MACABRE MONDAY

Ambrose Bierce's "Moxon's Master" (1899)

Folks, I am completely cheap-jacking this one this week (you can ask for your money back); I have a lot on my plate tomorrow. It had been my intent to do “Count Szolnok’s Robots” (D. Scott-Moncrieff, 1948), a story with highly similar themes, but Starr O’Hara put me on a Bierce trip. My laziness is entirely her fault.

“Presently [Moxon] said: 'What is a "machine"? The word has been variously defined. Here is one definition from a popular dictionary: "Any instrument or organization by which power is applied and made effective, or a desired effect produced." Well, then, is not a man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks -- or thinks he thinks.'

'If you do not wish to answer my question,' I said, rather testily, 'why not say so? -- all that you say is mere evasion. You know well enough that when I say "machine" I do not mean a man, but something that man has made and controls.'

'When it does not control him,' he said, rising abruptly and looking out of a window, whence nothing was visible in the blackness of a stormy night.”

Basically a dude plays chess with a robot (“Mechanical Turk”) and it all goes horribly wrong. This 100+ year-old story asks questions about our relationship as human beings with “artificial intelligence” that are arguably more relevant now than ever. “Over and over, his last words came back to me: ‘Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm.’”

(It’s difficult for me to believe that Bierce’s line, “Ah, plants also belong to the philosopher class! I should be pleased to know some of their conclusions; you may omit the premises” somehow went unused by Alan Moore in Swamp Thing.)

It’s public domain, so you can find it damned near anywhere, but here’s a nice copy: https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Bierce_Moxon.pdf (all praise be to Bezos, the Modern Moxon.)

https://donswaim.com/bierce-arts.html

“Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly. I have a machine in there that lost its temper and cut up rough.”