By the by, I was very surprised to hear about a new transhumanist roleplaying game, Eclipse Phase (also, it's released under Creative Commons, just because the creators are anarchists like that). I've been giving it a try and it can be a bit of a mind-bender sometimes.

I've been reading Accelerando by Charles Stross (available for free via CC if you're interested). A major theme is the evolution of intelligence in unexpected areas. For instance, once character is a little robotic pet that starts out as one of those toys we're used to seeing at toy stores. The main characters keep upgrading it, installing better processing power and neural images, until it spontaneously develops self-awareness.

This begs some interesting questions; how should we tell if/when things like computers become self-aware? What rights to self-aware devices have, and how is that impacted by distributed awareness (imagine if the Internet became self-aware - should it be illegal to take computers offline because it causes harm, albeit very small, to a self-aware intelligence)? And should we wait until intelligences request their rights for us to award them?

Well, the only reason we ever seem to take computers offline that I can think of is because we're installing newer, more advanced ones.

So I suppose that would be essentially the quid-pro-quo of ripping your muscles through exercise in order to make them bigger; no pain, no gain.

EDIT: Additionally, I'm not sure; one could make the case for animals as well as computers that, if they started demanding rights themselves, there would be no good argument as to not giving them it (the very ability to ask for one's rights is a sign that one has them).

In the meantime, like animals, we'd probably need people requesting their rights for them.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:49, Fri 15 Apr 2011.

So if I program my computer to ask for the right to vote then vote teh way I want it too, it should be allowed to vote?
Although I guess Diebold's computer's had the right to vote...

You're funny, silveroak :P

Asking for the right to vote may be evidence, but it's not the complete case. However, the more pressing question I think is, if I create an actual artificial intelligent but it does NOT ask for the right to life, should I still work to protect it?

Of course you should. That thing is worth some major cash!

Protect its rights :P (for instance, the right from being 'owned').

Well the declaration does state "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights", which may be arguable in the case of humans but brings up other issues when discussing synthetic senteince. For example one migt argue from a religious perspective that we can be owned by our creator 9or that his enemy might own our soul in some situations) but that what we are protected against is ownership by our biological/spiritual peers. in which case you could easilly enjoin your senteint machine from owning other sentient machines...

I don't know that the Declaration of Independence is meant to be taken as a moral guideline in quite that manner. However, the general moral stance of it makes sense. We say God is our creator and knows better than us, therefore God 'owns' us. I'd never considered that, should we have an AI which is provably not as intelligent as a human, that we may wish to 'own' it, similar perhaps to how own might 'own' a child.

I think at that point it also depends on how much of  ahand we had in te design and oteh rfactors. For example, I would say that giving it free will to decide if it wants to be owned or not and then deciding to own it when it chooses freedom would be the height of irresponsibility. I do think that there would not eb anything unethical with making a machine that is otehrwise sentient however, but feels safe only when owned by a human being (provided it isn't designed to become obsolete either...), and that other solutions exist where one wouldn't have to give up property rights simply because they amde something sentient. It does however require more thought than a simple answer.
Of course this is also one of thse things tha I think if you view the christian 'take' on the issue (hath not the potter power over the clay etc.) then God of the bible really botched the job - designing humans with free will then penalizing them for exercising it. But I digress...

Plato would like a word with you. Meet him in his cave.

More seriously, that's confusing the mind/soul/spirit/however you call it with its mere physical manifestation. My mind is not a bunch of electric signals; the electric signals are inseparable from it, but to know a mind you need to know more than brain signals.

but to know a mind you need to know more than brain signals.

Why?

Because just measuring the wattage between points doesn't tell you the information carried by that wattage, or the structures that information creates. Just like having a video card on your computer that only passed the ones and zeros to the screen, rather than portraying windows and words, wouldn't be especially valuable.

BUt that's a n issue of translation. In fact your video card does portray ones and zeros ont your screens, it simply does so through the manifestation of pixel color and intensity.
And a brain signal is far more than wattage - there would be frequency, waveform, phase, and timing of the bursts. Of course you would still need context to translate, but if an EM pattern designed to operate in a human brain encounters another human brain, then there is compatability to the context.

It's the difference between the words and the message, the bits and the abstraction they support. Yes, it requires 'translation', although I wouldn't reduce that to a 'just'.

I'm not sure what your point is. I didn't say 'just' anything, But when you look at a lot of myticism the idea that it is primarilly EM intraction is hard to dismiss. For example did you knw that hundreds of years ago teh best diviners used copper and iron rods for divining? Copper of course being exceptional for picking up an electric feild and iron for picking up a magnetic...

What I mean is, if you took the data stored in a human brain and translated it to an optical computer, or a quantum computer, or whatever, while maintaining identical performance characteristics, would it be different? I may be misinterpreting what you're writing, but it seems like you may be caught up on the mechanics of it being EM. I would argue the platform is almost irrelevant, compared to the abstract data stored in it.

How does that matter? If the 'ghosts' are EM 'echoes' of brain patterns being read by another brain then the platform in the end is the same: brain to brain. If I record sound on an EM tape and then play back the tape through a speaker it is sound on both ends, and if the recording is good then it is effectively the same sound.

It matters because I was agreeing with Kat and answering Falkus's question.

The method of data storage is (mostly) irrelevant. Only the message is of value.

Dang it, I'm used to you being called Kat, this just confuses teh conversation..

Sorry. If it helps, you can call me 'isara'.

Trying to reduce threads, so I'm putting this one under the larger umbrella.

Body modification; the good, the bad, the extreme. How far is too far?

I'd say almost all body modification probably comes with some good, and some bad, and it all depends on how any given individual weighs up the costs and benefits.

Some will care a great deal about whether or not it makes people around them uncomfortable, but others might actually consider making those around them uncomfortable a good thing (challenging pre-conceptions, and getting people out of their comfort-zone, etc.).

Some will care a lot about functionality, others will care much more about appearance.

Some will want to minimize hassles (e.g., avoid setting off metal detectors in airports), but others won't be as worried by that.

I guess the thing that comes to mind as being potentially "too far" is when things become non-voluntary.  Some body modifications are done to children too young to understand what's going on or give consent (e.g., circumcision), which raises questions about whether parents have the right to make such decisions.  And if we're speaking about transhumanism, it's within the realm of consideration to imagine a body modification that let you violate privacy in ways an unmodified person could ("x-ray" vision, or being able to record what your "eyes" see), and that opens another can of worms.

Also, I'm pretty sure when your essence score reaches 0, you become an NPC, which is something to be avoided.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:41, Wed 19 Mar 2014.

I loled.

I'm thinking more about the fringe cases. I know there are people who would argue cutting off a perfectly good, natural arm in exchange for a superior robotic one is sinful, but I don't fall into that category :) However, there are issues with for instance 'self-mutilation'. I read news-stories about people cutting off parts of their bodies, and normally those people are taken to the hospital for psychological care.

I also see issues with the topic of suicide. If I'm doing something that is likely to kill me, should I be permitted to do that?

In reply to katisara (msg # 107):

Ah, yeah, the question of when people are considered so mentally unwell that we don't trust them to make decisions about their own well-being anymore is a tricky one.

On suicide I'm of the opinion that if a rational person wants to do it, then that should be their right (the main reason "rational" person would want to do so is due to inescapable medical conditions, such as very painful or degenerative illnesses, or things like locked-in syndrome).  On the other hand, when someone is mentally unhinged, I can sympathize with those who want to prevent them from harming themselves.  There are plenty of cases where its easy for me to pick which way I lean in such situations, but also plenty where I see it as a tough call, and I don't have any hard-and-fast rules to cover all cases.  I guess a rule of thumb might be that if a person is ruled incapable of governing their own finances, then they're probably not in a position make a decision on self-mutilation or suicide, either.  But I'm not sure I'd want that to be the law of the land, as such.