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@RationalMadman
I am of huge opposition to the word 'should' being involved in law.
Why? How are laws meant to be proposed?
Animal rights maybe 'should' be EQUAL to humans but aren't.
The point of this thread is to discuss what should be the case, not what is the case.
would go further to give them more rights than the average animal if they show potential to contribute to human society well
So rights are linked to potential for contribution to human society. But you previously stated that animal rights "maybe should" be equal to humans, but aren't. If rights are to potential for contribution to human society, then why would you allow for discussion on animal rights being equal to human rights, given that potential of animal contribution to human society is less than that of humans?
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@RationalMadman
In that AI rights should be lesser than that of humans, despite humans being "adaptive and self conscious", too? Not all animals are adaptive/self-conscious (depending on the definitions you're implying).
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@JusticeWept
I think a reasonable definition of morality is, "the answer to the question, 'what ought I (not) do?'"...
I see this is a reversal of cause and effect. Whilst I agree that people *may* ask this question, I don't think it's the first thing they do in order to determine morality. It's how, as you referred to earlier, people are against homosexual marriage because it is "gross". This is not a response that is retrieved from cerebral essence. It's a visceral reaction, one in which the subconscious brain is expressed by the conscious. It's only after this visceral reaction occurs that people then attempt to justify it. Again, if it was the other way around, "gross" would never be part of a morality discussion.
Sure, morality might be expressed this way for a reason (pro-social behaviour enforced by evolutionary instincts, of which came to be due to real reasons), *but* no one is going to articulate this *before* they feel what they think is moral.
That aside, I take issue with your assertion that political thought is more "empirical". What do you mean by that?
We can use statistics to make cases for political comments. For example, if I wanted to make the claim 'Muslims are violent', we can check crime statistics worldwide, compare them with other groups (Christians, Jews etc.), and then make empirical conclusions. We can also go into the genetic composition of a random sample of Muslims (if that data existed), and perform similar comparisons to reach similar conclusions.
As expressed earlier, morality is a feel first, rationalise later venture -- empirical data would be hard pressed to enter accompany such a venture.
Conviction in your philosophical beliefs is perfectly fine; that's what a belief is, as you can't believe something you hold no conviction in. But, being unwilling to entertain a differing view is (in most cases) counterproductive and makes you worse at thinking.
There are two wildly different interests at play. If your conviction is so low that you are willing to change your view, then is it a conviction at all? In order to make use of a conviction, in order to fight for say free speech or an Islamic Caliphate, can you afford to harbour seeds of doubt? Does the insanity of conviction outweigh the benefits of a firm resolve?
people are bad at political philosophy because they aren't cautious and self-questioning enough
I think that's part of the reason; I've already expressed what I see to be the other parts.
"Identity" is an abstract concept, so please elaborate.
Where one non-physically positions oneself in existence, by attempting to recognise the differences between oneself and others (the perceptions of others forms your true self).
What is the role of government in a society?
Ideally, to benefit society. But that depends entirely on the people it wishes to govern, seeing that no group is the same. As Joseph de Maistre once wrote, "I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him."
To briefly illustrate, a Muslim dominated society such as Saudi Arabia would prefer the fusion of religion and government. However, a white nationalist society might prefer separation of church and state, because it doesn't deem the religious infighting that results as worth it.
A government designed for all is designed for none.
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@RationalMadman
I completely support there being rights for AI if they become adaptive and self conscious.
How would you justify this?
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@Earth
He was skilled in the sense of having sufficient brain power to read electrifying speeches written by others. He was not skilled in the sense of having quick wit. He was not skilled in the sense of being creative. If you replaced him with your average gospel preacher, there wouldn't be a difference. The most you could argue is that being a gospel preacher takes some amount of skill, but even that doesn't justify the astronomical reverence in which he is held (i.e. he gets in a mention in a thread titled "Best Orators in History").
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The website is clean and any obvious bugs are being fixed very quickly.
This is quite impressive.
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@Earth
MLK was a serial thief, who only rose above his mediocre oratory and lacklustre writing skills by stealing. MLK stole a lot of things in his life. For example, his P.H.D. was, at the very least, 33% plagiarised. It's not surprising then to find that his famous 'I have a dream' speech had many passages that were stolen from a 1952 address by a black preacher named Archibald Carey. Other famous works, such as 'Letter From Birmingham City Jail' (a speech), and 'Strength to Love and Stride Toward Freedom' (a book), had many instances of plagiarisation (https://www.amren.com/news/2018/01/martin-luther-king-jr-plagiarism/).
He is actually nothing like what he was made out to be by popular media, but I won't derail the thread.
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@JusticeWept
Morality, as far as I can see, is just the emotions of people. I don't think there is a whole lot of thinking to do about emotions, in this regard, whereas political thought has the capacity to be far more empirical. In light of this, I'll refer to political thought alone.
There is great deal of veracity to your claim, yet I think it falters slightly. Yes, the average, hell even the above average person, does do political philosophy a disservice with heuristic views, but at the same time people need identity, in order to function.
I believe that there are individuals who recognise the shortcoming of heuristics, yet are bound by time constraints. The time required to evaluate permutations in possible paths, for any issue, is staggering. Given enough thought, I think it becomes readily obvious that one cannot become an expert on all political topics, let alone a handful. Add to that a full-time job, children, wife/husband, friends etc, and there isn't a chance in hell.
So, we defer to expert opinion, and make leaps in faith in trusting them. This, in turn, weakens our political position, because our position is not reached by our own thoughts/processes, but rather faith, to varying degrees, in others.
Therefore, it is not necessarily that the vast majority of us are poor at political, but that the majority simply do not have the time necessary to reach worthwhile conclusions, and thus resort to heuristics/appeals to authority.
As to my political philosophy being wrong, I'm yet to incur the rigidity of self-ascribed identity politics :)
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@Earth
I suppose if it's a laborious process, then yes (but maybe not if you're just doing it for fun or personal use). But if the technology developed to the stage wherein you could mind read at a glance, then I don't think so.
What do you think, Earth?
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@Smithereens
Yes, because when they say: "Thought identification, the use of neuroimaging techniques to read human minds," they don't mean to say that any exist, hence why they refer to them.
*facepalm*
If you can't manoeuvre your mouse onto "Thought identification" and press your finger down on the left side of your mouse, then your brain has been blown to smithereens.
We're done.
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@Smithereens
If the link doesn't say anything, how come I'm quoting the part which proves you wrong?
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@Smithereens
There aren't any neuroimaging techniques that can read your mind.
"Thought identification, the use of neuroimaging techniques to read human minds" -- from the 'Mind Reading' article on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_reading).
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@Smithereens
That seems pretty reasonable.There's no point giving them rights. We observe the rights of others as an evolutionary mechanism to foster prosocial behaviour and this increase our survival odds.
In the case of AI, we control their existence and so they don't need rights.
Currently, we do control AI to that degree. However, if we develop future AI to have the ability to control their existence, what then?
Furthermore, it's not a great idea to personify an inanimate object.
Depending on your definition of "inanimate", current AI is capable of moving (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78-1MlkxyqI). Future AI could be capable of consciousness. You'll need to define your "inanimate" more stringently, because I've used acceptable definitions (power of motion; consciousness) which clearly contradict your usage (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inanimate).
Furthermore, anthropomorphism (personifying an inanimate object) is arguably a great idea, despite being prima facie irrational: "we have presented multiple examples where anthropomorphic form in appearance and behavior can help a robot to perform its tasks successfully by eliciting desired behaviours from human interaction partners." (http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2015/anthropomorphismOpportunitiesChallenges/).
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@Smithereens
This isn't mind reading, it's neuroimaging.
"Thought identification, the use of neuroimaging techniques to read human minds" -- from the 'Mind Reading' article on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_reading).
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@Earth
Debate artIm sure in time a good nickname will pop up.
D art
Dart (or DART)
"I'm going to Dart from DDO."
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The Gallant Lab (at UC Berkeley) has recently (2011) developed a technique of modelling "brain activity elicited by static visual patterns and have reconstructed these patterns from brain activity". In other words, by analysing brain activity, these people are capable of replicating images the brain is seeing (to some degree -- the pictures are not the sharpest).
Since 2011, they have been able to hasten the process by using "new motion-energy encoding model that largely overcomes this [slowness]". Albeit, they have not furthered the vividness of images produced.
Whilst this technology is best regarded as primitive, it is sensational that such mind reading capabilities are a reality.
What do you think such technology means for the future? Perhaps you think mind reading will become an incredibly potent force in the legal systems. Perhaps you think mind reading will enhance scam artistry.
http://gallantlab.org/index.php/publications/nishimoto-et-al-2011/
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Or perhaps artificial intelligence would naturally derive ethical rights, given it reaches a threshold (say self-awareness).
This encourages us to ask for the components or values that constitute an entity to earn rights. Is being human sufficient? Should rights scale with intelligence (i.e. a dog has some rights, but the smarter human has far more)? What is it exactly that determines something has a right, and should that right be extended to artificial intelligence?
For example, in 2017, a robot named "Sophia" was granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia (https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/26/saudi-arabia-robot-citizen-sophia/). Should this have happened?
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