future has been determined, and what you will do in the next second is already determined—you have no ability to change anything, you just accept the rules. Just a piece.
Of course, this theory is not irrefutable. First of all, like Dostoevsky, we can reject this scientific explanation of consciousness at all. Feyerabend has also criticized many scientific theories. After all, You will never be able to witness the existence of atoms or molecules in your life, and even if you do, you may not be able to ensure the authenticity of the things in front of you---------so where is the need to believe in science? Secondly, since we don't know everything about the future, why not treat the future as something that is still under our control?
So when we see Howl being killed, we still feel a kind of cruelty and suffocation, even if, very likely, or we already know that Howl is deceiving us, but when it is broken down piece by piece At the same time, we also seem to feel that this "life" that we cannot understand is suffering incomparably. For an object that looks like "life", humans finally unconsciously regard it as life.
There's one more important question about Howl that I didn't mention: Does Hal have the ability to empathize with humans? Before discussing this issue, I need to try to explain another question: "Whether there is a possibility of communication between humans and aliens" This question has been discussed by linguistics, in fact, there is no need to talk about "alien creatures" so far away Distance. It is very difficult for us to have empathy when we are far away from us on some evolutionary journeys. When cats and dogs are killed, or mammals such as pigs, cattle and sheep are killed, we will feel a lot of unbearable. Heart, but we feel significantly less empathy when cockroaches, mosquitoes, or lizards, octopuses and other creatures are killed. Even with creatures like squid or octopuses, even though they are more intelligent than many mammals, it is still very difficult for us to develop empathy. These creatures even have a physiological basis similar to humans, so why would you think that machines and humans share the same emotional basis? Humans feel sympathy for Hal, but can Hal really have feelings for people?
"But if we saw or heard an alien language should we still think in terms of human language components like phonemes, words and sentences or forget everything we know ? Think in terms of the components of human language such as phonemes, words and sentences, or should we forget everything we know? That's exactly Louise Banks' task in the movie when she's trying to convince the general that he can't start asking very complicated questions; they have to start with something more basic. Does the concept of a question even apply to alien languages? That's exactly what Louise Banks is tasked with in the movie when she tries to convince the general that he can't start asking very complex questions. Start with something more basic. We don't even know if the concept of "problem" exists in alien languages.
So if universal language theory only applies to humans, there 's a real danger that if an alien race started communicating we'd have no hope of deciphering it? That is if an alien starts to communicate with us, we have no hope of decoding it? Yeah, definitely. When people talk about universal grammar it's just the genetic endowment that allows humans to acquire language. There are grammatical properties we could imagine that we just don't ever find in any human language, so we know what's specific to humans and our endowment for language. There's no reason to expect aliens would have the same system. In fact, it would be very surprising if they did. But while having a better understanding of human language wouldn't necessarily help, hopefully it'd give us tools to know how we might at least approach the problem. Yes, absolutely. When people talk about universal grammar, they are talking about the genetic gift that enables humans to acquire language. We can imagine grammars we've never discovered before, so we know what humans can and don't have. But we have no reason to expect aliens to have the same system. In fact, it would be strange if they had the same system. But while studying human languages isn't necessarily more helpful to understanding alien languages, hopefully it will give us the tools to at least know how to solve the problem. ” (the above is Chomsky’s view on “universal grammar”)
This is also why many people are naturally afraid of artificial intelligence, because in the face of a conscious machine, you can never know what it is thinking, and they are unfamiliar to people after all. So does life in the universe, or what conscious things have something in common? When faced with this problem, Liu Cixin directly treated it according to the simple and rude laws of life---there is no reason to think that other beings have different laws of life from human beings, and the ultimate purpose of life is to continue oneself, so cited The dark forest hypothesis came out, thus constructing Liu Cixin's physical world. However, the problem of understanding between different species in this movie was finally solved with a mysterious experience similar to religion. The last important scene in the movie is David's process of comprehending divine civilization. The mysterious symbol expresses as much as possible the line between humans and gods---------There is no doubt that in the director's view, the relationship between human civilization and god-level civilization is not incomprehensible, and of course don't even think about it. This understanding can be manifested in reality. Using symbols known to man cannot express what man has never really known. (Of course, mystical experience may be a form, although philosophically speaking, it seems that we have no hope of knowing those things such as four-dimensional space and the ultimate secret of the universe, but mystical experience seems to be grafted as a kind of bridge) David After experiencing this journey, he saw through time and space, and finally, he became a "star child", a new life form.
Some people say that this "star child" is likely to be a Nietzschean metaphor. Whether the director has this idea or not, we can also see in the plot that the "star child" is indeed inextricably linked with Nietzsche. First of all, the first contact between obsidian and human beings in the beginning is to let human beings have a real leap in thinking. Since then, human beings can think. After those simple emotional brains, human beings have real feelings, and we can think, To be able to enjoy solitude, to be able to love. However, human beings are human beings after all, and they cannot get rid of all kinds of limitations. If the first leap in life is the leap from the instinctual brain to the emotional brain, and the second leap is the leap from monkey to man, then the third leap is the leap from man to "star child". The significance of the first leap is that life really produces emotions, and it is no longer just a natural and unfamiliar thing. The significance of the second leap is that we truly have thinking, and since then human individuals have become truly independent (not just using tools). So simple), then the third step is to get rid of the stupid purpose left in the previous life and cross the road of aesthetics. Human beings are just a bridge from monkeys to superhumans, even if there will be some gods in life sex, but still more of those fears, those fearful and humble, and at the same time holding too many meaningless pursuits for the meaning of life. Of course, it is certainly impossible to discuss too much of Nietzsche's thoughts here, but the incomparably huge star child floating in space represents a god-level creature that is free from the limitations of life and sees through the past and the future. Nietzsche's Superman. Since then, life has truly completed the leap from this side to the other side, and has completed its true and thorough evolution. The whole movie is also as Deleuze said, "Black stone, represents the three stages of the brain: animal, human, machine." In essence, by the end of the movie, this movie has left the category of ordinary sci-fi movies, and focuses on exploring The boundaries of thought and the ultimate question of humanity. The story itself is not complicated, but the whole movie is a movie with beautiful pictures, rich metaphors, and good atmosphere.
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