From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 20:51:32 MDT
Alex Ramonsky wrote:
> spike66 wrote:
>
>> I have known since the early elementary school
>> years that there are members of my species that enjoy torture
>> and would like to kill me ...
>
> ...(Thinks...'is this a conversation I should be having'?)...
Yes, because:
> ...Perhaps I excuse kids by thinking 'they're not intelligent enough
> yet to know any better...it's just like them pulling the legs off
> flies', and so on...
Sure, but the important point here is that humans have a
*nature* just like any other species. The naturalists who
observe the great apes took a while to recognize that, for
instance, chimps are high strung compared to bonobos,
who love to screw. Gorillas can be mean as hell, killing for
fun, or they can be gentle and nurturing towards kittens.
This month's Scientific American goes on about how
orangutans rape, but they seem to do so only to copulate,
not to inflict harm on their victims.
We humans in our current form can be bastards, or we can
be gentle, kind and good. But if you want to see human
nature in its raw form, watch children. Instinct is driving
them, and they do whatever comes natural. Adult humans
get instinct all crossed up by thinking about things and
in most cases overpowering instinct. Good thing.
We often speculate on the nature of an AI, but we have
no clue what an intelligent lifeform would actually do,
for we have no examples of one that operates without some
underlying instinct, which evolved from countless generations
of outcompeting other species.
Alex, I see human cruelty as an expression of our having
descended from those who fought battles and won. That
serves as an explanation for football (simulated
battle) as well as the fact that boxing is still the biggest
money maker for pay-per-view TV. Thats human nature,
its who we are. If we fail to somehow overcome that,
uploading with all our current instincts, it is easy to
imagine all manner of horrors, not the least of which
is the first upload simply replicating herself and devouring
all the available computing resources. spike
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