Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

Something bothering me a lot

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ckridge:
Hunh. You aren't allowed to curse online. Weird. I will moderate my language too, then, so as not to tempt you into trouble.

I think that problems with rendering robots as truly different -- as true Others, to quote Evie -- may be structural and unavoidable.

I saw a TV news segment designed to scare parents once, in which TV news reporters went into a playground and talked kids into coming out of the playground and around a corner with them, where they would meet their parents, and child and parent would be interviewed about how that had been possible. A mother asked her child "Didn't I tell you never to go anywhere with a stranger?" and the child replied "Oh, he wasn't a stranger. We had been talking."

No one is strange once you have been talking. 

Maybe the strangest person I know is a mathematician. She is remarkably child-like in many respects; has a vast, cold, well-controlled intelligence; has chronic, well-managed anxiety about people finding about how odd she is; has bdsm all mixed up with nurturing in benevolent ways that I could not possibly have imagined; is a second-generation immigrant from a very foreign country with a lot of her original culture still running in the back of her mind; and has trouble thinking of herself as a woman because almost no women do what interests her most.

If you talk to her when she is relaxed, she doesn't seem at all odd. When she relaxes and uncoils her mind, she is much larger than most people, but one only ever sees what can fit into one's window of consciousness at any given time, so except for occasional huge background shifting and stirring, it doesn't register. Every so often one realizes that she is asking questions about common human feelings, not argumentatively, but because she really doesn't know. Other than that, she seems no stranger than the rest of us. She does not seem a set of unusual traits, but rather a single integrated person managing those traits as part of her overall situation, just as we all manage ourselves and our situations.

With that in mind, think about Punchbot. Initially he looks like a prime example of how QC robots aren't like humans at all. He is perpetually jolly, to the point of seeming not terribly bright. He suffers no pain and is indifferent to physical harm. He loves to fight, but is indifferent to winning or losing. He has very little impulse control. Bizarrely enough, he is an accountant. This is not a package of traits one commonly finds in humans, and so Punchbot looks suitably odd.

This is, I think, because Punchbot is an undeveloped background character. If Jeph ever develops the character, he is going to imagine how all those traits fit together, how they are all part of the situation Punchbot is doing his best to manage, and what Punchbot's strategies for managing his situation are. The more this is done, the more like one of us in a different situation Punchbot will look, and the more it will be possible to complain that Jeph writes his robots as if they were human.

The problem of how to make well-developed robot characters look truly strange is exacerbated by the very wide range of human types in QC. It was relatively easy for '50s and '60s writers to write strange characters, because everyone was still trying to act like everyone else. In a social circle containing Emily, Brun, Tilly, and Faye, it is hard to step outside the bounds of human social behavior.

ckridge:
I think the spider robots are like those guys who wear neckbeards and sandals with socks and who, when told that this puts people off, will explain that it is more efficient and rational, and thus should not bother anyone.

cloudatlatl:

--- Quote from: Aenno on 09 Feb 2018, 21:14 ---My thoughts about this statement can't be written safely, because Russian laws directly forbid using hard-lined mat in a public space.

--- End quote ---

--- Quote from: ckridge on 10 Feb 2018, 06:39 ---Hunh. You aren't allowed to curse online. Weird. I will moderate my language too, then, so as not to tempt you into trouble.
--- End quote ---
I don't think Aenno was talking about cursing, I think this was referring to Russia's laws against anything that could be perceived as 'homosexual propaganda'.

ckridge:
Oh. Oh, dear. Noted. OK, tricky but doable. Language is infinitely flexible. I should probably try to review those laws.

Case:

--- Quote from: Aenno on 08 Feb 2018, 18:57 ---

--- Quote ---In fairness, there is no indication that robo-sex *doesn't* include sensual stimulation.
--- End quote ---
Can't imagine how is it. We have quite coherent evidence that AI don't need to see or even be near AI who with whom he/she have sex. So we can actually be sure (I believe) that everything involved involve mind, not chassis.

--- End quote ---

Do you know about phenomenology?  :mrgreen:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b58Zh_5VKI
(click to show/hide)I think you're introducing an artificial dichotomy here: Imagine a human brain whose sensory and motor-neurons are wired into a suitable device ('Brain-in-a-jar'). If you knew how to feed that brain information, it would be theoretically possible to let it experience a simulated world. Assume that the simulation is sufficiently complex.

Can you still uphold your distinction that the sensual stimuli received are not, in fact, sensual stimuli? What if the simulation is sufficiently complex that the brain itself can no longer recognize that it is in a simulation? Then your verdict ("no body, ergy no sensory stimulation") would be in conflict with the verdict of the brain experiencing those "questionable stimuli". Does using the term 'sensory stimuli' require actual, physical senses to be attached to the brain?


If you haven't already, I highly recommend watching Carpenter's 1974 SF-comedy Dark Star. Add a few like-minded friends (the nerdier, the better) and mind-altering substances (beer should suffice) for an optimal experience.
WARNING: Consumption may induce in you a proneness to fits of hysterical laughter upon hearing innocuous words like 'phenomenology', and I promise that you'll never see water balls in quite the same light as you did before. Symptoms may persist for the rest of your natural life. You learn to live with it ...  :-D

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