Robot Morality

Cris ...

I'm sorry to see that your love affair with perfect, artificial life is ongoing. Too bad. It may well have contributed to your inane comment:

Which is about the most ridiculous statement you may have made to date. Though, admittedly, I haven't taken the time to read through all your posts.

We, possessors of limited, defective brains ... brains to which paranoia is integral, could be the creators of intelligent, superior machines that would not contain the seed of that paranoia?

Dream on dear Cris ... dream on.

Chagur

 

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Chagur,

Perfect?

Nah just vastly superior. Just examine yourself more closely to see a good example of how the human form is so inadequate.

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Cris

 

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Cris ...

Decided to take your advice and after an extremely close examination which only revealed a testicular asymmetry, I did not find anything inadequate enough to make me wish for a more adequate 'mechanical' form.

But thanks anyway for the suggestion

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I congratulate you on your mastery of irony and dry wit.

However, aren't you proposing that an inferior, random brain be able to produce something which is superior to itself?
Is there any historical record indicating that a chair, as an example, is superior to the chair manufacturer?

By what process would such limited brains produce a superior brain?
After all, the normal first step in such a process would be to produce a functional specification of the desired product.
How would you specify superior features when, by definition, the people who are to manufacture your desired product are inferior and cannot understand the superior specifications?
Further, how would you, as one of these inferior brains, propose to be able to specify such superior features when you, yourself, would not be able to understand them?

Easier said than done.
By what process will you, or your designate, be able to create a design that is superior to yourself?

Astute.

Well, there is a term for replica cars and it is "replicar."
Perhaps, "repliman" should be put forth for the consideration of the world.

This all begs the question, "What for?"
Why do we wish to create a series of replimen who duplicate us in every way, except that they are mechanical, and only theoretically superior?

Is it only to bring the fictional aspects of "I Robot" to pass, or do we wish to be enslaved by machines, excuse me, replimen?

How can you shatter such a dream, Chagur?

Quite easily, I suspect.

BTW, my condolences on the ... *ahem*... asymmetry.

 

Re: Cris ...

Chagur,

I congratulate you on being a nearly perfect human. I think I remember that you are around 70, is that right? Some of the human imperfections that I had in mind are related to aging, such as deficient eyesight, hearing, memory, hair loss, muscle loss, bone loss, loss of fertility, weaker muscles, replacement teeth, etc. You get the idea I’m sure. And I take your statements to mean that you are not suffering from any of these human features and that you are as fit as a 20 year old. But realistically your age is such that you are at risk of dying form old age, and potentially quite soon (not being personal here, I hope you understand). Death is easily the ultimate human inadequacy. Do you know how to beat that yet? A machine could easily beat that issue. That alone is worth the progression to a post-human form, and outweighs any other consideration.

The biggest inadequacy of the human form is its inability to resist unplanned death from fatal diseases. Machines will not have that that rather serious limitation.

How about sleep, you waste 30% of your short lifetime in a coma. Machines will not have that limitation.

You also spend another 20% of your life, buying, preparing, and eating food, and eliminating the waste products. Machines have none of these time wasters. Ah but you might say you enjoy eating, well of course you do, you have evolved to enjoy eating otherwise we’d all be dead because we refused to eat. Eating is no more than an evolutionary instinct.

Why are you satisfied with a vision system that can only observe a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum? Being able to see infra-red and ultraviolet at least would enable you to see in almost complete darkness and be able to avoid dangerous high-frequency radiation. Also, how about a telescopic vision system that allows you to see greater distances, or even at the microscopic level?

Why are you satisfied with a body that can give you excruciating pain if you suffer an injury? Machines will not feel pain.

Why only be satisfied with only 5 senses, how about radar or sonar?

That’s enough for now I think on inadequacies.

Of course on tony’s issue of how we can produce anything superior than ourselves is rather obvious – we do it all the time. Try calculating the cube root of 123456, my calculator can do it in a split second. But there are many examples of humans producing machines that provide us with capabilities that are superior to our own abilities. But as we proceed to more accurately understand how the brain functions it seems inevitable that we will eventually develop superior replacement mechanisms for those functions as well.

Cris

 

*Originally posted by Cris
...Machines will not have that that rather serious limitation. *
What are we going to do with all the thousand-year-old cars?
Hey wait!
Why are the junkyards full of cars that aren't even twenty years old?

*How about sleep, you waste 30% of your short lifetime in a coma. Machines will not have that limitation. *
You're right.
They'll have the limitation of being in the repair shop.

*you have evolved to enjoy eating otherwise we’d all be dead because we refused to eat. Eating is no more than an evolutionary instinct. *
What kind of mindless twaddle is this?

That would mean that everyone died before they evolved to enjoy eating.

*Why are you satisfied with a vision system that can only observe a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum?*
Because it works.

*Also, how about a telescopic vision system that allows you to see greater distances, or even at the microscopic level?*
How often do you need to see things at great distances, or at the microscopic level?

*Why are you satisfied with a body that can give you excruciating pain if you suffer an injury?*
Look at lepers to see why feeling pain is actually a good thing.

*Machines will not feel pain.*
That is why they break down.

*Of course on tony’s issue of how we can produce anything superior than ourselves is rather obvious – we do it all the time. Try calculating the cube root of 123456, my calculator can do it in a split second.*
However, I can drive.
My calculator just sits there.

*But there are many examples of humans producing machines that provide us with capabilities that are superior to our own abilities.*
On the basis of one ability at a time, we can produce machines that perform the functions of one ability at a time.
However, what you, Cris, have consistently overlooked is that people have multiple abilities, and people can also decide when and why to use those abilities and when and why those abilities should be augmented mechanically.

Machines cannot decide anything at all.
Even computers are only following a long list of instructions, called "code," which is given to them by people, called "programmers."

My calculator has not once, on its own, decided to calculate the cube root of 123456.

 

Hi,if robot laws as stated by Asimov are applied,then it would open lots of other areas of trouble...remember HAL9000?He was initially considered to be malfunctioning,however HAL's programming let it believe that Mission mattered more than human lives,which to some extent is true.Asimov's laws would have prevented HAL from harming jupiter bound space craft,three laws may prevent robots from harming humans,but these laws dont offer much in the way of protection of human egos.