Restricted Ghosts and Recursive Aura
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 1:17 pm
First off, recursive aura is my euphemism for 'self-awareness'. I love all these fancy euphemisms that at first make no sense.
Anyway, think about whether self - awareness plays a part in proving individuality, or defining humanity. How would a program prove to another that it is self aware? How would we? Are there any technical hurdles that cannot be jumped in programming a true ghost?
Secondly, I have to ask about defining a consciousness. Or, a restricted ghost. One that has certain properties that we wish to define.
Here is a thought:
Which would a truly evil being, faced with a choice of selfishness or sadisticness of equal magnitude, pick? Would he (or she?) throw away his life in order to make others worse? Or would he choose to live out of selfishness anyway. (actually this is a bad example, he would choose to live in order to do more damage another day..., but you get my point)
Personally, I think that a truly evil being, if definable, would theoretically be more sadistic than selfish.
And another case of a restricted ghost.
An omnipotent being, a god, someone perfect, etcedera. Are these ghosts possible? Or in a simpler form, would the set of perfect things one could do be so narraw as to have only one choice in everything, and thus not have a free will? This would of course not make them a ghost, and thus there would be no such thing as a perfect ghost.
Some more technical things:
Please dont make super-long paragraphs, they scare people with small attention spans like me away. Put breaks in the paragraphs for relief.
Also, when using analogies (i havent seen this happen yet, but ...) note that some things are too unique to have reasonable analogies existent, like ghosts and consciousness. Everyone knows a program (at least today) cannot get anyware close to being like a ghost.
Anyway, think about whether self - awareness plays a part in proving individuality, or defining humanity. How would a program prove to another that it is self aware? How would we? Are there any technical hurdles that cannot be jumped in programming a true ghost?
Secondly, I have to ask about defining a consciousness. Or, a restricted ghost. One that has certain properties that we wish to define.
Here is a thought:
Which would a truly evil being, faced with a choice of selfishness or sadisticness of equal magnitude, pick? Would he (or she?) throw away his life in order to make others worse? Or would he choose to live out of selfishness anyway. (actually this is a bad example, he would choose to live in order to do more damage another day..., but you get my point)
Personally, I think that a truly evil being, if definable, would theoretically be more sadistic than selfish.
And another case of a restricted ghost.
An omnipotent being, a god, someone perfect, etcedera. Are these ghosts possible? Or in a simpler form, would the set of perfect things one could do be so narraw as to have only one choice in everything, and thus not have a free will? This would of course not make them a ghost, and thus there would be no such thing as a perfect ghost.
Some more technical things:
Please dont make super-long paragraphs, they scare people with small attention spans like me away. Put breaks in the paragraphs for relief.
Also, when using analogies (i havent seen this happen yet, but ...) note that some things are too unique to have reasonable analogies existent, like ghosts and consciousness. Everyone knows a program (at least today) cannot get anyware close to being like a ghost.