Re: How Robots Will Steal Your Job

Awareness is internal self-modeling.

Your computer manifests mere intelligence. And birds and cats who can talk and do math are simply calculators.

-Steve

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 01:08:31 GMT, "R. Steve Walz" wrote or quoted :

On the other hand, you can be conscious and look to the rest of the world like a vegetable. We don't find out you were conscious until afterwards and you tell us about your experience.

Consider the discovery that the infant anaesthetic curare was not an anaesthetic, just a muscle paralyser.

I don't think we have anywhere near enough information to make assumptions about consciousness. I think, in the interim, it best to err on the side of assuming too much consciousness.

Being kind to free range chickens does produce better meat and less adrenalin, even if they are not conscious enough to appreciate it.

-- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming. See

If I were a cat, I would rather be euthanized than adopted by him. He'd probably be SHOUTING at me all the time for getting hair on the sofa.

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"Cats prefer houses (and sofas) to people." David Byrne - Talking Heads (Andrew Thompson - PhySci/1.1C!)

-- Andrew Thompson

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If that is your argument, it is the flaw that is utterly simple - the word "conscious" does not mean "conscious in the same manner as a human" any more than "hair" means "human hair".

Nevertheless, it leaves hairs on my couch.

Then why not just say that, instead of trying to construct some irrational 'proof'? If you're not sure it's okay to eat animals, live with the guilt or become a vegetarian - don't murder logic as well as cows.

Why are you screaming? Are you an animal frantically tapping on the keyboard when it's human owner is away? As for machines, I have every reason to believe that consciousness is a continuum, and at some point deterministic machines will be built that I will be prepared to describe as conscious. I don't think washing machines are far along that continuum.

I claimed nothing there except that a statement of yours might well be correct.

Argument by assertion, no more.

Screaming doesn't make assertions true.

You fail to provide a shred of evidence that cats are not conscious. We do in fact have some evidence that various apes have thought processes that in some ways resemble ours. I see no reason to believe that cats and dogs do not have the same, at a somewhat lower level.

Dolphins probably just assume we are aware. If they ever thought about whether we know they are aware, they would assume we do. None of the apes that learned symbolic languages ever showed concern that people would think them machines. If I recall correctly, one was in fact 'interrogated' on this point, and put cats, apes and humans in the 'living' category, but ants in the 'machine' category. A fair enough division into conscious and unconscious.

Maybe you could learn from that ape.

- Gerry Quinn

snipped-for-privacy@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in news:9vAHb.2316$ snipped-for-privacy@news.indigo.ie:

I've been wondering about the logic behind the vegetarian option.

It is not ok to breed an animal for the sole purpose of killing and consuming it. Yet, if not for carnivore humans, that (individual) animal would never have lived.

It is not ok to hunt wild animals for food. What about weeding out the weak (or overpopulation) for the (supposed) good of the species? Predators do it to prey. Lemmings do it to themselves. Some carnivores do it to each other (cannibalism).

It is ok to starve wild animals to extinction by destroying their habitats to make farmland on which to grow vegetables for all these new vegetarian converts. Organic farming is no better (less yield per area - so more habitat destruction). Organic produce does have more flavour though.

----------------------- Of course it does, because we are our only example of it. Lots of things are called hair.

---------------------------- Saying that is the SAME as what I say! The very REASON we let each other eat lower animals is BECAUSE we ALL KNOW they are non-conscious!

---------------- I don't feel like I'm screaming!

--------------------- No, it's mine.

---------------- Except legitimate ones.

and at some point

----------------- I agree. But animals are NOT.

I don't think washing machines are far along that

--------------------------- Me neither.

--------------------------------- I didn't say "human" minds, I said CONSCIOUS minds.

---------------------------- Limit yourself to what you know directly, and you will see. Eschew "thinking" of what you see, and simply SEE it!

------------------------- I'm not screaming, think of measured crisp speech. Think of it as stridency!

If they were, they would do what WE do because WE'RE conscious!

------------------- Lower levels are not merely less of the same, or the same done slower, but NOT THE SAME AT ALL! Cats are NOT human retards!!

---------------------------- Dophins simply don't.

-------------------------- I'd love to see that cite.

-Steve

This seems to be a common assumption that may or may not be true. Most of the technologies that are used AIs that can "learn" also have the capability to forget.

Now, it may be possible to hook this AI up to a normal computer.

Of course. The problem wiht defining AI is that we don't have a good handle on what "real" intelligence is.

Yes, we have now reduced this task to a relatively simple algorithm and so it can't be *the* indicator of true intelligence.

Again, like the above. It used to be considered that chess was an unsolveable problem by a machine intelligence. With both algorithm improvement and Moore's Law, this was disproved.

Frankly, I would rather see a great Bridge program.

Sort of. We can *study* the structures, but until we understand them better than we do now, we can't really improve them.

I prefer the process of duplicating these processes, so that we get the same, or simlar, end results. I'm of the "rational behavior" school of AI: I don't care how (or even *if*) a machine thinks, but rather that it can behave in a way that we would consider rational.

The nerve cell may be slow, but the simulations we can make of it are even slower. The problem is that not only does each neuron have a rather large number of direct inputs, it seems to be able to be indirectly affected by nearby neural activity.

I'm not saying that we cannot eventually duplicate it, but I doubt we will be duplicating the human brain anytime soon.

D. Jay Newman

The ongoing 30-year old study of Koko the gorilla

Consider the following quote from

Koko and I communicate with each other through a modified form of American Sign Language (ASL). Koko has demonstrated well over 1,000 such gestures. She also understands over 2,000 words of spoken English, so people can speak to her and she will respond in sign. She also communicates with her normal gorilla vocalizations, of purrs and cries. In our more than 28 years together, Koko has expressed the whole range of emotions associated with humans, like, happiness, sadness, love, grief, embarrassment."

I'd say, based on your posts, it's clear she is able to express herself better than you.

Note: Followup-To set.

Christer Ericson Sony Computer Entertainment, Santa Monica

Circular argument, or argument by assertion - feel free to choose which fallacy you are committing, as your statement can be construed either way.

If a cat can be unconscious, a cat can be conscious. The vast majority of English speakers will agree with me.

No it isn't. Almost everyone thinks animals are conscious, and most people eat meat. Of course, we tend to ensure that animals are unconscious (indeed, dead) at the time of consumption, except those like oysters to which we don't ascribe significant consciousness. Few people would consider it ethical to take a bite out of a live cow - indeed we concern ourselves with laws regarding humane killing. If we thought animals were unconscious, why would we care?

The way I look at it, they would eat us, and turn-about is fair play.

You were explicitly using the word in your invented and incorrect sense of "having consciousness like a human". I merely translated your assertion into English.

"I see a cat. The cat sees me. God sees the cat and God sees me." So we used to recite in kindergarten many years ago. I still have had no reason to quarrel with the first two sentences.

They do lots of things we do.

I think it is from a book called "The Ape's Reflexion" - maybe you can find a copy somewhere. It was an interesting read.

I don't know any apes, but I am convinced that many of my four-legged friends are quite conscious and aware.

- Gerry Quinn

I think the problem is at least a level deeper.

UNESTABLISHED--so far--is whether a true consciousness, which is so different from our own as to be unrecognizable, can exist.

I contend that, not only is this unestablished, it's unlikely.

It's quite fanciful to imagine minds so different from ours that we would not credit them as minds at all, but I think it is just that: a fancy. I see no reason full "consciousness" wouldn't transcend the particular "iconic and verbal lingo" of a species.

-------------------------- Misapplication of fallacy. What I said is simply true, you have NO evidence of ANY sort that something that reminds you of our own awareness is anything of the kind, merely because it does so, when you are emotionally invested in the result.

---------------------------- The cat can be non-moving other than for breathing, but without being humanly conscious. People might grant free use of the word, merely for lack of another in the current state of the language, but the same might be said of an anaesthetized insect, and this same audience would permit it, so that means nothing. Just because the state of an animal might seem outwardly similar in every visible respect to that of a human, this may be so despite the fact that the human is specially conscious as we believe but the animal never has been, in the way we value, even though it looks the same outwardly.

In other words, many performances of animal functions have nothing whatsoever with the function of actual awareness, and they are merely the bodily reactions that EITHER an aware or a non-aware animal's body will produce, and are unrelated to actual self-awareness. An example would be that an animal might well eat, sleep, produce REM, and apparently be attentive to a stimulus without actually having any semblance of the kind of human awareness that makes us know that we exist as a specific thought. These actions are unrelated to whether the animal is cognizant of its existence as a theory, or whether it even HAS a mind that produces thoughts separate from its immediate attention.

---------------------- People are easily confused about what they believe, but they clearly value animals as less valuable so as to justify killing and eating them. This means that they inherently MUST believe that whatever animals have is less important than what we have.

------------------------------------- Agreed, but this comes only of the confusion I meantioned that is based on the same confusion as YOU manifest here about the difference between outward signs of function, and actual self-awareness, and how easy those are to confuse one for the other simply because we are the only aware being we share ideas with. You see, animals don't HAVE "ideas" that exist as symbolic memories.

----------------------- Except, of course, that is fodder for humor precisely because they cannot, and WE KNOW they cannot conceive of even their own death, or in fact any future state.

--------------------------------- Just because it only applies to humans on this planet doesn't mean that it wouldn't apply to aware robots or other alien species.

You see NO "god", liar.

------------------ I see the camera, the camera sees me.

------------------------------- But nothing special to being aware in the manner we know WE are aware!

---------------------------- I'd enjoy it if they were, but I very much doubt they could. If they could, then they would do more to save themselves from our pragmatic use of them and join with us. Steve

--------------------------------- Cute, so you're saying that we aren't even conscious!!!

----------------------------------- While an amusing verbal and semantic device here, I see no proof that awareness would or could ever be MORE than what we have, or that it could be less than what we have either. Awareness is a specific way of seeing, one that requires us be less than omnipotent, but aware of past and future.

-Steve

I think there's little point in arguing further with you. Have a good new year, and (just for me) knock any animals you plan to eat alive on the head first.

- Gerry Quinn

Once we start talking to dolls because they have sound sensors and are capable of responding to speech, you will have something resembling a valid comparison.

As far as I am aware, we have already started doing this.

Cheers Bent D

Of course, this particular line of reasoning would allow you to eat Belgians too.

Cheers Bent D

Belgian Waffles are YUMMY!! :-|

?? How in the hell did you parse that from what I wrote?

That's one way to *start* defining it. A full definition if probably more elusive than that. And I think we need to be open to the uncertainty of our position. Nevertheless, I do very much suspect--and believe the evidence supports--that "intelligence" transcends species. When/If we meet *truly* intelligent beings, there will be no question.

The flip side is that, assuming animals don't have "critical mass intelligence", they still deserve respect and care similar to that we give infants--who also aren't "fully human"[1] yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [1] I know, I know. For once, take the *meaning*, not the *words*.

Intelligence is the capacity to choose an appropriate action in one's current situation. Animals certainly have that capacity-- and we human animals often fail to exercise it. Animals fare should fine as situation-action agents in their native habitats, and frequently adapt well to the environments we impose on them. I enjoy animals tremendously and take care not to injure or in- flict suffering on them. I respect them and their abilities. Why demean or disparage them?

Very well stated, Dude.

Yeah, don't look at my finger: look what I'm pointing to.

Nice website. Greta and Emmy would love to play with Samantha.

George