From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 00:04:32 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> Well, yes indeedy. People for whom nature and nature `have turned the
> volume controls on many emotional "hooks" to zero' are known as sociopaths,
> I think, and I scurry away from them quicksmart. Of course doing such
> resets deliberately and cautiously might yield another, less heinous
> outcome, but even the wish to do so I also find somewhat troubling.
Don't you think you should at least have the option of switching them
off, stepping outside yourself for a while, at least long enough to get
some idea of what the difference is between having emotions and not
having them?
A lot of people would say that having emotions means a great deal to
them. I don't see how they can know what it means to have emotions, if
they don't know any other way. They just have a vague, sentimental,
culturally inflicted attachment.
I know exactly what my emotions mean to me, and why. I'm not just
defending the concept of emotion because that's what I've seen people do
on talk shows.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns Writing in Gender-neutral
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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