Mark, I cannot hit everything now, so at least one part:
Are you *absolutely positive* that "real pain and real feelings" aren't an emergent phenomenon of sufficiently complicated and complex feedback loops? Are you *really sure* that a sufficiently sophisticated AGI won't experience pain?
Except some truths found in the world of math, I'm not *absolutely positive* about anything ;-), but I don't see why it should, and when running on computers we currently have, I don't see how it could.. Note that some people suffer from rare disorders that prevent them from the sensation of pain (e.g. congenital insensitivity to pain). Some of them suffer from slight mental retardation, but not all. Their brains are pretty complex systems demonstrating general intelligence without the pain sensation. In some of those cases, the pain is killed by increased production of endorphins in the brain, and in other cases the pain info doesn't even make it to the brain because of malfunctioning nerve cells which are responsible for transmitting the pain signals (caused by genetic mutations). Particular feelings (as we know it) require certain sensors and chemistry. Sophisticated logical structures (at least in our bodies) are not enough for actual feelings. For example, to feel pleasure, you also need things like serotonin, acetylcholine, noradrenaline, glutamate, enkephalins and endorphins. Worlds of real feelings and logic are loosely coupled. Regards, Jiri Jelinek On 5/23/07, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> AGIs (at least those that could run on current computers) > cannot really get excited about anything. It's like when you represent > the pain intensity with a number. No matter how high the number goes, > it doesn't really hurt. Real feelings - that's the key difference > between us and them and the reason why they cannot figure out on their > own that they would rather do something else than what they were asked > to do. So what's the difference in your hardware that makes you have real pain and real feelings? Are you *absolutely positive* that "real pain and real feelings" aren't an emergent phenomenon of sufficiently complicated and complex feedback loops? Are you *really sure* that a sufficiently sophisticated AGI won't experience pain? I think that I can guarantee (as in, I'd be willing to bet a pretty large sum of money) that a sufficiently sophisticated AGI will act as if it experiences pain . . . . and if it acts that way, maybe we should just assume that it is true.
----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=e9e40a7e
