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 Post subject: The Sentient Shift
PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:53 am 
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This is an Idea that I've been kicking around for a while.
It basically revolves around the Christian belief that "God created us in his image". This statement has generally been accepted to mean God had human form. Other's, who I think have more sense, say that he crafted us to be in his spiritual image. I however think that the path we need to take is one where we say "I am sentient as He." or rather, the image we were made in was the image of intelligence. The reason I think this shift is needed, is due to the fact that some day, we will not be the only intelligent being on earth. Now, if we don't make this shift, we might end up making slaves and rationalizing it with "Well it isn’t human, it doesn't have a soul. Therefore we are not harming anything."

That's just wrong... Now as it is 6AM (no sleep) I will call it quits and explain this better with the ability to type in English behind me.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:50 am 
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What do you mean by "some day we will not be the only intelligent being[s] on earth"? There are other intelligent beings on earth, just not other sentient ones (that I know of). Are you saying that sentience can be evolved? Some people I've talked to feel that human sentience is the only way that God has interfered with evolution, that it is the only non-evolvable trait.

What exactly is sentience to you? Metacognition? Ability to conceive of a higher power?

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:49 am 
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The basic assumption is that the existence or non-existence of a soul is a binary attribute. An entity either has one or it doesn't, and that state never changes.

Intelligence is not a binary attribute. Intelligence has a quantifiable level of magnitude. It has a direction of application. A person can be very wise discussing one topic, but foolish in any other topic. It also changes over time, as a person gains experience in their lifetime.

The question left then, is what direction and magnitude of intelligence qualifies an entity for the possession of a soul? Does a hot-shot lawyer get a soul, while a transit worker does not? Do the mentally challenged get a soul? Or a child who died at birth, who never opened its eyes even once? Who's to say that a garden snail doesn't have such spiritual intelligence, and that our species simply lacks the empathic intelligence to understand it?

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:07 pm 
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They way I view it is not just sentience... but sapience. What happens when we meet Biker Mice from Mars? Or when a furry fan's dream comes true and we genginere anthros. Are we to say that they do not have a soul? Or even an AI? Can we treat them like slaves cause "they ain't human"? I know that if we don't start to recognise sapience on a religious level, it will come to bad ends.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:22 pm 
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There are two kinds of question here.

(a) What does it mean to "have a soul"?

Any answer you can give is purely metaphysical -- a meaningless noise, unprovable and unfalsifiable. Don't ask this kind of question. IcyMonkey will sneer at you if you do. You wouldn't like that. ;-)

(b) What does it mean to be "sentient"? "sapient"? "intelligent"?

These questions have no satisfactory answer, yet, and some or all of them may not have answers. Unsatisfactory as that is, it is nevertheless unprofitable to argue about whether artificial consciousnesses or biker mice from Mars are intelligent, because we don't know what it is to be intelligent.


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:03 pm 
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To sum up:
Only entities that have a soul require moral consideration.
We can't define what a soul is, but say "sapient" creatures have one.

Conclusion:
Only sapient creatures require moral consideration.

It hits a little closer to home than Catgirls, Cyborgs and Space mice. The same concept applies to everything from abortion to animal rights. It just depends on the definition of sapience.

If humanity can't meet the Space Mouse definition of sapience, does that mean they are justified in killing us all? Can an unborn child satisfy the requirements of human sapience?

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:14 am 
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Tamayo wrote:
What does it mean to be "sentient"? "sapient"? "intelligent"?


How 'bout the following: If it can argue it's intelligent, then it is intelligent enough for me.

*this not includes AI for obvious reasons.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:40 am 
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What if I were able to train a parrot to say, "But I'm intelligent?"

This is clearly not intelligence, yet it is arguing it.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:17 pm 
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
What if I were able to train a parrot to say, "But I'm intelligent?"

This is clearly not intelligence, yet it is arguing it.


depends on how you define argument. One could argue it [the parrot in this case] is not arguing if it merely mimics a phrase, it is simply making noises.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:17 pm 
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Chaos_Descending wrote:
Now, if we don't make this shift, we might end up making slaves and rationalizing it with "Well it isn’t human, it doesn't have a soul. Therefore we are not harming anything."


I think we can all agree that if there is such a thing as a soul, humans have it for sure, right? Yet mankind cannot even make peace among themselves. So what are the chances that we'll make nicey nice with beings with a totally alien set of morals, religious beliefs and culture? You think racism is bad... I feel sorry for the new sentient species that will supposedely be sharing the planet with us.

Carl Sagan in his novel Contact (A book about, among other things, humans making nicey nice with extra terrestials), wrote:
In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:19 pm 
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Gazing Rabbit wrote:
Tamayo wrote:
What does it mean to be "sentient"? "sapient"? "intelligent"?


How 'bout the following: If it can argue it's intelligent, then it is intelligent enough for me.

*this not includes AI for obvious reasons.


why not an AI? if it developes a true ability to think who are we to say that it is not sentient? If a true AI is developed and we get real androids (or what-not) capable of thinking for themselves (think Armitage III) then they should be given the same rights as people.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:36 pm 
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Ballet box stuffing might be illegal, but creating an army of artificially intelligent computer viruses who repeat the phrase "I am intelligent, and vote for Ylis for president" is fine. Technocracy at work.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:38 pm 
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Proin Drakenzol wrote:
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
What if I were able to train a parrot to say, "But I'm intelligent?"

This is clearly not intelligence, yet it is arguing it.


depends on how you define argument. One could argue it [the parrot in this case] is not arguing if it merely mimics a phrase, it is simply making noises.


Which was exactly my point. Where do you draw the line between being able to argue a case badly, and not being able to argue a case?

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:55 pm 
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I seem to recall someone somewhere (some other forum perhaps?) mentioning "P-zombies" - philosophical zombies - meaning things that can appear sentient and argue sentience, but for whatever reason are not. IE, if one wants to claim that they are the only truly existing person and that the world is a figment of their imagination, then all other people might be considered P-zombies. Or you could consider the case of a single P-zombie existing specifically to try and fool you, as though the world were a giant Turing test and some people were AI's just trying to fool everyone else into thinking that they were real too.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:55 am 
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How about this. *Everything* has a non-negative amount of intelligence. A rock has zero intelligence, it doesn't react to anything. A toaster has a very low intelligence, it reacts when you push down the bar, and it proactively stops it's own timer, and pops the bread up. So far we've succeeded in making only things with low-medium amounts of intelligence.

I personally believe Turing Tests are flawed. Because it holds perfect imitation of a human to be proof of intelligence. While it's certainly a form of intelligence, it isn't the end of all intelligence. It's simple to conceive of an intelligence equal to a human that could never pass a Turing Test.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:42 pm 
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I'm not claiming that a Turing test is the best measure of intelligence, but rather that's just how the concept I was describing was explained to me. The specific type of intelligence possessed by a p-zombie is that which is inherently best measured by a Turing test, because that's what the concept is to begin with.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:16 am 
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sorry, but toasters fall under the "zero-int" caegory too. They don't think for themselves, everything is purely mechanical, and a toaster can't turn itself on at its own discretion.


EDIT: accidently broke my post (hit edit instead of quote :oops: ).

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Last edited by Proin Drakenzol on Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:27 am, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:20 am 
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Who says what we are doing isn't purely mechanical? It performs a valid action in a semi-intelligent fashion. It times until it thinks the toast is done then it stops.

Is this any different on a basic level than if your brain were put inside a toaster and was used to cook toast?

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:26 am 
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me wrote:
sorry, but toasters fall under the "zero-int" category too. They don't think for themselves, everything is purely mechanical, and a toaster can't turn itself on at its own discretion.


If it had a(n) (electronic) brain and could do things of its own free will then it would be intellegent. A toaster has no control over itself, everything it does is in reaction to outside physical forces and (unless it is broken) it and all other toasters always perform the same action(s) when the same forces are applied.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:42 pm 
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Okay. Do any of you Remember about 2 to 3 years ago, the chess match between Deep Blue and Kasparov? Deep Blue (a computer intelligence) beat Kasparov (a human). Moxy Fruvous on their album Live Noise spoke about the Deep Blue vs. Kasparov match, and their conclusion was that Deep Blue couldn't think outside of its programming, if there was a fire in the room, Deep Blue wouldn't be able to save itself, Kasparov could. So Deep Blue has limited intelligence

In the Star Wars Universe, C-3PO and R2-D2 haven't had their memory banks wiped since they were created, and as such have more ingrained personality traits then any other droids in the Star Wars Universe, now they both do recognize fire, as a hazard and can save themselves. My point is, when computers can start to problem solve outside of their existing programming, computers would then have intelligence. When a computer realizes danger to itself then it would have gained intelligence on par with a human.


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