BCrayfish said: thekitchensink said: Louie said: The answer is easy: People would still kill the A.I. It's just a game in the end so the CPU can't "die" no matter what you do. You just have to re-start the game and it'll be "alive" again.   If I kill you, and then clone you with the same memories, feelings, relationships, etc., are you the same person? Assuming you were cloned exactly as you were before in what way would you not be the same person? The only difference I would have from my pre-cloned self is that I would be pissed that you killed me. Even more so if you forgot to tape my shows for me while I was being cloned. :D

Fundamentally speaking, I think one would be hard pressed to find a difference between making an exact clone and freezing a person to reawaken him/her later. The person would feel the same, and for anyone who didn't know what happened, they'd be the same person. Of course it could be rather embarassing if they met each other.

 

First of all nice thread. Who knows this could possibly be achieved in the future. But would we want to? Playing around with the lives of intelligent body-less minds? I would have a harder time killing those NPCs under that condition. I certainly would have played through Fallout 3 differently if that were the case.

WessleWoggle said:   Well, before we have real simulated conciousness, we are going to have fake simulated conciousness, that just appears to feel but doesn't. So I will get my murder and rape in before A.I.is self aware to the extent where I should feel bad.

Agreed, although it may be difficult to distinguish it at some point. In the end we may even have to take the creator's/programmer's word for it, no matter how uninformed or dubious his/her word may be.

One of the possibilities is that the first computational conscience is a simulated human brain... That to me lifts really hairy ethical problems, especially if the brain isn't connected to a virtual or real world which feels familiar. It's pretty likely it'll be a suffering or ill mind pretty soon.

 

Deneidez said: SnowWhitesDrug said: This is why I believe man can never create a being that is just like himself. The thing will always be maths equations, like an animal. but even then it will lak the "life" that is in an animal that causes it to be alive.  Actually with current level of bioengineering one could resurrect whole species back to life and that means bringing back to life neanderthals for example. If thats not creating a being like human, what is? :) "Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million. The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA." http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/20/2257231&from=rss Well, I revisit my comment/opinion about the matter itself: I personally am a indie dev and I do like to figure out how something is done in games. Especially AI in strategy games have fascinated me always and I always find a way to make AI do exactly what I want it to do(I figure out the algorithm and follow it.). To make AI that impress/fools game dev is even harder so 'we' are kind of immune until we have enough processing power to simulate all the things theres going on in brains. When that happens, no one can say is it real or not.

lol dont be foolish man, I'm not talking about bringing something back from the dead through genetic engineering. You have misread what I said (as many people on VG charts do, for what reasion I dont know.) I used the word "create" in that scentence youve picked out. I used that word with the intent that it would be read as "making something from scratch" just as an artist creates a painting on a blank canvas. The painting didnt exist and had never beed heard of until the painter imagined it and then painted it on the canvas. Bringing an extinct animal back from extinction is no different to mating 2 dogs. Yes its a much more complex process, but in that man can not claim to have created an animal or life.

The gift of life is not something that man can create and as far as I know no man understands exactly what life is. Yes man can controle to an extent the giving and taking of life, but when something recieves life it is concieved from a source unexplainable to science. Man cant make a life creating plant like a power plant and then chanel life into anything he likes. This isnt transformers and the all spark doesnt actually exist lol. But, as science prides its self on observation and recording the observation it could be fair to say that some where out of the physical a life giving source exists.

You also have to remember that what is on a computer is bound by binary code. 1's and 0's. And "life" isnt exactly something that can be converted to 1's and 0's lol, so there for a computer character can never "become" alive, and neither can a computer controled being. They can only imitate something that is alive.

The tough thing is working out what causes something to die. Is it the body shutting down first or the mind leaving the body? If the mind leaves the body can the body still live or can a mind be reconected to a body after its died? And why can some people be brought back to life on the operating table and others cant? And do people who are in a comer and being kept alive by life support still have their mind? is it just the body operating on some form of mechanical basis due to oxygen being pumped into their blood. Like petrol into an engine. But have the people who wake up after years and years kept their mind making it possible for their brain to re-engage with it and resume consiousness?

lol there are alot of questions surrounding life and its connection to the biomechanical flesh and although I have thought about this alot I still have no clue to the life conection to the flesh relationship. But I think if we can understand how things that were alive no longer function we can start to pinpoint some clear ideas on life its self. things such as abortion might become considered murder if they truely discover life begins as soon as conception. But I'm sure we will discover all this in time :)

now that I've read all your posts I will comment :)

The thing you guys are trying to do is explain life without accepting that there may be a spiritual realm interconected with the physical realm. Weather a brain is fully organic or has been turned bit by bit into something mechanical the truth of the matter is still there, biomechanical or synthetic mechanical, they are both mechanical just made of different compounds. The problem with transfering a brain into a machine is that the concious mind, powered by some sort of unseen force does not go with the data. through science, which is puerly observation, its fair to say that the concious mind is either active with in the body, or the body is dead. The concios mind does not exist in some sort of physical form and there for cant be transfered.

How can I possibly claim that conciousnes is not contained within the physical? Because as we know anything that is mechanic must follow its proticol. Or its code. In any fleshly made creature, including humans, there are chemical reactions that occure with in the brain. these reactions occur based on the same principles as code. The eye sees something, the skin feels somethig etc the brain interperates it and tells the mind what the body is feeling.

To claim we are puerly physical is to claim we have no freedom of choice and act exactly like code, responding to certain variables interperated by our brain like a cpu.

I say we have freedom of choice and that comes from having something that exists outside of the physical that is conected to our body and our mind. We know very little outside of the physical, but we know alot about how the physical works, and the physical is puerly mechanical. Trees are puerly mechanical forms of life. They have no consiousness and grow and change by seasion based puerly on a mechanical basis. Like an organic computer program.

Understanding the physics of a realm outside of the physical is probably very impossible! lol but I think we need to stop looking to the stars for answers to life and start looking at ourselves and accept that there is something more to life then just the physical.

@SnowWhitesDrug: Your post has a lot of assumptions and some bad reasoning. I could go on about it for a long time but I'll just refer to two parts:

What about synthetic bacteria? That's definitely creating life, unless you have a really narrow definition of creation.



Actually not all computers are digital, you can just as well have an analog computer if it's necessary to produce artificial intelligence. In strict terms a brain can be seen as an analog computer actually .

could you care to explain my bad reasoning? And doesnt any theory base itself on asumptions? You cant say you believe in aliens without making an asumption, you cant say you believe in evolution without making asumptions, you say you belive in christianity without some asumptions. everything takes faith, some things more then others.

bacteria work much like trees. which i explained are puerly biomechanical, and have no concious mind. The same with viruses. you should research how these things work and you will see where your flaws are. Once again your missing my arguement.

And you obviousily have no idea what an analogue computer is, because its still mechanical, and runs off measurements, it may not be binary but it is still mechanical

I can point at a few quotes:

through science, which is puerly observation, its fair to say that the concious mind is either active with in the body, or the body is dead. The concios mind does not exist in some sort of physical form and there for cant be transfered.

(This one does not follow... a mind is interdependent with a body, therefore the mind is not physical??)

How can I possibly claim that conciousnes is not contained within the physical? Because as we know anything that is mechanic must follow its proticol.

(Again, does not follow. You are saying that something physical has a protocol, therefore consciousness is not physical. Apparently you assume consciousness does not have a protocol, yet you give no reasons for that assumption. Our belief that we have freedom of choice does not automatically imply we don't follow a protocol)

Yes, but the assumptions are supposed to be stated explicitly, and they are not supposed to be the conclusions of the theory. In your post you state repeatedly that "there is more to life than the physical", yet there's no clear support of that from any assumptions you state.

But where have you proven that a conscious mind isn't purely biomechanical / bioelectrical / biochemical or similar?


What definition of mechanical are you using here? An analog computer can just as well be based on chemistry or electricity as mechanics, it encompasses a lot of different things actually. There are even DNA-based computers.

I mentioned analog computers to disprove your statement that "a computer only uses 0s and 1s". You attempted to diminish the notion of a computer by saying it can only use 0s and 1s, which is only true for a subset of all computers.

 

NJ5 said: could you care to explain my bad reasoning? I can point at a few quotes: through science, which is puerly observation, its fair to say that the concious mind is either active with in the body, or the body is dead. The concios mind does not exist in some sort of physical form and there for cant be transfered. (This one does not follow... a mind is interdependent with a body, therefore the mind is not physical??) I dont see a problem??? if you read the whole paragraph it makes sence, when you take it out of context like that of course it sounds weird. How can I possibly claim that conciousnes is not contained within the physical? Because as we know anything that is mechanic must follow its proticol. (Again, does not follow. You are saying that something physical has a protocol, therefore consciousness is not physical. Apparently you assume consciousness does not have a protocol, yet you give no reasons for that assumption. Our belief that we have freedom of choice does not automatically imply we don't follow a protocol)Actually I used the idea of "freedom of choice" to put foward my idea that the freedom to choose is not a part of following a protocol, and that freedom comes from something that is not physical that makes up every human being. And doesnt any theory base itself on asumptions? Yes, but the assumptions are supposed to be stated explicitly, and they are not supposed to be the conclusions of the theory. In your post you state repeatedly that "there is more to life than the physical", yet there's no clear support of that from any assumptions you state. lol.... to show you your error i would have to type everything I've said in here again, there is no problem here.  bacteria work much like trees. which i explained are puerly biomechanical, and have no concious mind. But where have you proven that a conscious mind isn't purely biomechanical / bioelectrical / biochemical or similar?lol read above And you obviousily have no idea what an analogue computer is, because its still mechanical, and runs off measurements, it may not be binary but it is still mechanical What definition of mechanical are you using here? An analog computer can just as well be based on chemistry or electricity as mechanics, it encompasses a lot of different things actually. There are even DNA-based computers. I mentioned analog computers to disprove your statement that "a computer only uses 0s and 1s". You attempted to diminish the notion of a computer by saying it can only use 0s and 1s, which is only true for a subset of all computers. yes that is true that a few use 1's and 0's, I used that refrence to in game AI on computer that actually do use 1's and 0's. To clarify what I am talking about when I say mechanical you need to research the definitions of how that word is used becuase I dont have time to sit here and explain word meanings. when you mention DNA computers, no idea what they are, but the fact that DNA is just a code continues to prove what im saying about the mechanical nature of the physical lol

From what I've seen from the things your saying you have a very closed mind to the spiritual, yet I keep showing you how everything in the physical follows a protocol. I'm saying the active freedom to choose does not come from protocol and there for can not come from the physical. when was the last time you saw something do something that it wasnt programed to do? And dont tell me computers that learn... they are programed to learn similar to the learning functions of the brain. thus making them as mechanical as the brain and there is no arguement there.

I recomend you spend as much time as me researching and thinking about these things, then come back in a few years and present your theory, not just trying to disprove my theory. 

 

just so every one knows, im not saying my thoughts are fool proof, there is alot of stuff I can think of right now that I cant explain, and looking for answers for, but what im getting at is that there is something about humans that does not exist in the physical and thus cant be reproduced by physical means. And I've given all the evidence I can think of at the moment that points towards this, as well as going off track with other related things lol.

So because this 'something' (which gives the ability to recognise choices and makes choices, as well as self recognition) can not be reproduced by physical means man can never create it using AI. It has to be given to what ever the creation is via the natural means of which life is injected into a living breathing human.

EDIT: And apart from saying it's God who gives life and man his ability to think and make choices, morals, etc, man has no idea where this extra non physical something comes from.