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Kill

Kill with fire

Ask someone else to kill it

Run

Befriend

Befriend and start a spider silk company

Befriend and sic on enemies

Capture and study, because they shouldn't exist

Use to create a spider army

Offer waffles

Offer Cheerios

[Method of Madness]

One of the most interesting things in the comic, I think, is how Momo says that some AIs "choose" to believe. What a strange concept.

Sounds quite human to me.

Except people believe or they don't, or maybe something in between, but it's hardly a choice.

[Storel]

I had to Google the word "fib." Is that an Eastern US word? It doesn't exist out here...

Now that you mention it, I don't think I've heard it since moving out West.

Not that far east, though; Colorado/Wyoming person here and I've heard the term.

I've been living in California since I was four years old and I've heard the word "fib" for as long as I can remember.

Both my parents were originally from the Midwest, though (Oklahoma and Wisconsin), so it's possible I got it from them... but I'm sure I've heard lots of other Californians use that word.

[Is it cold in here?]

Distributed devotion orchestration service?

I got it even if nobody else did.

It's possible to "choose" a working hypothesis.

I wonder what happens when religious humans try to proselytize AnthroPCs.

[Method of Madness]

It's possible to "choose" a working hypothesis

Perhaps, but belief is a conclusion, not a hypothesis.

[bhtooefr]

For that matter, I could easily see an AI worshipping humans, and from there worshipping a creator of humans.

[Rghfrgl]

 I think Jeph's new freckle style http://jephjacques.com/post/52443364918/tonight-i-figured-out-how-to-use-clipping-masks is another victim of the details being lost when he downsizes the comic.

[jwhouk]

"FIB", of course, has another definition in Wisconsin.

The I stands for Illinois. The B is an appropriate moniker questioning the individual's birth. The F is a slang derogatory term.

[Method of Madness]

What do you have against Illinois?

[pwhodges]

Presumably that it's not Wisconsin, mainly.

[Zebediah]

As I understand it, it's not so much the entire state of Illinois in general as it is Chicago in particular. Because, you know, da Bears.

[Method of Madness]

Oh, a sports thing

[Zebediah]

More of a religious thing. The Green Bay Packers are the legally established state religion of the State of Wisconsin.

[Method of Madness]

I thought cheese was the official religion.

[Mr_Rose]

No, that's the state currency.

[bryntheskits]

Aw man I really liked that pun.

Pea one was still the best though.

[FunkyTuba]

Her puns are clever. Too clever.

IMO, good puns (ones that you'd share in a conversation) should have a punch-you-in-the-gut "gosh why didn't I think of that already" quality. Clever puns belong in prose or in the third or fourth round of a pun contest.

[Sidhekin]

Third or fourth round?  There hasn't even been a complete round yet!

Clearly, what she needs is a sparring partner.  Even the bantering baristas need a few rounds of setup before achieving hilarious quality!

[FunkyTuba]

Third or fourth round?  There hasn't even been a complete round yet!

exactly my point ... to shoehorn a pun contest into an ongoing conversation the punner must choose not a clever pun but rather a stupidly-accessible one that will draw out a "gee, I can do better than that" reaction

that said, picking a pun fight with non-sequitur specialist Emily and could-find-1000-rhymes-and-near-rhymes-to-any-word-you-can-think-up-in-half-a-millisecond Momo might leave Claire with more than she bargained for

[Kugai]

Robot Religion?

Interesting


So say we all.

[Thrudd]

Going back to the pole on scrappers weapon-ology I chose the Stop Sign with a few added decorations "Please" "Living" and "♥"
It's a standard post apocalyptic or street punk weapon of bad-ass-ery.

Warning - while you were typing your keyboard had been commandeered by a Barovioan Otaku using a c64. You may wish to adjust your pixels.

A pun contest is never shoehorned in. At best you can try and kick-start one into a conversation by booting one or two choice comments on the fly.
As pointed out though, you should never stand still and wait for a response.

Being a master of non-sequesters is not the same as wielding the pun or accessing a thesaurus or just rhyming.
A pun is a unique ephemeral  creature of questionable pedigree.

[Sidhekin]

... we can haz arms poles?

[Mr_Rose]

No, just poll arms.

[Is it cold in here?]

Buddhism could appeal to AnthroPCs who don't believe in a higher power.

[Shjade]

It's possible to "choose" a working hypothesis

Perhaps, but belief is a conclusion, not a hypothesis.

A little hard to argue given belief is, by definition, not a conclusion. If you had come to a proper conclusion "belief" would be beside the point: you'd have something concrete you could point to and say, "and this is my conclusion, based on X, Y and Z." The fact that the end result is a belief means there is no conclusion - there's only faith. They're exclusive in that context.

Further, I don't think anyone would answer, "Why do you believe X?" by saying, "I was born that way." Belief is a choice, a decision, a conscious frame of mind. It's not something built into you.

[Method of Madness]

Hmm...interesting. I've always assumed I didn't have a belief because I've found insufficient evidence to support any conclusion. I don't think I've chosen to not have one, though. I don't think I could choose to believe if I wanted to. I just don't.

[Shjade]

You haven't chosen to not have evidence - that's a question of analysis, observation, etc.

You've chosen to not believe in the absence of evidence.

[Pilchard123]

I may have to change my vote to a hand-cranked runcible gun.

[Method of Madness]

The absence of evidence is why I don't believe, but it is also why I cannot believe. That is why I reject the notion that I've made a choice.

[Zebediah]

All sorts of unanswerable questions here about why we believe what we believe (religious or otherwise). For example, I have a strong belief in the inherent equality of all people, regardless of race/gender/ethnicity/orientation/whatever. There are plenty of perfectly rational arguments to support such a belief, and plenty of empirical evidence as well. But - and this is a big but - that's not why I believe that. I don't recall choosing to believe that everyone is equal, it just seems to be part of my makeup. It's not a rational or conscious choice, it's just a feeling I get whenever I witness any kind of injustice or prejudice that such things are wrong. So was I born with some predisposition to believe this, or is it a result of the environment I grew up in, or a combination of the two? I can't say. In the end, it doesn't matter - I believe what I believe, and the philosophers can argue all they want about why.

And let's not even get into my religious beliefs and why I believe what I believe on that question. That's an argument for another thread.

[Shjade]

Fair enough.

[Method of Madness]

Well said, Zeb. I do reject the notion of an "unanswerable question", but otherwise I very much agree.

[Valdís]

"A thousand people have posted, including Shjade leaving the discussion!"

Yeah, yeah. Not just gonna delete the post.

If you had come to a proper conclusion "belief" would be beside the point: you'd have something concrete you could point to and say, "and this is my conclusion, based on X, Y and Z." The fact that the end result is a belief means there is no conclusion - there's only faith. They're exclusive in that context.

Faith means believing something even when you don't have a good reason. People will always have reasons for their belief. Those reasons can be good and well-founded or they can be shoddy as all get-out and the person just doesn't have very high standards, but they'll still have underlying reasons for it (even when not readily apparent to even themselves, such as when their evolved biology gives them a 'feeling').

As in, those X/Y/Z are the previous determinants leading to that belief, even if they're nonsense. The key words are 'PROPER CONCLUSION', not that a belief isn't what people think is one. This is also why absence of belief isn't a belief; because it isn't a conclusion, it is the lack of the X/Y/Z reasons for that person.

Further, I don't think anyone would answer, "Why do you believe X?" by saying, "I was born that way." Belief is a choice, a decision, a conscious frame of mind. It's not something built into you.

That is such a ridiculous reduction of what he meant, even aside from just repeating what you believe multiple times. You don't have to be "born a [political position]" in order for it not to be a matter of being convinced of something. It isn't a conscious decision. One can, however, consciously experience applying critical thinking to beliefs one has and then find them to be lacking - because something caused your standards of evidence to become more demanding prior to re-evaluating views. That is not the same as "choosing not to believe", it's just ceasing to compartmentalize certain parts of your mind. Likely due to external influence, such as trying to find things to validate it but failing.

We aren't Causal Agents impossibly divorced from physical causality. Things come from previous determinants, not whimsy.

Also there are all kinds of questions people ask about why I believe "x" where the correct, demonstrable answer actually is being born like that.

[Method of Madness]

I'm not going to move any posts, but I think someone (possibly me) should create a belief thread in Discuss instead of continuing here.

[Is it cold in here?]

A key point is that the psychology of it may be different for AIs.

[Valdís]

But the physical reality around us all wouldn't be.

Just because their different hardware might change some of those reasons doesn't make them any different from Human-people.

[Zebediah]

Well, I've often argued that a sentient AI would have profoundly different motivations than we do, simply because of the hardware differences. Our base motivations are the result of millions of years of evolution selecting for the traits that best kept us alive and best enabled us to reproduce in the environment we were in at the time. Our intelligence hasn't completely freed us from the instincts we evolved back on the African savannah or before.

AIs are the product of a vastly different evolutionary experience - they are the end result of decades of humans trying to build a better computational device. So an AI's driving motivation might well wind up being to process the most data, or to provide the most useful information (to us or to another AI). They wouldn't have a sex drive as such, because biological reproduction isn't an issue. Nor would they have any particular desire to dominate others, or to amass wealth. What would they want? More processing power and more data to process, hence more bandwidth. Beyond that it's anyone's guess what they might do.

[Valdís]

But how does that change a single thing about how the causal reality for both of us works? Just because their reasons can have fundamentally different causes doesn't mean they don't work in the same way.

I don't see how a particular conscious animal or machine's psychology would have any possible impact on it what-so-ever. I mean, there are plenty of people and animals already with very different approaches to all kinds of things. It's not like I was speaking as though the statement I made is only valid if the beliefs were formulated within a "human 22 year old Nordic trans woman's brain with issues".

[pwhodges]

Belief is a choice, a decision, a conscious frame of mind. It's not something built into you.

Ways of thinking can be trained into you at an early age, the memories of which do not remain conscious.  Some beliefs can be such a fundamental part of your early upbringing that you don't even have the awareness of them necessary to question them (unless you gain it anew as a result of later critical thinking); such beliefs can just as well be described as built in.

[Loki]

Wouldn't an AI that we recognize as "human" be human-like by virtue of human bias? If a human evaluates if a robot is sapient (and thus if it is an AI), they cannot help but apply human standards to them, such as "does this subject care about others" etc. Others criteria, such as "does this subject have arsuajwry" would not apply because humans don't have a concept of "arsuajwry" (I just created the term through semi-random typing on my keyboard).

I fear I am not doing a good job explaining what I mean. Basically, an Artificial Intelligence designed by humans would be considered "human" because it is alike to a human intelligence. Thus, those we consider AIs would think like us to some degree. There may very well be subjects out there in QC-verse who are intelligent in their own way, but we wouldn't recognize them as such, because we are but human.

For a more succinct view on this, compare Randall Munroe:



Warning - while you were typing a human intelligence has weighed in on the matter. You may wish to review your existence.

[Tobimaro]

I had to vote for Battle Spatula because of this (and I'm not a big fan of Ranma 1/2, but I thought of...) :

(click to show/hide)

[/end spoiler]

[Valdís]

The image got removed by host restrictions, but knowing which character you mean: Mmh.. I wanna try Okonomiyaki. :3

[Tobimaro]

The image got removed by host restrictions, but knowing which character you mean: Mmh.. I wanna try Okonomiyaki. :3

No, I put it in a Spoiler, because other people might have had a problem with it.  I'm being good.   

[Loki]

I cannot see it either. I get the image located at http://blackeva.tripod.com/adm/interstitial/remote.gif.

[Method of Madness]

Even when I click it doesn't show.

[K1dmor]

 He was trying to post a pic of this char:
 

(click to show/hide)

Her name is Ukyo Kuonji:
 

 "Battle Spatula"  .

[Is it cold in here?]

The phrase "choose to believe" might make more sense for AnthroPCs than it does for humans, conceivably. Unfortunately it has the word "choose" in it, which could lead to scathing comments about the whole idea of free will.

[Method of Madness]

Why is that unfortunate?

[Valdís]

In the sense that using meaningless gibberish doesn't expedite discussions, presumably.

I suppose what you mean is more like "Installing new patterns of behaviour" etc., Cold, rather than regular personality growth in response to circumstance? That doesn't really mean anything different either, since there are preceding determinants of the old software causing it and so forth. There are pre-existing reasons even if it is arbitrary and separate from the person's knowledge (Such as if the reason is "I believe it because installed it without reading it first"; there are things in the program causing the belief).

[ThomasEll]

I think that questions of free will notwithstanding, I think it's reasonable to use the word choose in relation to belief systems.


I would imagine that for AIs then it is more of a choice, as they wouldn't have parents who already have their beliefs passing them on, and would basically be able to come to whatever conclusion they wanted to (I assume).

[Valdís]

I think that questions of free will notwithstanding, I think it's reasonable to use the word choose in relation to belief systems.

Then try to actually seriously believe something horrendously inhumane about another group of people for a few minutes now - one which you don't have any problems with at all, but that others hate.

How's that working out for you? No? Not managing it? I know I can't; and that the same things goes for the rest. Pretending to hold a belief is not synonymous with actually believing it.