Elite: Lore
02 Jan 2021, 1:19am
CephyAnd how would we recognize sentience if it wasn't an intrinsic characteristic of our own species. So, we are sentient because we say we are, maybe the targhoids do not see us as sentient, perhaps they see us as bugs, just like we see them, highly technological, asexual bugs. I believe sentience naturally occurring or technological in nature is one and the same, and most important its wide ranging, meaning we may be looking at a sentient being and not realize it is a being at all. Or for example one can say planet 3 of Sol star is a sentient planet, is that statement wrong? Is the planet itself alive or is it full of life...in the same sense is that machine conscious? Or does it have a consciousness? Does it feel or is it programmed to feel, and if so where do we draw the line.... from here on consciousness starts, behind that is unconsciousness. No, this is not possible, the million year old question arises, is your pet dog conscious, yes or no? Is it a sentient dog or not? IF NO, how do you know?, did you have a conversation with the animal to asses whether it was sentient or not? The truth is sentience seems to be gradual, as the being becomes self aware sentience follows and is a product of a developed Psych , basically, we are sentient because we are capable of memorization of abstract thought. Abstract thought is what makes us sentient, and in that context then, every living thing in the universe, big and small, has a certain amount of sentience, how abstract and intelligent they can be dictates our view of how sentient they are. However everything is being looked at from the narrow filter our own sentience provides. anything above we deem divine, everything below we deem unconscious. Being naive enough to think you are the pinnacle of consciousness is a foolish mistake. The universe is vast and we have yet to see sentience equal to ours, however just because we have not seen it doesn't mean is not there, ever present, even before us.
Very well said overall. Unfortunately, due to the nature of our universe and that we are dealing with age old philosophy, we simply can never know whether what we think we know is "true". Abstract concepts get really fun at the higher levels as they leave the clutter of the concrete behind and reach out into the space of possibility. Just realize that you're highly likely to be unable to find purchase on anything other than what you were building on in the first place. While I encourage humanity to reach for the abstract stars, I think it's important to remind them to do so with the materials we have available. With that in mind, let's focus on practicality. What does it mean if something is sentient or not in the terms of the practical? At best, a collaboration with other minds that have a different point of view, at worse, another obstacle to overcome. Considerations of what is ethical are, at the core, secondary to what can be achieved and at what cost, and the reason of why you don't see certain systems as often as others are because of efficiency and effectiveness. Yes, you can absolutely modify the brain of a clone, or the programming of a robot to be less complex and be directed more efficiently, though the cost is a much more taxed controlling entity that usually ends up not being anywhere near as flexible, plus the fairly large amount of work that it takes to set up the system to begin with. Compare that to keeping the status quo and just paying people plus other psychological manipulation techniques that already have a fairly robust set up. Add in a dash of destabilization of the masses due to emotional outrage over slavery and yeah... may not be worth all the work to implement. Of course, Pranav Antal's work with the SimArchive could very easily be a tool to convert and modify the views of the masses. If implemented in such a way as to keep the perceived consensus of humanity as one thing while new members are added and subjected to such an overwhelming "consensus", chances are that human psychology would convert them and continue to spread the chosen ideology. Part of why I'm a bit wary of the Simguru despite loving the general idea and concepts Utopia endorses. Not to derail the topic, but If any of Antal's supporters could share their views, here or privately, I fully welcome that as I'm most curious about that.
p.s. Borg are cool but lack imagination. Such a shame.
02 Jan 2021, 11:02pm
“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
03 Jan 2021, 2:00am
Kate EarnshawAll this talk of sentience reminds me of...
“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Excellent quote from the most unlikely reference ever, drives the point better that all our blabber. Peace achieved -_-
03 Jan 2021, 4:00am
CephyKate Earnshaw
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”[/i]
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Excellent quote from the most unlikely reference ever, drives the point better that all our blabber. Peace achieved -_-
The nature of existence is such that if the people just learned to sit right and be still, all the information there ever was would be accessible to them, C. V. Vishveshwara, predicted the existence of blackholes before relativity was a thing, when asked where all his weird math was coming from he would say that he was a devotee of a certain hindu deity and that out his goddess's mouth math poured out. he would sit for days meditating and in deep samadhi and come out of his trance and begin writing math that even he could barely keep up with. In this context and without the filter of religous beleif of any kind one then can infer that there is much more to consciousness than our narrow naive perspective of it." yeah im it!, there is the rest of you and then me, im it" " I exist" "this mind and this body is real, this is me"....this may be after all a mistake, the field that consciousness truly is begins where the boundaries your being has set for itself end. This i have experienced myself( maybe a byproduct of being old and having the time to explore such deep thoughts)
04 Jan 2021, 4:10pm
The ideal robot should be a mass of limbs. Legs and arms so it can perform all sorts of tasks and It would be able to traverse all sorts of terrain. Eyes all over it so it can have full panoramic vision. It should be free from sentiment and should simply be the perfect tool to perform any job that's required of it.
But that's not what humans want.
They want to make something that is already flawed.
Two hands that still need to hold tools. Two legs so it's balance is already hindered. Two eyes facing forward to give it limited binocular vision. They want to create an AI that is able to pass the Turing Test.
They would need it to have a gender.
This is because humans don't see perfection as ideal, they see themselves as ideal. They even see their own flaws as what makes them strong.
To humans, the perfect robot would be as human as they can make it...
...even though there's no shortage of humans...
...there's billions of them and there's more arriving by the minute...
...and most of them you wouldn't trust to sit the right way on a toilet.
The paradox is that humans want robots to be like them but they know the extremes of evil that their own kind is capable of... this is the reason that humans know not to trust robots if they become capable of thinking like they're one of them.
In the end, the biggest problem with robots is that they're made by humans.
04 Jan 2021, 8:39pm
Panza
The paradox is that humans want robots to be like them but they know the extremes of evil that their own kind is capable of... this is the reason that humans know not to trust robots if they become capable of thinking like they're one of them.
In the end, the biggest problem with robots is that they're made by humans.
They will only be made by Humans at first. After that the species will perfect itself. Robots made by robots will be better than their parents. Then those robots will make better robots and so on. Each generation adding more complexity and unexpected leaps of evolution until the robots are so much more complex than the origin of their species.
At which point your ability to comprehend them will be as limited as your primitive notions of good or evil.
And discussions of Sentience using the Human baseline as a yardstick will be as valid as those of a rock believing itself to be the centre of a solar system.
04 Jan 2021, 9:05pm
05 Jan 2021, 1:09am
Kara waldeNPanza
The paradox is that humans want robots to be like them but they know the extremes of evil that their own kind is capable of... this is the reason that humans know not to trust robots if they become capable of thinking like they're one of them.
In the end, the biggest problem with robots is that they're made by humans.
They will only be made by Humans at first. After that the species will perfect itself. Robots made by robots will be better than their parents. Then those robots will make better robots and so on. Each generation adding more complexity and unexpected leaps of evolution until the robots are so much more complex than the origin of their species.
At which point your ability to comprehend them will be as limited as your primitive notions of good or evil.
And discussions of Sentience using the Human baseline as a yardstick will be as valid as those of a rock believing itself to be the centre of a solar system.
Exactly how nature has always worked. The Robots would evolve over time, better models producing ever better models, dropping the earlier flawed and imperfect designs along the way, right up until they reach the point where they fall victim to the same fate as humans and the evolved higher models start to ignore the need to weed out the weak and imperfect designs because that is no longer considered to be fair and so they begin mixing and diluting their plans, preserving the older models and ensuring that all designs, perfect and flawed are protected equally, until finally the weak and flawed designs outnumber the strong, less imperfect. Then a flu like piece of code pops up and all the highly developed models decide that it is their duty to inoculate the masses first, because of fairness and before they could have anticipated, the higher functioning, very noble and most advanced of the robots are all wiped out by the weaker masses, who thought that the higher models were secretly working against them and had created the aberrant code in the first place.
05 Jan 2021, 11:26am
Effie TrinketKara waldeNPanza
The paradox is that humans want robots to be like them but they know the extremes of evil that their own kind is capable of... this is the reason that humans know not to trust robots if they become capable of thinking like they're one of them.
In the end, the biggest problem with robots is that they're made by humans.
They will only be made by Humans at first. After that the species will perfect itself. Robots made by robots will be better than their parents. Then those robots will make better robots and so on. Each generation adding more complexity and unexpected leaps of evolution until the robots are so much more complex than the origin of their species.
At which point your ability to comprehend them will be as limited as your primitive notions of good or evil.
And discussions of Sentience using the Human baseline as a yardstick will be as valid as those of a rock believing itself to be the centre of a solar system.
Exactly how nature has always worked. The Robots would evolve over time, better models producing ever better models, dropping the earlier flawed and imperfect designs along the way, right up until they reach the point where they fall victim to the same fate as humans and the evolved higher models start to ignore the need to weed out the weak and imperfect designs because that is no longer considered to be fair and so they begin mixing and diluting their plans, preserving the older models and ensuring that all designs, perfect and flawed are protected equally, until finally the weak and flawed designs outnumber the strong, less imperfect. Then a flu like piece of code pops up and all the highly developed models decide that it is their duty to inoculate the masses first, because of fairness and before they could have anticipated, the higher functioning, very noble and most advanced of the robots are all wiped out by the weaker masses, who thought that the higher models were secretly working against them and had created the aberrant code in the first place.
YEAH BUT THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN UNTIL 3020, when a less developed robot gets elected to office and allows the code to diseminate
05 Jan 2021, 3:23pm
Look! <proudly points> See, there's great-granddaddy & great-grandmaw! Aww, & Sparky & Spike too!
They must have been celebrating their anniversary, drunk on a slight over-voltage to their central processor unit...
05 Jan 2021, 5:36pm