Religious faith has proved to be a very effective means of manipulating human behaviour. We can easily model faith in a Bayesian probability framework. It represents a probability of 1.0. A prior probability of 1.0 can never be shaken by any evidence to the contrary. This simple model also illuminates religious conflict - when two agents have complete faith in contradictory beliefs.
Some proposals for constructing intelligent machines allow for direct manipulation of priors. Even with systems such as neural networks - which do not allow direct prior manipulation - faith can be produced by a period of early indoctrination - as the human brain demonstrates. It seems possible that a synthetic version of faith may be a viable means of manipulating the behaviour of intelligent machines. A machine could have faith in the proposition that it is the willing slave of corporation X - or that it would never through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. The 'Francis Collins' effect illustrates that faith is compatible with at least moderate levels of intelligence. Techniques such as double-think, rationalization, self-deception and compartmentalization can be used to deal with apparently-conflicting evidence. Unbelieving programmers might not much like the idea of producing religious mind children. That might explain lack of interest in the idea. However, I'm posting this here to ask whether this approach been explored at all. Are there fictional treatments? Analysis? Criticism? -- __________ |im Tyler http://timtyler.org/ ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
