How do we know if a person really is sentient, or is merely simulating sentience?
The short answer: We don't. The real problem is that we can't even define sentience clearly enough to definitively test for it. Once AI gets to the point where it appears sentient as far as anyone can tell, then it won't matter if it's really sentient. It becomes a philosophical argument.
To me, sentience = self awareness. I know I'm sentient through the good old "I think therefore I am" argument. Other people see more or less like me, so I assume they are sentient as well. Sure there's possibilities of everybody else being figments of my imagination or programs running according to script or whatever, but as far as I'm concerned these are too unlikely to worry about. An AI which is programmed to simulate self-awareness, may not really be self-aware. We may have to grant civil rights to such an AI just to be on the safe side, but I wouldn't feel comfortable about it.
I love this quote by Melinda Messenger: "Why should I allow my body or my children to be filled with man-made chemicals, when I don't know what the health effects of these substances will be."
That would be the same Melinda Messenger that has breast implants.
Thing is, science doesn't try to tell you what's morally right and wrong. It just gives you the facts (which are sometimes disproven by later science). It's up to the public to make of the facts what they will.
Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe - ninety-six billion planets - into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honour of asking the first questions is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God ?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a god."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
So here's the problem, how do we know if the robot really is sentient, or is merely simulating sentience? If the robot had been programmed to "do what a sentient being would do in your situation", how do we really tell the difference?
Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraft
on
UFOs In the News
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "Meat. They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat." "That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?" "They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines." "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact." "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines." "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat." "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat." "Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage." "Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?" "Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside." "Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through." "No brain?" "Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you." "So... what does the thinking?" "You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat." "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!" "Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?" "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat." "Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years." "Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?" "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual." "We're supposed to talk to meat." "That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing." "They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?" "Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat." "I thought you just told me they used radio." "They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat." "Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?" "Officially or unofficially?" "Both." "Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing." "I was hoping you would say that." "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?" "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?" "Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact." "So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe." "That's it." "Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't rememb
So, if you went to 2D world (with time you detail bastards) what would they observe as you freely moved around?
Nah, the 2D world wouldn't have time, so the ships would need to be equipped with spacetime bubble generators powered by antimatter fuel. Access to the planespace would be done through "gateways" called Sords. Of course we first need to discover the massive sub-atomic particle Yuanon.
I remember reading somewhere (though not where, but this is slashdot so it should be ok:)) that while the total number of crashes were increased by the camera, the total number of serious injuries increased. It makes sense - an accident from running a red light is more likely to cause serious injury than an accident from being rear-ended.
You misunderstand, the whole point is that you don't need XMLHttpRequest if the data can be parsed as JavaScript. You just need to include it with a element.
Huh? I must be missing something big here, because I thought the whole point of XMLHttpRequest is so that you could easily query the server for data without reloading any pages or (i)frames. Lots of people get that data in XML format, others use plain text, and seems others use JSON. Whatever the format, you need XMLHttpRequest to get that data from the server. If you just included it in a element on page load, it would be a plain old "WEB 1.0" web page, the kind you get if you click on the "Basic HTML" link in GMail.
With all the scifi on tv, I don't think people will really be excited until we make first contact with an extraterrestrial species. Or at least visit another solar system. NASA should start working on hyperdrives immidiately.
This guy may have been from later test runs, especially if the researchers believed he would go all the way, since they had higher expectations of subjects in the beginning.
I actually meant that everyone in the psych class thought he'd go all the way. Well, I'm really just projecting my feelings on others, since I don't know what they were thinking, but a lot of people snickered whenever the subject laughed at an exclamation of pain.... He really impressed me because as soon as the shockee said "let me out of here", he just calmly refused to continue, no conflict or anything. To him, continuing against the shockee's wishes was not even an option.
I'm also pretty sure that it was the first of the studies, since the format was the same. On the other hand, I just found online what I think is the video of the first experiment, and skimming it I did not find that guy. Maybe it was one of the following experiments after all.
The GP's post made the valid point that many, if not most, of the non-hentai anime still contain nude scenes of young/young-looking characters. So no, ADV, Geneon, and many others would not be just fine.
It's too bad that such an experiment isn't allowed, since I'd like to participate in one like it just to find out what I'd do in these kinds of situations. Maybe if they could get fully informed consent ahead of time, and then hypnotize the subject to forget what they know about the experiment. The memories would return after the experiment is over....
Interesting. You fall into the same trap as many of the psychologists who decried the experiments when they were published -- that the subjects must all be inherently flawed and that normal, good, decent people would never find themselves failing in the same manner. You ignore that in 1963, most of the test subjects were probably church-going Christians themselves. Even the researchers performing the experiment were convinced beforehand that no more than 1.2% of subjects would go all the way to deadly voltage.
In fact, 65% did. None stopped before 300 volts, and the shocks started at 45 volts and increased 15 volts each time. That means that a minimum of 16 shocks were delivered by every single subject. The experiment was stopped when the subjects either refused to continue or objected more than 4 times. The experimenters expected that most subjects would stop at 150 volts (8 shocks) and that no more than 4% would make it to 300 volts.
Let me repeat that again. Every single subject shocked people up to 16 times, well into the "dangerous" range on the dial. None of the subjects knew what they were getting into at the time. They were being led to believe that they were helping perform a test on memory of the "electocuted" actor.
Wait a second, you're speaking of the Milgram tests, right? I forget at which voltage the "shockee" started to demand to be let out of the experiment, but wasn't that before 300 volts? I know there were subjects who refused to continue at that point. Particularly I remember in the video there was a guy who laughed every time he applied the shocks, so everyone thought that he would go all the way. And yet he stopped as soon as he heard that the guy being shocked wanted out.
Perspective? I'm guessing that WAY more people die of old age every day in China than are murdered in the U.S. Does that make Chinese old age more tragic than murder in the states? Numbers aren't everything.
At the moment, he only has +3 Informative. There's room for another mod in there. I'm guessing you saw the Karma bonus or something. I don't think Karma bonuses affect how much a post can be modded.
Most of the concentration camp operators did their "duty" willingly, for their country. They did not need to be threatened.
"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do." -Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Slashdot Mirror
How do we know if a person really is sentient, or is merely simulating sentience?
The short answer: We don't. The real problem is that we can't even define sentience clearly enough to definitively test for it. Once AI gets to the point where it appears sentient as far as anyone can tell, then it won't matter if it's really sentient. It becomes a philosophical argument.
To me, sentience = self awareness. I know I'm sentient through the good old "I think therefore I am" argument. Other people see more or less like me, so I assume they are sentient as well. Sure there's possibilities of everybody else being figments of my imagination or programs running according to script or whatever, but as far as I'm concerned these are too unlikely to worry about. An AI which is programmed to simulate self-awareness, may not really be self-aware. We may have to grant civil rights to such an AI just to be on the safe side, but I wouldn't feel comfortable about it.
I love this quote by Melinda Messenger: "Why should I allow my body or my children to be filled with man-made chemicals, when I don't know what the health effects of these substances will be."
That would be the same Melinda Messenger that has breast implants.
Those are obviously women-made implants.
Thing is, science doesn't try to tell you what's morally right and wrong. It just gives you the facts (which are sometimes disproven by later science). It's up to the public to make of the facts what they will.
Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe - ninety-six billion planets - into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honour of asking the first questions is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God ?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a god."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
-Answer, by Fredric Brown
So here's the problem, how do we know if the robot really is sentient, or is merely simulating sentience? If the robot had been programmed to "do what a sentient being would do in your situation", how do we really tell the difference?
"They're made out of meat." ... what does the thinking?"
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"So
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat."
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't rememb
So, if you went to 2D world (with time you detail bastards) what would they observe as you freely moved around?
Nah, the 2D world wouldn't have time, so the ships would need to be equipped with spacetime bubble generators powered by antimatter fuel. Access to the planespace would be done through "gateways" called Sords. Of course we first need to discover the massive sub-atomic particle Yuanon.
I remember reading somewhere (though not where, but this is slashdot so it should be ok :)) that while the total number of crashes were increased by the camera, the total number of serious injuries increased. It makes sense - an accident from running a red light is more likely to cause serious injury than an accident from being rear-ended.
FTA: They are not only sensitive to light, but also emit infrared rays that can make night look virtually like day.
So there are cameras that actually send out infrared rays, like radar/sonar?
Oh, I didn't realize you could do that. Well, learn something new every day :) Thanks!
I don't want the neighbours to see me naked. What should I tattoo on my butt-cheeks to make me safe?
Goatse?
There aren't any right-wing organizations I know of that even address the issue of innocents being sent to death row.
Well obviously if the guy is innocent, God wouldn't have let him be sentenced to death!
You misunderstand, the whole point is that you don't need XMLHttpRequest if the data can be parsed as JavaScript. You just need to include it with a element.
Huh? I must be missing something big here, because I thought the whole point of XMLHttpRequest is so that you could easily query the server for data without reloading any pages or (i)frames. Lots of people get that data in XML format, others use plain text, and seems others use JSON. Whatever the format, you need XMLHttpRequest to get that data from the server. If you just included it in a element on page load, it would be a plain old "WEB 1.0" web page, the kind you get if you click on the "Basic HTML" link in GMail.
Show me a single person who's never broken any laws, and I'll show you a lier.
With all the scifi on tv, I don't think people will really be excited until we make first contact with an extraterrestrial species. Or at least visit another solar system. NASA should start working on hyperdrives immidiately.
Last time I checked not too many kids and spouses getting blown up by IED over inb Iraq.
Certainly not American kids and spouses....
This guy may have been from later test runs, especially if the researchers believed he would go all the way, since they had higher expectations of subjects in the beginning.
I actually meant that everyone in the psych class thought he'd go all the way. Well, I'm really just projecting my feelings on others, since I don't know what they were thinking, but a lot of people snickered whenever the subject laughed at an exclamation of pain.... He really impressed me because as soon as the shockee said "let me out of here", he just calmly refused to continue, no conflict or anything. To him, continuing against the shockee's wishes was not even an option.
I'm also pretty sure that it was the first of the studies, since the format was the same. On the other hand, I just found online what I think is the video of the first experiment, and skimming it I did not find that guy. Maybe it was one of the following experiments after all.
The GP's post made the valid point that many, if not most, of the non-hentai anime still contain nude scenes of young/young-looking characters. So no, ADV, Geneon, and many others would not be just fine.
It's too bad that such an experiment isn't allowed, since I'd like to participate in one like it just to find out what I'd do in these kinds of situations. Maybe if they could get fully informed consent ahead of time, and then hypnotize the subject to forget what they know about the experiment. The memories would return after the experiment is over....
Interesting. You fall into the same trap as many of the psychologists who decried the experiments when they were published -- that the subjects must all be inherently flawed and that normal, good, decent people would never find themselves failing in the same manner. You ignore that in 1963, most of the test subjects were probably church-going Christians themselves. Even the researchers performing the experiment were convinced beforehand that no more than 1.2% of subjects would go all the way to deadly voltage.
In fact, 65% did. None stopped before 300 volts, and the shocks started at 45 volts and increased 15 volts each time. That means that a minimum of 16 shocks were delivered by every single subject. The experiment was stopped when the subjects either refused to continue or objected more than 4 times. The experimenters expected that most subjects would stop at 150 volts (8 shocks) and that no more than 4% would make it to 300 volts.
Let me repeat that again. Every single subject shocked people up to 16 times, well into the "dangerous" range on the dial. None of the subjects knew what they were getting into at the time. They were being led to believe that they were helping perform a test on memory of the "electocuted" actor.
Wait a second, you're speaking of the Milgram tests, right? I forget at which voltage the "shockee" started to demand to be let out of the experiment, but wasn't that before 300 volts? I know there were subjects who refused to continue at that point. Particularly I remember in the video there was a guy who laughed every time he applied the shocks, so everyone thought that he would go all the way. And yet he stopped as soon as he heard that the guy being shocked wanted out.
Perspective? I'm guessing that WAY more people die of old age every day in China than are murdered in the U.S. Does that make Chinese old age more tragic than murder in the states? Numbers aren't everything.
At the moment, he only has +3 Informative. There's room for another mod in there. I'm guessing you saw the Karma bonus or something. I don't think Karma bonuses affect how much a post can be modded.
OTOH, in... Australia I think it was, it was only about 50%. The lesson is, don't try to set up a totalitarian regime in Sydney.
Yes, because only 50% of the population will blindly follow your commands to oppress the other 50%?
Most of the concentration camp operators did their "duty" willingly, for their country. They did not need to be threatened.
"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do." -Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
here ya go.