Ask A Genius 1013: Thunderbird and Ranch Rides, “You have no idea”

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/16

Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

Rick Rosner: We recently returned from a two-night stay at a dude ranch. I tend not to inform people in advance when we travel out of town due to concerns about online privacy, so I apologize for any inconvenience. The ranch we visited has operated for over 150 years and transitioned to a dude ranch approximately 60 years ago. Carole’s parents took her there in 1972, and we began taking Isabella there in 2004. This time, we were accompanied by Isabella and her fiancé. The experience was pleasant overall.

The most unusual aspect was the lack of Internet or cell service for a few days. During our stay, I found a way to work out, and we rode horses three times. Typically, we walked with the horses, but on the last occasion, we trotted. We had to stop trotting because it was too uncomfortable for Carole, especially since standing in the stirrups was challenging for her ankle. They seldom allow galloping, as it is a dude ranch. While walking, I did not wear a helmet but conceded and wore one for the trotting, which seemed excessive. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In equestrian events at Thunderbird, participants win ribbons up to the eighth place rather than buckles.

Rosner: The women leading the rides at the ranch wore buckles they had won. We inquired of one young woman, who confirmed that she wins ribbons, not buckles, and although she competes in Montana, she was familiar with Thunderbird, which is likely among the top three in North America.

The ranch staff is highly skilled in both ranching and riding. Comparing the first ride to the third, I noticed some improvement in my abilities, although walking on a horse only significantly develops skills. Galloping might help, and trotting could teach one the cadence to avoid being jostled. Trotting is the bumpiest gait for a rider.

I could have enhanced my skills significantly. I have ridden horses several times and took horseback riding lessons as a child in Albuquerque. I had the same horse for the morning and afternoon rides yesterday. By the afternoon, the horse was resistant and noisy, wanting to go off the path. I was concerned it might try to scrape my leg against a tree or fence post, but it did not. Not all horses know that trick and are mean enough to attempt it. Do you have experience with horses attempting such tricks?

Jacobsen: Horses are relatively intelligent and even-tempered. Were these warmbloods? 

Rosner: Yes. 

Jacobsen: Warmbloods are intelligent but more docile compared to thoroughbreds. Warmbloods are rarely problematic; only 2 or 3 out of 60 is difficult. 

Rosner: The horses might nip at each other, but I did not see any nipping at or kicking people. The ranch staff ensured everyone remained safe. One of the women leading a ride was on a new horse that appeared to have been trained for something sophisticated, as it was prancing and holding its tail up. In dressage, horses might hold their tails up. I am more familiar with show jumping.

This horse had been trained for something other than ranching. We have a dog with Cushing’s disease, which is an adrenal tumour, making her high-strung. She is part whippet and skittish, taking three years to calm down. Cushing’s disease can result from being high-strung throughout life. This woman mentioned that the horse had been diagnosed with Cushing’s, and you could tell it was high-strung. Imagine spending your entire life training for one thing and then being sold to new owners who need to learn of your past and expect you to perform different tasks. This horse was highly trained and likely frustrated.

Jacobsen: Who is more skilled with horses: Carole, your daughter, her fiancé, or yourself? 

Rosner: I am, having ridden more than anyone else, although I would not describe my abilities as skillful. I have a willingness to have the horse do what I want. I have galloped on horses, sometimes involuntarily. The first time I rode a horse, at around five years old, it sensed my inexperience and took off at a gallop. People had to catch it with me.

I’ve ridden in the back seat of a horse, which you don’t want as a boy. My sister had a horse in Albuquerque, and you don’t want to be a boy riding behind the saddle because your junk gets rattled against the back of the saddle. The rides are very leisurely, so I spent much time thinking about what the future might be like when science fiction reaches places like this.

Jacobsen: Could it be something sophisticated like a plug-in for a horse brain?

Rosner: Yes. The rider’s brain will necessarily be short. But the book I’m reading, the book I’m writing, has quite a bit of animal interfaces with what I call mesh in the book because it’s a mesh that’s laid across the top of your brain as an interface. It may not happen in the next decades, but they’ll be messing with it. You’ll be able to tie people together and to animals so they have some fake telepathy.

What will that look like, and how are we going to make peace with the animals after thousands of years of animal holocausts? In South Africa, after the end of apartheid, they had reconciliation. To move forward as a country, they had to grant amnesty to many of the people who practiced apartheid. Everyone agreed it was horrible, and millions of people were harmed, but they had to find a way to move forward. If animals start having some understanding about the world they’re in, which is a human-run world, there will need to be what I call agricultural accords. They must negotiate how to deal with this horrible history and move forward.

We’ve talked about it a little bit, but it would be helpful, though probably not worth the disruption, to link horses and humans on a working ranch. With a good working horse that you’re used to, humans can already do most of the communicating they want to do. Linking their thoughts would not improve the horse’s performance much and might make the horse confused, angry, and miserable. Or it might make the horse distracted. Horses have an awareness of the natural world, but they don’t get wobbly in the knees about a nice sunset. They might gain some aesthetics if they were communicating with a human, but who needs a ranch horse with aesthetics? If they start understanding words, they might consider it a curse because words can explain things that, as a horse, you might not want to know. As a cow, you definitely wouldn’t want to know. What do you think?

Jacobsen: It is not easy because horses communicate a lot nonverbally. Translating from one whole brain system to another species’ whole brain system, or the whole nervous system, would be very complex. The speed and style of processing might be different. It wouldn’t be like Avatar, where you plug into the other animal. It would be wireless,

Rosner: We need an AI intermediary. The horse would only have human-like thinking skills when linked to a human. If you break the link, the horse returns to being mostly a horse but maybe a troubled one because it retains more than before. Depending on how long they’re linked, the horse might think, “Holy shit, I knew much stuff.” A linked horse could understand years and have a more definite understanding of its lifespan. Horses surely have some understanding; they know some horses are young, some are old, and some are decrepit. A smart horse could put all that together, but to have words put to it for a while and understand the whole deal, then lose the words when the link is broken, could make the horse a little bit squirrelly.

The linkage becomes possible in my novel, but it sometimes works differently. Elon Musk has said things about Neuralink that are hard to verify, but credible people are working on implanting chip-like things in animals. There’s a certain inevitability to this experimentation. It’s not inevitable that you have a bunch of animals that get chipped, and it works. But in my book, it’s inevitable. Plus, you’ve got CRISPR liberationists/terrorists who might be releasing viruses that effectively make the people and animals who catch the virus better at thinking. So, there’s a gradual encroachment of smartness for people and animals into the world. And I want to show how that might play out. That’s where some of the fun is.

Jacobsen: Which species would be easiest to link a human to another species? 

Rosner: It’s not about how smart the animals are; it’s about the animal’s personality. So far, the animal most excited to embrace the technology is an octopus. You don’t mesh the octopus directly. You put the octopus in a little wheeled buggy with an aquarium on top, and it can maneuver around the lab using its thoughts or arms to operate the controls. They’re thrilled, especially when they find out they only have a two-year lifespan. The mesh doesn’t just act as an interface; it enables them to record their conscious experiences.

I’m going to have to figure out if that’s reasonable. Early in the book, it’s not reasonable at all. But later on, they could use being meshed to achieve a kind of linear lineage immortality, similar to ancestor worship. In some religions, the ancestor is living in your head with you. Is that a reasonable approximation of some forms of ancestor worship?

Jacobsen: It seems like veneration of the dead. Either you set up an altar, or you make a prayer to them.

Rosner: I thought so. Anyway, with the meshed octopuses, some of their consciousness can live on via the link in the next-generation octopus. So, the ones lucky enough to get meshed join this group mind that lives on after they die. Octopuses are into it. Other animals, less so. Some are scared of it. Some are depressed by it. Monkeys and other primates are into it but also exhibit dangerous Planet of the Apes-style behaviour, making them hard to work with and tricky. I have yet to think much about primates, whether it has to go Planet of the Apes-style or not. Dolphins are very interested.

Because dolphins don’t have hands, that might be frustrating for them. But dolphins, as you probably know, are super horny. If they can use the mesh to set up relationships with humans, they might want to be jerked off or even have sex with somebody. Even regular, unmeshed dolphins today occasionally cause people to get busted for giving them hand jobs. Dolphins let it be known that they like a hand job. So a meshed dolphin would be even hornier. And that’s not necessarily positive because dolphins can be rapey, too. Not every dolphin is rapey, but they can gang up on a female dolphin and box her in, letting one dolphin get at her.

If you’re a dolphin trainer meshed with your dolphin, the future might allow for romantic relationships across species. It may be human-primate relationships. Bonobos have a reputation for being chill, very sexual, non-patriarchal, and, like everybody, have sex with everybody else without getting worked up about it. But then you hear other things suggesting that this may be a sunnier picture and that bonobos might be a little creepy sexually, too.

So I don’t know if all primates or a primate in a romantic relationship with a human could be chill. But could a dolphin be chill? That’s something to look at. I would guess that if you showed certain primates a ton of human porn, they would get sexually excited. That’s something I could look up. I’m sure somebody has studied that. Maybe not because it wouldn’t benefit your academic reputation, but somebody has.

But we know that dolphins can be horny for human touch and that some humans are willing to engage in that. Does that mean that, given the right people and animals, you could see relationships that work, at least for a while? I don’t know. Anyway, who else would be amenable to being chipped? Dogs would be, as they like to be of service and to be loved, though it varies by breed. Dogs would take to being meshed better than cats, though it depends on the cat. What do you think? Which animals would be into it, and would it go well for them?

Jacobsen: Elephants. 

Rosner: Primates or resurrected protohumans make the most sense. But the trouble is, a meshed primate that understands speech, can read, and understands technology and the function of objects in its environment would be tricky to manage, especially if it gets upset about being confined. That’s a complicated issue to have out in the world.

Smart animals without hands would be grateful for the expanded understanding and agency. Elephants, for instance, do everything with their trunks, and they’re quite good at it, but it’s different than having a hand. Maybe we could hook them to some mechanical grabber to increase their dexterity. Ditto for dogs. In my book, I’ve got a fully articulated dog that walks around standing up like a little person with a dog head. I didn’t copy this comic book, but there’s a comic book set in the future where one of the detectives is a Doberman in a human getup. So, dogs are a possibility.

And then there are wild card animals. There are a zillion animals out there, each with different personalities. Pigs, for example, are smart and would love to have fingers to operate things, but they would also be appalled at what happens to most pigs. Herd animals might take better to being meshed and linked more intimately with each other.

In the book, I’ve got an experiment where they mesh a dozen Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to see how their precision would increase. I watched a documentary about how much they sacrificed for the job. They destroy their hips from the high kicks. Their whole deal is about precision, even though they are sexy. If they were meshed, their precision would be wildly increased. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are essentially herd animals, priding themselves on squad spirit. It’s not cheating like it would be if you meshed a basketball team because cheerleaders aren’t competing for prizes. They want to be the best, but it’s not like they go to tournaments. So they could be meshed, and nobody would yell that it’s cheating.

So, in my book, I’ve got stuff happening in the next 15 years that probably won’t happen for 30 or 40 years. 

Jacobsen: At what point do you think meshing with another person would mean a loss of individuality? In that experience, people are so merged that they are one mind, and when they uncouple, they are two minds again. 

Rosner: There’s a related question: how much does individuality matter? I read a story about people who tried merging in a science fiction anthology. It’s a common theme. In this story from 2017, people have layers of communication and intimacy. They talk less and send images more. When someone used to live without 5G or the Internet has to talk to another person, it’s weird because their speech skills have atrophied. The person in the story is in a relationship with someone’s daughter, who urges them to level up their connection. They break up quickly because they can’t handle knowing each other’s transient horny feelings for a waiter or waitress, which makes the guy jealous. The issue wasn’t the loss of individuality but the horribleness of knowing everything the other person was thinking. The loss of individuality would not be a top concern for meshed people.

It would force people to think about how much their individuality matters. We don’t have to think about it now because we know we’re individuals with our own thoughts. In a meshed future, people would have to consider whether their thoughts are still their own if they are in a relationship with a spouse or in a throuple. They still have to operate their body and have their own perceptions.

By still having my sensations coming in through my eyes, ears, and skin, is it going to drive me crazy if I’m deeply linked to someone else and they’re commenting on everything I’m seeing and thinking? I don’t know if that’s an individuality issue or just a matter of not liking more than one voice in my head at a time. What do you think? 

Jacobsen: Nature evolved cognitive creatures with individuality for a reason.

Rosner: Say again.

Jacobsen: Nature evolved cognitive creatures and individualism for a reason. There’s a reason why we’re social. We have a deep, intimate connectivity with others, allowing us to pass on information and knowledge by speaking and demonstration. There’s an important adaptation there. It has multiple levels. AI might do something similar if nature developed it over billions of years with all the other factors considered.

Rosner: Yes. We are individuals because it’s tough to make us linked thought-wise. Our brains are in our heads, and it’s efficient for us to access all of our brains when necessary. But it’s not feasible to access the contents of someone else’s brain except through communication. It might be tough to link animals that way. Wheels work well in certain situations, but almost no macro animals have anything like wheels. Some animals can mimic a wheel when convenient, like pandas rolling down a hill, but being a creature on wheels is hard to evolve. It’s also very expensive. It would be nice to have wheels on flat surfaces, but few flat surfaces are in the wild. What do you think? Is there something to the argument that prior evolutionary forms set boundaries on the next path, and wheels weren’t part of that? 

Jacobsen: Yes. There’s a plant that moves several feet a year by growing roots toward where it wants to go and letting the roots it had to die behind it. 

Rosner: There’s also an animal called a rotifer that does some spinning to move, like a wheel, but it’s a single-cell organism. Anyway, people used to love going to the theatre, where 400 people could all feel the same thing watching the same stuff on a screen. Individuality hasn’t been threatened at such a basic level as when you link people.

It will initially have low fidelity so it won’t be a threat. Some people will take to it and want as high fidelity as possible, or maybe not. I wouldn’t want Carole to know my every passing thought because some thoughts are horrible, and I don’t like them. Some of my horrible thoughts have OCD, like having Tourette’s, but with thoughts instead of vocalizing them. Most people have that. Don’t you have horrible thoughts? You’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to think that,” but you do?

Jacobsen: I accept my horrible thoughts as part of me. I don’t judge them.

Rosner: But would you want to share those with somebody?

Jacobsen: Sure.  I’ve shared plenty of them. It depends on the context. Everything depends on context. Yes, life is like a joke—it depends on the context.

Rosner: I could see if someone has a stronger personality and two people are meshed together, one person overruling the other’s thoughts and being patronizing. That would suck. We could list the issues with meshing. One issue is whether it’s even practically feasible to have an interface that works with specific neurons. You can lay something in the brain, and your brain will eventually learn how to interface with it. Is that a reasonable thought?

Jacobsen: Yes. You’d need a common structural processing system, a narrative history, and a similar linguistic system and vocabulary. You might need an AI intermediary to do the translation. A translational system could be possible.

Rosner: Maybe you would, and that would be terrible because the lag would be brutal.

Jacobsen: We’re comparing it to computers now. What if there’s almost no latency period? You could buffer people’s thoughts and guess at them, but buffering and latency will be a huge deal that must be addressed.

Rosner: It might be a pain all by itself. Ideally, two meshed people would still need to translate the signal. Unless a cable physically linked the two people, you’d need some broadcasting apparatus, which would be its pain. That could be a simple way of doing it, so you’re only sometimes linked. You go to work, come home, your spouse comes home, and you put on your helmets to share thoughts for half an hour.

That is an early step. You’re either sharing directly through the helmets, and your brains have learned to talk to each other, or you’re talking to an interface. In my book, I call it the Big Block. You get all sorts of input from it directly to your brain, but it could also handle the interface between a couple of people or more.

Jacobsen: It could be an all-the-time thing if everyone shares the same life and workspace. They could be like the Spacing Guild in Dune, portrayed in the movies as not using AI but being linked up as a unit for geometric spatial travel. 

Rosner: I fell asleep during the movie, and it’s been a while since I read the book. Are those the people who take Spice and merge with their ships?

Jacobsen: That’s one group. There’s another group in the current portrayals that makes it seem as if they have their brains completely jacked into a system that helps facilitate linking their brains. They get around their religious prohibition against AI by integrating with computers, but there’s no AI.

Rosner: Wait, did the people on the desert planet have a prohibition against AI?

Jacobsen: There’s a prohibition against AI everywhere in that universe. There is no AI in the likeness of a human mind among all the families. The premise of the books and the show is that there was a war between humans and AI, leading to a religion that forbids creating thinking minds in the likeness of a human mind.

Rosner: Oh, I didn’t know that. 

Jacobsen: It’s like The Lord of the Rings, where there’s a rich backstory you might need to learn about. Dune is set after this prohibition against AI. The Spacing Guild takes Spice, lives in it, and transforms their bodies to use prescience for space travel. That’s why Spice is so valuable. That might be the group mind with the computer. There’s a small scene, but they have yet to show the disfigured humans in tanks in the newest version so far. The lag time issue wouldn’t be a problem if the kinks were worked out. If you’re localized, the signal doesn’t have to travel far. The central processing could be in your locale with the people you’re linking with, reducing latency like computers in different rooms.

Rosner: Maybe. But there might be workarounds for latency. People are used to waiting for responses in conversation, so they might get used to whatever lag there is. But that could be for another discussion. We should end here because I’m tired from dealing with horses all day.

Jacobsen: You have no idea. 

Rosner: You’ve dealt with horses for 14 hours a day, pushing them around, cleaning up their mess, and feeding them. If possible, let’s have another session tomorrow to discuss the specific issues around meshing.

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.