Ethics

[Baron Morte]

I did some thinking on the matter of self awareness and I am left wondering about the extent of that. I am assuming that most of you have seen the movie Blade Runner. For those who dont, the movie pictures the suffering of the replicants, a breed of androids that have the same emotional responses as we do, but they live for only 4 years.

I read dantes thoughts on hurting animals which can be read here and i found most incoherent. As most mamals do have a very developed nervous system, then protecting humans from harm and just not caring about other creatures's suffering is absurd.

However what if computers where programed to feel pain. I remember this Simpsons quote "oh crap, why was I programed to feel pain" which was said by a robot in flames, that always makes me laugh. Anyways, whats the diference between the pain that such robot would feel, and the one that one animal would?

In a sense the matrix's robots, for those who have seen the anime, pictured that in a very good way, in that bit where angry humans thorn a robo-hooker to shreds, while said robot screams her lungs out.

I would most certainly empathise with replicants in pain, as I do with advanced animals in pain.


Would you?

Thats abit heavy for this time of night isnt it?

[Baron Morte]

My brain never sleeps

[Untouchabler]

hehe,

I agree though. Dantes views were worrying. :-(

PS: as if its not obvious, Im Mr_Untouchable, I got banned before, not sure why.

[W]

Pain is just a signal that you're being damaged. Only sentient beings suffer.

[Baron Morte]

Machines could be programed to feel the same way.

[W]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

Machines could be programed to feel the same way.

Machines could be programmed to give a signal meaning they're being damaged (many already do), which could be called pain, but not suffering.

Nothing wrong with pain itself, it's the damage and the suffering that's bad. Damaging things that aren't yours isn't ok, nor is inflicting suffering. But as I said, only sentient beings can suffer. I've yett to see any evidence that animals are sentient, and don't make me laugh about "hurting" a computer.

[Baron Morte]

Animals and humans are just a organic machine, and i fail to realise why, eventually, obviously not with the tech we dispose today, a mechanical machine would not feel pain.

And i am not even talking about physical pain, which is simple, but I am also referring to emotional pain.

[Untouchabler]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

Animals and humans are just a organic machine, and i fail to realise why, eventually, obviously not with the tech we dispose today, a mechanical machine would not feel pain.

And i am not even talking about physical pain, which is simple, but I am also referring to emotional pain.

yeh, we are organic, but our morals, feelings, ability to make decisions etc, cannot be reproduced in a machine, and therefore emotional pain cannot either.
Humans do things that are illogical, through free will, that cannot be programmed, unless you actually program it to do randomly illogical stuff, but that fact that its programmed would still mean it was following a logical protocol

[W]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

Animals and humans are just a organic machine, and i fail to realise why, eventually, obviously not with the tech we dispose today, a mechanical machine would not feel pain.

And i am not even talking about physical pain, which is simple, but I am also referring to emotional pain.

Aka suffering.

We're obviously more than just animals. If you can't accept that, I can see why you're having problems with animal pain.

And shut the **** up about tech. You have zero understanding of science and engeneering.

[Baron Morte]

It all comes down to being responses under the stimulus of hormones like seretonine and the like. We have all that just because of one thing. We are programed to learn. If you program a well developed machine to learn and it is going to behave just like us, given the right ammount of time.

Your moral feelings and crap are unbelievably simply to mimic. So are the random crap, which is contained in the learning process

[W]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

It all comes down to being responses under the stimulus of hormones like seretonine and the like. We have all that just because of one thing. We are programed to learn. If you program a well developed machine to learn and it is going to behave just like us, given the right ammount of time.

Proof please?

[Baron Morte]

Originally Posted by W

Aka suffering.

We're obviously more than just animals. If you can't accept that, I can see why you're having problems with animal pain.

And shut the **** up about tech. You have zero understanding of science and engeneering.

Obviously more? Where is that huge difference?
Your ignorance in evolution and biology are just astounishing. Please refrain from comenting on such subject in order to avoid aditional embarassement.

We are only diferent beacause our brain is a little more eficient on the art of learning. And thats about it. Everything else is just a reflex.

Do you think we just sprouted out of a tree or something, and we have no conections with the rest of animals?
Fact is that genetically, we are 1% different of a great ape. We are animals, and with a little thing we like to call self awareness.

The statement about my knowledge in tech is ludicrous and pitiful. Like yourself.

[Baron Morte]

Originally Posted by W

Proof please?

Of what?

[W]

Well, I'll just let your statements stand as they are, anyone with any knowledge in biology for instance will be able to see what a fraud you are now.

[Dante Hicks]

I thought I was going to have to come here to defend my point of view, but fortunately W has addressed any immediate questions.

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

Fact is that genetically, we are 1% different of a great ape.

This however, is the typical drivel which get's trotted out in such debates. What the hell does it matter how much DNA we share or whatever the statistic is? (as a btw, it's generally given as something between 95 and 98.5% similar these days). I share almost all the same DNA as someone in a profound vegetative state (or a dead person for that matter) - yet we are treated by society as completley different.

Anyway W is quite correct. The difference I was drawing originally was that of suffering vs pain. You may find that incoherent, but I don't see why. If you can build a computer which is capable of self-awareness/consciousness/etc and it can "suffer" in the sense I'm talking, then I've always argued it'd be wrong to subject it to "hurt".

[Gayle29uk]

Originally Posted by W

And shut the **** up about tech. You have zero understanding of science and engeneering.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Untouchabler

PS: as if its not obvious, Im Mr_Untouchable, I got banned before, not sure why.

Who?

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

Animals and humans are just a organic machine, and i fail to realise why, eventually, obviously not with the tech we dispose today, a mechanical machine would not feel pain.

And i am not even talking about physical pain, which is simple, but I am also referring to emotional pain.

Physical pain is simple for machines is it?

I think you need to understand the reason we feel pain in the first place and read quite a lot into artificial intelligence and conciousness.

[Baron Morte]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I thought I was going to have to come here to defend my point of view, but fortunately W has addressed any immediate questions.This however, is the typical drivel which get's trotted out in such debates. What the hell does it matter how much DNA we share or whatever the statistic is? (as a btw, it's generally given as something between 95 and 98.5% similar these days). I share almost all the same DNA as someone in a profound vegetative state (or a dead person for that matter) - yet we are treated by society as completley different.

Anyway W is quite correct. The difference I was drawing originally was that of suffering vs pain. You may find that incoherent, but I don't see why. If you can build a computer which is capable of self-awareness/consciousness/etc and it can "suffer" in the sense I'm talking, then I've always argued it'd be wrong to subject it to "hurt".

I used that argument to prove that we are just a bud in the large tree of the mamals, more specifically the primates. And to think that we outrageously different from other animals is nonsense.

And to compare with a person in a vegetative state was a very faulty argument. You could have enourmous dna similarity with someone who has just been killed.
If you consider that the dna match is 98%, and that a great ape looks almost nothing like a human, except the humanoid body, and it can't write, read, think and enslave one another, its clear to understand that this 98% match is really A LOT, linking us to all the other forms of life.

This way, I hope you can understand that most certainly, other mamals do feel pain as we do.

And emotional pain, The movie A.I. adressed this matter somewhat properly.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

If you consider that the dna match is 98%, and that a great ape looks almost nothing like a human, except the humanoid body, and it can't write, read, think and enslave one another,

Neither can a lot of pikeys but they feel pain (I hope).

its clear to understand that this 98% match is really A LOT, linking us to all the other forms of life.

Of course it's a lot - if you know anything about Evolution you'd be insane to say that we are not linked to other forms of life. HOWEVER that 2% makes a big difference.

[Baron Morte]

Originally Posted by Ste

Of course it's a lot - if you know anything about Evolution you'd be insane to say that we are not linked to other forms of life. HOWEVER that 2% makes a big difference.

Well dont tell me that
tell dante.

[Phang]

someone tell me if moutain gorillas are seen as non-sentient despite the number of ways they show very human behaviour (edit, forgot to mention: and very similar brains and brain patterns).

ps how do you define sentient? able to speak english?

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Baron Morte

This way, I hope you can understand that most certainly, other mamals do feel pain as we do.

No-one has said animals don't feel pain, as that'd be immediately disprovable. Stop straw-manning. It's whether they can reflect on this pain in the same form as we can (which I'm terming "suffering").

And no-one has said we are "outrageously" different from animals. On many important levels we are highly similar (biologically I mean). For instance, our respitory system is probably similar to many other animals. As are our the way some of our muscles work, etc, etc.

But none of that matters to the issue of cognition. The key issue is whether human beings have certain mental characteristics that seperate us from animals. Here we're talking about language, Dennett's introspection/reflection property, self-awareness, abstract reasoning and so on. It would seem quite evident that we do.

The distinction that animal rights types (say Peter Singer) makes is the extent of this difference. From memory, he argues that almost all animals are capable of suffering (although he never really proves this in his main book).

I'll say again : It's the properties objects display that we judge them by, not their underlying structure. The fact we're 98% the same as Chimps is utterly irrelevent. If we encountered a sentient / conscious / intelligent alien which we shared 0% of it's DNA, wouldn't we still treat it as an intelligent life-form, irrespective of the underlying difference? Ditto with an intelligent computer.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Phang

ps how do you define sentient? able to speak english?

Yes, obviously. This is why I support the mass murder of Chinese people.

Come on, I know this is an emotive topic, but do we really need to descend into sillyness?

In terms of how we define sentience, there's a whole wealth of literature in the field of cognitive science which discusses these topics, so there's no glib answer.

However, see my previous post for some comments on that subject.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

No-one has said animals don't feel pain, as that'd be immediately disprovable. Stop straw-manning. It's whether they can reflect on this pain in the same form as we can (which I'm terming "suffering").

I'm sure an animal can suffer, perhaps they just don't complain about it as much as we do...
However a computer won't feel pain it will just react to it.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Ste

I'm sure an animal can suffer, perhaps they just don't complain about it as much as we do...
However a computer won't feel pain it will just react to it.

Read the thread, realise where you're wrong, don't post ever again.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Read the thread, realise where you're wrong, don't post ever again.

Stop boosting your postcount with pointless comments. I've read the thread, posted earlier and fail to see where I went wrong...

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Ste

Stop boosting your postcount with pointless comments. I've read the thread, posted earlier and fail to see where I went wrong...

What makes you so sure animals are sentient?

And why is a machine's definition of pain different from any other creature's? (Assuming AI or simi ofc)

[Ste]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

What makes you so sure animals are sentient?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/...098466,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisw...034866,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/featu...989714,00.html (this one especially)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991430

http://www.animalsentience.com/whatis_stress.htm (this website looks bollocks but kind of supports my point of view - definately worth a read for an understanding of sentience)

There are three types of evidence for conscious awareness:

1. The neural structure of the brain is similar in all beings with a central nervous system. This topic is currently well outside the initial scope of this site.

2. The versatility of animal behaviour in response to different stimuli would indicate that some way of thinking about alternative actions is present.

3. Animal communication can provide a useful view of animal minds if we can identify the reason for the communication.

so not all animals are sentient. But that's not the point.

And why is a machine's definition of pain different from any other creature's? (Assuming AI or simi ofc)

AI is another argument. Whether it can truly exist and whether a machine has consiousness etc. In my view - no.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Ste

AI is another argument. Whether it can truly exist and whether a machine has consiousness etc. In my view - no.

What if we became so good at making computers we made one exactly the same as a human?

Would that be conscious?

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Ste

<snip>

Those URLs are interesting up to a point, although the usual newspaper write is awful. That first one for instance. I don't quite get how being indecisive is evidence of metacognition or whatever you wish to call it.

Anyway, I don't think anyone was arguing against animals performing tasks - even complicated tasks in the instances of some non-human primates or dolphins. Likewise, computers (or robots to use a physical parallel) can be "trained" (programmed) to execute quite complicated chains of instructions (I realise this is different from some of the alleged abstract reasoning chimps display).

As I say, the issue is more to do with a reflective quality - or consciousness in total. I fully admit that these are partially empirical questions, and as such, it might be that we can agree a schema for consciousness/non-consciousness (or sentience) where a dolphin can be proven to "pass". If we did get to the stage, then I will fully argue for full legal protection for dolphins (say).

On the subject of AI : If we are to presume that dolphins, chimps, etc have "consciousness" (in the sense we're talking) then it seems a fairly outrageous presumption that we (or whomever) could _never_ build an AI displaying similar characteristics.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Those URLs are interesting up to a point, although the usual newspaper write is awful. That first one for instance. I don't quite get how being indecisive is evidence of metacognition or whatever you wish to call it.

Go go gadget Buridan's Ass.

[W]

Originally Posted by Ste

I'm sure an animal can suffer, perhaps they just don't complain about it as much as we do...
However a computer won't feel pain it will just react to it.

Most "complaints" of pain (screams, curling up etc) are social reflexes, and don't have anything to do with sentience at all. However, as sentient beings, we can change our reflexes, and for instance train to endure pain by willpower.

I'd love for you to explain what the difference between an animal instinct and a program for signaling damage in a computer is, in respect to the "just react to it" aspect. I bet it just comes down to a belief that animals do suffer as us, and without that that there is no difference.

Pain is a stimulant


My name is Gokuhan

SUPER ULTRA MEGA SAIYAN HYPER HYPER MORPH HAIR STICK UP MOVE LEVEL 18 PAK CHOOIE UNF

[Ste]

Originally Posted by W

I'd love for you to explain what the difference between an animal instinct and a program for signaling damage in a computer is, in respect to the "just react to it" aspect. I bet it just comes down to a belief that animals do suffer as us, and without that that there is no difference.

I would say that to suffer you firstly need to have consciousness. To have consciousness you need to be alive. A computer isn't alive.
The 7 things something needs in order to be alive is: Move, reproduce, sensitivity to change, grow, respire, excrete, and feed. I don't see how an electrical machine would be able to do most of those.
Either a change in definition of living or organic machines are needed.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by Ste

The 7 things something needs in order to be alive is: Move, reproduce, sensitivity to change, grow, respire, excrete, and feed. I don't see how an electrical machine would be able to do most of those.

no, those are merely the criteria all living (read: organic) things we have currently encountered meet. It's perfectly feasible to have a living organism which did not excrete and instead retained the waste products for growth, for example.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Phang

no, those are merely the criteria all living (read: organic) things we have currently encountered meet. It's perfectly feasible to have a living organism which did not excrete and instead retained the waste products for growth, for example.

Which is why I said we would need a new definition of living.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by Ste

Which is why I said we would need a new definition of living.

no, my point is that YOU need a new definition of living

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Ste

I would say that to suffer you firstly need to have consciousness. To have consciousness you need to be alive. A computer isn't alive.
The 7 things something needs in order to be alive is: Move, reproduce, sensitivity to change, grow, respire, excrete, and feed. I don't see how an electrical machine would be able to do most of those.
Either a change in definition of living or organic machines are needed.

Why would organic machines be needed? Silicon is perfectly efficient as far as it goes.

Would you consider van Neumann machines to be alive?

And those things are relevent to the species btw, not the individual. Otherwise sterile people (for instance) wouldn't be classed as living. Hard luck for the nuclear industry.

[edit]

And it's reproduce independently anyway, otherwise you could consider a car to be alive, under some interpretations.

It does mean, however, that viruses aren't living things.

[Phang]

oh, the fallacy of MRSNERG

[Dante Hicks]

Defining conscious as something organic (indirectly) is kind of pointless word play when trying to argue about AI.

If Consciousness => Living => Organic, then we clearly need a new word, for the characteristic a hypothetical machine capable of, say, passing the Turing test would display.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Defining conscious as something organic (indirectly) is kind of pointless word play when trying to argue about AI.

If Consciousness => Living => Organic, then we clearly need a new word, for the characteristic a hypothetical machine capable of, say, passing the Turing test woudl display.

Using the word 'organic' at all in this discussion is pretty stupid, because it has a very precise scientific definition, one that is totally irrelevent here (this isn't directed at Dante ofc)

[W]

Originally Posted by Ste

I would say that to suffer you firstly need to have consciousness. To have consciousness you need to be alive. A computer isn't alive.
The 7 things something needs in order to be alive is: Move, reproduce, sensitivity to change, grow, respire, excrete, and feed. I don't see how an electrical machine would be able to do most of those.
Either a change in definition of living or organic machines are needed.

Please explain where your reply is in any way relevant to the quoted text? I was objecting to you saying computers would "only" react, not feel pain, when pain in biological beings IS reacting!

Really, life or not has nothing to do with the matter at all, nor biologic/electromechanic differences. This is an issue of metaphysics not physics.

[acropolis]

Originally Posted by W

Nothing wrong with pain itself, it's the damage and the suffering that's bad.

dood, where have you been? pain sucks.

it would be easy to hook someone's brain up to a contraption that made the person feel pain without any actual tissue damage.

and it would work the same on a squirrel as a human.

i guess you could claim that the human would be suffering, and the squirrel would be in pain, but in reality my reaction to pain has always been exactly the same to pain as i would imagine any other mammal feels: ouch. it is not because i realize that i exist that this is horrible, it is because it hurts.

PS: by any half decent definition, a number of animals are sentient. The telling experiment is the mirror one, where different animals are placed in front of a mirror with a dot or some such on their head. Non-sentient animals and very young humans have no way of realizing that they are seeing themselves in the mirror. Older humans, and some species of chimps etc, realize that it is themselves they are seeing and reach up to remove the dot.

PPS: the word 'organic' is good. the word 'living' has outlived it's usefulness, outside of metaphors. prions, viruses, etc. made it a useless (having only an arbitrary definition) word decades ago.

PPPS: sometimes it seems that people go the logical route:
1. I don't understand how one could ever program 'pain' into a computer
2. I don't understand how one could ever program sentience into a computer
3. Pain must have something to do with sentience.

People also do this with humor (perhaps rightly) and emotions (I think wrongly).

People are dumb.

PPPPS: This thread is about morals, not ethics

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by acropolis

PPS: the word 'organic' is good. the word 'living' has outlived it's usefulness, outside of metaphors. prions, viruses, etc. made it a useless (having only an arbitrary definition) word decades ago.

How does a word meaning 'containing carbon' manage to be useful in this circumstance?

[acropolis]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

How does a word meaning 'containing carbon' manage to be useful in this circumstance?

that's not what it means.

but simply because it is simple and precise. something organic and sentient has a clear meaning. 'living' has no clear meaning whatsoever, and it's only going to get worse.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by acropolis

dood, where have you been? pain sucks.

it would be easy to hook someone's brain up to a contraption that made the person feel pain without any actual tissue damage.

And this would only be bad if the person didn't enjoy it / want it.

Think about it, let's say you built some kind of tricorder type device capable of detecting "pain". It'd almost certainly go off if you pointed it at :
1. People engaged in S&M (or perhaps lots of sexual type acts)
2. People in the dentists chair / during certain physio
3. People running a marathon / at the gym

etc. The physical act might usually be bad, but there's lot of times where it's necessary or even pleasurable (to some). I'm not even sure we'd be capable to differentiate in a scan type situation.

Anyway, I'm not sure how any of these mini-experiments (like the mirror one) tell us anything amazingly (by themselves I mean). Once again, one could presume a stupid computer program could be taught how to tell it's own reflection (presuming a camera/robot situation) in a mirror. What would that tell us by itself? That our program is self-aware in any meaningful sense?

Individual tests seem useless, unless we're going to have a Turing test type thing which is an ingenious way of measuring a hell of a lot.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

everything youve ever said relating to animal sentience.

hay guys i dont think animals are sentient so i dont think we should let them have any rights because its better to be sorry than safe oh wai

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Phang

hay guys i dont think animals are sentient so i dont think we should let them have any rights because its better to be sorry than safe oh wai

Well, I'm hardly the one making these decisions. If I was supreme overlord of the Earth then I might approach these matters differently.

But that's an odd-line of thought to go down anyway. Should we be better safe than sorry and start treating rocks well? Plants? Insects? I don' t just think, I'm pretty convinced that these objects aren't sentient.

Just because other people disagree does not mean there is legitimate grounds for doubt. There are a massive majority of religious types in this world but I don't go round living my life Pascal's wager style thinking "Hmm, maybe I'm wrong - maybe god does exist!?!?"