Posthuman Norms

[Cray]

Watt's Blindsight

I have that book and I've been meaning to write a rebuttal to the author for, like, a decade.

I really enjoyed it at the first reading. It seemed like a logical derivation from ideas in Harry Turtledove's "Bluff" short story.

The problem I had with "Blindsight" is that it posits self-awareness is not required in intelligent beings. However, an entity capable of high level awareness of its environment, creativity, persistent memory, and other features of intelligence is going to notice that itself is not the same as other objects.

For example, the vampires of Blindsight will notice that their hands respond to their internal thoughts, but the hands of other entities around them do not obey in the same fashion. Self feels pain; pain is not felt when other entities are injured. And so on. Sapiency is one level of recursion that environmental awareness, the consideration of that unique entity "'This entity' - *I* - am thinking about hands." I'd suspect you'd need active "consciousness suppressors" to get an intelligent post-human without consciousness.