Re: Free-will, interdependence

["John Kineman" <***>]

Judith,
I think regardless of what kind of Frankenstein monsters we create, it
is the decoding loop that will be the savior. There is a great deal they
will not effectively commute with without a proper and gradual
evolutionary and developmental learning interaction with nature. Unless
the divergence from reality is incremental, so that it can construct its
niche, I expect the reaction will be fatal.

But speaking of the "Measure of a Man" which I think was the title of
that episode, I did like Piccard's (i.e., Roddenbury's) final argument -
that in the end it is what our actions say about OUR humanity that
matters most. We might also think about that in our treatment of
animals, as well as enemies.

JK

Judith Rosen wrote:

> Dan's post reminds me of a Star Trek episode where Data's rights ware
> put "on trial" such that the issue became proving whether or not Data
> was ALIVE, in the same sense a biologically created, natural organism
> is alive. For those who never watched Star Trek, the character of Data
> is an artificial organism, an android who has achieved the level of
> complexity such that he is alive, and he also is sentient, possessing
> an equally artificial (in creation) brain of sufficient complexity
> that he has achieved true consciousness. (Incidentally, my father was
> my Star Trek watching companion, even from a distance!) During the
> trial, it was demonstrated that Data had an "off button", which you
> can use to make him completely unconscious and inert, but not dead.
> This was held up as proof that Data was not alive and the issue was
> not addressed very will in the episode. I was frustrated because I can
> see a counter argument that would have been perfect to rebut that
> seeming "truth": All biological organisms have a whole series of "off
> buttons", if you choose to define them that way. A blow to the back of
> the human head where it joins the neck is quite capable of rendering
> any living human as unconscious and inert as Data was after Riker hit
> the "off button", for example.  Therefore, the fact that you could
> unplug a computer and turn it off doesn't really prove that whatever
> "intelligence" we can creat artificially is less than a human's. Human
> beings are as dependent on oxygen as any computer is on electricity.
>
> I wonder if it will be possible to apply the natural laws to
> artificially created life forms or artificially created intelligence
> that might exist independently of a "body" (except perhaps the
> substitution; a computer network)? I believe this question was what
> caused so much concern in my father regarding abuse of his theories if
> he published any kind of "How To" manual-- or anything that might be
> used as one. The artificially created versions won't have an
> evolutionary foundation, which may well cause an entirely new kind of
> interaction, or causal framework, to form. Different doesn't always
> mean "worse", but there are no guarantees...
>
> Frankly, this divergence from an evolutionary process is something
> that I believe is already happening with humanity-- Our species
> is using our intelligence to subvert natural evolutionary processes--
> both in our own physiology and in myriad other organisms we USE for
> some purpose of our choosing-- in favor of new, artificial
> evolutionary processes. It's either really difficult or truly
> impossible to predict what that might mean down the road.
>
> Judith