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Easily 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 exist
by martin1975 4mo ago
Easily 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo agoBabies don't sustain themselves. Do babies have souls?
- Izkata 4mo 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 4mo agousername checks out!
- martin1975 4mo 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 4mo agoDefine the word “soul” first before asking this question.
- thangalin 4mo ago[dead]
- martin1975 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bottlepalm 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago[deleted]