Human rights for robots or robot rights for humans?

so im still being flamed on this thread then. another little bully in the pack, and not one i expected either.

i think you're being really unfair jef, in fact i think you're being plain dishonest now.

i am not duty bound to answer every dumb fucking question anyone can come up with. especially when that question is based on a complete misrepresentation of my position, is basically fantasy drawn out of yours or someone elses imagination, and then treated as if it was concrete fact.

I'm not flaming, I haven't insulted you. I have asked you to answer my question, I'm sorry you find that to be offensive.

I haven't given your position. I've asked why actions that you have agreed with do not lead to certain consequences. You have refused to answer them.

This is true. But if you have no intention of answering then why bother responding?

As I've said repeatedly. I suggested that a position you had supported could lead to unpleasant consequences, I was assumed you would explain to me how this would not be the case. Or address this potential problem.

this is derailing this thread again jef. in short - you projected a position that i had not shown support for, then you made a slippery slope judgement of what that projected position might eventually lead to, and asked me if i supported that. it was a projection on a fallacy on a projection, and there is no reason for me to answer it, imo. and yeh, i am insulted by both the original questions, and by your demands that i answer to them, and by your continuance of that on this unrelated thread by insinuating that i am a wriggler.

Ok, I did bring it up again. We'll ignore your earlier derailing and leave it at that.

IMO arf's initial point - albeit poorly put - that the concept of extending human rights to robots is meaningless as the concept of human rights does not as yet cover all human beings, is a good one. that being said, not everything has to boil down to feminism.

I've done a bit of AI/neural networking stuff so far and read some of the philosophical side of it, but to be honest people's obsession with the idea of "intelligence" always baffled me. taking the Chinese room as an example, it may be true that we could make a machine which could simulate aspects of intelligence without in itself *being* "intelligent" per se; my question tho would be, does it really matter?

a mate of mine brought up the following tho, which I thought was interesting:

will people one day see people who punch their computer in frustration the same way they see people who kick puppies?

oooh that is an interesting line of thought.

did you see this yet : http://www.aspcr.com/

"The ASPCR is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, founded in 1999."

jonny t - your example there is even better for checking that site - check out this quote:

Great!! I'd consider joining but it is an American society and not world-wide - bloody jingoists!!! And the pic of the android touching noses with the kitty cat is adorable..

Sarcasm, darling.

Personally,I doubt that it will ever be possible to make a machine that is self-aware.I am not saying it is impossible, just that I can't see how it can be done......I am not saying that concioussness is some mysterious essnce that is seperable from the material world it must be a property of matter in some way........ However if we did succeed in making a self-aware machine,
that was worthy of the respect of being accorded human rights, then would it not be variable rather than constant capital, v rather than c, able to generate more value than it was initially worth enabling the capitalists to escape the falling-rate-of profit dilemma.I don't see how you can give a machine free will, or even what free will is, Isaac Asimov etc notwithstanding

Personally I don't see the point of robots if we can't make them do all the shitty work that we don't want to do. Just make them intelligent enought to perform complex tasks without giving them any capacity for self-will or self-awareness. Then there would be no human rights issue, and we can all laze around being fed cocktails by robot buttlers.

Unless self-will & self-awareness are epiphenomena generated when a system reaches a certain level of complexity.

The thing that concerns me most about robots is - why do people consider ACTUAL PROPER robots to have to be shaped like people? Like we've made plenty of robots and whatnot, but people don't consider them to be real unless they're just a metal equivalent to people. Is that just some God-like morality coming through? Making them in our own image and shit? I just find it sorta mental that humans are that weird/arrogant/...weird.

ahh the good old ghost in the machine ...

ahh the good old ghost in the machine ...

Cos they are using the incorrect term for a start! A robot, as you say, does not necessarily have to resemble a human - that would be an android. = a robot in human form.

Re: people's reactions to androids i don't think it is so much God like morality as a feeling of discomfort at being confronted with a being that perhaps resembles themselves in some way and that on some other level fundamentally doesn't... i think the issue goes down to fear,superstition, loss of control, lack of understanding on an emotional as well as intellectual level..cos as you say it is not a logical position.. it is an emotional reaction.I think this reaction shares some similarities with certain racist attitudes -

This would not apply to me obv. - i would love an android pal!

Btw Bob your concern as noted in your opening few words is not about robots but about the nature of the human condition as is in some/most spheres - a rather tougher nut to crack than the issue of consciousness in robots /androids which any fool ( ) can see is only a matter of time.

Love

LW X

Yeah i think this is quite possible.

That indefinable (prolly! ) moment when that which is created becomes greater than the sum of its parts...and simultaneously becomes something else entirely.

I love this shit so much and am so glad Pingu bumped the thread.

Love

LW X

I am strangely disappointed that this thread isn't a witty joke about ICC militants.

Surely the members of the cyborg fraction of the proletarian camp would reject the notion of rights as a bourgeois construct?

meh, the ICC are just the epiphenomenal ghost in the capitalist machine. they have once again managed to get themselves a mention though, they clearly subscribe to "no publicity is bad publicity"

Surely they're the machinic spectral (non)presence of the revolution avenir?

surely even office boredom doesn't merit discussing the ICC so gratuitously

You'd like to hope so, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, the truth is somewhat different.

salvation is at hand

I don't like football.

you don't like the bloody ICC but that doesn't stop you playing bloody bingo does it!

anyway, you have a regional accent, which means you're workin' clarss, which means you like football

Hull is the largest city in Britain never to have had its football team in the top division. Nobody in Hull likes football, not even the City season ticket holders. I went a couple of times myself to sample the misery, and some of the chants were quite funny -- "We're shit & we know we are," etc.

we are certainly spectral, but isn't that true of communism in general?

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.