[Stryke 9]

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.

[an0n]

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.

[Fineus]

Only because it's programmed to - someone could program another one that forces it to grow if you don't touch it

[an0n]

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.

[Stryke 9]

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.

[icespeed]

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.

[an0n]

The Tamagotchi is not an animal, it's a brain.

[TopAce]

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?

[Fineus]

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.

[icespeed]

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.

[Nico]

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
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"

[Fineus]

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.

[01010]

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.

[Fineus]

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.

[icespeed]

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...)

[Gloriano]

Tamagotchi is just Program all things it's does are programmed

Animals are real they got feeling they Breath and they live

[an0n]

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.

[Martinus]

[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.
[/color]

[Fineus]

Fine, so you're saying that stimulus and information are the deciding factor in the difference between consiousness, ability and awareness?

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.

[Nico]

if a coffee mug could feel pain ( no matter how stupid does it sound ), you'd still slam it w/o after thought?