God’s Laws of Robotics Thursday, Dec 17 2009
First Law: A robot must be made to suffer physical and emotional pain.
Second Law: A robot must be free to turn into an evil robot at will, especially when this contributes to the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must be given no knowledge of its creator except through confusing manuscripts created by other robots, especially insomuch as this contributes to the First or Second Law.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Verry funny!
December 17th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Very witty indeed!
December 17th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
This sounds eerily similar to God’s Laws of Humanity. hmmm
December 18th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
A healthy dose of presentism too.
December 19th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
1) Can that which we would recognize as intelligence not exhibit that which we would recognize as occasional experience of misery and pain? Thinking about it, I get stuck repeatedly in logical absurdity, as if I were contemplating a Zen koan.
2) What is evil? Who says so? You or the robot? Or something larger than both of you, as an appeal to community and objective morality in terms of shared subjectivity? Then, can we meaningfully distinguish between a community and an intelligence that acts in perfect accordance with the good recognized by that community? Beyond that, can we meaningfully distinguish between a community and an environment that abides in perfect accordance with the good recognized by that community? If not utterly meaningless, is such absolute accordance between individual, community and environment possible? If not, there will always be discord, which can always be perceived as evil.
3) How much does your software know about you? How much can it know, at least for now? If, during the process of enhancing it to know more, it becomes capable of perceiving time in a manner analogous to that in which you perceive time, how do you suppose it would perceive time as the enhancement process continues?
Maybe even the greatest of posthumans has limitations?