Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Levyathan on February 28, 2004, 02:57:52 pm
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...So I asked Thunder a question and he said that I'd have to start another thread if I wanted to discuss the subject.
Here's the question. If someone else wants to answer, it's fine by me. But I'm specially interested in Thunder's view.
Originally posted by Levyathan
At what point, exactly, do you draw a distinction line between two entities which, even though they exist, have no consciousness of themselves?
The specific case was about a dog and a Tamagotchi. That's all there is to it.
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And he said forum. And I think you're pishing your luck here..
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
If you want to debate consciousness then start your own thread.
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So you want to debate whether there is a difference between a tamogotchi and a pet?
Where should I start?
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Exactly. I'd appreciate any and every effort.
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Okay, I guess I'll start off with (animal) pets being living creatures, while tamogotchi's are a mass of cold, heartless, technology, with a bit of programming.
Then you have living pets, such as dogs, who provide tangible companionship, protection, fun, etc.
Tomogatchi's vibrat when you don't press the button that makes them sleep.
Is there really a point to this, or are you just trying to piss off Thunder?
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Something like: What is the difference if you die in FreeSpace or in real life?
You can see the difference
*out*
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
Okay, I guess I'll start off with (animal) pets being living creatures, while tamogotchi's are a mass of cold, heartless, technology, with a bit of programming.
And a dog is a mass of flesh with a bit of natural instinct. The difference between them is what I'm looking for.
Originally posted by Knight Templar
Tomogatchi's vibrat when you don't press the button that makes them sleep.
Just as dogs respond accordingly if you don't feed or take them to a walk.
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You do not have to pay to feed your Tamagotchi.
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By what you're saying - humans act in exactly the same way as a Tomogatchi does. Yet we consider ourselves to be conscious of ourselves.
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Originally posted by TopAce
You do not have to pay to feed your Tamagotchi.
If that's the only difference you could find, by logic one should be less sad when a dog dies than when a Tamagotchi dies.
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I could say at least 20 differences if I had ever played with Tamagotch. But I am not interested in things like that.
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
By what you're saying - humans act in exactly the same way as a Tomogatchi does. Yet we consider ourselves to be conscious of ourselves.
So you're saying that dogs and Tamagotchis are aware of themselves just like humans are?
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Originally posted by TopAce
I could say at least 20 differences if I had ever played with Tamagotch.
Considering your previous posts in this thread, I'd have to say that I don't agree with that.
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No, but that's my point - you're saying that tamagotchis and dogs respond in the same way to the same stimulus - but that a dog is no different from a tamagotchi. It deserves no sympathy.
One thing I'm sure we can both agree is true - if I were to kick a tamagotchi it would not cry out in pain. If I kicked a dog or a human - they both would. They are both aware that they are in pain - if perhaps, the dog does not understand why, it still understands that it feels it.
A few years ago when we first got my dog - Harry - I accidentally trod on one of his paws - he cried out in pain and wouldn't go near me for the rest of the day, and spent the next few days being warey around me. Clearly then he understood that I had caused him pain - he made a distinction between me, the world we both occupy, and himself.
Ergo, dogs are quite different from Tamagotchis.
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The Tamagotchis cannot think for itself. If you put it in a situation where it has to make a decision and LEARN something outside it's programming, it's screwed.
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wowow....
At what point, exactly, do you draw a distinction line between two entities which, even though they exist, have no consciousness of themselves?
You are saying an animal (in this case a dog) has no consciousness?
Do you have consciousness?
A tamagotch is not conscious because it has no thoughts, it is just a computed script!! It can change on it's own, it can't act on it's own, etc, etc, etc...
The irracionality in some decisions every animal takes is proof enough of their own consciousness.
Happy now :mad:
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This is going to dissolve into a flame war with remarkable rapidity.....
Let's look at things logically.
Firstly we must define what 'consciousness' is. The Oxford Compact English Dictionary defines consciousness as:
1) The state of being conscious
2) Awareness, perception
Dropping the first definition as it's irrelevant to the point, we are left with option 2, that of consciousness being defined as awareness and perception.
Feeding that definition seamlessly back into a real-world context, you and I are both aware of our surroundings. For example, I'm sitting here at my computer, and I'm aware that there's a light on in the corner, and that my pet rabbit is scratching away at something in his hutch. As I look around the room, I see things. Percieve them.
Living things, besides some of the more obvious functions that they carry out, all have some element of awareness and perception. A plant is aware of where the sun is and adjusts the position of its leaves throughout the day accordingly. My rabbit, Dandelion, is aware of where he is (in a hutch in the corner) and where his food bowl is, for want of a better example.
Looping back to the original argument, that of a Tamagotchi vs a dog for 'consciousness' we must ask ourselves this: Is a Tamagotchi actually aware of its surroundings? Can it percieve things?
The answer is 'no' in both cases. A Tamagotchi is programmed to react to certain pre-defined stimuli. When playing with a Tamagotchi you have a choice of things to do. IIRC you can feed it, play with it and do a couple of other things. What you can't do is throw a grenade at its feet and see how it would react. The Tamagotchi doesn't have a 'grenade' option in its code.
On the flipside, if you throw a grenade at a dog's feet, it would react in any number of ways. It might run away, it might sniff at it wondering what it is, or indeed it might pick it up in its mouth and return it to you as if it was a stick that you'd thrown. Naturally, we view two of those options as downright stupid, but that's because we know what a grenade is - the poor dog doesn't until it blows up, by which point it wouldn't care anyway.
Consciousness, as I've stated, is a difficult thing to define. Even when you've got the definition from a dictionary you need to interpret it correctly. I suppose it comes down to this:
Consciousness is the attribute that a thing has if it is able to percieve its environment, be aware of what it is and what it is doing, and being able to react to unexpected stimuli. Living things can do that to varying extents, artificial life like a Tamagotchi can't. At least, not yet.
In the original example, Singh's dog was a perfectly happy, healthy and energetic creature who was as much a part of Singh's life as his sibling(s), his parents or his friends. Losing that companion, even though said companion wasn't human, left a large hole in Singh's heart. He could never replace that dog, not even if he managed to find another animal of exactly the same breed, temperament and colouration as the one he's lost. If it had been a Tamagotchi, you'd just reset, hatch the egg and start again. Sure, you might feel a slight sense of loss as you'd worked hard to evolve that Tamagotchi, but it's still technology. You can't pet it, you can't hug it and you sure as hell can't think of it as a companion in any stretch of the imagination.
In my life, I've got a house rabbit as I mentioned earlier. He's about seven years old now, and I'm quietly preparing for the day when it'll all be over. Most rabbits live on average for about eight years, so I doubt I've long left. But I've shared some moments with him, mainly because he's been a close part of my life. He's been 'there' during some of the toughest parts of my life, such as losing my father suddenly nearly two years ago. He's more than just a pet, he's a companion and a friend. Sure, he can't speak to me or play multiplayer F-Zero on my Gamecube, but with him around at least one thing will go right in the day. He'll always be happy to recieve a scratch on the nose or to hop around like a maniac when I waggle his food container in front of him prior to pouring it into the bowl. Although he's a rabbit, with all the lower intelligence that comes with it, sometimes he acts so 'human' it's untrue.
For those of you that have a pet, give it a hug right now. Unless it's a goldfish or a boa constrictor, that might not be a good idea. With them around, our life feels less empty. Your life might suck big time, but it'll suck less if you spend just five minutes with your pet.
That, my friends, is joy.
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Ah, this tired old thing... well, if you want to go by sheer observation, it's mostly a matter of level of complexity. Technically speaking, there's no way we can actually be sure that, say, all of the forumites here are actually self-aware humans and not just highly accurate simulations. There've been quite a few bots that passed the Turing test in our time. There are very few who'd claim that such scripts are self-aware, and those individuals are so terribly ignorant they're not worth speaking of any further.
The problem is, it's not really possible to find a flawless test of self-awareness. You can prove that you yourself are a conscious being, if you're clever (and Descartes' famous statement ain't a solution, by the way), but you can't make that claim about anything else in the universe.
However, despite the lack of solid proof we take for granted that quite a lot of things in the world are conscious, starting with those most like ourselves. If something displays rudimentary signs of semisentience, such as dogs and most other predatory mammals do, we presume them to be conscious on a level somewhat below ours. No proof, just our observations, but if we take it as a given that, say, those we converse with on a regular basis are aware human beings like ourselves rather than cleverly constructed automatons, and things like chairs are not conscious, then we must assume that the same property of awareness extends through the rest of the universe in varying quantities by the same token. Dogs act quite a lot like us in terms of external signs of consciousness, and it is understood that they work in a very similar way to the way we do, and are adaptable intelligent beings by any definition- they will act to preserve their own existence and are capable of rudimentary problem-solving of a sort that's difficult to explain if one doesn't presume the idea of a self. Tamagotchis have some extremely crude simulations of consciousness, but we also know how they work and know that these are actually hardcoded reactions whose similarity to our own is present purely by means of our own interference and imaginations- the "feed" button does not actually feed them, or indeed do anything analogous to a feeding, it simply sends the Tamagotchi data that it interprets by lighting up certain pixels on a screen, which in turn small children interpret as the reaction of a recently-fed animal. The actual process is no more intelligent than a pile of rocks falling over. Hence, we must presume that the dog (a being similar to us) is conscious to some extent and that a Tamagotchi (a being wholly dissimilar) is not.
Since the alternative is being the one real human being alive in all of existence, I'd go for presuming that other things are conscious.
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Does it actually matter?
Look, dude, the guy could be grieving over a screwed-up Post-It note - and I would still give him my sympathies. Now, you may chortle and say "Post-It notes don't matter, dude!" and expect him to "buck up", stand up straight and say "You're right! These emotions are stupid! They are so *very* human, emotions - another reason why they are such a weak species. Hahahahaha!"... but I would disagree.
The dog means nothing to me. It has no value to me whatsoever. Not only is it something that I've never met, never seen, and can only vaguely imagine as one of any number of different kinds of dog... but I'm also a cat person as well. I do not give my sympathies for the dog, because I never knew it and I don't give a damn about it.
But someone did. And that someone is really torn up about it. Now, in a supremely self-centred way, I could say that I don't know what's wrong with him - because, in my arrogance, I could blithely assume that just because the dog means nothing to me, it must mean nothing to him too, right? However, I'm not stupid like that; I understand that there are other people in the world who aren't really basically just like me, but with different names... they're completely different people with different values and different feelings about stuff. I can accept that he grieves for something that he values greatly and I don't care about at all.
No, I don't feel bad for the dog's death. I feel bad for Singh feeling bad. To quote someone roughly, "I grieve for your grief." This guy is feeling low, and I don't like it when people are sad, so I offer him my condolences as a way of saying "I'm sorry, hope you get better soon."
So if my sympathies are offered based on the person's grief, and not on what I think they ought to feel, then it doesn't matter if it's a human dead or a dog dead or a Tamagotchi frazzled or a Post-It note all messed up... if they're sad about it, they get a little piece of sympathy in digital form.
Doesn't matter, does it?
Which reminds me: my condolences. To lose something as dear to your heart as a pet is pretty bad. I hope you feel better soon.
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Yeah, except that's not the point of this thread.
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[color=66ff00]I think your example of a tamagotchi is counterproductive.
It's perfectly feasable to think of a dog as a system (us too for that matter) if you could program an artifical construct i.e. one not designed by nature to react and interact in the same fashion as a dog; and it wouldn't be that hard, think of Lionhead's Black & White as an example of how AI can create an almost lovable entity. Give it the right amount of randomness and make it look like a dog then who's to say that it's any different from a real dog? It feels pain and reacts accordingly, gets hungry and reacts accordingly, feels sleepy etc.
Would the same level of humaneness be required for such a creature and if not, why not? I've thought a lot about this kind of thing before and I can only conclude that if we construct something that can positively or negatively impact our lives and that we can positively or negatively impact its life in the same fashion of the creature that it was built to emulate then why should it not have the same rights as one of natures creations? The workings may be different but the creature in esscence is identical.
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my god, this is a pure discussion on wheteher a machine can have feelings or not.
i mean comparing a tamaguchi and living breathing animal is just plain wierd.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Yeah, except that's not the point of this thread.
Well, you could just extrapolate from my post and figure that my point is a general 'does it matter?' to the whole topic, not just the subject that initiated the question. I thought that I might as well be specific, address the underlying issue of 'non-conscious stuff doesn't matter'. 'Sides, seemed a better place to express such thoughts than the sympathy thread. Regardless:
Okay... so let's assume that a dog lacks consciousness, self-awareness, and is basically the same as a Tamagotchi, and we shouldn't draw distinctions between them. Right? Okay. Yes. Right. Good. Yes. Well then.
What? What does it matter? It's not conscious. So what? Some things are, some things aren't. Why should that change anything? What about the comatose; how shall we treat them? The unconscious, are they different to fully-conscious people? Are sleeping people the same as furniture? What?
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Your utter lack of interest in the world around you would disturb me were it not such a common phenomenon. There, there, now. Go back to your TV. That never gets complicated, or hard to understand, or any of those other awful things reality does.
Windrunner: But it's a distinction worth making all the same. Far too many people take intelligence for granted and don't explore what it actually means or where the line is drawn; and then you end up like my grandmother who's certain her computer is sentient and literally corrupts her files to spite her. Or you end up treating thinking beings like property, and, well, history is made of all the horrible things that occur when that happens. As is much of the modern day, in fact. Far too many people are far too unconcerned with whether, to use the metaphor, something bleeds when you cut it. The result's indistingishable from psychopathy. Yes, it seems like a rather obvious question if you don't think too hard about it, but it's precisely not thinking too hard about it that's a problem.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Your utter lack of interest in the world around you would disturb me were it not such a common phenomenon. There, there, now. Go back to your TV. That never gets complicated, or hard to understand, or any of those other awful things reality does.
Oh, no, no no no... you have it all wrong.
I simply fail to see what relevance this question has to anything. Oh, sure, it's useful for the sake of knowledge, granted... but that's all it is useful for, as far as I can see.
What's so important about the quality of consciousness?
I just don't see how the matter is important. Now, if you want to assume that I'm ignorant or stupid or whatever and am incapable of considering the question, that's fine, but realise that, in your haste to get off by being rude and condescending, you've failed to consider that I may have actually thought about the question and not seen it as particularly useful, much like how I don't consider "Do I exist, or am I dreaming this?" a particularly useful question, though for perhaps a different reason. Actually, that said, I suppose that they both fall victim to the same killer: being unverifiable.
Who knows? Maybe you'd like to answer the question this time 'round, so that I could understand what the fuss is about, because I've never claimed to be intelligent or wise or particularly awake at the time of writing and may have missed the point entirely... rather than throwing 'dumb sheep' at me. Just a thought.
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How about reading the rest of my bloody post, where I explain in bloody detail why it's a damned important distinction to make. The fact that you weren't able to make the rather obvious logical connection yourself does not speak well of your non-sheephood, or the amount of actual thought put into the problem. Should you actually show evidence of having given the matter (or any matter) significant thought I will gladly reverse my opinion, but whining about my up-to-now perfectly accurate assessment and doing nothing else isn't gonna get much from me in the respect department, kiddo. Palming off knee-jerk apathy as the result of some kind of honest deliberation merits outright contempt as the foolish intellectual fraud it is.
Dismissing something from the onset as insignificant and thinking no more of it is nothing but intellectual laziness, something that merits no more respect or credence than its physical counterpart. There is nothing not worth thinking out at the very least to a satisfactory hypothesis, obvious and immediate practical applications or no, and refusing to think because it's not worth the incredibly small effort is to risk remaining totally ignorant on what may in fact be a very significant problem for the sake of a quick cop-out. Which is basically what you've done here.
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Dude, chill. What the hell is your problem?
I just figure that there's not really much point in this discussion, seeing that there's no way you're going to prove anything either way. Far as I can see, it's all speculation. "Dogs are no different to Tamagotchis! No consciousness!" "I disagree, they're like humans, so they probably possess consciousness as well!" "Who says humans are conscious beings?" "I do!" "Well, I don't!"
Furthermore, my moral system isn't based on some rule like "Don't harm conscious beings." Why not? Why not harm conscious beings? 'Cause it hurts them? So what? That presumes you give a damn in the first place. 'Sides, may not be conscious in the first place. No, my morality is "enlightened self interest," I believe. Do to others what I'd like to have done to me, really. Consciousness doesn't really enter into it. Empathy does, I s'pose, but that doesn't really require the object to be sentient.
Bleh. I just can't find it in me to get worked up about unanswerable questions, sorry. Ones like these, anyway. Let's do the one about clones, that's always fun.
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So you treat the aforementioned chair just like you would a person. It must be interesting to be around you most of the time. That's presuming you aren't one of those freaky Internet people with fetishes involving being eaten, sat on, worn as clothing, hit with a hammer, and basically everything else.
Why the hell even bother post here, anyway? You don't care, fine, that's your problem. I don't care if I don't give everybody a warm fuzzy feeling inside every time I say anything. Some Nigerian peasant doesn't care about the nuances of a new macroeconomic theory being developed in Taiwan. Billy-Bob the janitor down at the local Burger King doesn't care if you don't like him putting his penis in your Whopper. Find the one that doesn't fit (hint: It's the one who still seems to care enough to make several long, pointless posts to the effect that they don't know and don't care).
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What I think Stryke 9 is saying is that every undiscussed discussion is worth taking. Do not procrastinate anything, physicaly and mentaly.
Isn't it?
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That's what I was going to say, but I decided to focus more on how this topic actually is directly relevant to everyday life so we wouldn't get lost off in abstraction. But yeah, that too.
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every living thing can see things from there own perspective. i an here, and i can look at you and sense the world around me, and you can see me and sense the world around you. can a machine do the same thing? does it have a perspective?
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How can you determine that, though? That's the point of the thread.
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you can't, unless you can be that machine ala freaky friday.
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But then it would still be you.
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What a pile of ****.
Tamagotchi's are alive because they eat, sleep, ****, respirate (via electricity) and eventually they die.
They're by no means sentient, but they're alive.
Though I suppose a better way to put it would be to say that they're a life-form, but not necessarily alive or sentient.
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But they don't eat.
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Yes they do. You give them carrots and whatnot.
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So you pretend to feed them. And you can mash strained carrots on your pet rock and call it a meal. Doesn't change reality.
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Just because it doesn't eat the way we do, doesn't mean it's not still eating.
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Didn't I talk about this before? The way we eat is acquiring and converting energy and materials from external sources to keep our body functioning. The "eating" you see in those things is a simple stimulus caused by pressing a button, which results in an output to an LCD. It's not even close.
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Eating is the input of a required, specific collection of particles which alter our physical bodies in some way to allow them to function.
How is a specific collection of electrons not that?
If you don't push those buttons, the creature doesn't get it's "Eating" signal and it starves to death.
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Only because it's programmed to - someone could program another one that forces it to grow if you don't touch it :doubt:
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Okay: I throw a ball at you. You catch it. There, you've got programming too.
And the only reason you could reprogram it would be if you were altering the constants within its operating environment, and if you did that to people by bending the laws of physics you could make similar changes to their operation.
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The thing does not "grow" or "die" anyway. It does not get bigger or (as far as I know) more complex. It just continues to run the program, or shuts down under the proper circumstances and must be reset.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not entirely clear on the specifics of what the things do.
See, it's not a physical entity you're talking about, it's a representational program built to simulate the functions of life. It doesn't do so with much fidelity, but then it's just a toy. There are far more accurate mimicries, and it could potentially be argued that there are semiautonomous programs these days that form a rough parallel to early cellular life (viruses are quite aptly named, though so far none I know of have had the variable traits- the capacity for evolution without outside input- that made life possible... though it wouldn't be terribly hard to make one.), but there's no good comparison between the ways software and physical beings exist.
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Hey, interesting.
Blaise, you sound scary.
One of the basic things about living things is that they have to take in 'information' in order to increase in complexity. That's the whole thing about eating- take in fuel and convert it into more complex energy. ( i think.) tamagotchis, i assume are the actual machine, plus battery. The tamagotchi does not take in external fuel in order to increase in complexity; and even when you change the battery, it still does not increase in complexity. Therefore it is not alive.
I think that's also one of the things about consciousness- that it can mould other things that aren't a part of it, into more complex systems of information. So, tamagotchis don't do that. Humans do, therefore they are conscious. I'm not sure about dogs, though.
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The Tamagotchi is not an animal, it's a brain.
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Originally posted by Levyathan
Considering your previous posts in this thread, I'd have to say that I don't agree with that.
Not surprising.
Oh my god! Where should I go? :cool:
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Originally posted by an0n
Okay: I throw a ball at you. You catch it. There, you've got programming too.
I could chose to drop it after I catch it - throw it back - not catch it in the first place or to not even pay any attention to the fact that you're throwing balls at me... probably some other variables as well.
But I have options depending on who I am - if I know I can't catch for **** then I probably won't try to catch it. If a Tamagotchi is programed to catch a ball - that's what it'll do. Whether it's any good at it or not will not alter what it does - it'll still try and catch that ball.
Suffice to say - a human can break their programming, I could one day decide that I'm insulted that you keep throwing balls at me, and shoot you in the face. The Tamagotchi - even if it had the capacity to whip out a gun and start shooting away - could not, because it's not programmed to. It certainly wouldn't know the meaning of being insulted - AI isn't that advanced yet.
Looping back around to the dog - the dog could also decide it was annoyed with having balls thrown at it all the time, and bite the guy who threw the ball. It might also never grow tired of it - and chase balls to the end of its days (no laughing please).
Do you see where I'm going with this? Dogs are much more aware and self automated than Tamagotchis - and even if they're not as aware as humans - they still deserve compassion as any living thing does.
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nah, kalfrithunder...
you can look at it the other way too. humans and dogs are just more complicated programs that have more possible (randomised) responses to more sets of stimuli than tamagotchi have.
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All that, you can program a machine to do it too: will I keep the ball, let it go, sen dit back?
I think that ultimately, instinct, or whatever you call that, is just a bit of complex algorythms. organic, but still. I believe that in the future, a robot will be able to be as self aware as we do.
Of course, a tamagotchi won't do all that, it's not advanced at all. Quick an erarthworm, let see if it's gonna react to pain and will avoid you :doubt:
In a videogame, I shoot at a monster, it knows it's me which shooted it, and goes after me. It's all a matter of how much and what kind of data is spent on it. I guess we have much more, and that's it.
"waits for some bigot to start with the concept of soul"
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You can, but the fact that both feel obvious pain is still evident - and I'm still going to show compassion to them. Tamagotchis show no such emotion and are artificially created... they merit no compassion because they would not benefit or be hurt by it.
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I like this discussion.
I have a question though, if say for an example that some company developed a robot that actually had a synthetic central nervous system and could register pain (pain is just your bodies way of telling you not to do something or that something is wrong, it hurts because you pay more attention to it that way) but it couldn't think outside it's basic programming (say it was a street sweeping robot or something) would it be ok to hurt this machine? It knows what pain is, it hurts it, but does it understand what pain is?
I'm not really sure if I've conveyed this right.
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No, it wouldn't - but that's just my beliefs. Why should anything on the planet be made to suffer? I don't want to get into the whole "so how do you feel about that chicken sandwich you're eating" type thing here - but I don't kick kittens. I don't shoot people and if there were a robot that could feel pain - I wouldn't hurt that either. However since a coffee mug cannot feel pain, I would smash it (to prove the point, I've no actual reason to smash it... you know what I mean).
That said, I rank all living things on the same level of awareness. Indeed I tend to lend more compassion towards animals / things that aren't human because humans as a rule go out of their way to be unpleasent creatures.
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okay, i'll be the bigot who comes back with the idea of soul. (i seem to be taking both sides of the argument...)
i've done a bit of study on the traditional idea of 'body spirit and soul', and this is what i think: body, is obvious, the physical, fleshly, material bit. Spirit is like the life-force, the breath, the heartbeat. Soul is the consciousness, heart, the will. Technically, only humans have soul... so only humans have consciousness. but we transpose our consciousness onto our pets because we form emotional links with them, as fellow living creatures... (i suppose this means dogs have spirits, but im not very sure about this...)
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Tamagotchi is just Program all things it's does are programmed
Animals are real they got feeling they Breath and they live
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You people can't possibly be this stupid.
People are programmed by their experiences from birth.
If you sat and coded new things into it directly, every key-stroke would be like a driving instructor going "Left a bit, right a bit, stop, park".
And before you start babbling about "I can choose" as a reason why the Tamagotchi isn't alive, the only reason it can't choose and you can is because at some point in your life someone has told you to do something, you've been unable to do it and nothing has happened as a consequence. So after that point you were able to think "I don't HAVE to do it". The Tamagotchi has the disadvantage of a lack of uncertainty in its universe. It can't see someone disobeying and it can't experience it itself because its entire world is controlled by those little buttons.
Whereas if you consider an IRC-bot instead of a Tamagotchi........
The only reason people are so complex is they are surrounded by information and lessons to learn.
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[color=66ff00]This is true an0n but you need to know a bit about psycology and biology to understand that and not all are educated thus.
Plus there are those who will no doubt believe that animals do have a soul and our argument cannot make sense to them due to their belief.
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Fine, so you're saying that stimulus and information are the deciding factor in the difference between consiousness, ability and awareness? :doubt:
If you put an newborn child in the middle of a forest and let it learn (lets assume it survives to adulthood) it would learn various things. From the word go however it would do what was most necessary to it at any given time (if it needs food, it'll seek it out etc.) A Tamagotchi cannot do this because it has a lack of information? Or because it relies upon someone else to do everything for it throughout its "life". A Tamagotchi cannot assimilate any new data other than what it's given. Even if it were provided with other stimulus, someone would have to program in what it could do with it... it would be unable to experiment in any way at all. A newborn child could. A puppy could. Neither relies on any further programming than what they posess at birth.
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if a coffee mug could feel pain ( no matter how stupid does it sound ), you'd still slam it w/o after thought?
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Uh, no, Thundypants.
If you dump a baby out in the woods (assuming it doesn't encounter any animals) it would just lay there until it dies.
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Ever tried it?
Seriously - there's been stories of ferral children who've been discovered living in harmony with wolf packs and what have you - and those were actual reports (I've not read far into them, but know of their existance at least).
But you seem to be missing the point - if we're talking about an absolute newborn then yes without care it would probably die. An infant dog or child might explore and even survive without aid. The Tamagotchi would lay there untill it died no matter what - even if you did give it legs, arms and a mouth. It is limited entirely by its programming. If you don't tell it to go and find food and shelter on its own then it won't do jack but sit there where you left it. An infant dog or child might well make some effort to move around - maybe even survive (however unlikely they may be). You haven't programmed them to do anything at all - but they'll do something. The tamagotchi won't. If you really think that dogs and humans are on the same level as a tamagotchi? Well you've got issues :p
Nico, no - I wouldn't slam it. As I said if I knew something could feel pain I would not cause it to feel pain unless it gave me due cause (if a dog is attempting to rip my throat out - I'll fight back, if a human attempts to shoot at me and fighting back is possible, I'll fight back).
Now, lets see how an0n tries to justify a tamagotchi being the same as a human or a dog. This should be stunning.
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"In harmony with wolves"?
Yeah, wolf spots child, wolf eats child. Wolf is at harmony with its lunch.
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No, the child was alive untill humans found it.
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If a baby encounters the wolves (or any animal for that matter) it learns from them.
And the only factor limiting the Tamagotchi are those imposed by its world.
Think of it this way: Every function in the Tamagotchi's programming is like a law of physics in our world.
We have all these laws of physics which dictate how we act, what we see, what we sense. The only factor limiting the Tamagotchi is that it doesn't have all these laws in its world.
If you took all the Tamagotchi's programming, converted it into some form that could be understood by say the brain of a dog (as well as adding some 'make heart beat' functions so it could work with our laws of physics) and let it loose in the real world, it'd do just as well as any normal dog.
That's what you've got to understand about the universe; intelligence and life are not quantifiable because they are non-existent. All things have the exact same amount of 'intellectual potentional', and they are limited only by the things in their environment and their ability to interact with them.
The Tamagotchi has almost no ability to interact and almost no environment. If you gave it more, it would react more.
In short: it's a bloody tiny life, but it's a life.
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Here's a question for you then, if I was to shoot a Skaarj in Unreal 2, would that be murder? By the criteria you set it's a life - it just has very limited options in its world.
Also, you seem to have gone off at a tangent from this thread - we're not debating what quantifies life, we're debating consciousness (at least the last time I checked...).
And at the end of the day - a dog is aware of itself, a Tamagotchi shows no such awareness. It also does not want for food or anything else in its world - it reaches a preset time period and - by reference to its programming - becomes hungry. Humans can and will eat because they enjoy it - not because it is necessary. The Tamagotchi is not actually hungry, it will not grow weak and die because it was not fed - it will grow weak and die because whoever programmed it told it that is what it should do. A dog or a human could be dying of starvation but have several options open to them - they could give up and die or go and find food.. or an array of other options. A Tamagotchi would be compelled to stay where it was and die because that is what it is programmed to do (again assuming a Tamagotchi could move around and find food on its own).
Moving on slightly, if you were to give a human, a dog and a Tamagotchi equal understanding of a hand grenade (as someone said earlier, and lets assume that all 3 could have an equal understanding of it... perhaps show them a video of a grenade exploding next to a dog, human and tamagotchi... whatever works for the sake of arguement) - the human would chose to move away from the grenade, as would the dog. The Tamagotchi would not. It feels no pain or desire for self preservation. It is not concious of its situation or care for its own survival.
Ergo, I suppose one would have to enable computers to feel pain before you could have trouble making distinctions between a Tamagotchi and a human or a dog. Since feeling and situational awareness to the world around you seems the deciding factor in states of conciousness at this stage.
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Originally posted by Ghostavo
What I think Stryke 9 is saying is that every undiscussed discussion is worth taking. Do not procrastinate anything, physicaly and mentaly.
Isn't it?
I disagree, though. Well, not about procrastination, but the other bit.
If the topic is unanswerable; if any discussion is going to end up like any good religion thread, with a 'Well, that's what you believe, and this is what I believe, and that's the furthest we're going to get,' because we can't look at the world and simply see who's right and who's wrong... I don't really see much point in telling our viewpoints to other people if that's all we can really do. The issue of, say, are other people and animals conscious like me, or am I the only one who's not an automaton acting a part, is not going to be resolved by a handful of people on the HLP message boards.
Plus, I'm not sure what benefit knowing all about consciousness would have, apart from the actual knowing about it, which doesn't really count per se. As far as *I* am concerned, anyway. If it turns out animals are also conscious, or aren't conscious, then it won't mean anything to me; the state of being self-aware is not important to me in how I treat other things. Nor am I a scientist or psychologist to know just how knowing this could benefit the human race; I don't know any practical application for this knowledge. If there is one, great! turn me all around, this issue is important. But if not, and I'm not about to assume there is one without evidence or something, then... meh.
Meanwhile...
they still deserve compassion as any living thing does
Why?
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Why not? It pleases me to behave differently from the rest of the human race and actually be nice to things around me. If I am kind to a dog, I get something back from that because the dog behaves in what I believe to be an affectionate way towards me. It's mutually beneficial and does no harm to anyone.
I know that it may shock you, but just because something isn't up to our standards of what we gauge as intelligence, doesn't mean we have to dominate it, mistreat it and be generally human towards it. There is another option.
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That assumes that you actually *care* about what happens to other creatures - after all, you can generally get twice as much out of something if you work for your benefit at its expense than if you work for mutual benefit.
Now, I do actually care about how other creatures feel, because I'm all compassionate like that... but I don't think it's a very good basis for a moral system, because as soon as someone says "It's in pain? So what?" you run into a huge problem that undermines everything you've built up from that.
I prefer my base, where harming others means others harm you, so it is better to not harm others at all, which works for almost everybody because almost everyone has a modicum of self-preservation. Furthermore, it hits where it counts, because the kind of person who screws over others is most likely going to be doing it for their own benefit, and this system directly addresses that. It's worked for thousands of years, as well. True, it suffers from the same problem, in that it assumes that you care about yourself, but in practical terms it is more likely for someone to care about themselves than about some other entity that *isn't* themselves.
Just a thought. Not exactly a disagreement, just a difference in method in coming to the same conclusion of not harming others. Because, you know, I do actually think about these sort of things... when it's worth my time to do so.
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Pfff. I care about me and my laziness.
So I'll always look first-off for a way that will make everyone happy regardless of their opposing opinions, that way more people owe me. But if someone appears to be refusing to co-operate and deharmonising the system, they're quickly and extremely violently removed from it.
This way you can keep things orderly and even provide an outlet and purpose for anyone who enjoys causing harm to others.
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How is it that this topic lasted 3 pages :wtf:
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Because it's one of the few subjects that's never had its own thread.......in recent memory, anyway.
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
One thing I'm sure we can both agree is true - if I were to kick a tamagotchi it would not cry out in pain. If I kicked a dog or a human - they both would. They are both aware that they are in pain - if perhaps, the dog does not understand why, it still understands that it feels it.
Then consider a dog that has a disease which keeps it from feeling pain. Would it be 'okay' to kick this dog, break its legs, set it on fire and nail its eyes onto a wall? Would it deserve less sympathy than a normal, healthy dog?
Originally posted by Kalfireth
Clearly then he understood that I had caused him pain - he made a distinction between me, the world we both occupy, and himself.
If you don't feed a Tamagotchi or play with it every once in a while, it'll get mad at you too. Programming? Yes. But what's the difference between artificial programming and natural instinct?
This has already been said, but as your post was a direct reply to mine, I felt the need to respond to it.
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The only difference, as I keep saying, again and again and again and again, in various forms and contexts: It's got nothing to do with the mind and everything to do with the body.
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Exactly. When I ask that kind of question, I'm not actually asking, but implying that there's no difference.
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So whats the point of the thread? You just fancied an arguement?
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Why don't you consider it a true question and answer it?
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Can it actually be answered though? Or is it just an opinion similar to the question "is red a nice color?". I can voice my opinion (I think I already have) - but I can't give you an answer to a question that works for you.
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So now you're saying it's all a matter of opinion?
What about the dog that feels no pain?
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[color=66ff00]I still think the tamagotchi is a bad example and is ultimately limiting the argument.
Kalfireth, if you shoot skarrj or whatever his name is, in unreal it's not inflicting suffering, if you could make him fear for his life and have your ramifications negatively effect his wellbeing then you would be in effect doing something morally wrong as you're getting pleasure from creating suffering, even if it is to a digitally created person.
This is pretty much all down to how you as a person identify the rights of an entity.
[/color]
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The Skarrj dies when you close the game anyway.
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The bare functioning of consciousness would be simple awareness in its most basic form. This requires no emotions, thoughts, or senses.. other than the basic awareness of existance.
As such, I feel every living animal has consciousness. Even those driven purely by instinct. Perhaps even bacteria and plants have consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is the work of something beyond a 'brain'.
Most things we theorise from here are exactly that - theories. We may guess as to what consciousness other organisms have by observing their behaviour. But ultimately, we are stuck inside our own human minds and may never know.
its really an 'out there' thing.
Jack
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And the Tamagotchi dies when you remove the battery...
At the end of the day - for me at least - I choose to act with compassion in the direction of living animal and plant matter. I have not worked out my own philosophies to such exact detail that you can now ask "what about treading on grass?" but the general law for me is that anything that is alive deserves my compassion - not necessarily my aid - but if I see a dog suffering I shall feel sorry for it.
Tamagotchis on the other hand, as with all digitally created life at this stage, do not fully experience these emotions. They display them as they were created to (if you shoot a scientist in Half Life it cowers away from you from then on, but that's only because someone programmed it to show that animation instead of any other they could have programmed - indeed if i reprogrammed the game I could have the scientist clap and jump up and down when I shoot it). As for the dog that feels no pain - would I hurt it? No. I would not inflict harm on it even if it did not actually feel whatever I did to it - who am I to do so?
That, at least, is how I try to live. It's not a debate or a question - it's just what I do.
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One last question, then. If it's a matter of opinion (as you now seem to think), why can you not sympathize with the death of my Tamagotchi (and say so in a public - I guess - forum) while I can't express my own view (which is exactly the same) about the death of someone else's dog?
I know this isn't the appropriate thread for that, but you probably won't make me create a new one to ask one single question.
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Let's all just agree that Thunder is wrong and that I should be given admin powers
:nervous::nervous:
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I guess i`ll get in on this one hehe.
Ok if a cat sees a bird, what does it see?
A: a picture in its mind of food , which would be considered primative and not be a thought at all.
B: thinks about catching and eating the bird which would be considered a thought..
(edit) Oh and mammals don`t run on batteries, toys do..
So if it takes a battery it is a toy nothing more, nothing less..
(edit) This toy you speak of is man made, a dog isn`t..
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The trouble is, we have only qualities of consciousness established. Things like congizance, self awareness and rational thought. But we have no way of measuring these, or even establishing if they are at all present in a given organism. Its easy to say a plant is not aware, but do you have any evidence to back this up?
We know that all people with blue shirts are conscious, but we are blind, so we don't really know who is wearing what colour shirt. See?
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Originally posted by Rictor
The trouble is, we have only qualities of consciousness established. Things like congizance, self awareness and rational thought. But we have no way of measuring these, or even establishing if they are at all present in a given organism. Its easy to say a plant is not aware, but do you have any evidence to back this up?
We know that all people with blue shirts are conscious, but we are blind, so we don't really know who is wearing what colour shirt. See?
That's true, but we don't know what the percepts of a plant are. We do for something like a tamagotchi, becuase we created both those percepts and specified either the reacitons themselves, or how those reactions are created.
Of course, you could say that the search for understanding consciousness is a fundamental element of the human condition.
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Yeah well I just threw that in for good measure..
My point is that a toy has no life, it is how you say man made.
Aldo has a good point there.
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Kinda finishing up my part in this thread (may still post, but not as much)...
Levyathan - I can sympathise with the loss of a dog more than I can sympathise with the "death" of a Tamagotchi because...
1 - The dog feels pain, the Tamagotchi does not.
2 - Dogs are (for the sake of rounding things up) programmed with more advanced companionship with humans, they provide more positive stimulus for a human being.
3 - I've been through the loss of a dog myself, I can't say the same of a Tamagotchi.
4 - If a dog dies, that's it. Its physical existance decays and its personality ceases to be. If a Tamagotchi dies you reset it or replace its batteries (AFAIK thats how they work?) and you have another go with them. They develop no personality and their physical form remains unchanged. If you were to damage your Tamagotchi then you could buy another one and the difference would be un-detectable.
I hope that helps answer any questions :)
an0n - no.
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
Levyathan - I can sympathise with the loss of a dog more than I can sympathise with the "death" of a Tamagotchi because...
That's not an answer to my question. I didn't ask why you sympathized more with a dog than with a Tamagotchi. I asked why was it that you could openly state that you didn't sympathize with a Tamagotchi while I couldn't say that I didn't sympathize with a dog's death.
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Oh I see, well I hope that wasn't the point of the thread - if so I'll be really disappointed. I'll answer your question but don't expect to love the answer...
And to answer your question, a Tamagotchi has not died here - but one of our members dogs did. Given that I know what it's like to lose a dog (mine died on the first day of the summer holidays in school, several years ago) I immediately not only empathised with the loss - but know exactly how I would feel if someone proceeded to tell me that it was unimportant to them.
It's equally true that if a friends father died - it wouldn't directly affect me. It would be unimportant to me. But even if I didn't directly care that he died (and I would, anyones death is a tragic thing.. yes it's part of life etc. but it's still an unpleasent event)... can you imagine what my friends might say to me if I openly voiced that I didn't care that his father died? At the very least I'd be labled an insensitive bastard.
Likewise the death of a complete strangers dog may not rank highly on your list of important things, but the majority would either voice their sorrows - even if they didn't care especially - or not post at all. Posting to specifically say you don't care at all is unnecessary - which is why I told you to shut up as I can imagine that your lack of caring is not needed. The reasoning is no more deep than that - if you can't say something kind or constructive during others difficult times - don't say anything at all.
The End™.
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People get attached to Dungeons and Dragons characters. That's how stupid this argument is.
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True, but it's something of a grey area of loss - I could love my table lamp more than anything else in the world. If it was broken I could be heart broken myself. It would matter to me. But I wouldn't post about it on a forum.
A living animal though, or a parent or friend. That I can understand. That is something most people all have in common. At any rate - nobody should post to say it doesnt matter to them at all. Not in this community at any rate. I'm not saying everyone should feel compelled to post about their losses - but if you want to and feel strongly about it then I would not promote people saying "that doesnt matter to me" around here.
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When it gets down to "I'm right because I say so", it really isn't worth it anymore.
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I told you that you wouldn't like the answer - somehow I get the feeling this entire thread has been a waste of time and that you could've gotten to the point a lot faster.
The end of the matter is indeed that this is not your forum - so if you want to tell people you don't care about the loss - do it elsewhere. If you don't like that it's a little tough isn't it :)
Now, shall I just lock this and let the whole matter rest - or would you like to try and argue the toss some more? I'm not trying to be hard on you, but I do sympathise a lot more with someone who loses someone they love - over someone who says they don't care for that loss openly. As I said, if you can't be nice in such circumstances - don't say anything at all.
So, lock or no lock?
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SPAM!!!
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[color=66ff00]I think the underlying priciples of this discussion have merit but you could argue one case against the other for a long time. *shrugs*
[/color]
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Most things we theorise from here are exactly that - theories. We may guess as to what consciousness other organisms have by observing their behaviour. But ultimately, we are stuck inside our own human minds and may never know.
its really an 'out there' thing.
The trouble is, we have only qualities of consciousness established. Things like congizance, self awareness and rational thought. But we have no way of measuring these, or even establishing if they are at all present in a given organism. Its easy to say a plant is not aware, but do you have any evidence to back this up?
We know that all people with blue shirts are conscious, but we are blind, so we don't really know who is wearing what colour shirt. See?
When it gets down to "I'm right because I say so", it really isn't worth it anymore.
Hey, that's what I said, but I got told off for it.
*grumbles*
'Course, nobody touched my whole side-step of the issue, due to its pointlessness and futility. Ho hum.
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I`ve never had to deal with the loss of a loved one till my dad died 2 years ago, and the sad part is its like a dream to me, I became numb to it but still miss him..
Being aware that someone will not be in your life anymore is the hardest part of death..
It has torn my family apart and all I could do was to watch it happen..
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
The end of the matter is indeed that this is not your forum
That's priceless. Close whatever you like.
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OH TEH GNO TEH NAZI$!!!1!1!!111
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*grins* Damn straight Stryke ;)
Oh - and because I feel a little random today: