>From: Brent Allsop <allsop@fc.hp.com>
>
> Also, like ALL other popular discussion of the future, it is
>entirely based on the "Turing test" view of lonely consciously
>isolated beings. The view that we will eternally never really know
>what other conscious minds are like other than the causal behavior we
>can observe. Is the boy really feeling pain? Or is he just a tape
>recorder begging for the pain to stop? The assumption is that no one
>will ever know.
Can you point to specific scenes that advance this view? I didn't get this
impression.
But it's a correct view anyway. Even if you were to mentally interface
directly with another being, and then feel consciousness, you'd still always
be feeling only your own consciousness. It would be a more intense version
of feeling empathy for someone. You wouldn't be able to make any claim about
whether the entity is conscious itself, when you're not interfacing with it.
>This is my pet peeve and there is no way the future
>can be like this. The worlds of our consciousness will expand and
>escape from our skulls. We will be effing, sharing, merging, and
>getting inside other's minds. Hence the future will be very different
>than all this Turring test like behavior. Surely even the idea of
>individual beings will really no longer exist in the distant future.
>
> Another utterly stupid assumption the entire plot hinged on
>was the idea that once the mother spoke the special words to the
>android boy, it would suddenly drastically change him and forever lock
>him into the mind set of only loving the person that spoke the words.
>The only thing that could be done to change such would be to destroy
>the boy. It's difficult for us to alter ourselves, but it's absurd to
>think that an android couldn't be modified.
Well, he was a beta right? Maybe the rollback feature hadn't been completed
yet.
---------------------------------------------------
Zeb Haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
My personal webpage:
http://www.inconnect.com/~zharadon/ubunix
A movie I'm directing:
http://www.elevatormovie.com
"What is this, some Three Stooges episode where everyone is armed with pies?
Bill Gates is supposed to walk through the airport with an armful of pies
so that he can stoop to the level of his attackers?" -Chris Russo
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