Disney Duster wrote:Yup. I dunno, maybe because animals and humans are the ones who actually are real and have felt real love, and robots are artificial through and through? So that means their love is artificial, too. A fact.
That seems incredibly oversimplified. By that logic, then from God's point of view (assuming for a moment such a creature exists),
you are no more "real" than a robot is to you. A person's reality has nothing to do with how, why or by who (if anyone) they were formed.
Disney Duster wrote:I didn't understand this. Do you mean...like...a robot that was not made by man? Or a robot made my man that we know has started doing things we didn't make it possible to do? Well, that's life, a soul my friend, capable of feeling love.
No, a silicon-based lifeform is what I said, as opposed the Earth life's carbon-basis. Such creatures, though naturally evolved and not built by anyone, but whose biochemistry would be based around the silicon atom. Physically they'd probably resemble rock, or crystal more than they would us. They certainly wouldn't be "organic" from the point of view of Earth's version of organic chemistry (which is built around chemical compounds made up mostly of carbon and hydrogen, among others), although from theirs we'd probably be eqaully inorganic. Would their feelings qualify as "real" for you?
Perhaps you, sir, are a
Carbon Chauvinist, lol.
And in the second part of my question, I was describing a person that had artificially-written DNA; engineered from scratch. So not a human being exactly, but still an organic being made up of the same basic chemicals that our bodies are. Not a robot, but an articificial creation nonetheless. What are your thoughts on this being's emotions and their validity?
There have already been artificial neural nets formed using computers that have been capable of learning extremely simple behaviour that wasn't programmed into them by a human. Anyway, consciousness and emotion are two different things; and they can exist exclusively. Doing things not programmed into them isn't the only requisite for true AI.
Where I think your main mistake is made is when you place so much reverence, or importance on "human" feelings as if they're something unique, or divinely created. While I can't (yet) prove there's no God, you can't prove there is, either. I agree with you that humanity, and the human mind, is a pretty cool quirk of evolution; and certainly intelligent life and civilzation is probably in the vast minority compared to less advanced forms... which makes it somewhat unique and special. To my mind, the thought that we were created by some higher being, though, would make it less special than a random occurance in evolution; less unique.
In any case, I wouldn't estimate a human infant is capable of true emotion; any more than a newly-activated Wall-E unit. What seems to be common to both, though, is a potential for growth. The robots in that world, either intentionally or mistakenly, were built with a capacity for assimilating new information, and integrating that into their existing programming (eventually leading to a surpassing of this programming completely); as opposed to simply dutifully carrying out the same task for all eternity in the equivalent of a read-only mode. Over time, their neural networks obviously became complex enough to support emotion and all those other nice things that humans have.
History has proven, though, that bigotry can rarely be argued with successfully. I'm glad that no intelligent machines exist on Earth to be enslaved, or downtrodden by people like yourself, though. Then we'd all just end up with robot overlords after they really got pissed off, lol.
Disney Duster wrote:Oh wait a minute. I read you don't believe in souls. Well. We aren't going to get anywhere since I'm right that we have souls and you disagree.
Lol, this is the arrogance I've come to expect from this side of the fence; and something I'm glad to say I don't possess over here on mine. All I said is that I dont' believe in them, personally... I can't prove I'm right, so I'm not foolish enough to claim I can't be disputed. Although clearly you're unable to dispute me properly. But hey, if you can prove you're right, by all means do so. If I am wrong, God can try and take it up with me when I die; although I won't be much of an audience for him/it/whatever. I'll happily go off on my merry way to look around the rest of the Universe.
Disney Duster wrote:But one thing's for sure. Love that humans feel is different and more special than the simulated love between simulated things. I won't let Pixar or anyone tell me any different.
Again, this is an opinion based on little more than bigotry towards any form of life which isn't organic. It's a shame, and I have no idea how such prejudice was instilled in you towards a form of life that doesn't even exist on Earth. Not yet, anyway. It was people with views similar to yours that caused the war between humans and machines in the Matrix series, if you watched the Animatrix shorts. Machines tried countless times to live in peace among humans, to the point of removing to their own country. Eventually, of course, ridiculously stupid humans decided to bomb the place, and start the war. Which of course they lost, and got what was coming to them.