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Human

quarter--mile.com

71–80 of 282 posts

Re: Human

#71

Related but an aside - Lately I've really been wondering if Skynet actually is the next evolution. That humans, like all animals before us, are a stepping stone and there is actually no avoiding machine overlords. It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. At least Fermi's paradox helps me sleep better…

Like, "yeah we're doomed, but at least it's inevitable and universal."

Re: Human

#72
Excuse me, but from the very beginning, it was SO predictable where this was going.

Re: Human

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a teenager I used to revel in explaining to religious people that I believe humans are actually just the evolutionary step between biological life and machine life.

I guess you fail to see the irony that your own eschatology itself is pretty religious.

It’s a belief about a great future change, but there’s nothing supernatural or totally implausible about it. And it doesn’t sound like they were preaching it as the absolute truth, but were open that it was just their belief. Also, no social rites or rituals mean that despite them telling it to people who didn’t care to hear it, I am not convinced that their belief was very religious.

Also, “As a teenager” implies more self-awareness than you seem to give them credit for.

Re: Human

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you fail to see the irony that your own eschatology itself is pretty religious.

More broadly—and at least in online spaces—I often notice that many vocal proponents of atheism exhibit traits typically associated with religious behaviour: - a tendency to proselytise - a stubborn unwillingness to genuinely engage with opposing views - the use of memes and in-jokes as if they were profound arguments - an almost reverential attitude toward certain past figures There’s more, but I really ought to get…

[deleted]

Re: Human

#75
Imperfection and randomness is a strength (that's why evolution doesn't make perfect copies, you might end up with the random mutation that protects you from the next pandemic) you could imagine that machines need human intelligence to think outside the box

Re: Human

#76

Funny enough, this is also something I thought about a few weeks back: what's the motivation of machine, if it has no emotions, to explore and continue in the world - what sense does it make if it doesn't have curiosity (of course this could be a RL function, but still, imagine putting yourself in world without life, where everything is only static, how boring would it be).

what if the causation is in the opposite direction (and i believe it is) - to explore and continue in the world is the primary drive (as the opposite traits just get naturally de-selected, be it organics or machines), and we only perceive it as our mind's artificial constructs like curiosity/emotions/motivation.

Re: Human

#77
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you fail to see the irony that your own eschatology itself is pretty religious.

More broadly—and at least in online spaces—I often notice that many vocal proponents of atheism exhibit traits typically associated with religious behaviour: - a tendency to proselytise - a stubborn unwillingness to genuinely engage with opposing views - the use of memes and in-jokes as if they were profound arguments - an almost reverential attitude toward certain past figures There’s more, but I really ought to get…

Sounds like every group of people ever, when viewed through the biased sample of “people who post”.

Re: Human

#78
post #7

Doesn't really make much sense. It states that this is a purely mechanistic world with no emotion. So why would a machine be "bored" and wish to create a human?

I see it as an anthropomorphized word for the story. I imagine the machines run out of tasks with high or even low priority, but they still generate tasks at some epsilon priority that are close but not quite to random. That's a kind of boredom.

Re: Human

#79
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My headcanon is that "boredom" and "fear" are probabilities in a Markov chain - since it's implied the machine society is not all-knowing, they must reconcile uncertainty somehow.

How would a machine know that it doesn't know?

Experience of encountering things that were previously unknown unknowns would teach it of the general existence of such things.

Re: Human

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disrespectful? Of whom? It's a work of fiction. There's really no need to find something to offend you wherever you look.

of other animals but yeah I'm not sure that was the right word, just seems wrong. basically humanism seems like racism but towards other species. I guess speciesist?

My take was that other animals didn’t exist either, in the story.
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