I wrote a little while ago about the most interesting things to talk about are the ones people are often most uncomfortable discussing. They also tend to lie on the boundaries of acceptability — where it’s OK to do one thing in one culture, but not in another. I warn you in advance, this little essay is at once long-winded, poorly focussed, and probably really “out there” to most normal people.
I remember in Glendale California, as an idealistic young Mormon Missionary, I met an Armenian family — one of many in the Glendale area. Unfortunately, I can’t remember their names… the only name I remember well is that of Armik Shahmirian, who sacrificed a lamb in our honor the day before we baptized him.
Anyway, this family had a very unique saying. In English, it reads something to the effect that “Culture is just an excuse for the way you are”.
For instance, take that tradition of sacrificing a lamb in honor of someone. No, I’m not making this up — according to Armik, it’s an Eastern Armenian tradition when you are about to celebrate something important. Yet, what is the difference between saying a prayer over a lamb before slicing its throat yourself, and going to the supermarket to purchase a lamb? What’s the difference between putting a bullet between the eyes of your old milk cow, or purchasing a rack of beef ribs at the supermarket?
Do we value life less or more, because we purchase it pre-packaged in the supermarket?
This question is of some pretty vital importance to me lately. I recently switched from a nearly-vegetarian diet (I was Vegan for a year, then ovo-lacto-fish-fowl for two — which isn’t vegetarian at all, but I digress) over to a heavily fat-and-protein based Atkins diet. Really, it’s not strictly Atkins, because I think calories do matter, so I watch calories, watch carbs, and watch my protein balance so I don’t end up with ammonia breath. But now I’m contributing so much more to the dead animal contingent of the planet.
It seems obvious to me we evolved as omnivores. We have many traits in common with other hunter-gatherers. Unfortunately, in the animal world, the only really close approximation we have in a mammal that eats a diet similar to humans seems to be the bear. Eating carbs, like berries, tends to pack on the fat. Eating meats, like that nice rotting carcass over in the corner of the cave, tend to give more protein and muscle mass. Easy comparison.
But when I go to the store on three subsequent weeks, I can be almost certain that I’m eating meat from three different animals or more. As humans, we raise these animals for meat. Pigs, for instance, have become so stupid and lazy that people are paid full-time to “plug in” male pigs into female pigs because otherwise the pigs just aren’t interested in reproducing. And yet, these are normally intelligent animals.
Are they self-aware?
I think they are. I think animals have feelings, though quite different from humans, that are every bit as real as our own. I think they are aware of themselves, just as we are of ourselves. They just aren’t as smart as we are (at least, as far as we can tell). I discard the notion of a “spirit” pretty much entirely — and I realized the other day why.
I want to build something smarter than me.
I want to program an intelligence that can think faster, longer, and harder than I possibly can. And remember more. And make better judgements. And come to better decisions, not just in my own personal space, but for humanity as a whole.
We do it in every other endeavor of life. We build planes so that we can fly, when a person flies quite poorly on arms alone. We build roads and cars to transport us at amazing speeds on land. We build computers to do math better than we do, and to beat us at chess.
We can build machines to work harder than we do. To run faster. To jump farther.
Why not to think better?
This is my dream: to have an intelligent assistant small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. That this assistant can think better and faster than I do. That I can hear what it’s thinking, or better yet, to have the results directly wired into my brain. To have a secondary memory to augment my own, either through some sort of glasses-type interface, or directly interfacing with my neurons.
And most importantly, to have a non-human to talk to.
I think we’ve done amazing work with machines in so many other pursuits of life, it’s simply a matter of time before we can create autonomous life forms that think better than we do. I really don’t think we’re going to encounter “aliens” in my lifetime… interstellar distances are just too great, and wormholes, hyperspace, superlight speed, or other theories aren’t anywhere near a reality able to overcome that ocean of emptiness.
But, I think, we can find those aliens. We must build them ourselves. And most of us won’t ever even notice they are a part of our lives until the moment of recognition has passed us by.
sacrificial lamb
I think that you digress. By wanting a second ” being ” wired into your brain directly you seperate yourself. You allow someone else to do the thinking for you. Whereas the person doing the sacrifising is connecting themselves closer in a more spirtual way. They are taking the responsibility and awareness of what it is they are doing and what the other ” being ” is giving up. I bielive that is what is wrong with our society. We have all become third person’s by allowing the machines to take control of our lives and think for us. Wheather it be as simple as a spell check or playing chess to something far more complicated as tracing our very DNA. Once someone else has created the program the masses allow it to do our thinking without a care as to if it is right or wrong. It is all about how much will and wont we have to be connected instead of being stuck in a traffic jam. Teresa
Consciousness
I don’t think so.
Animals and machines have something in common. Animals and humans have something in common. Humans and machines have something in common.
Animals and machines both have reaction ability. The ability to carry out functions. The ability to respond to stimuli.
Animals and humans have something in common. The ability to feel. Fear, affection, anger, and arguably love, depending on the level of thinking the animal (and some people) have.
Humans and machines have something in common. The ability to use logic, to strategize based on complex arrangements of variables a solution to complex problems.
Whether or not you believe in a soul, humans have something these others do not. Consciousness. The ability to create abtractions. Humans can be inspired to emotion based on a piece of music, or a sunrise, or by relating to people who have nothing to do with us.. even fictional people. We can appreciate irony, not as an equation, but as humor.. We can taste and enjoy food, we can make decisions based not on logic, but on an understanding of emotion – and that is a gift machines can never posess.
Humans are the perfect blend of emotional animal and thinking machine. While we will never be able to react as fast in a fight as a cat, or beat a supercomputer at strategy.. we will be able to tell by a tone of voice or a look that someone needs reassurance and give that to them.
Computers can’t think “better” because the way they “think” is so different. I love the idea, but I’ve seen one too many episodes of TNG, watching an android try to figure out whether he likes the taste of his food, or try to understand why something is funny.
For me, I will take our imperfect, slow, emotionally driven animal selves any day of the week.
Where’s Rosie when i need her….
I don’t think that reasoning is entirely accurate.
Humans and Animals have traits that are characteristic of each other. We are both able to think on our own and have natural survival instincts.
A machine is just that. A Machine. It is a creation that Humans have invented to make there lives easier. Everything function they do is something that a human has told it to do. The reaction a computer gives is pre-programmed. Whether it is preprogrammed to be random or a static response, it is always the same. What is funny though is even the random responses are given from a set of pre-determined responses. So the only real randomness is the pattern in which it uses (Which I guess is even programmed) so therefore the randomness is really only experienced by the end-user. It would be great to think that there are free thinking androids, but in reality there are not free thinking machines. A computer takes in data, processes it, and reacts according to its program. For example a car will not take it self in to get an oil change. It can pop up a light on the dash board to remind the human, but other than doing something it has been programmed it can not think for itself and direct you to the gas station.
A human and an Animal are all driven by emotion. A Machine does not have that ability. If you were in combat, you would not have the same logical thinking as if you were walking down the street in your home town. A machine can be programmed to enter a field of battle and perform a specific task without fear of its life. You can not get a human to do the same (with exception to a few special-ops people, but they are wired differently – lol).
~Jon~
Emergent Behaviors
What is a man? (or woman, here at barnson.org, we’re gender-neutral although overwhelmingly male-centric)
For me, that’s the center of the argument. What makes up a person?
When you get down to the molecular, the biochemical level, all we are is an assemblage of machine. Each cellular structure has a particular function it fulfills, including reproduction. That’s kind of the crux of of the thesis of “Darwin’s Black Box”, by Michael Behe: that evolution could not possibly have taken place (or could not possibly be responsible for macro-evolution) because the structures are “irreducible”, or if you remove any piece, or change any piece, it ceases to function.
Our brains, too, are a bio-electro-chemical machine. Our thoughts, as firm as they seem to us, are actually tenuous things that exist as patterns of synapse reactions — it is somehow through these patterns that we find the structure, thought consciousness is not nearly fully understood.
We have devices now that can read electrochemical impulses from a neuron, and cause an action to take place. However crudely at this point, we can “read the mind” of someone’s intent, and enable electrical hands to move based upon the stimulus of a neuron.
Computers also are dramatically diverging away from that “human programmed this” paradigm. Through the use of evolution simulators, we can actually evolve source code, selecting the strongest strains for a particular purpose, without even fully understanding why they work the way they work. It’s been demonstrated on a small level, even in FCPGA computers. You set a target, and watch as primitive, unstructured, random computer programs go through iteration after progressive iteration, in an evolutionary fashion with random mutation, becoming something greater than any human initially made them.
It’s like breeding dogs at that point. There are desirable traits in the creature you’re working on that you can reinforce through successive generations, and end up with something not entirely created by Man.
There’s a phenomenon in computer science, called “Emergent Behaviors”. That is, if you throw together thousands or millions of copies of a computer program, with slightly different properties, and program their “environment” to be slightly different, and act according to slightly different rules, you get these astounding, self-organizing results. It is, to me, fantastic to virtually “watch” these in action, as the simulations can be run to predict human behavior on a large scale in reaction to environmental stimuli.
I don’t think some person is going to program the “uber computer” — a walking, talking, thinking robot-man. Yet, I think that the growing self-learning capabilities of computers are what is going to drive the future of artificial intelligence. And in large quantities, these autonomous bodies — much like the cells of a human body — could create self-organizing, learning patterns from far, far simpler components, and exceed the understanding of the people who “created” them.
I often wonder, if there were a god, if that’s basically what happened. This dude decided to play with some chemical reactions or a simulation, and in one massive “HOLY CRAP!” moment, the Big Bang happened. Then He sat back, gave one massive “whoah, dude, that was killer. rah” and then set about on some other project that didn’t involve the apparent failure…
—
Matthew P. Barnson
I love your opinions
They are usually controversial.. and its nice to have some debate back here at the Barn, son.
That being said, its is a bit cliche to use the old “We’re machines, too, just of a different sort”. Picard used it in the TNG episode, “Measure of a Man”. The fact is, the ability to organize and the ability to desire are quite different things.
A computer is never going to enjoy the fruits of doing something.. or for that matter doing nothing. A computer is never going to have a dream, or want to do anything at all. A computer can “do”, but not experience.
I beilive
I beilive, that in Matt’s reasoning, even our very emotions are a reaction of something electriclly created within our own selves. Hence the disbeilef in ” spirit ” And on some level I am with him. We know that even the disease of being bipolar is a chemical imbalance within the brain that causes the highs and lows and emotional roller coaster rides within a person. Which now we know to treat with another chemical in the form of a pill. So like his learning computers and machines we are learning and changing our ownselves. We over time have even made ourselves unable to use simple drugs like pennicillin because we have built up immunities from the constant use of it for all the wrong reasons.
With that being said though have you ever wondered why we cannot find the infinite smallness within our own selves. Why every time we think we have cracked it something smaller appears. Or doesn’t even though we know it is there. Because what truly seperates us from machines is our soul. That is the one thing, even apart from our emotions, that we posess that machines don’t. The one question that everyone wants to know is how life began. You can not answer that question with an intangible. Which is what our soul is. An intangible that grows with the use of it’s ” machine ” US.
By the way I would like to let it be know that I can’t spell.
FYI — Pigs are Fast
I dare any of you to go out to the local farm, step into the pen, and try and catch a pig. Those suckers can move. They are also pretty intelligent. I’m not playing on the stereotypes created by “Charlotte’s Web” or anything. They have higher reasoning ability than most breakfast-side-order-to-be animals.
Not advocating for or the against carnivorous diet, but having been exposed to the prepared food industry via my father (animal nutritionist for the FDA for over 30 years) I think that fish endure the most inhumane “slaughter” process. And, of course, fish is the exception to most vegetarians. Personally, I find that a lot of vegetarians are opposed to eating meat because, psychologically, there’s this moral taboo (see how this is all tying in, Matt? :)) of killing and eating a life form that is remarkably similar to humans in terms of composition, life cycle, etc. In this case, the opposition stems from the culture of the way we are.
Sammy G
Lessons from my father…
My father taught me that gutting fish while they were still alive was humane because “fish don’t feel any pain”
Hey, I’ve seen “Finding Nemo”, I know different!
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Fish
My Uncle and Father taught me the same way but when I did it and the fish wiggled I KNOW he felt it. It was just me justifying getting a truly fresh fish. That sucked. Teresa
mmmm….
mmmmmmm…… fresh fish….. I don’t care if they wriggle. One of two things is true. 1) God created fish and he commanded us to use them for food. or… 2) There is no God and therefore no consequence to killing the animal. Either way, I’m eating MEAT tonight!
Fish…
Fish Are our Friends .. Not Food…