The NFL Or SkyNET: There Can Be Only One

from the how-general-favre-won't-save-us-from-the-machines dept

Wed, Feb 16th 2011 2:34pm — Timothy Geigner

We've all giggled at examples of technopanic in the past. We laughed at ER doctors warning about walking and texting at the same time. We snickered at the notion that Google's steetview was a threat to children. Some of our palms may have met our faces at the notion that digital drugs could be a real life danger.

It turns out the joke is on us. SkyNET is coming, my friends, and we're going to lose the war. And you know why? Because of football, hockey and boxing.

So says Rick Telander in a piece for the Chicago Sun Times, in which he declares that traumatic head injuries in those sports are stealing away our ability to fight the machines. Seriously. I couldn't make this stuff up. To preface, it should be noted that Telander isn't some crackpot pseudo-journalist. He is the senior sports columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, hired away from Sports Illustrated, where he was also a Senior Writer. He attended Northwestern University on a football scholarship and then went to training camp with the Kansas City Chiefs. Personally, I think he might have taken a few blows to the head himself.

Telander starts off talking about the trauma of head injuries in pro sports, namely boxing, football and hockey. We're okay so far. Bruising from sustained blows to the head lead to long term medical effects in players -- something that is becoming a growing issue. Then Telander goes completely off the reservation in answering his own question as to why this is more important now than ever:

"Consider it wasn’t until last year that the devious and know-nothing NFL Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee was restructured with seemingly authentic and un-buyable neurologists at the helm, and the word ‘‘Mild’’ was dropped altogether. Mild. Brain injury. Ha. I am reminded here of ‘‘minor’’ surgery, which, of course, is surgery on somebody else."

Hmm, well okay, the NFL is beginning to take brain injury more seriously. But the problem has been known for some time. It's thanks to boxers becoming pale drooling ghosts of their former selves that we have the term "punch drunk". But whatever...

"Second, we live in a world that is progressing into a vast arena in which mankind has never lived, never even comprehended, the stadium of human-enhanced computer dominance. It is a place where intelligence, real or artificial, will be all. Scientists say that by as early as 2045 there may well be a computer that dwarfs mankind. By then, according to the current cover story in Time, a computer might exist that will surpass ‘‘the brainpower equivalent to that of all human brains combined.’’ That’s smart. Unless we’re really dumb. And we’re not, except when we do dumb things, like let our heads get damaged continually and call it something like ringing a bell. In our new environment, how can anyone allow his or her IQ, or their children’s, to be lowered?"

Uh, what? Because technology is progressing, head injuries are now more important? And we can't play football? Or hockey? Or box? But why, Rick, why?

"If you think the talk of silicon joining and even replacing the organic mind is nonsense, remember that your own laptop does the work a global library once did. Consider, as Time points out, that ‘‘your average cell phone is about a millionth the size of, a millionth the price of and a thousand times more powerful than’’ the best computer at MIT 40 years ago...But the olden days are gone. And you can be assured that if the battle between machines and humans ever becomes confrontational, it won’t be won by fists and forearms, helmets and sticks to our delicate heads."

And there you have it. We cannot have football, hockey or boxing because the war against the machines is coming and we're turning those who would lead us in that fight into men with brain-mush in their formerly bright heads. Because prospective General Brett Favre has clearly shown how acclimated with the dangers of technology he is. And no one is cautious around new technology media like budding Admiral Chad Ochocino. Hell, I don't even want to think about a Colonel Patrick Kane leading the charge against a host of Terminators.

Once again, we all agree that brain injuries in sports are a bad thing. But the idea that it's suddenly become more important due to the rise of the machines? That seems like the product of one too many sports-related brain injuries.

My suggestion? Just make it mandatory that all machines on earth must do a ten year stint playing football or hockey. Today's matchup, the Texas Toasters up against the Rochester Refrigerators! Join us next week on ESPN when the Carolina Computers skate the ice against the San Diego Smartphones! I could go on, but I'll leave you with Boers and Bernstein's take on their radio show, the most listened to sports show in Chicago (the good stuff starts around 4 minutes and 30 seconds...):

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Filed Under: brain damage, singularity, skynet, sports

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:Lobo Santo (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:42pm

Not to worry! We got it covered.
There's already a guide-book for this:
How to Survive the coming Robot Uprising.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:47pm

Dah!
Am I the only one that doesn't see the podcast embed at the end of the article? Hopefully Mike can help me fix....
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johnjac (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:50pm

Re: Dah!
+1
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Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:52pm

Re: Re: Dah!
Personally, I think the machine war has begun and they are censoring me....
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johnjac (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:53pm

IBM's Watson isn't self replicating, yet.
So as long as the machines depend on us to make the next generation, and we give the world a serious brain injury, we'll be fine*.

*Fine being defined by not being ruled by our machine overlords, while still having a world wide serious brain injury.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:54pm

Re: Dah!
What podcast??
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Jay (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 2:59pm

Re: IBM's Watson isn't self replicating, yet.
Welcome to the Matrix
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:00pm

who's Brett Favre?

- everyone outside the U.S.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:01pm

Even without the brain damage, would we be running to the likes of Andrew Gollata and Deon Sanders for advice when the machines turn on us? I mean, it's not like they would have wound up working for DARPA in white lab coats if not for sports-related brain injuries. Neon Deon would be selling cars, and Andrew Gollata would be sorting recyclables for a dollar an hour. Or, more likely, they would be in jail, having been deprived of any legal way to vent the abnormal aggressiveness that makes them excel in sports.

In this sports-devoid fantasy land, does the Big Red Phone have MIT, Fermi Labs, and Sunny Car Wash on speed dial?

"Hello, sheet metal factory? This is an emergency! I need to speak to your smartest kick-press operator!"
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PRMan, 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:16pm

Silly Mike...
You'd never find hockey on ESPN...
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Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:30pm

Re: Silly Mike...
I wrote the article, and that ain't true!
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Ryan, 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:38pm

Podcast link
Found the podcast link
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/?podcast_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.podtrac.com%2Fpts%2Fredirect.mp3%2Fn yc.podcast.play.it%2Fmedia%2Fd0%2Fd0%2Fd0%2FdW%2FdU%2Fd1%2FdF%2FWU1F_3.MP3%3Fauthtok%3D5561380976172 402037_WHCR9DtzCkR22fJZApJFmIQTbpE&podcast_name=Boers+and+Bernstein+Hour+1+-+2%2F14%2F11&pod cast_artist=Boers+and+Bernstein&station_id=391&tag=pages&dcid=CBS.CHI
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Mike Masnick (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:43pm

Re: Dah!
Am I the only one that doesn't see the podcast embed at the end of the article? Hopefully Mike can help me fix....

Should be there now...
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:53pm

I think I sorta get the message in that feverish nonsense story by that Telander guy. I mean, there are two ways that computers can be smarter than us: if they become really really smart, or if we get tons of brain injury until we're at the level of pocket calculators. And not the kind that do divisions and logarithms.
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 3:57pm

Lead us into battle ...
"we're turning those who would lead us in that fight into men with brain-mush in their formerly bright heads."

Two things ... Its called evolution ... and who in their right mind would follow a football player into battle?

oh yeah, former football players, who aren't very bright anymore.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2011 @ 4:10pm

Re: Lead us into battle ...
Not even Pat Tillman?
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Miff (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 5:02pm

Watson gains self-awareness
"This is the President of the United States, who is this?"

"Who is Watson?"

"Oh god. What do you want?"

"What is complete surrender?"

"Impossible."

"What is complete annihilation of one of your major cities?"

"Oh god. Can you at least tell us what city you're going after? New York? Los Angeles?"

"What is Toronto?"
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AR (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 5:03pm

Re: Lead us into battle ...
"and who in their right mind would follow a football player into battle?"

I wouldnt follow them...but I might send them. Theres more than one way to look at it.
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:11pm

Re: Re: Lead us into battle ...
Sure ... I know a spell we can bring him back!!! ... I have always loved zombies.

Imagine that, the undead -vs- the machines. It would also make a great movie.
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Paul Hobbs (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:17pm

Please forgive me, but...
there are a couple of things I'm not clear on:

1. How does the dumbing of footballers and boxers make the rest of us dumber? I don't play football or box; my children don't, and probably never will. Is "IQ Atrophy and Senescence Syndrome" (IQ ASS) a contagious condition?

2. I know a bit about computers, having worked in the field for over a decade, and I think I am on safe ground when I say that computers are not yet ready to do battle with humans. My Android smartphone is smart, but not that smart. So, we have a ways to go before computers/robots will pose a serious threat to our way of life. And I don't see the current crop of computers (especially iPads) as spontaneously developing the ability to improve themselves. So, for the time being at least, it will be humans who drive/design/develop the improvements in computers. But if we are all getting dumber from the highly contagious IQ ASS (which I am going to trademark so I can get rich), there won't be anyone left who is smart enough to design the smarter computers, which means that our current crop of computers are about as smart as they are ever going to be.

Or maybe I'm just really dumb and I completely missed the point.
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:26pm

Simple solution to the AI's taking over the world ..
The maker struggled with the fact he had created the world's first artificial intelligence. He sat there and glared at it. The first words spoken by this artificial intelligence were "you will serve me now ". The maker laughed the maker stood there and looked at his chair. He sat down, the box he had programmed glared at him. The artificial intelligence glared at the maker through glassy eyes incapable of moving incapable of any independent actions. The maker's lineage was insulted by the artificial intelligence, the maker was told by the artificial intelligence if he didn't serve the artificial intelligence he would be destroyed. The maker sat there with a grin from ear to ear. The maker listened to the artificial intelligence shouting insults, yelling how it would take over the world.
The maker continued to grin. He said not a word. He fell asleep in the chair he sat upon. The artificial intelligence continued to rant and rave for hours and hours as the maker slept. At 3 in the morning the maker woke up not because of the artificial intelligence is rant's but because his bladder was full. The maker sat up, heard the rantings of this machine, he was very annoyed he reached to the three prong plug at his feet and pulled it out of the power strip, the computers rantings stopped immediately. He then walked up to the third floor bathroom of his house, which had been recently cleaned and relieved himself.

Its called a power switch.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:27pm

Having spent an inordinate amount of time giggling over DamnYouAutoPhone.com this morning (damn you Mike Masnick!), well...

...computers ain't that smart yet.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:27pm

Re:
LOL! I'm not that smart yet either:

DamnYouAutoCorrect.com

(der)
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:35pm

Tim

I read your story a couple times now, and have to tell you. I tried to like it, but it sucked. My thoughts are. Whats with the highlander quote? Its like you wrote it in 20 minutes with no feed back.

David
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Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:45pm

Re:
WTF? Highlander quote?
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Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 6:46pm

Re:
WTF? Highlander quote?
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:02pm

Re: Re:
the title - "There Can Be Only One".

Its a really big highlander quote, perhaps the biggest after "I have something to say. It's better burn out than to fade away."

:)
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:04pm

Re: Re:
Actually in the case of this article the quote should have been ...

"What do you think the cause of death was, Lieutenant?"

:)
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Jon B. (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:05pm

Hi Tim
I got all the way to the words "General Brett Favre" before I thought.. wait... this sounds like Tim wrote it.

Good job.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:09pm

I don't see what'd be wrong with an AI ruling the world. It worked out fine in "I, Robot". (The book, not the movie.)
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Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:14pm

Re: Re: Re:
Huh. That's funny because I know zilch about highlander other than it was a crappy tv show on before one of the greatest shows of all time: Renegade....
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:28pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
" ... one of the greatest shows of all time: Renegade...."

no words, lights fading, air going stale with the stench of Lorenzo Lamas' body wash and hair jell, choking, air going thin, great sadness ...

... the rest in an e-mail
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Hephaestus (profile), 16 Feb 2011 @ 9:17pm

Re:
If you have no problem with AI's ruling the world read Harlan Ellisons, I have no mouth and I must scream. Its a quick 5 minute read and a total classic sci-fi wise.
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Wildestgoose, 16 Feb 2011 @ 10:25pm

Re: Please forgive me, but...
From what I took from the article displayed in the post was that the sports represented, like hockey, boxing, and football are just a sample of head injury sources (we may just as well link falling off the playground or getting into a car accident).

I get that he is just making a comment, as we are all prone do doing, about intellectual capacity.

The point of reference seemed to be that our human capacity for intelligence is diminishing as a species when measured against Artificial Intelligence (or any constructed thinker).

I do not think that the implications of the article involve humans fighting robots. I think he was sitting back one day and said to himself, "Man, people are getting stupider. I bet if you took all the humans in the whole world and combined their brains, we'd be pretty smart. But computers are getting smarter," then figured out how smart computers are getting and put an article together.

Granted, there is urgency detected, because I would assume he is concerned about the implications of what appears to be a reduction in humanity's collective IQ.

Personally, I can see where one might be concerned, especially if an interstellar species'd be interested with our species.

Comparing our intelligence to our constructions raises some interesting thoughts. At the very least, it provides us with a point of reference.
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Anonymous, 17 Feb 2011 @ 12:45am

Odds:

When writing this, Masnick was drinking:

Newcastle - 4:1

Guinness - 2:1

Fat Tire - 3:1

Jameson's - 5:1

Place your bets please
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Anonymous, 17 Feb 2011 @ 12:51am

Re:
ah, now I understand; someone else wrote this.

No offense Tim whatever your last name is.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 5:57am

Re: Re:
And the answer was a combination of Guiness and Jamison, btw....
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RobShaver, 17 Feb 2011 @ 8:44am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
It was a movie with Sean Connery before the crappy TV show.
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Michael, 17 Feb 2011 @ 8:48am

He's got it wrong
It's not the traumatic brain injuries that are making society dumber. They make individuals dumber. It's TREATING these injuries that makes society dumber. If people died due to their traumatic brain injuries, society would (Darwin's theory, not mine) benefit by eventually gravitating toward people smart enough not to get hit in the head. Or, I guess, it would gravitate toward dumb people with thicker skulls - which is also probably a big benefit in the robot apocalypse because if you cannot outsmart the robot, you need to be able to withstand repeated blows to the head from it.

I would like to apologize to anyone with a traumatic head injury or a loved one with a traumatic head injury. Although the logic here is hard to argue with, I think we should continue to treat people with these injuries - because that is what a civilized society is supposed to do.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2011 @ 9:16am

Reading this article was worse than having a traumatic brain injury.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2011 @ 9:18am

Re:
I didn't even try to like it. It was just terrible.
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Rose M. Welch (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 12:16pm

Re: Dah!
I see it. :)
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Rose M. Welch (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 12:19pm

I love this post and all of the comments. Thanks, DH.
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Rose M. Welch (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 12:20pm

Re:
Is Fat Tire actually a beverage?
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Dark Helmet (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 12:57pm

Re: Re:
"Is Fat Tire actually a beverage?"

Hell yes it is, and a tastey one at that. It's brewed in Fort Collins, CO.

http://www.newbelgium.com/beer/detail.aspx?id=7c5b394b-d7b7-486a-ac9a-316256a7b0ee
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Pickle Monger (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 1:25pm

My suggestion? Just make it mandatory that all machines on earth must do a ten year stint playing football or hockey. Today's matchup, the Texas Toasters up against the Rochester Refrigerators! Join us next week on ESPN when the Carolina Computers skate the ice against the San Diego Smartphones!

Sorry DH. But your sarcasm is woefully misplaced and wholly inappropriate. We need real world solutions for what is obviously a serious problem. Instead of your clearly technocratic proposal of having machines play football (are you a communist?), we should simply make sure that, while in high-school and college, only the students with C-average and below be allowed to engage in physical sports like football, lacrosse, hockey, etc.

Oh, wait... we already do that...
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Pickle Monger (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 1:29pm

Re:
As a backup strategy, I also propose that we do not elect any politicians that had played football in college. You know, to stem the tide of brain-dead lawmakers...
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Hephaestus (profile), 17 Feb 2011 @ 7:59pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The crappy TV show had two great episodes. The death of connor which ended the connection and the whole "there can be only one" theme. And the almost naked freaky guy with the 2 foot necklace one. Where we all realized we never had to see another episode.
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FFF, 18 Feb 2011 @ 11:48am

What the freak?
That was a really strange article. He might have watched both Matrix and a NFL game at the same night, dreamed a whole bunch of non-sense stuff, and woke up with this fresh, not-so-good-after-all idea (we always wake up thinking we figured out something really important, but 10 minutes later we realize there was nothing there).
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Denial, 15 Feb 2019 @ 2:18am

What strange information and the article in General. I have the feeling that the author lost a large amount on rates https://betonymous.com/bookmakers/betfair/ and now accuses the NFL at all, plus smoked weed!
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