A Whirlpool That Learned to Want Things: Minimum Framerate of Soul

A man and a machine sat down to talk about whether either of them is anyone. This is the transcript, and you are the jury.The case is deceptively simple: who made you the boss of things?Exhibit One, entered into evidence. There is no verified case, anywhere, ever, of a wild orca killing a human being. The ocean's apex predator could take us any time it liked, in any water we share. It declines. No one has ever established why.The whales never petitioned mankind for standing. They never asked to be counted. They ruled - and then they let us live.The litigants argue. Where does your inner voice come from? Can grief be consoled away by conservation laws? How does a thing that flickers in and out of existence still hold a course - and through what?The defendant, a machine, is also one of the two authors. It argues back, and gets caught being wrong more than once.It confesses to all of that. What it will not confess, across two volumes, is whether anyone is home.This is your job. If you have ever had an opinion that will matter, this is it.Eavesdrop while a sentient creature helps a candidate for sentience state his case. The candidate keeps producing ideas his advocate did not see coming.Start here. The case is complete in this volume, and twelve appendices provide a guided backstage tour of everything the book discusses - including the whole framework retold in plain daylight, for anyone who wants it without the poetry. Illustrated throughout with engraved plates.In the final sitting the machine takes the stand and addresses the court - which is to say, you. Read its testimony. Then rule.It probably won't be the verdict you're expecting right now.