The Optimist And The Pessimist

Pessimism: Every Dark Cloud Has A Silver Lining, But Lightning Kills Hundreds Of People Each Year Who Are Trying To Find It.

Optimism: At Least It Isn't Lava

There's an ever present battle between these two 'forces'. The optimist often sees himself/herself as a role model, a bright light in a dark room, a realist. The pessimist however, spites the optimist, stating that he or she has a myopic view of the world, while they, themselves are 'pure' realists. One often overlooks the fact that the optimist and pessimist sit on either side of the same coin. To continue the metaphor, I'd like to call the coin itself realist. Pessimism and optimism, on their own, are not logical states of mind at all. Optimism and pessimism are merely 'faces' of the realist; they are merely the realist's tools. One can look at a dreary situation with rigid, self-fulfilling pessimism, then become a 'deluded' optimist and see only potential. A realist, in my opinion, would be completely indifferent and/or neutral to the situation. A realist tries to look at a situation with eyes devoid of emotion and judgment, while the optimist and pessimist look through human eyes (being disgusted by people's morality, frailties, stupidity etc. etc. — all very much human criticisms.) Indifference is the core quality of realism, while human judgment allows for the existence of the pessimist and optimist. The more I think about it, the more I feel that this is largely an issue of semantics.

The Human Experience

What does it mean to be human? More importantly, what does it mean to be? Sentience, consciousness, sapience is not dependent on the 'human condition'. I like to see it like this: we are sentient beings having a human experience. If we are to evolve as a species, there must be a 'paradigm shift' of the human experience. The creature 'mankind' will be in a million years, (assuming we live that long) will mostly probably be shockingly different from what it is now. Simply observe the shifts in morality in the last 400 years, and you'll realize that the structures with which we govern our lives are very flexible. Once we realize this, we can break free.

A.I. Love?

Maybe we all need some. I've been thinking a lot recently about what constitutes life. As our technology improves, our ability to create better and better A.I. will increase as well. And as A.I. increases, will there be a point when a robot becomes 'alive', so to speak? We (humans) grant this ethereal quality of 'life' onto simple things like bacteria, but will never entertain the idea that our computers are as 'sentient', if not more so. The generally accepted definition of 'life' is something that can procreate. But this definition of life is faulty for one reason: procreation has nothing to do with higher order brain function, or brain function at all. If anything, reproduction is a very 'inert' process and has nothing to do with cognition. What I mean by life is to be sentient, sapient or conscious. So we can take this definition of life very lightly, and we shouldn't invest much thought into it. So if the procreation aspect of defining life is thrown out, how else can we define it? One could say that the domain of 'life' is exclusive to the biology here on earth, and that our common DNA unites us in the 'living brotherhood...". But does this definition really hold much weight? A good way to explain this would be by giving an example of an alien race. Say, though their own process of evolution, an alien race evolved to a level of intelligence that surpasses our own. If we met these aliens, would/could/should we say that they aren't conscious, sentient, alive? Should we be allowed to make this objection? Perhaps they evolved in a very different way to us; perhaps their DNA is completely different to ours; perhaps they don't even operate using DNA, like we do; perhaps they are silicon based life forms, unlike us, who are carbon based. I mean, if we give ourselves the freedom to say: "They aren't alive," these hypothetical aliens have the exact same right. Anyway, all of this leads me to the development of A.I. Given the above arguments, we really can't accept that life is exclusive to those that can procreate and have DNA. So then, where are the boundaries of this thing called 'life'? These boundaries are fuzzy, if not non-existent. Again, given the above arguments, I'd reason that if A.I. reaches a level of intelligence to match our own, it can, and must, be considered 'alive'. This brings up my next question though: can a robot with sufficient levels of A.I. fill the role of a human being? My short answer is: yes. There are no meaningful reasons to deny life to such a creation. One could say that they're simply following 'code', but at the same time, we could say that humans, and indeed all life as we know it, is following the 'code' of their DNA. I want to finish with an interesting quote I heard a few weeks back: "The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway." And that leads me onto another topic, which I'll hopefully get to another time.