Robot Lives Matter?

[legendary]

This week's episode on Dualities got me thinking on the theme of 'progressivism' vs 'conservatism'. 

Consider, for an example, that you are a progressive, or at least are more to the left than your grandparents who thought sex before marriage was immoral. 

Think about the following. It is an oversimplified scenario, but it just came to my mind while contemplating: 

Very soon, AI and robots will be prevalent in our society.  

Initially we'll use them as our personal slaves, treating them as our personal ticket to a stress-free life. 

Sooner or later, advances in AI will inevitably lead to the development of robots that are capable of experiencing the same types of emotions (joy, pain, anger, etc.) as us humans. 

Imagine if you had a multi-million dollar business where robots do all the work for 164 hours a week; and "progressives" in the future start a petition demanding that we free the robots, and start paying them equal pay for equal work. They might even call it 'Robot Lives Matter'. 

How pissed off would you be? Probably just as much as the slave owners of the 19th century. 

Then, a few decades later, imagine if your grandson introduced you to a robot he is dating. Would you find it weird and disgusting? 

Maybe then people will look back at some of the depictions of robots in the movies of the past and say how insensitive and 'robophobic' human beings were. 

Before long, a human candidate is running for President against a Robot candidate. The human candidate reminisces about the simpler times of the past, when the robots knew their damn place. Surprise, surprise, you end up voting for the human, because these modern 'progressives' have lost their minds. 

And a progressive of 2019 will have turned into a hardcore conservative in, say 2079. 

I see how biased our views are. Even if we've abolished human slavery in the West, we still have other forms of slavery and oppression, like factory farming. And no matter how much we progress, there will be newer issues and the next generation will find a way to demonize the current generation.  

Reality is one giant mindfuck. So long as the individual tries to maintain his/her existence, Reality will continue to outsmart and frustrate them. 

[Forestluv]

Yes indeed.

I think relationships and marriage is a good example. At one time, much of society recoiled from inter-racial marriage: "Marriage in between a man and a woman of the same race!!!". Support for inter-racial marriage was very progressive at one time. Then it became mainstream. More recently came same-sex marriage. The conservative mantra was "Marriage is between one man and one woman!!". Support for same-sex marriage was a very progressive position just 30 years ago. Yet, now it is becoming mainstream and in another generation will no longer be a "progressive issue" it will be mainstream. Yet, will today's progressives be tomorrow's conservatives? The young millennial generation is considered more progressive on today's issues - for example most are cool with same-sex marriage. There mantra is "Love is Love!!". Yet when I ask them about human-android marriage, they are taken aback and most recoil. Most of today's progressives say "Marriage is between two humans!!!". Will today's progressives be the conservatives in the future? Will they have marches and political yard signs to protect the "sanctity of marriage" as being between two humans. How will they feel about human-android marriages? Will their mantra still be "Love is Love"?

 

[ValiantSalvatore]

I ask myself sometimes if we are able to keep up to a degree. With bio-engineering/bionics and what not, we could modify humans, to be as strong as a humanoid creature, especially someone who lost a limb or build an exoskeleton that could help us carry weights etc.

 

I think the question of consciousness or free will become more relevant and interesting, most likely robots will have the capacity to emulate human emotions and the question if we consider them creatures able of our moral consideration is something else. Could you program values? They could I assume easily adjust to the human world and their rules see an autonomous vehicle. Yet, when they can emulate human emotions and feel them through a different structure then flesh, then at one point if they have free will or some level of consciousness (whatever that is) what would stop them from considering us inferior? Since we are out of flesh and bones and more an animal to them, then they are to us. They don't need to eat etc. They can maintain and repair themselves.

At the same time, I think if it does not get to this point and they are just some humanoid creature that has not transcended their robotic like tendencies. It would be difficult but more easily for a society to accept relationships between them, I mean there are sex robots already

which would enable us to say hm well, if there is something like this already maybe it is fine to date a robot/humanoid. Anyway, I am going way out of bounds saying that if you consider movies ( I do not watch a lot) then they are also often our friends and helpers imo. So, questions in the social releam could be if you marry a humanoid creature would you get a tax break? Is it fair to let people marry humanoids if they don't have free will? What is free will? What is consciousness? How do we still differ from robots in terms of emotions? Could a humanoid creature give birth? (Considering bionics). Can we make them conscious? Are their limits? So we have to modify ourselves since they are not capable of becoming as fully conscious as a human in order to evolve as a species to keep up with robots

This all get's even freakier considering the Kardashev scale. 

A friend of mine is printing out a humanoid with electronic motors, ardunio etc and things I have no idea about, with a 3d printer. So, potentially we could build or own a.i's. He is going to be as tall as a human. He is not going to be able to do much, yet it's freaking cool, building something like that on your own.

The questions for me is at what point is a sentient being considered moral to the same scale as we consider other humans if I take Wilbers idea of depth and span in terms of complexity. Then if there is a humanoid creature that is quite complex, but let's say stage orange so he would work in a manufactory have certain limitations programmed inside of it. So, it only picks up boxes and repairs smaller robots. He would not have any emotions, so he is not a sentient creature. It is only efficient and returns results.

Yet, let's say we have a robot for human affair who can recognize and emulate emotions and feel them, he would have more depth considering the "moral standards" of society is placed on human emotions and affairs, so we could say they are more "worthy" of moral consideration. They could translate languages, even go to a normal school work there as a teacher, or work in an embassy. So, there is less manipulation, less  "conscious" teachers. You could also design them so they look a certain way, "theoretically" sex scandals at schools could be prevented to a degree or discrimination?  They could work overtime etc. They would have a lot of depth and depending on which century we are talking/living in so, imagine you are on a boat out in the ocean with a humanoid of this level or scale, Albert Einstein, two hells angels, and two college students and a married couple, with provisions that last for only 3 days, with no sight of an island. Who would you kick off the boat in order to survive? Considering moral span and depth of the situation and of the people themselves on the boat. 

 

[ValiantSalvatore]

15 hours ago, legendary said:

Before long, a human candidate is running for President against a Robot candidate. The human candidate reminisces about the simpler times of the past, when the robots knew their damn place. Surprise, surprise, you end up voting for the human, because these modern 'progressives' have lost their minds. 

The same with saying a supercomputer could run our society and make a decision about where resources would go is that fair? Considering the corruption of society? Someone could also influence the system, even if there is a system who guards the system. Like the FBI, or some form of police.

[ValiantSalvatore]

This is from my favorite anime which is run by a system similar, of brains of people who the system considers worthy of integrating it into its system.
 

Imagine your life and the value you provide is evaluated by some form of system, see China which is giving it's citizen points on social behavior so they can buy train tickets, and if they break this conduct they will not be able to have access to public transportation, etc.
 

 

[CreamCat]

By the way, I do not see progressive people. Most who claim to be progressive are a conservative of another kind.

Being progressive entails destroying one's ego. Destroying one's ego is a constant process.

It's easy to see conservatism because egos like conserving something.

Are you progressive relatively to yourself?

Edited April 17, 2019 by CreamCat

[CreamCat]

On 4/16/2019 at 1:20 AM, Serotoninluv said:

Support for inter-racial marriage was very progressive at one time. Then it became mainstream.

Inter-racial marriage is beneficial for your children's genetic health. It's easy to justify inter-racial marriage when you see physically and intellectually superior children from inter-racial marriages. Japanese people love foreign genes too because they suffer from genetic defects in their gene pool.

Often, genetic defects manifest as facial deformities and various physical deformities and low intelligence.

I am attracted to superior genes, too.

Edited April 17, 2019 by CreamCat

[Leo Gura]

Last year a city in Texas passed a law to ban robot brothels.

So the robo-racism is already in full gear  Bigots are surprisingly proactive with their bigotry. 

BTW, you should see the last Star Wars movie. It had robo-love and robo-SJWs.

[Rilles]

Imagine our kids doing this instead of porn in the future? 

[RichardY]

Conservative is lame duck. Even savagery wins.

[JohnnyBravo]

This topic comes to mind that a robot is a robot, but, it should still be treated with care and respect 

The care and love you show the robot reveals Who you are.

If you treat a robot as just a robot coldly, that shows what you are like.

--

A monk told me this and no i am not making this up.

Repeat I am not making this up I heard this in real time in the real world.

The monk had a friend who would go to an ATM all the time at university. He would always smile and wave at the ATM. He used it as well and it was the only one he chose to use out of other available ATMs on the campus.

He treated the atm like an actual human.

After 2 months, one day, he walked past the ATM. And the ATM made a beep sound, the sound is warns you to take your money and card now.

It was strange because......no one was at the atm or using it except this man from afar.

He walked over. Popped out $500.

As I said this is a true story, take it on faith.

I also had an older mentor that would speak to his car. He named his car and refered to the car as "she." A female car. He would kiss it and hug it and pat it when we were talking and i really believed him.

Final story. But not robots.

Osho said his first relationship was with......a tree. He said in school he used to pass this tree about 4 times a day and he said the tree someone cared about him. One time he hugged it on a hot day and knew with full conviction that this particular tree was someone looking after him and cared for him.

Osho said when he graduated school to move to college, he didnt care at all about leaving his parents or friends or teachers.

He said he was only sad because he wouldnt see the tree. Osho claimed he somehow felt the tree was crying too.

A year later, some fucking idiot cut the tree down to put in place a political statue or some shit like that. Osho said he was heartbroken.

Some items to ponder.