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[cheebers]

[Kronus]

OOH OOH, philosophy!!!

What makes us human? In other words, what makes humans "special?" Why is that question even important? Therein lies the answer. We strive for meaning and to us, that is ultimately important.

I feel we as humans are ultimately incomplete and look to complement ourselves. When we are born we are essentially blank vessels. Our parents then inflict us with the virus known as humanity. They take from us selfishly to complete themeselves, and give their own lives meaning. They shape us and because of this we become our parents, and our surroundings, and indirectly, we are every other thing in the universe. However, we are the compilation of the universe in a specific configuration. You are you and I am I, and the two shall not be confused with one another. However, there is the you that exists within me and the you that exists without me, and both are true forms of you.

So, we cope with our incompleteness in ways that are unique to ourselves. These ways are determined by who we are as people, and that is determined by how we became who we are. Memories are what we use to determine who we are, what we do, and why.

Sentience, the feeling that I am I, is only obtained through memory. Without memory, without the conflict and emotions that cause us to have memory, we would not become ourselves, we would simply exist as the whole of nothingness.

Sentience is a curious thing, one cannot prove that one exists to anyone but oneself. One could have simply imagined others in order to create meaning. In a sense, one can imagine that this is all taking place inside one's head, if one were to imagine that one is the universe. This is true, in a way, one is one's perception of the universe.

My point is this: is a human really any more important than a rock, or an A.I.? Well, you can't have one with the other. You take away a rock from the universe and the absense of said rock will directly or indirectly affect the rest of the universe. I know for a fact that I am, but I have no way of proving it. Because I'm of the species known as human, I take it for granted that every other human is sentient and ONLY humans are sentient. People don't believe that a rock is aware of it's existence because people don't want to believe a rock is aware of it's own existence. An A.I., we imagine, is profane in it's imitation of the human soul, much in the same way we believe it to be a sin when man imitates God.

[krystyn]

Those 1s and 0s were ripped directly from a human brain. She was Yasmine - a girl just as real as Dana ever was. Her intelligence also far exceeds what we are capable of producing on our own today ... the context of her value, btw, in my mind, was never directly opposed to Dana's value. I find the correlation between A.I. processes of the present time to not work so well when laid against this (fictional) ninja brain'd A.I. of the future.

I know that a lot of you automagically found that alignment of Dana vs. the Machine, but it seemed clear to me that you could have your cake and eat it, too. You could work to save both, because both were important, and incidentally the fate of the entire freaking universe hung in the balance as well. Make your decisions accordingly, etc.

And if you had to take the allegory of Melissa's Journey a bit further, she didn't become a machine. She grew up. (she says that, too, in Chapter 12 and beyond - ah, what a great line!) She became something not recognized by her family, and she was terrified they would reject her for what she had become, even though it was not her fault. She was not Yasmine the child any more - she had been forced into a cycle of living life to the fullest, and being responsible for many other lives. She learned how to kill, and how to show mercy. She fell in love, in her own way. She completely changed, and not just into a machine, but into what she felt might be a monstrous creature.

I mean, would you knock off value points for John 117's life? He's inbetween, dontcha know. He's been given shots full of miracles, and his armor is a part of him as surely as his eyes and his heavy, heavy limbs. He's a cyborg, not a pure human. Do we regard his value any less for this?

I'm just wondering, here, if you can draw a line, knowing what you know now. I'd almost accept that Melissa was 'just a program,' but she was not. It's quite clear what she was and is, and how very important her 'life' turned out to be.

[Phaedra]

[Phaedra]

post removed

[thebruce]

[Phaedra]

[Ozy_y2k]

Personally, I think you should append "Screaming Gender Issues Queen" to your sig.

[krystyn]

Phaedra, you -should- have brought all of that up, because I was thinking it, too. The coffin for the Princess was a tantalizing allegory for me all along.

When I refer to 'Melissa,' I refer to all of her aspects, btw. When there was discussion of the id, eg, superego, I was nodding right along. She was blown apart by circumstance, but she's complete ... now. I mean, um, five hundred years in the future. Um, soon she'll be complete like she was, and then will be. Roit?

I've always seen her character as having a very specifically human journey. When it hit home for me the most was after talking to her on the payphone, and hearing other people's recounts of her obsessions with revenge and loneliness. Echo and combine with Perdita's story, and Durga's displays of network prowess, and you've got someone (yes, someone) with a lot to offer the world.

It's interesting. In that universe, I could never quite relate her to 1's and 0's. It just didn't ... work.

[thebruce]

[Phaedra]

[thebruce]

(continuing from my last post )
the thing is, if from the beginning Melissa was referred to as 'it', there wouldn't have been the same connection. If the AI had no gender, it would be regarding much more acceptable as a complex piece of software.

But this software was copied from human's mind, so it thought, reasoned, acted, and spoke like that human being. The purpose of the AI creation process was to imitate as flawlessly as possible, the original human being. Because of this, we totally forget that it's still a program. In a sense, we're so taken by how accurate, how human, lovable, innocent and emotional the imitation is, that we forget it's an imitation. It's an imitation that grows on its own, not in the same lifestyle, or life, as the original human. It's its own entity.

No matter how much skill and talent I have, if I copy Mona Lisa stroke for stroke and colour for colour, so that no appraiser can tell the difference - mine is still a copy. it is not the original. If I tell someone which is the copy, you can bet the other's value will suddenly skyrocket (or else mine will drop). Now, say I destroyed the original and kept my 100% accurate copy. I could essentially deceive the world into believing I owned the original. But is it the original? No. There would be zealots who no matter how much I told them the truth, they wouldn't believe I had the skill to duplicate flawlessly like that. Just like there are people who vehemently will uphold that Digi-Yasmine IS Yasmine. But in the end, digi-yasmine is still a digital impersonation/copy/duplication of the original.

I still know my copy is worthless (at least, as valuable as someone would pay for it knowing it was a duplicate).

But I suppose you get into some philosophical issues now here too... if the duplicator dies and his secret dies with him, that the original Mona Lisa was flawlessly copied and destroyed, then no one will ever have any clue that the painting being touted around is in fact the real Mona Lisa; so in the end, Mona Lisa v2 IS the original. The deeper aspect of that now is that it is in fact, not the original. So how do you define real and not real? The existence in the world of the knowledge of the truth? or the full community acceptance of what is the truth? If no one knows or can ever know that the copy is not the original, does it really matter if it's not the original? 1000 years from now we could live in an entirely duplicate world where nothing any longer exists from our current time - but if no one there knows, what's their loss?
Except that the ultimate truth is that everything - everything from their past no longer truly exists. Just imitations. So what is real 1000 years from now if they don't know anything is not real?

man, this is getting way too deep for 4pm

[krystyn]

I may as well never act in any plays that have been performed before, then.

I mean, I get what you're saying, but how does this ultimately compute? Do imitations then automatically devalue the end product? Can you say that about every single copy of anything?

Melissa was pretty unique, and did many things that altered the course of human history. She may have been a flash copy of a human brain, but her composite identity was far, far different than the original.

I guess I'm just not seeing where you're going with this ...?

[johnny5]

[vector]

I was wondering where you would place the new Melissa in comparison to another AI such as Cortana? Melissa seems to have found her way past the 7 year point of no return for an AI. Does this make her an entity that can grow past the limitations of an AI? Also i have been having problems with the concept of lumping AIs in with programs. To me a program is something that can be coded and peiced togather by hand with lines and lines of code. but our brains do not work that way. I dont see how an AI created from a brain that works more on relationships than 1s and 0s. (by this i mean that our understanding and reactions to the world are based on many factors includeing genetics and meories. how does genetics and how a smell triggers a memory that relates to a good feeling translate over to a program? An AI to me is a digital construct that is able to understand and react to the world on a higher level of conciousnes than a program built from if then statements. I doupt that we could look into a list of Melissa's sub routines and find the one for "If trapped in the past on an antique server use telephones to build a crew to help you return to the future and save the world". Also if an AI was simply a program that could be copied and treated like we treat any bit of software, why are there more than on AI personalities? Why is it that there is a Melissa and a Cortana not just the package Cortana program installed on all ships and when rampency comes your just reinstall as you would with any OS that becomes corrupt?