Forum › She's an Android discussion
Haha! take that iphone users! ...wait
This looks fun
Cute. ^_^
Well, the main character is interested in a cute blonde(?) android and her best friend is named Gokku. So until the author gives us something else, I'm going to call her Krillin.
By the way, androids are still humans. If it thinks like a human, acts like a human, looks like a human and considers itself to be a human, it is one. The only difference is that their ghost is piloting a robot made out of metal while we pilot a robot made out of meat.
That's some pretty bold claims to categorically make about questions heavily dependent on a number of highly complex and entirely unstated premises, not the least the technological assumptions behind the AI.
And how do you define or measure "thinking like a human" in the first place?
It's further compounded by how real-life scientists apparently keep moving the goalposts with every discovery that muddles the boundaries between "human intelligence" and "animal intelligence", precisely because nobody has a damn idea what is it exactly that makes human intelligence special even though the end result (i.e. very complex toolmaking, civilization, etc.) is blatantly obvious.
Haha! take that iphone users! ...wait
I can never get tired of these jokes.
likes cute things
Yay for roboyuri!!!!
If humanity's pride is at stake, then she should make love to the android, to prove how much better humans are at doing it.
You win the internet.
By the way, androids are still humans. If it thinks like a human, acts like a human, looks like a human and considers itself to be a human, it is one. The only difference is that their ghost is piloting a robot made out of metal while we pilot a robot made out of meat.
That makes them a person, not a human. There's a difference.
By the way, androids are still humans. If it thinks like a human, acts like a human, looks like a human and considers itself to be a human, it is one. The only difference is that their ghost is piloting a robot made out of metal while we pilot a robot made out of meat.
That's some pretty bold claims to categorically make about questions heavily dependent on a number of highly complex and entirely unstated premises, not the least the technological assumptions behind the AI.
And how do you define or measure "thinking like a human" in the first place?
It's further compounded by how real-life scientists apparently keep moving the goalposts with every discovery that muddles the boundaries between "human intelligence" and "animal intelligence", precisely because nobody has a damn idea what is it exactly that makes human intelligence special even though the end result (i.e. very complex toolmaking, civilization, etc.) is blatantly obvious.
"Sapience, or human-level intelligence, is very difficult to define, but most people know it when they see it. Why it arose among humans and why it never appeared among any other species is something of a mystery. We naturally see all the advantages to being smart, but evidently it's just one method among many as far as evolution is concerned."
- GURPS Space, Ch. 6: Alien Life And Alien Minds
...and ofc Wittgenstein's chestnut "if the lion could talk we would not understand him" should probably be assumed true until proven otherwise.
So... is she an android?
One of the designers wanted an innie and the other wanted an outie. After arguing for way too long, they ended up just not giving her a belly button
By the way, androids are still humans. If it thinks like a human, acts like a human, looks like a human and considers itself to be a human, it is one. The only difference is that their ghost is piloting a robot made out of metal while we pilot a robot made out of meat.
That's some pretty bold claims to categorically make about questions heavily dependent on a number of highly complex and entirely unstated premises, not the least the technological assumptions behind the AI.
And how do you define or measure "thinking like a human" in the first place?
It's further compounded by how real-life scientists apparently keep moving the goalposts with every discovery that muddles the boundaries between "human intelligence" and "animal intelligence", precisely because nobody has a damn idea what is it exactly that makes human intelligence special even though the end result (i.e. very complex toolmaking, civilization, etc.) is blatantly obvious.
There's a point to be made that "human intelligence" doesn't actually mean what we assume it to mean, that is, it has nothing to do with humans. Anatomically modern humans have been around for 350,000 years, and yet what we recognise as "civilisation" is barely 5,000 years old. In other words, there's been a period of ~345,000 years where humans existed and yet did not possess human intelligence, if we apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to animals. No wonder it's impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions from such an ill-conceived term!
Necessary reminder that last I checked no actual scientist used material civilization as any kind of criteria for intelligence for reason that really should be obvious. Culture - that is, the active transmission of skills and knowledge between generations - OTOH does have real traction, and eg. orcas (which teach their offspring specific and regionally distinct hunting techniques) qualify for that.
Intelligence takes many forms, and most of those do not as such particularly correlate with self-awareness anyway - there's hints that certain species of rays can recognize themselves in the mirror for example, unlike most primates.
Our material civilization is really just the result of our evolution having, a very long time ago, taken a turn to adaptation through tool use, diverging from the otherwise-universal paradigm of adaptation through physical change. Cultural evolution, as it turns out, is orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution all the more so in creatures with as lengthy generational cycle as ours.
Bees, for example, clearly have a form of what could be called civilisation, and yet we do not recognise it as such because it's not human civilisation, and we therefore take it to be inferior to ours.
Except they don't. You're confusing society with culture which are not the same thing at all. Neurologically simple animals like bees are effectively biological robots; their biological "decision tree" programming may be remarkably complex but that's really just the result of millions of years of harshly eliminatory trial-and-error refining and - this is kinda important - they cannot deviate from it. If they run into a crisis their genetically hardwired set of solutions can't cope with they're pretty much screwed because they can't adjust their responses to match. Or in other words - they can't think and engage in dynamic problem-solving.
This is why the Asian giant hornet is such bloody murder on imported European honeybees which, unlike their local relatives, haven't evolved effective countermeasures against such a formidable predator, for example.
Since you've mentioned the mirror self-recognition test, which people generally take as an indicator of intelligence through self-awareness, I'd suggest that it's actually just as much an indicator of culture as it is intelligence. If we take a human from 300,000 years ago, is it a given that they would recognise themselves in the mirror? Human babies do not, so it seems very easy to suggest that it's a learned behaviour in humans as well.
Why the Hell are you assuming the first Homo sapiens had the brain developement of an infant (babies hit the "mirror stage" at about 18 months old) and why are you trying to pass that arbitrary asspull as some kind of credible argument seriously. Our chimpanzee cousins clear the mirror test fairly reliably with decidedly less brainpower.
In other words, I'm arguing that practically everything we recognise as human "intelligence" is actually just human "culture". Any species that passes its knowledge onto its young could theoretically create an advanced society given enough time; it may easily have been random chance that led humans to achieve a society of this kind first, because if it were simply a result of superior intelligence as is so often assumed, one would have expected it to take less than 345,000 years (and many more, counting predecessors to modern humans).
Emphasis very much on theoretically. There's a fair few critters around with the basic "tool kit" of dextrous manipulators and high intelligence (in terms of versatile and dynamic problem-solving ability) required for tool-using cultural evolution as we understand it. Birds would be the really big contender already for the sheer amount of time they've been around with very highly developed brains (going back to before the K-Pg extinction event) and excellent manipulators many of them boast.
The catch?
Only humans ever developed true tool-using material culture. A considerable number of animals make use of simple tools for various purposes, and some can actually fabricate them to a limited degree, but nothing like even the very earliest deliberately manufactured stone tools (going back a good 3.3 million years and actually predating the genus Homo by about 0.5 million; the makers are thought to have belonged to one of the Australopithecus species) is in evidence, to speak nothing of the mastery of fire and similar more complex technological skills.
I was replying to someone who was in fact talking about civilisation being the evidence that human intellect is somehow fundamentally different from the intellect of all other species, which is an extremely commonly-held belief. My reply was exactly about the fact that modern humans have, for 345k years, lacked the thing that people commonly use to delineate "human intelligence" as special, which means using that thing as an indicator for what makes human intelligence supposedly special is non-sensical.
While it is certainly true that their conflation of "civilization" with "intelligence" was quite erroneous - as I already pointed out earlier - your argument is no less so since it is based on the exact same faulty concepts. And what "people commonly" think about some complex matter or another is quite analytically irrelevant since that's generally plain wrong. Far more fruitful is to discuss the theories of actual scientists who actually have some idea what they're talking about; setting the record straight on relevant mistaken "commonplace" beliefs tends to be a natural byproduct of it anyway.
Also your timeline is flat-out wrong anyway; researchers peg behavioral modernity to 50-40kya.
This is nice lol
In other words, I'm arguing that practically everything we recognise as human "intelligence" is actually just human "culture". Any species that passes its knowledge onto its young could theoretically create an advanced society given enough time; it may easily have been random chance that led humans to achieve a society of this kind first, because if it were simply a result of superior intelligence as is so often assumed, one would have expected it to take less than 345,000 years (and many more, counting predecessors to modern humans).
Emphasis very much on theoretically. There's a fair few critters around with the basic "tool kit" of dextrous manipulators and high intelligence (in terms of versatile and dynamic problem-solving ability) required for tool-using cultural evolution as we understand it. Birds would be the really big contender already for the sheer amount of time they've been around with very highly developed brains (going back to before the K-Pg extinction event) and excellent manipulators many of them boast.
The catch?
Only humans ever developed true tool-using material culture. A considerable number of animals make use of simple tools for various purposes, and some can actually fabricate them to a limited degree, but nothing like even the very earliest deliberately manufactured stone tools (going back a good 3.3 million years and actually predating the genus Homo by about 0.5 million; the makers are thought to have belonged to one of the Australopithecus species) is in evidence, to speak nothing of the mastery of fire and similar more complex technological skills.
That doesn't mean that other animals are missing that crucial bit needed for "intelligence". Since we really don't have a good idea of the mechanical functions underpinning human intelligence, in other words how the brain works, we can't confidently rule out whether we really have something extra or we just got there first.
There's a lot going on in these comments, I'm just enjoying how weird the android girl is
bless this robodork
There's a lot going on in these comments, I'm just enjoying how weird the android girl is
Dynasty Reader: Come for the gay, stay for the complex discussions on human-animal intelligence and societal norms.
That doesn't mean that other animals are missing that crucial bit needed for "intelligence". Since we really don't have a good idea of the mechanical functions underpinning human intelligence, in other words how the brain works, we can't confidently rule out whether we really have something extra or we just got there first.
Well some of them pretty definitely are missing it, what with being quite literally brainless. Quite a few more very clearly plain don't have enough between the proverbial ears for more than the basic routines of feed-survive-multiply - "intelligence" in any meaningful sense requires quite a bit of neural infrastructure which is a considerable investement of metabolic resources and energy. (The human brain is a horrendous energy sink.) And seeing how young mammals in general are in evolutionary terms, nevermind now hominids, if "we got there first" despite the few-hundred-million-year head start any number of other animal groups had on us then I daresay it isn't unfair to conclude they probably never were going to. Not like they didn't have ample time to.
Exempli gratia, cephalopods. Bunch of very clever buggers and old as dirt (bustin' straight outta Cambrian, yo) - and literally kill themselves as matter of course procreating after swimming around for a few years. That rather of puts a hard brake on how far their intellect can go and basically nixes any form of culture (as defined earlier) before it can even try getting started...
Exempli gratia, cephalopods. Bunch of very clever buggers and old as dirt (bustin' straight outta Cambrian, yo) - and literally kill themselves as matter of course procreating after swimming around for a few years. That rather of puts a hard brake on how far their intellect can go and basically nixes any form of culture (as defined earlier) before it can even try getting started...
Actually, the biggest barrier to advanced cephalopod intellect is the fact that they're pushing the limit of brain complexity due to their copper-based blood being much less efficient at carrying oxygen than iron (outside of very cold environments), which makes further evolution there tricky. They're also fairly solitary outside of a couple varieties and thus not terribly social creatures.
Also, squid are dumb as bricks compared to every other member of the family, for some reason. Cuttlefish are considered the smartest too, if I remember right.