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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7155965" data-attributes="member: 4937">Like you, I tend to think that since humans look like they are free willed, then they probably are.  Likewise, since I perceive myself as conscious - that is I perceive myself thinking about myself - then I tend to think that I am.  But it's possible that I'm being deluded, and that I'm simply a mechanical device that has been constructed to perceive that it is conscious.   Just as you are skeptical that an artificial lifeform could be conscious, many people are skeptical that any mechanical process - which don't get me wrong, I agree that we must essentially be a mechanical process - could be non-deterministic.As a counter example, I note that we appear to live in a non-deterministic universe, as on the quantum level, the universe cannot be described in purely mechanical terms.   I don't believe that there is anything particularly special about biological hardware as opposed to any other substrate.   It stands to reason to me that if with biological hardware you can achieve self-willed, self-aware, sapient organisms, then you can achieve the same thing with circuits. As for software knowing what the symbols it manipulates actually mean, then it seems self-obvious to me that it could.  And likewise, I'm pretty darn certain that the vast majority of what humans do is algorithimic and is based on built in 'hardware' compiled during early life development.  Humans learn to do things like walk or read way too fast for it to not be built in algorithms. However, this is all tangential points.  If you are curious about why some people think that consciousness is a delusion, or why some people think free will is impossible, I encourage you to go to Wikipedia and read about the concepts.Aha!  Does being conscious guarantee that the thing is actually self-willed, and so therefore has a right to self-determination?  You've made a dangerous assumption here.Tons of things, with the worst case being that humans might engineer robots based on those naïve beliefs, which is likely to be extremely dangerous.  Creating a living thing based on idealism not grounded in reality is horrific.  If you are going to 'play god', you better know what you are doing.   The more moderate case is that it could increase unfriendliness in a particular robot - roughly equivalent to teaching a dog to bite.   And of course I also consider it potentially a form of a abuse, equivalent to mistreating a dog.  Depending on the droid's construction it might be non-trivial abuse.  So for example, physical damage like smashing the hands of a droid with a hammer in a droid, might only be rather mild abuse - no pain sensor, or pain doesn't cause distress or discomfort, or pain can be simply switched off when its not useful.  But arguing with a droid that it is actually deserving of human rights might be the equivalent of taking a pair of scissors and cutting off a dogs ears in terms of the level of distress it might cause to a typical AI actually capable of understanding the argument.  It's highly unlikely that a well made droid would become unfriendly, but the sheer inability it had to placate you, make you happy, or cooperate with what it thinks you wanted, could potentially be painfully cruel to a droid.  Heck, you might make a droid down right suicidal, convinced that since it could never "become a real boy" and that its purpose depended on it, that it might as well shut down.But let me give you some concrete non-hypothetical examples to think about, based on one issue that you just raised.Suppose I introduce you to a software agent on my computer.  It is fully conversant with you.  Talking with it is just like talking with a person.  It talks about its feelings.  It's self-aware.  It claims to be a person.  It can engage with you on topics of philosophy and mathematics and even your kid hitting a home run in little league.  I convince you through whatever means that its algorithms make it just as conscious as you are.  And you believe it.  You are like, "You are a person.  You ought to be treated exactly like a person.  You ought to have the same rights of a person."   Ok, so then my software agent creates 1 billion individual copies of itself.  Now all of them tell you, "I'm a person too.  I'm a conscious intelligent being.  I have the same rights of a person.  I'd like to register to vote."Do you have a problem with that?  Why are the copies any less persons under your definition than the original?</blockquote>

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