From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Mon Sep 23 2002 - 23:41:04 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 09:12 PM 9/23/02 -0700, spike, a fine fish-fancying feller, wrote:
>
>
>>I am another one who has been pofoundly baffled
>>most of my life by the human emotional operating
>>system.
>>
>
> This is another way of saying that you (and many here) have trouble
> negotiating your own emotions and those of other people, and as a result
> perhaps tend to edit out or mute those aspects of human life. Of course you
> can't do that successfully without being autistic. This is NOT meant as an
> aspersion (an Aspergersion) on our pal the Spikester.
Perhaps this is true, and of course it was not
interpreted as an Aspergersion of any kind.
Or even if so, I am waaay meta this evening.
Cheerfully, willingly, joyfully meta, assuming
these adjectives have any meaning in the state
of meta.
>>as an exercise, let us try
>>(I dont even know if it is possible) to switch off
>>the emotions.
>>
>
> But why would you wish to do such a system-degrading thing?
As an *exercise* my good man, simply a thought
experiment. I am not proposing to suppress
emotions long term, or to try to live that way.
> What madness is
> this? Hey, gang, let us think about the world from the position of a
> logical device with no *understanding*?
A fine madness is this. AIs could perhaps offer
stunning insights into human nature that we simply
cannot see, for we are viewing from the inside
looking out.
> While you're at it, let's do some
> aesthetic analysis by asking blind people about visual art...
I suspect the blind may be able to offer some
profound insights about art, for they see from
a different point of view.
> the deaf about
> music, the castrated about sex.
See above. Have you never wondered what it
would be like to be *completely* free of the
drive to copulate? I have.
>>An AI would not know or
>>care what pain is, for instance, other than to
>>observe that sentients avoid it, like a mathematical
>>function appears to avoid an asymptote.
>>
>
> Oh me oh my. This is almost the exact parody that critics of transhumanism
> would come up with.
So let us fearlessly endure parody. It is merely
an experiment.
> Damien Broderick
> [it hurts me to read it...
If you were to switch to meta mode, it wouldn't
hurt a bit.
Recall a certain incident that occurred on extropians
a few days after the 9-11 attacks. A highly regarded
poster coldly dashed out the calculus of nuking the
entire Muslim world, estimating the impact of hastening
the singularity, which would save the lives (in a sense)
of that fraction of humanity which lived to see it.
Clearly that poster was deeply in meta mode. I am
suggesting that when someone wants to go on such
non-human meta flights of fancy, they should be allowed
to clearly identify the idea as a meta, then go ahead and
explore the most absurd or deplorable ideas imaginable.
Those who do not agree with the notion of, or cannot
go meta, would immediately hit the delete key, thereby
saving emotional upset. spike
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