Driverless cars

[Simm Hogue]

Knight Rider (1982 TV series) featured KITT, a modified black Pontiac that was controlled by a computer with artificial intelligence. KITT was like a human being, it had feelings and it felt joy when villains were defeated.  Now Google and other companies are developing marketable driverless cars and jobs are being replaced by robots. This can end up only in one way: there will be a driverless, jobless AI robot world with no human population. Robots will be the Übermensch that Nietzsche foretold. Bad news? Not at all. Planet of the robots will end human suffering for good. 

[Simm Hogue]

Long ago St Paul wrote: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26). In robot world there will be no more death!

[Simm Hogue]

Below is a link to KITT. KITT had personality and a sense of moral values and justice. It is true that current computers do not feel emotion. But since artificial intelligence is possible, artificial feelings are possible too. The question is: why should robots have feelings; are feelings a benefit? If subordinate robots are equipped with a pain chip, then dominant robot bullies can torture them. They had better be without the pain chip.

http://www.teamknightrider.com/classic/articles/enter.html

torstai, 1. toukokuuta 2014 10.26.37 UTC+3 Simm Hogue kirjoitti:

[Bernardo]

>> But since artificial intelligence is possible, artificial feelings are possible too <<

Whether the premise is true or false, this is a non sequitur. The validity of the premise depends on the definition of intelligence. If you define it as I did in Rationalist Spirituality, than I agree with the premise: artificial intelligence is possible.

Gr, B.

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

I don't think robot feelings are possible, especially based on some things PJ & Benardo posted recently on FaceBook.(thanks!)

Nor do I think robot consciousness is possible, as I think materialist arguments explaining consciousness are rather weak. (Here's a 34 page philosophical argument about this subject.)

Beyond that I think the ability of Science to suss out truth is in fact much more limited than people want to believe. Here's my unpopular opinions on this belief, which the biologist/mathematician Stuart Kauffman calls the Galilean Spell:

Like Chomsky, as a "agnostic fundamentalist" I think the hubaloo about the success of science is overstated and Nature will not yield all her (Her?) mysteries (Mystery?) up to our limited minds. 

I also think this belief in being able to fit everything into our understanding of Nature (natural laws) may, as psychiatrist Ian Gilchrist notes, be a product of overemphasis of "left brain" traits. As he notes, when you build up a world subject to mechanism, it's easy to proclaim that all things are subject to mechanism.

As Wigner noted long ago, the 100% applicability of laws, or the existence of universal laws, is not assured - we are largely capable only of finding facts which have a high number of invariants:
 

"...This property of the regularity is a recognized invariance property and, as I had occasion to point out some time ago, without invariance principles similar to those implied in the preceding generalization of Galileo's observation, physics would not be possible. The second surprising feature is that the regularity which we are discussing is independent of so many conditions which could have an effect on it...

The preceding discussion is intended to remind us, first, that it is not at all natural that "laws of nature" exist, much less that man is able to discover them..."

The Nobel Winning physicist Josephson has discussed this as well, noting that lack of replicability is not the indication of falsehood some might want it to be. In fact he warns us against the Pathology of Disbelief when discussing the limits of science.

[Bernardo]

Sciborg, you are quite scholarly in the wealth of relevant references you always ground your statements on. You also write cogently. Have you ever considered writing a more complete essay or even a book? Or maybe you are already an author, but in disguise here...? :)

Gr, B.

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Thanks for the kind words Bernardo, but sadly I'm just a guy who's been reading about this topic for years.

I lack your gift for explaining complex topics so I don't think a book is in my future...but perhaps a blog where I can link to the giants whose shoulders I use as my camp grounds. :-)

[Simm Hogue]

Big mammals have few offspring. So they must regard their offspring precious and valuable. Most moms love their children. Since snakes and insects and amebae have a lot of offspring, we don't see proud snake moms around hugging their babies. Feelings give mammals darwinistic the survival advantage: if your son becomes an adult, he will probably find a girl and pass the DNA forward. Fear gives the survival advantage for rabbits, but not for tigers, which are absolutely fearless, since they are at the top of the food chain.

Human beings, monkeys, cats and dogs prove that robot feelings and robot consciousness are possible. We are all robots. We think that life is precious, but that is just the way our brains have been programmed by evolution, Snakes have a different program, that's all. Snakes and computers have no feelings. Rabbits are conscious of carrots and tigers. Carrots are not conscious.

My cat is a naive realist and thinks that there is a world 'out there' with cat food and mice and doors. Bees are naive realists: they see flowers 'out there', the same flowers I see.

I'm afraid materialism is true.

torstai, 1. toukokuuta 2014 10.26.37 UTC+3 Simm Hogue kirjoitti:

[Bernardo]

>> I'm afraid materialism is true. <<

Why do you hesitate in embracing it wholeheartedly?

[Simm Hogue]

OK. Sherlock Holmes used to say: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” The impossible solutions (God, creationism, Berkeley's idealism, meaningful universe, etc.) have been eliminated, so what remains is materialism. We are here to make money and have sex, then die. There are pleasure centres in brain that guide our behaviour. We seek sex, drugs and rock' n' roll. We are killer apes on a planet that cannot stand our presence much longer. According to leading scientists and the latest IPCC report, very soon (by 2100) this planet is so hot that civilisation has collapsed everywhere and survivors (those who have food and energy to heat the house) live in chaos. Since chaos is inevitable and we die anyway, why not nukes?

torstai, 1. toukokuuta 2014 10.26.37 UTC+3 Simm Hogue kirjoitti:

[Bernardo]

It's an interminable, almost intolerable mental loop, isn't it? When we think we're almost 'resolving' it, it catches us again and we suddenly find ourselves starting from scratch.

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Sorry - When did God get eliminated?

Beyond that there's still no explanation for why anyone feels anything, or why these feelings need to be differentiated. Why does anger have a different experiential quality than love? Why do activities feel meaningful, and why does this feeling vary so widely not just in different people but in the same person depending on time/experience/context?

Every subjective state could be variations on hunger & lust for example, regardless of the actions/experiences.

This is why, intuitively, Bernardo's ideas make a certain kind of sense to me. What we see are images of true processes rather than actual causal factors.

[Simm Hogue]

Young people are often idealists, ready to break down barricades but when they get older and wiser, they usually become materialists who just wax their cars. Therefore materialism correlates with wisdom. Atheism also correlates with wisdom: most scientists are atheists, and almost all Nobel Prize winners are atheists. Therefore it is silly to believe in God. Darwin eliminated God.

torstai, 1. toukokuuta 2014 10.26.37 UTC+3 Simm Hogue kirjoitti: