8 ms·
I think about Star Trek: TNG’s “Measure of a Man” a lot lately. We can be so confident to decide what is and isn’t alive from vibes alone. The conclusion I’m
by Waterluvian 5mo ago
I think about Star Trek: TNG’s “Measure of a Man” a lot lately. We can be so confident to decide what is and isn’t alive from
vibes alone.
The conclusion I’m currently at is that I don’t know and probably can’t ever know. Maybe you’re all philosophical zombies. Maybe I am one too!
But at some point we will get close enough that it hopefully becomes obvious that we must tread carefully.
The entire episode is incredibly relevant. But here’s a snippet: https://youtu.be/EFNbTnFHruI?si=pW9QtxCsqMtHkVYG https://youtu.be/EFNbTnFHruI?si=pW9QtxCsqMtHkVYG
- martin1975 5mo agoEasily one of my top 10 favorite episodes. The judge broached on the subject of what makes us distinct from Data (e.g. machines w/great heuristics) - the existence of a soul. Or rather, I'd like to think, in the words of CS Lewis, that we are a soul with bodies attached.
- cout 5mo agoHow would someone know whether one has a soul or not? Is there any sort of introspection that can reveal the presence of a soul or any of its properties?
- high_priest 5mo agoThere is no soul. Just a bunch of systems nudging each other to action. What people call soul is literally the same as the concept of personality. In essence, the way all systems in your body have been calibrated to exist. I believe that the moment an artificial inteligence is going to "receive" a soul, is the moment it is going to be made to sustain itself. Either as a larger package (some bots working to keep an AI farm running) or as an individual (a bot which is tasked with not only fulfilling human desires, but also sustaining itself)
- Waterluvian 5mo agoIt's an interesting hypothesis. I think there's something elegant about "soul" or even consciousness being an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system. But I struggle with really squaring that with my own first-person sensation of experiencing existence (which I assume you and everyone else has but I can never actually know for sure).
- lupire 5mo agoBabies don't sustain themselves. Do babies have souls?
- Izkata 5mo agoI swear I remember once reading about a culture where babies don't have souls until they're named. Maybe something about gaining their own distinct identity?
- hn_acc1 5mo agousername checks out!
- martin1975 5mo ago> the moment an artificial inteligence is going to "receive" a soul, is the moment it is going to be made to sustain itself. You should try your hand at sci-fi writing. You may be onto something there. You seen Westworld?
- wrs 5mo agoDefine the word “soul” first before asking this question.
- thangalin 5mo ago[dead]
- martin1975 5mo agonephesh (נֶפֶשׁ), is a word in the Hebrew bible that the KJV (English) renders as "soul" hundreds of times, and it also translates the very same word as "life," "person," "creature," "self" So, the question can be asked another way - do you 'have' life, e.g. are you alive? If yes, then you are (or 'have') a soul. The mistake many of us will make, not due to our own fault but rather due to inability to discern, is that this is somehow not apparent to most if not all people with a sane mind.
- ryandrake 5mo agoBased on how some actual humans I know speak and act, I'm less and less convinced the human brain is much more than a stochastic next-thought prediction stream.
- 123hT 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- bottlepalm 5mo ago35 years old and just as relevant today - https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think... A silicon alien coming to earth might poke us, we would say ouch, and just determine the ouch sound is just the result of a bunch of chemistry - not really conscious or feeling pain like it can, just emulating.
- Waterluvian 5mo agoAnd were programmed through evolution to not want to be shut off. So I don't think we can really trust the human behaviour to protest its own destruction. That's just plain reasonable design!
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- brcmthrowaway 5mo agoI wonder if modern Star Trek could make this episode.
- overgard 5mo agoDefinitely not. Kurtzman Star Trek is not really Star Trek in any spiritual sense, it’s a vessel for political messaging (they’ve pretty much said as much)
- hn_acc1 5mo agoAFAICT, Star Trek has ALWAYS been a vessel for political messaging.
- overgard 5mo agoNot really. It had a strong perspective on some things, and stories were occassionally commentary on real world issues, but at the end of the day Star Trek had its own viewpoint. Modern Stark Trek isn't run or written by people that are Star Trek fans, it's written by people that want to use an existing IP to attach their agenda to. They care about the agenda not the show.
- dragonwriter 5mo ago> Kurtzman Star Trek is not really Star Trek in any spiritual sense, it’s a vessel for political messaging (they’ve pretty much said as much) So was most of Roddenberry, Piller, et al., Star Trek. At its low ebb in Braga Star Trek, but even then...
- msabalau 5mo agoEven if it could, it probably ought not makes this precise episode, because the technological, philosophical and social context is remarkably different. A similar episode, actually informed by what we know or can forsee about AI and LLMs, and addressing our hopes and fears about what they mean would be interesting though.
- why_at 5mo agoI'm a big fan of Star Trek but I recently rewatched this one in the context of recent AI developments and it's not as good as I remember it. They barely touch on the issues of consciousness, Picard basically says "What if Data is conscious?" and then goes off on a tangent. The judge eventually rules in Data's favor but doesn't give much of a justification IMO. It's still a good episode, but it doesn't add much to the conversation on consciousness. It's a hugely complicated topic which people have devoted their entire careers to.
- lupire 5mo agoIt asks important questions. It's not so presumptuous as to try to answer them conclusively.
- Waterluvian 5mo agoIn fact I think the conclusion it comes to is the one that people, especially the smart ones, so easily miss: we don't know the answer. It might be that we can't know the answer. But ignorance is not a defense.
- jordanb 5mo agoThe fact that they sent Data to starfleet academy, gave him a commission in the starfleet, let him attain the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and then decide that actually he's a machine that can be dismantled seems like quite a turn. Does the ship's computer have a commission? It was a good episode but it had some elements of Star Trek tropes in it, like the evil admirals and Picard can talk his way out of anything.
- krapp 5mo ago>The fact that they sent Data to starfleet academy, gave him a commission in the starfleet, let him attain the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and then decide that actually he's a machine that can be dismantled seems like quite a turn. Data is basically an Isaac Asimov android (down to the positronic brain) and Measure of a Man is an Asimov-type story whose tropes don't entirely fit within in the Trek universe. It makes no sense within the context of the Trek universe that Data is unable to use contractions for instance - but it makes sense in the context of how a robot might have been conceived of in the 1940s.
- throwatdem12311 5mo agoI’ve also rewatched it lately and I’m more on the side of the Starfleet scientists when I was obviously on Picard/Data’s side before.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- qarl 5mo agoAny time I bump into a device that acts like a human I'm going to treat it like a human. Because treating things that act human inhumanely is not something I want to learn how to do.
- Brendinooo 5mo agoMy instincts are pretty different here. - I'll try not to swear at/hit a printer: not because I see the printer as having human-like qualities of being capable but complex and unreliable, but because I want to be a person who can control his temper. - Treating an inhuman thing as human because it can mimic us in some way is not something that I want to do.
- qarl 5mo agoSo if a machine does become conscious, you're happy being nasty to it until it is proven conscious? I try not to make errors like that.
- micromacrofoot 5mo agojust don't treat anything nastily, it's not so difficult - I don't treat my dog like a person but I'm also not nasty to her
- qarl 5mo agoMeh. I'm speaking loosely. You know what I mean. Or you should. EDIT: It's difficult to have a conversation when one person changes what they said after the fact.
- Brendinooo 5mo agoWhat was unclear about my first bullet?
- qarl 5mo agoI said "inhumanely". You shifted the goal post to swearing at inanimate objects. I ignored you.
- vondur 5mo agoDon't forget the other episode "Quality of Life" with these working robots who data discovers have become sentient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quality_of_Life_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quality_of_Life_(Star_Trek... I do miss the old TNG show.
- jvanderbot 5mo agoI think about this from the other end. It cannot be considered a conscious being. There just isn't a world in which we should start to think of a machine using ethics we reserve for humans. AI is essentially infinitely reproducible at zero cost, and won't suffer from decay etc. There's not scarcity to preserve. So, I'd turn off an AI in a moment to save property or real possessions or money. I'd sacrifice property and money to save animals. I would never choose to save an animal over a person. I'd probably not choose to save a person over a child. I don't see any inversion of any of those priorities that makes any sense. It is interesting to think about what would cause me to consider these priorities incorrect, but a majority consensus about a program being sentient isn't it.
- Waterluvian 5mo agoWhat is the connection between scarcity and consciousness?
- Avicebron 5mo agoIf we turn off people we can't usually just fire them back up again, and swapping the models between harnesses is also tricky.
- Waterluvian 5mo agoWhat if the human brain is a LOT of RAM and we simply suffer from having zero non-volatile storage. We could make an AI just as deficient and then that specific distinction disappears.
- andrei_says_ 5mo agoWhat if it’s not a lot of RAM? What if genetic memory, multigenerational conditioning, life-long patterning and conditioning, experienced in a body, combined with forces and processes not yet detected nor explained, cannot quite fit in a sliver of modeling?
- jvanderbot 5mo ago
- Kiboneu 5mo ago> The conclusion I’m currently at is that I don’t know and probably can’t ever know. I think about this quote often, straight from Data's voice module in another episode: 'The most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is, "I do not know".'
- snowwrestler 5mo agoIt’s a great episode of TV because Data is a main cast character who is obviously conscious. We know before the episode starts who is right and who is wrong in this particular argument. This episode is not about consciousness, it is about civil rights: resisting bigotry and power. Note that the episode is NOT about the ship’s computer. They all know it’s not conscious, despite also being a machine that can converse and do things. Our LLMs are like the ship’s computer.