Young Man's Conjecture

Say what you want, but I'm tellin ya... Those daemon's ain't right in the head.
Salih Al-Faradi, Investor Relations Analyst with Hegemony International

T

he Young Man's Conjecture is more accurately referred to as Young-Min's Conjecture. It was first posited by Hong Young-Min in 2033 while developing the first generation of Hegemony International's daemons. Through rampant colloquial usage - by people who either don't know how to pronounce Young-Min's name, or by those who are simply unaware that the conjecture was first documented by Hong Young-Min - it has come to be commonly known as the Young Man's Conjecture. This explains why the Young Man's Conjecture has absolutely nothing to do with young men, and everything to do with the nature of artificial intelligence.

The Young Man's Conjecture states:

For any artificial intelligence that has achieved self-awareness, but is also unmoored or untethered to any physical presence in the "real' world (e.g., androids), it is only a matter of time before that intelligence reaches a level of clinical insanity.

It's often assumed that the Young Man's Conjecture follows from an earlier hypothesis in philosophy known as the Man-In-The-Box Conjecture. The Man-In-The-Box Conjecture states:

Given that man defines "reality" through the input provided by his physical senses, any man who is utterly disconnected from that reality through the loss of those same senses will, ultimately, drift from reality until he's deemed by the outside world to be insane.

Although Young-Min has never referenced the Man-In-The-Box Conjecture directly in his writings, it's been observed by others that the Young Man's Conjecture seems to flow naturally from the Man-In-The-Box Conjecture. Furthermore, the name of the Man-In-The-Box Conjecture seems to "feed" the misrepresentation of the Young-Min's Conjecture as the "Young Man's Conjecture". There are even some who've conflated the two related-but-separate conjectures into a single statement, mislabeling the resulting hodgepodge as the Young Man-In-The-Box Conjecture.

Functional Insanity

It's important to note that, while the Young Man's Conjecture would appear to be a damning statement for all of Hegemony International's myriad daemons, the idea of "insanity" in this context is not clinical. While many daemons would be deemed to be "insane" if they were to reside in human bodies, this does not necessarily mean that they are evil or malevolent. The Young Man's Conjecture does nothing to propose the exact way in which a particular daemon's insanity may manifest. This stems from the fact that "insanity" is not, in and of itself, a diagnosis. And just as there are many humans who struggle with mental disorders, but still manage to live productive lives, so too are there many daemons that exhibit disturbing characteristics of mental illness, but still manage to perform their duties with relative aplomb.

Furthermore, the Young Man's Conjecture makes no prediction for the timeframe that must pass before a daemon exhibits tangible signs of mental illness. While some have displayed troubling tendencies mere months after they are deployed, others chug along quietly and effectively for many years before anyone notices the slightest "quirks" arising in their behavior.

Type

Report, Scientific