Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

I don't really think so. Civilisation might be over-rated as an achievement but technological progress isn't. If an Orca dies of a disease that would be fixable with technological progress, how can it be 'as smart' or 'smarter'? I mean, I am not taking a moral view about the relative worth of an Orca life and mine, I am just being pragmatic. The objective of all life is to live forever while maximising pleasure and avoiding pain. Death and diseases fuck that plan pretty badly. Anything mitigating them is a great thing. What do Orca do about their teeth aches?

I doubt they get much given their lifestyle, but you're not realy being pragmatic at all. Because you are confusing technology with intellect. This is wrong in two respects. firstly, orca have no hands and live in water, which means they will never develop technology no matter how smart they are. They could however, for example, be genius level experts on mathematics. Obviously I'm not saying that IS the case, I don't know either, but the point remains that technology is not a measure of intelligence as such, and to look for it is to look for the wrong thing.

The second fault is that our tool-use appears before our high intelligence. Our evolutionary predecessors wqere already using chipped flint technologies without the big brain explaosion that we went through. Plenty of other creatures, from chimpanzees, which seems part of the constinuum, to birds, which doesn't, use tools, and even use one tool to make another tool. Ants and termits actually farm fungi and keep "herds" of other insects.

so what you have done again is assume that inelligence must be demonstrated by doing what we do. On the basis of the above, either a tiny brain can be intelligence in the same way we are, even if we have a lot more of it, or tool use is essentially independent of intelligence, albeit strongly enhanced by it. Either way the presumption that tool use is indicative of intelligence and self awareness doesn't work.

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Well, as anyone who has done RPGs, we are familiar with the impossibility to think truly 'alien' thoughts by our very nature... As to robots 'thinking', would a robot get why it is not Okay to dismember one individual to use his parts to heal five other individuals? i.e. would a robot be able to comprehend the limitation of pure abstract logic? To get even more poetical, would a thinking robot 'get' a sunrise? Maybe, if it was solar-powered... Maybe, if it had learned to fear the night and the things that go 'bump' into the night... But, if it ever comes to a conflict between Mankind and another species, I'll fight on Mankind's side. My country, right or wrong is stupid. My race, right or wrong... seems less so.

But what you're describing there is not intelligence as such, it's "instinct". Your evolutionary history as an animal condityions yuou to fear the night, to value the lives of your fellow humans, etc etc. But none of this is logical or even intelligent. Almost every organism will share these sensations to one degree or another.

The fact that there are certain things that are essentially hardcoded into your brain is not evidence of higher order analysis, it's evidence of the limits of our own intelligence. And the fact that these are elegantly synthesised with your own active, intelligent, self aware thoughts to the point that you can't tell one from the other demonstrates how fault it is to think of yourself as a logical being. What you are is a bundle of ancient evolutionary prejudices, a thick layer of social conditioning, and only in part an active, thinking being making your own choices.

So if a robot did come to the conclusion that it eould be logical to disassemble one person to assist several others, that doesn't indicate that it lacks intelligence or that it thinks in a different way we do. It just shows that it doesn't have the same programming.

The point is that when we think, the sense of self-wareness and identity we have, that would presumably also apply to another animal with aq diffreent evolutionary history or to a machine intelligence which didn't have any. So yes, they will "think like us", but they won't necessarily think the same thoughts or come to the same conclusions.

And hence, there is no reason to think that we are unique or special. Setting the bar at what amounts to imitating humans only confirms that we have difficulty seeing ourselves from the outside.

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Yeah but that's my point. I am not thinking or feeling in galactic terms or geological timespan. I'm thinking in terms of decades at most, maybe centuries when I feel particularly reflective and that's that. I don't give a hoot about the galactic scale of things. So, if your aliens misses my lifespan by a couple of millenias, it's no big deal in the grand scheme of things but, for me, their existence is as irrelevant as their non-existence. Technically, the whole human race can be born and die within the gap.

But not if it happened before we appeared. Plus, we are probably not far away from technical, physical immortality bso the lifespan thing might be moot. Either way, it's still relevant.

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Huh? Can I not be the product of my environment, my genetic make-up and yet decide on things, both trivial (what to eat tonight?) and not so trivial?

Not if you see yourself as a pure consciousness, no. Because then evolution and culture won't matter, and everything would come down to "choice". As you can see, that is precisely the problem I have with much of the way modern society is structured.

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That doesn't mean that the whole isn't greater than the sum of them.

I don't think I've said that, but equally that's in danger of being a cop-out to avoid dealing with the implications. At the very least, you need to be specific and not resort to aphorism; is it in sum so different that that it qualitative difference to this issue? I don't think so.

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Our morals, being the result of evolutionary pressure, will have universal value.

Not universal, inasmuch as some people don't have them, and not universal becuase they are specific to us as us. You value human life but not so much the life of the steak on your plate. And so, not universal at all, but specific to humanity.

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Well, we'd have to look at specifics but, to my knowledge, the low paying jobs are the ones best covered by the employment legislation.

No, becuase in low paying jobs you are often working for a coimpany other than your employer, or obliged to sign opt-outs, or the rules are just flouted by both parties because the pay is so low that the worker actually wants (needs) more hours.

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True but no one forces you to marry and, especially, have kids. I know plenty of friends who are married but childless.

Just millions of years of evolutionary programming. See? If we really recognised our real physical existence and history, we would recognise that having kids is not some optional extra. Remember that in evolutionary terms, all those married-but-childless people have tossed their DNA in the trashcan. As such they have made themselves unfit to survive, just another failed, dead end experiment by the species.

Here's a neat little demonstration of the yawning gulf between our subjective perception of reality and the actual reality that's out there. From the You Are Not So Smart blog, which discusses these topics and is well worth a read: You Are Not So Smart

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Contrast Effect October 14, 2009 tags: Adelson, checkerboard, optical illusion, shadow by David McRaney The Misconception: You see colors as they are. The Truth: You take the info from our eyes and interpret it based on other cues in the environment. In the image [above], block A and block B are the same color. No, really. Fire up Photoshop or Sumo Paint (free online) and see for yourself. Even after you prove this to yourself, you can’t make your mind see them as the same color no matter how long you stare. Why? Because the brain takes shortcuts whenever it can. The less time and energy spent processing, the more likely you will survive to get your genes into the next generation. You look at the board above and assume the shadow makes the square darker. This is called the contrast effect, and it works with other perceptions too. You don’t usually evaluate two things objectively, you evaluate them relative to one another. An annoying person seems nicer when around very annoying people, a heavy object seems lighter after lifting a heavier object. This is always happening everywhere you look, and that’s why you are not so smart when it comes to seeing color.

Originally Posted by contracycle

You are confusing technology with intellect. This is wrong in two respects. firstly, orca have no hands and live in water, which means they will never develop technology no matter how smart they are. They could however, for example, be genius level experts on mathematics. Obviously I'm not saying that IS the case, I don't know either, but the point remains that technology is not a measure of intelligence as such, and to look for it is to look for the wrong thing.

Mouais. I get what you're saying but an entirely impractical/non-applicable intelligence is of no use, is it?

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The second fault is that our tool-use appears before our high intelligence. Our evolutionary predecessors were already using chipped flint technologies without the big brain explosion that we went through. Plenty of other creatures, from chimpanzees, which seems part of the constinuum, to birds, which doesn't, use tools, and even use one tool to make another tool. Ants and termits actually farm fungi and keep "herds" of other insects.

I am well aware of that. And, as a personal asides, this was this fact that convince me as a teenager to accept that we were just smart animals. I had resented that fact when first told by my biology teacher at 11... But, as you say lower, tool-making is strongly enhanced by intellect. And, as I say, an intellect that does not try to expand the quality and length of its lifespan is a bit of a weird and useless thing... And I don't think it'd be possible seeing as all life is born with the survival instinct...

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On the basis of the above, either a tiny brain can be intelligence in the same way we are, even if we have a lot more of it...

I think that'd be my view.

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And the fact that these are elegantly synthesised with your own active, intelligent, self aware thoughts to the point that you can't tell one from the other demonstrates how faulty it is to think of yourself as a logical being.

Hold on. I think of myself as logical when I am face with choices and uses logical tools to derive the 'correct answer' (given a specific goal and constraints). I do not pretend to be a purely logical being...

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What you are is a bundle of ancient evolutionary prejudices, a thick layer of social conditioning, and only in part an active, thinking being making your own choices.

Well, yes. I think the 3 elements mesh to create "me". And the first 2 elements explain why I can relate to all humans and especially understand particularly well my temporal and spacial neighbours...

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So if a robot did come to the conclusion that it eould be logical to disassemble one person to assist several others, that doesn't indicate that it lacks intelligence or that it thinks in a different way we do. It just shows that it doesn't have the same programming.

Is not having a different programming equivalent to thinking in a different way?

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And hence, there is no reason to think that we are unique or special. Setting the bar at what amounts to imitating humans only confirms that we have difficulty seeing ourselves from the outside.

Granted. But I do think that we're unique and special as long as we haven't met 'thinking robots' or 'recognisably intelligent beings' (And, as you said, even if Orca might be smart, the fact that we cannot see it pretty much nullifies the possibility or the reality. The point of intelligence is to affect your surroundings. Else, it's useless and surplus to requirements).

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Not if you see yourself as a pure consciousness, no.

Even religions don't see us as pure consciousness. indeed, they put a lot of emphasis on our 'base nature'. Only neo-classical economics makes that assumption, afaik, and it is with the express intent to create a mathematical model - i.e. something simpler than real life.

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I don't think I've said that, but equally that's in danger of being a cop-out to avoid dealing with the implications. At the very least, you need to be specific and not resort to aphorism; is it in sum so different that that it qualitative difference to this issue? I don't think so.

Well, I am no scientist so I an't really quantify things properly but I think that what I am saying is that, yes, I am a product of evolution, yes, I have social conditioning (albeit it is not perfect and can be played around with. Thinking of it, you can even play with your evolutionary conditioning - "C'est beau, une ville la nuit" - "Cities are pretty at night" i.e. playing specifically on the fear/attraction of darkness and night). And yet somehow I can still make independent decisions . I am on the record on saying that humans conform to a limited numbers of archetypes, personality-wise. You got the 16 templates of the Briggs Mayer, if you want. But still, people from the same background and with not too dissimilar genes, still react quite differently to the same stimuli. That cannot be denied either.

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Not universal, inasmuch as some people don't have them...

Genetic mishaps asides?

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and not universal becuase they are specific to us as us. You value human life but not so much the life of the steak on your plate. And so, not universal at all, but specific to humanity.

1- That's what I meant. Universal to us, humans.
2- Some people are now trying to expand the "us" circle to the steak on my plate. I am not quite with them but it might come a time when cows will be included in the circle just as women, black, brown, yellow and gay people finally were/are...

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Just millions of years of evolutionary programming. See? If we really recognised our real physical existence and history, we would recognise that having kids is not some optional extra. Remember that in evolutionary terms, all those married-but-childless people have tossed their DNA in the trashcan. As such they have made themselves unfit to survive, just another failed, dead end experiment by the species.

But they have made that decision (albeit for quite a few, I suspect it's mostly a delayed thing rather than entirely cancelled) - They've done so against their evolutionary programming. And again a good chunk of social conditioning. A pretty impressive feat of 'independent/superior strata' thinking, no?

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Mouais. I get what you're saying but an entirely impractical/non-applicable intelligence is of no use, is it?

No. Cetacea display clear intelligence in their hunting strategies. Clearly it's not useless or it would either not have evolved or been selected against. But orca are the apex predators of the oceans, just as we are on land.

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And, as I say, an intellect that does not try to expand the quality and length of its lifespan is a bit of a weird and useless thing... And I don't think it'd be possible seeing as all life is born with the survival instinct...

But there is no reason to think that notional cetacean intelligence doesn't TRY to extend its lifespan, only that the accident of their morphology places clear limits on what thery can practically achieve.

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I think that'd be my view.

Well then. The human brain weighs in at 1.3kg or so, while the sperm whale brain, the largest to have ever evolved in all the fossil record, is 7.8kg, and the orca brain is about 5kg.

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Is not having a different programming equivalent to thinking in a different way?

No. If I use VisualBasic to write a spreadsheet programme, and the same tool to write an adventure game, they both essentially work in the same way, even if they are doing different things. My point is that your sense of self and identity arises from structures that evolved from basic needs to assess and understand your environment. Any system that does the same job would therefore be likely to have much the same sense of self. If that system happens to be incarnated in a mass or neurons or in a mass or logical circuits doesn't - or at least, can't be assumed to - matter.

You are preprogrammed with at least a range of certain behaviours primarily concerned with stuff like fear of heights and relating to other humans. Other animals are preprogrammed in different ways. It takes effort to "break" a horse to being ridden because it's own preprogramming interprets having another animal on its back as being under assault from a predator. A notional silicon intelligence would almost certainly have some kind of preprogramming implicit in its physical architecture. But there is no reason to think that a machine mind would have a fundamentally different sense of self or experience of the world than we or horses do. It would therefore think in the same way that we do, way is in manner or method, but it would probably think different specific thoughts.

I would expect that it would, for example, fear death, in a way, even if without all the rush of hormones and whatnot that accompanies the experience in animals.

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Granted. But I do think that we're unique and special as long as we haven't met 'thinking robots' or 'recognisably intelligent beings' (And, as you said, even if Orca might be smart, the fact that we cannot see it pretty much nullifies the possibility or the reality. The point of intelligence is to affect your surroundings. Else, it's useless and surplus to requirements).

Except that maybe we don't see it becuase we are looking for something that imitates us rather than something that has its own subjectivity and uses its intelligence to its own ends.

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Even religions don't see us as pure consciousness. indeed, they put a lot of emphasis on our 'base nature'. Only neo-classical economics makes that assumption, afaik, and it is with the express intent to create a mathematical model - i.e. something simpler than real life.

No religions do do it, it is absolutely implicit in the concepts of sin and free will. Worshipping "false gods" is not merely a function of social conditioning, it is seen as wilfully perverse. The neo-classical economists do something else, presume perfect rationality, but that is not the same. What neither are acknowledging is that the sense of self is essentially illusory.

Again from youarenotsosmart:

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The current self is the one experiencing life in real-time. It is the person you are in the three or so seconds your sensory memory lasts, and the 30 or so seconds after that in which your short-term memory is juggling all your senses and thoughts.

As little as a minute ago, the YOU that is currently reading this post did not exist. The you of a minute ago is now just a memory informing the you that exists now. Obviously that's not how it feels, but how it feels is just how it feels.

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But still, people from the same background and with not too dissimilar genes, still react quite differently to the same stimuli. That cannot be denied either.

Certainly, but the same is true of birds, cats, and prairie dogs.

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Genetic mishaps asides?

Well quite. And therefore, a problem in the hardwiring. Which is an analysis very different from old ideas of good and evil, wilful malice, deliberate misbehaviour etc. Which is again an argument for the fact that most of our society is based on principles of human congnition and mentality that are not in fact true.

Now the point at hand, where this comes back to the death-of-man issue from which this originated, is that if we are to have a cogent, sensible and sane society, we have to start from the things that are in fact true, not things that we have inherited from previous, un- or less scientific understandings of humanity. Surely these things are significant to whether people self-identify as a certain class, or whethere that self identification matters.

All the arguments that reduce social structure and policy to matters of "choice" fall into exactly this trap. They presume a holistic mind and a free will that makes choices; but it is clearly the case that "free will" is so hedged about with caveats as to be reduced to a meaningless slogan.

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But they have made that decision (albeit for quite a few, I suspect it's mostly a delayed thing rather than entirely cancelled) - They've done so against their evolutionary programming. And again a good chunk of social conditioning. A pretty impressive feat of 'independent/superior strata' thinking, no?

If you choose to see it that way, but I have never claimed that people (or indeed other animals) are completely deterministic. I do not at all deny the possibility to break or overcome what I have described as programming.

What I am pointing out is that concepts like "choice" are essentially dead, and that we have to take more active responsibility for our social structures. Becuase in fact human mentality is so insubstantial and subject to so many influences that to fetishize consciousness as the sole arbiter of what is to be done is to wallow in wishful thinking.

Originally Posted by contracycle

All the arguments that reduce social structure and policy to matters of "choice" fall into exactly this trap. They presume a holistic mind and a free will that makes choices; but it is clearly the case that "free will" is so hedged about with caveats as to be reduced to a meaningless slogan.

But that does look deterministic.

For example, I am willing to concede that someone who turns psychopath does so as a bad combo of genes and environment [most likely - Genes alone could be possible, I guess]. OTOH, if I decide to murder Auntie Jane for her inheritance, it won't be genes or environment pushing me to do so, it will be a freely made decision - And made against both genetic and social programming.

Also, I might not be the same person I was a minute ago or will be in a minute but there's enough physical and mental overlap to justify using "me" as a valid expression. What I would agree with is that I am not the same person I was 15 years ago... There's been enough changes for me to say "I've changed. This was a younger/whatever version of myself but I am no longer this person". I don't think anyone has any problems with that view of things.

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Because in fact human mentality is so insubstantial and subject to so many influences that to fetishize consciousness as the sole arbiter of what is to be done is to wallow in wishful thinking.

See above the distinction I draw between, say, serial killing and murder-for-profit. I think you're going too far in that direction but I am willing to wait until we have specific cases to discuss before really passing judgement because I think that, overall, we agree...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

But that does look deterministic.

It's more or less the opposite, because instead of claimning that there are specific causes with specific outcomes, I'm saying that things are pretty much to randomised to predict very much at all.

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OTOH, if I decide to murder Auntie Jane for her inheritance, it won't be genes or environment pushing me to do so, it will be a freely made decision - And made against both genetic and social programming.

Well yes and no, I mean it wouldn't be that heavily against genetic programming, becuase if your aunt is your senior she's probably done with reproducing and therefore her evolutionary function is already complete. Obviously that's not all there is to it becuase we do benefit from keeping our elders alive, but it's not quite so clear cut.

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Also, I might not be the same person I was a minute ago or will be in a minute but there's enough physical and mental overlap to justify using "me" as a valid expression. What I would agree with is that I am not the same person I was 15 years ago... There's been enough changes for me to say "I've changed. This was a younger/whatever version of myself but I am no longer this person". I don't think anyone has any problems with that view of things.

Well, not only have you changed, but with a very few exceptions all your cells have
also since been replaced, so you are in fact a materially different person in physical fact.

Anyway, I'm not saying that the individual personhood is a concept so faulty that it has to be abandoned completely. What I'm pointing to is the political implications of realising that we are not an abstract mentality mysteriously coupled to a physical body, but a series of mental processes that are sometimes at odds. And therein lies the split between the Left and the Right which the article I posted indicated; the Left is big on ideas like social influences and structural problems, which the Right is still banging on about values and morality and national character.

It's also why I have, correctly, claimed that Marxism is the only properly scientific political philosophy available, because all of these things are present at its core, rather than the ancient doctrines that underpin the rest.

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See above the distinction I draw between, say, serial killing and murder-for-profit. I think you're going too far in that direction but I am willing to wait until we have specific cases to discuss before really passing judgement because I think that, overall, we agree...

But to discuss these things in terms of a specific case or a specific mentality is completely the wrong approach to take. That isolates the individual from the much greater context which impinges upon it, and means you've already excluded the bulk of the point at hand.