Starfish by Peter Watts (1999) | Hacker News Reader

Starfish by Peter Watts (1999)

rifters.com

145 pointszetalyrae65 comments

No one has ever made me feel horror and despair like Peter Watts. His books stare directly into the abyss. I think it's what makes the hope you feel at the end seem earned.

If you haven't read his work but you spend time thinking about HCI, you should.

I see people differently after reading Blindsight; The picture is much darker, concretely more accurate, with what light is there geared to all hell and so much brighter. I'm better for it and at a greater peace.

Eh, I love blindsight, but I really think it oversold the case against consciousness and for belligerent intelligent life.

It wasn't a competition though just mutual incompatibility: aliens so alien that we can barely comprehend their motives and are implicitly regarded as hostile by our manner of existence.

I'd say the case it was making has only become more relevant with the chatbot age.

> I'd say the case it was making has only become more relevant with the chatbot age.

Exactly. The central thesis, consciousness not being necessary for intelligence, is very relevant today.

Of course, the existential horror background in the book was also quite well done.

Which reminds, generative AI means we should be able to get the book version of Chernoff faces into grafana now...

There's something interesting here, where the very thing that prompted the LLM boom (transformer networks) was the thing that introduced a higher level of information integration into neural networks; under the somewhat mainstream theory (not to say uncontroversial, though) that consciousness is a function of Integrative Information (IIT), it could be said that transformers are in a real way more conscious than previous architectures.

I have no conscious awareness of what I wrote, I just tried to be Peter Wattsy, haha

(kidding!

It's oversold, or beautiful artistic expression of something. Bleak, yes; Stark; Also beautiful.

The thing it expresses is… a thing. We're not at all as conscious as… we think?, as we portray ourselves?, to others and/or ourselves? And it's magical to view people as… partially unconscious to a significant degree while also loving them and with respect.)

And knowing that another person sees you clearly and still loves you, that is magical. As well as useful since you can have discussions and make decisions based on the realities of your self without having to achieve some mythical self awareness.

I agree with you on that point. It seems to me that people who read Blindsight and get all existential are not thinking things through all the way.

Blindsight poses the question, in essence, "What if consciousness is a competitive disadvantage, in which case non-consciousness would be Better™?"

I can't make a conclusive case one way or the other w/r/t the premise—it may perhaps be the case that consciousness is a competitive disadvantage. I don't know how we could test that without something to compare ourselves against (which is why the book resorts to introducing vampires and aliens—this question is untestable otherwise). But the conclusion, that non-consciousness is somehow "Better™," falls absolutely flat for me. "Better™" is a value judgement. Values and Judgements are both features of consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no such thing as "better" or "worse", there is only "is" and "is not."

So: speaking as a conscious being (you'll have to take my word for that), I'm quite comfortable saying that I like being conscious. And with unconscious living organisms—like, I don't know, coral reefs or whatever?—it's not so much that they like being unconscious as that they don't "like" anything at all.

So I think I'm quite comfortable continuing on being a "competitively disadvantaged" thing (supposing that's even the case, which it just as plausibly is not), that is at least able to conceive of questions like this one and make value assessments of its own, rather than despair over the alleged competitive disadvantage inherent in the fact that I experience myself and the world.

A computer can beat me at chess, sure, but it cannot care that it has done so.

Better here is purely in evolutionary terms, i.e. would a sub- or non non-conscious life form out-compete conscious life forms in its niche.

How do you know that values and judgements have anything to do with being conscious? A machine can act like it has values and judgements and we wouldn't attribute any consciousness to it. Or if you've seen a dog tear up a garbage can every time it's owner leaves, I wonder if you're watching an expression of dog values. Is the dog conscious?

What? Of course... of course the dog is conscious.

Did you mean dogs don't have values and judgements? I suspect they do, and those might be much more different than dog consciousness vs human. And one judgement might be "human gone; i do wtf i WANT bro" or, you know, something vaguely like that.

> How do you know that values and judgements have anything to do with being conscious?

The terms "value" and "judgement" have a broad semantic range. I mean to use them here in a sense that presupposes an exercise of subjective preference.

Machines, amoebas, programs, etc. can make choices, yes, and they can weigh alternatives, sometimes by assigning scores (aka "values") to differing outcomes. When I say that "Making value judgements is something that, by definition, conscious beings do and that non-conscious beings do not do," I'm trying to establish a narrower, more restricted definition than the broadest possible meaning of "value" or "judge."

So it's not that I "know" that values and judgements have anything to do with being conscious; I'm using these terms in such a way that by definition they do, because that's the set of things I want to talk about. The question then is not whether I'm right or wrong yet, but rather once we restrict the set of all things that could be called a "value" or a "judgement" to only the ones that I'm trying to make qualified assertions about, whether that set is empty (in which case everything I'm saying still evaluates to True, but vacuously and therefore uselessly so!).

I'm arguing this way because I think that narrower set a) exists and b) is relevant to the argument I'm making.

> Is the dog conscious?

I think dogs are unquestionably sentient (i.e. they are able to detect and respond to outside stimuli), and seem to display, in some minimal degree, at least an approximation of sapience (i.e. they are able to understand themselves and the world around them; hold and express preferences; form relationships and make decisions based on them).

I don't have a way to test whether a dog is conscious or not, and the dog has no means of trying to persuade me one way or the other; so I have to remain frustratingly agnostic on that point (frustrating to myself as much as I'm sure to you).

I quite enjoyed Blindsight, but that was not my takeaway at all :P How do you see people differently after reading it?

Hard to pin into words!

We're unconscious of how unconscious we are?, and it's good to… what's the term, suffer gladly and give gladly? To own one's unconsciousness and raise it, and expect and see others' unconscious going about major things in life - to see it coldly as well as warmly.

I find this is more accurate and safer than assuming consciousness in everyone, and it also reveals so clearly people who do cast that light; and see.

It's less desolate! I promise! Sounds like it's worse but it's not. That's the tricky-get-into-words part, you know?

I like this. Most people are doing the best they can while running on autopilot most of the time.

I think free will is possible but it requires a level of training and introspection and practice that most people find unpleasant, so most people revert to autopilot.

thanks for finding these words! i find myself getting less "nice feelings" of any depth on the internet lately (perhaps I am complicit), but your words are a breath of fresh air :)

Thank you for this! I have read Blindsight but I have long wondered why everyone thought it was so revolutionary. I kept thinking I was missing something. And I think this is it! In that I already thought/knew that everyone is basically sleepwalking through life and are not really conscious of what's going on.

I came to my conclusions on this mostly through my own studies on Illusions and other studies on consciousness. Knowing basic facts of how we see, and all the ways that our sight, touch and hearing really, fail us. Seeing the studies of how people who have their hemispheres separated can have parts of their body act independently of each other really blew my mind when I first learned about it.

Too many people believe that they themselves are sitting in a box and looking out through windows when really we're in a dark room reading a bunch of instruments and guessing what's out there. Plato's Cave is real and we are, all of us, already inside it.

the fun thing is to realize we were actually p-zombies all along, hallucinating that we have qualia.

I'll give my own interpretation, which is different from the parent though maybe we arrive at the same place.

Blindsight dismantles a lot of noble myths about what it means to be human and human exceptionalism. The things you read and see in all kinds of stories. It makes you appreciate how easy and unconscious it is to settle for comfortable lies over truth about how smart or great you are. I think this is what freaks a lot of people out about whether AI is conscious, actually.

I think the hope comes in if you embrace the implications for yourself, because to be otherwise is to be unconscious.

"Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s

Have you tried contacting Google for customer service? I’ve found that to be a sure-fire cure for whenever I catch a case of optimism.

He's very proud of having been rejected by a Russian publisher for being "too dark".

I haven't read anything from Peter Watts, but I have read Cormac McCarthy and what you're describing sounds like that.

Oh man, no, no, it's a different experience entirely. Not as shredding as McCarthy (The road or Blood Meridian alike).

Start from Blindsight and read the afterwords.

I need to give this a re-read. I really enjoyed my Blindsight re-read recently. But Starfish and Maelstrom after it are such uhh, not to pun to hard but, such high pressure intense sci-fi stories. Amazing ambiance, creeping horror, in such incredible backdrops.

Watts just kept going with his universe. It was and is so good. Such an incredible reflection of the world at the time of writing, and I've found it's lost so little of it's capturance. That it gets so many of the plights of the over-civilized world, and the perils lurking in the economic and governmental an attention systems of the planet. From the old site (https://www.rifters.com/attic.htm) to the new site (https://www.rifters.com/), Watts just really, across mediums, wanted to get his world out, to show it's timelines. Incredible.

Starfish is where it all started, and I remember it as both a slow burn, but also so hard core, so real. In a world both so our own but so far away, so separated (insert follow up deep joke here), but still within the world, still immersed (pun!) in the Earth of the story. Maelstrom, the second book, is also incredible, in very different ways. Watts reflected on Maelstrom 18 months ago, and it captures some of the amazing titular sceneage, of an overrun net, a howling wasteland from accelerated technological adversarialism. Incredible book. He goes to talk more to his own background, biology, but upon re-reading it, I think of LLMs, of the GPU milleniums burned recently, doing not that far askance competitive training, forcing our own gradient descents in ever increasing numbers upon the world. Thanks Peter; your visions are cherished. https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=11220

Recently finished the Starfish quadrilogy and adored it as well. One thing I particularly like is how this theme of evolutionary pressure applies to everyone alike; characters, software, ideologies, neural nets.

Also Watts manages to conjure this feeling of future shock I've only previously felt with Charles Stross' work.

Honestly, I thought the Behemoth pair dragged a bit - I suspect it might have worked better as a more tightly-edited single volume.

(Sue Burke's Semiosis trilogy is worth a read, too, in a similar evolutionary SF vein.)

Watts is truly remarkable. I also recommend the Sunflowers series, just a brilliant conceit w.r.t humans in deep time plus a sound understanding of dealing with ASI.

Wikipedia has it down as:

The chronological order within the Sunflower universe is: "Hotshot", The Freeze-Frame Revolution, "Giants", "Hitchhiker", "Strategic Retreat", "Remora", "Outtake", "The Island".

Just realizing I didnt see that list before I there are a few I haven't read.. brb

Chimp is very much not ASI, by design. Humans have ASI but the risk of value drift was too great so they downgraded him to 4.8

Chimp isn't, but at the end of freeze frame Sunday addresses one who she thinks is. [Not sure if that was the original intent in this thread, though]

Hmm. I don't remember that, maybe it's time for a re-read.

I'm looking at my kindle version here...

2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence, the "I" in "It" is slightly different. 5th paragraph, 2nd sentence, the "s" in "space" is likewise. Then in the next chapter, there's an "e" in "every" and later another "e" in "eye".

And as you spell it out (and in some editions), it ends with...

"I see you found my eighth-notes."

Nah, that's different

no, thats it. its a secret message sent to the ASI that chimp is fronting for

His Blindsight is one of my all time favorite novels (sequel is good to). His short story Malak - about a military drone given a prototype ethical program - is so good.

ASI = Artificial Super Intelligence?

I read Freeze Frame Revolution and drew blank seeing that acronym.

ASI = Artificial Sentient Intelligence

Have not read this series (yet), but Watt's Blindsight is an absolute masterclass in literary sci-fi

Starfish ... It's very good bit also very hard on the reader very devastating

What's notable is that the Rifters trilogy just progresses in intensity and in the overall gloom. Starfish is light reading compared to Behemoth, which is sitting for me on the last chapter, because I couldn't finish it.

I've read his works, in general all his first books are awesome, the sunflowers series is all awesome, and the rest can get a little hard to read (but I still liked them)

This is also very good but man it is dark.

Peter Watts Amazon "About the Author".

> https://www.amazon.com.au/stores/author/B001H6Q2TE/about

> This is awkward and a little creepy. They tell me I have to do it for promotional purposes, but I've already got a blog. I've already got a website. Being told that setting up an author page on fcuking Amazon is essential to success? A company that treats us all like such goddamn children it doesn't even allow us to correctly spell an epithet with a venerable history going back 900 years or more? That just sucks the one-eyed purple trouser eel.

> Also the bio information above is fucked. For example, my work has only appeared in 36 BoY collections, not 350; the noms and awards info is out of date too, but apparently it was all written by some publishing house and I can't change it from this interface.

> Still, here I am. But if you're really all that interested, go check out my actual blog/website. Google is not your friend (any more than Amazon is), but at least it'll point you in the right direction.

> I'm the one on the left, by the way.

Hell yeah brother.

Wonder when it was written and what it would say if written today.

> A company that treats us all like such goddamn children it doesn't even allow us to correctly spell an epithet with a venerable history going back 900 years or more?

This meant what?

> author page on fcuking Amazon is essential to success

> information above is fucked. For example

I imagine at some point writing "fucking" was rebuffed, or maybe you can write "fucked" but not "fucking", or there was some time between those paragraphs.

If you like his work, you can donate to “The Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund”. I did after reading Blindsight, and received a friendly thank you email from him afterwards because so few people do.

Doubly worth doing as aside from writing some of the best modern hard Sci-Fi half of them are released for free on his page.

Peter Watts is PhD marine biologist. Deepwater biology in the Rifters trilogy (Starfish, Maelstrom, βehemoth) is interesting.

I should read his long form stuff, I don't do anywhere near enough long form reading these days. I read "Malak" in Engineering Infinity years ago and it's very good indeed.

blindsight is really something

Years ago I read the entirety of Starfish on the gloriously Geocities-ass website linked here, and I highly recommend it. Even as someone who has a hard time keeping focus, it sucked me in.

Blindsight and Starfish are both awesome.

Blindsight in particular will also blow your mind.

It'd say Starfish is a great read but it doesn't quite get to mind blowing.

They will, however, drain your trust in humanity to deeply negative levels.

These are the books I read when I feel like I'm too optimistic about world affairs. The dark themes that seem so close to being possible help boost my cynicism and level me out.

His Rifters books had some interesting tech in them that I want to see in the real world (for positive uses): dirigibles using vaccuum for buoancy rather than hydrogen or helium, and abiotic food production ala the "Calvin Cyclers" he has in the book. Abiotic food production using only minerals, water, and air as inputs would be tremendously helpful for space colonization and also for scarcity scenarios on earth, like living in the arctic, at sea, or in the desert.

I've read blindsight and echopraxia, but not starfish, so thanks for the reminder.

If starfish is even despairing than blindsight and echopraxia, then this should be "fun"!

it starts despairing. Then it gets worse.

One of the sequels "Maelstrom" has some incredibly prescient descriptions of the Internet as this overwhelming useless medium that was taken over by bots and ai...back when llms started to take off and post everywhere I'd always think back to this book. Great author

Blindsight and Echopraxis are two of my favorite novels. Hope he writes a third one in that series. Both really ahead of their time.

According to his blog, Peter Watts is currently writing the 3rd book of the Firefall Series. It'll be titled "Omniscience", no release date has been set yet.

Every time Peter Watts comes up, it bears repeating:

TRIGGER WARNINGS APPLY

The Rifters series, which has some spectacular images and conceits, is also author-insert misogynist sadism gratification-porn.

Didn't have to be that way. Shame that it was as IMO it renders the series and indeed Watts un-recommendable.

Meh, seriously. Write a better book instead of flailing about the dark themes.

If someone is mature enough to read his book, they'll be able to process the less palatable parts themselves.

BTW,

> We present the results of a meta-analysis of all empirical studies on the effects of these warnings. Overall, we found that warnings had no effect on affective responses to negative material or on educational outcomes. However, warnings reliably increased anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material or that they increased engagement with negative material under specific circumstances.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625

The whole Rifters trilogy (quadrilogy?) is amazing, Starfish is actually my least favourite of the Rifters' books but still really good.

The villain Achilles Desjardins (I don't think he shows up in Starfish? been some time since I read it) is possibly one of the most villainous and sociopath characters I've ever read in a book.

His Sunflowers series is great too. Maybe my favorite (after Blindsight, of course).

Read for free on his webite: https://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_TheIsland.pdf

Or collected in The Freeze-Frame Revolution here: https://www.amazon.com/Freeze-Frame-Revolution-Peter-Watts-e...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com