From: Alex Ramonsky (alex@ramonsky.com)
Date: Thu Jun 20 2002 - 04:12:17 MDT
spike66 wrote:
>
> 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.
Watch which children? I have experience of villages of 'tribal'
children, and they don't argue, fight or beat each other up. The book
'The Continuum Concept' by Jean Liedloff outlines cultures she has
experienced where this is also the case. It seems to be only children in
'developed' countries that exhibit this 'natural' violence.
Some of my social anthropology chums took their son on one of their
jaunts into south American jungles. Their kid sometimes hit the native
children during play, and they treated the punch as if it were a tree
branch falling on them or something...they had no idea that anything
unpleasant was intended; they thought it was an accident, or that there
was something 'wrong' with him. More tellingly, one of the natiuve
children spent six months in the states, going to an ordinary school and
so on. When he returned to his tribe he would often try to argue and
fight with his peers, just like our kids do...what is going on here? Do
humans behave like bonobos in the 'wild', and turn into chimps when
living in 'civilisation'?
>
> 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
>
>
>
...So are you saying that any of us who _don't_ have those 'natural'
instincts for violence and aggressive competition will just become
extinct, as indeed are the tribes I refer to?
I find that very interesting, and I'm wondering if we're helping to wipe
out a mind set which we wish we'd made a backup of when we want to
program a sane AI (I use 'sane' and 'friendly' as interchangeable here.) ?
Ramonsky
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