Cats are People Too

[onehitwanda]

However, can a subpar machine create an improved version of itself

Not without instructions or, for earlier versions, a machinist to do the manipulation.

I suppose whatever helps you cope with the existential dread.

I have no existential dread. I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm a strange local anomaly in the probability waves of a plethora of subatomic particles that behave like waves - or is it infinatesimal waves that behave like particles? I can never quite remember. It would be nice to be around a while longer but there's little I can do to steer that ship, so it's pointless wasting energy worrying about it.

Life is explicable in that it likely arises in situations where there is sufficient complexity in self-replicating structures that can adapt to changes in their environment and out compete their competitors. It's entirely possible that given sufficient advances in computing we will see self-replicating machines that can construct improved versions of themselves. Perhaps they will be able to evolve their rulesets. But I doubt a single one of them will ever reach the point where they stick their fingers in a plug socket just to see what happens.

Machines are, at their origin, logical. Creatures are not. Humans are creatures, not machines, and while our bodies can be reduced to some sort of machine-like analog there remains some strangeness to us that cannot be simulated. Perhaps that will change - every probability curve has outliers, no matter how unlikely.

Some may argue that your brain is not only a processor, but also not very successful at it.

and yet, here we are, 800-odd million years on from the first prototype of life on what was previously basically just gravel, able to snipe at one another despite my obvious limitations due to my inferior processor.

 

[onehitwanda]

You're essentially suggesting that we have a soul or something mysterious beyond matter, and that's fine; it's a matter of faith that can't be argued with. However, this notion also renders the term "intelligence" mysterious and makes any discussion about it unattainable. It takes us into the realm of religion, which is no longer intellectually stimulating.

I don't believe in the soul - I was an atheist, now I just don't care. Were I to believe in anything, the idea of death and rebirth as understood in Buddhism is probably closest to my own personal ideals. But I don't subscribe to that, as comforting as it might be. This is all I have; it's not much but it's mine, and I do my best to use it well.

There is something to us that machines do not have. I can't define it, but its lack is visible in our automata. Perhaps it's just the embodiment of chaos? It's fundamentally impossible to predict with 100% certainty how a creature will behave; whereas there is a finite list of things a machine will do.

It's an interesting thought.

 

[nice90sguy]

There is something to us that machines do not have. I can't define it, but its lack is visible in our automata

That's my feeling too, and I've only recently come to it. But I think that specialness that we (homo sapiens) have compared with machines, is less to do with our specifically human trait of intelligence, than to do with our being living creatures.

can't define it

I've recently read a very interesting book which attempts to do just that, based on speculation of the chemical origins of life. It's hard to put in a nutshell, because you really have to start with agreement about some basic terms, but I'll try:

A machine, as the author of the book puts it, "has no skin in the game": It basically doesn't give a shit about anything, including, most importantly, itself. But we, and most living creatures, definitely do have "skin in the game" when we do just about anything. Just about anything: from raising our hand to turn down the dial on the thermostat in our apartment to opening up the pores in our skin to allow more water to evaporate from it, to "just chillin'" by watching a few stupid Tok Tok videos.

We, and most living creatures, care about stuff like being too hot. If you don't believe in God, it's a mystery how we got to be that way. Natural selection might be able to explain how creatires got better at giving a shit about the world and learning how to cool temselves off, but has nothing to say on how they started off worrying about hot and cold in the first place.

 

[onehitwanda]

has nothing to say on how they started off worrying about hot and cold in the first place.

emergent behaviour.

Organisms that don't care about hot or cold lose out reproductively over generations to those that do, since those that do will expend energy to move to places that are more tolerable. A more tolerable environment in general leads to faster population growth.

You could argue that we give a shit because some single celled thing moved into a sunbeam on a cold day while all its mates froze to death.

 

[Duleigh]

Have you tried discussing it with a random person? I know I'd probably give an even worse performance if you tried to do that with me.

Yes, the word equity never comes up

 

[onehitwanda]

Disturbingly similar answers.

as you'd expect when they're trained on the same corpus of a priori knowledge. Train one of them on the Bible and the other on the Origin of the Species and the answers will differ radically. AI is only as good as its rules and its data set.

 

[Zootonius]

emergent behaviour.

Organisms that don't care about hot or cold lose out reproductively over generations to those that do, since those that do will expend energy to move to places that are more tolerable. A more tolerable environment in general leads to faster population growth.

You could argue that we give a shit because some single celled thing moved into a sunbeam on a cold day while all its mates froze to death.

My two cents is that the complexity of mind is orders of magnitude more complex than anything being imagined today. The field of Quantum biology is hinting at how complex life may be.

 

[djrip]

But we, and most living creatures, definitely do have "skin in the game" when we do just about anything. Just about anything: from raising our hand to turn down the dial on the thermostat in our apartment to opening up the pores in our skin to allow more water to evaporate from it, to "just chillin'" by watching a few stupid Tok Tok videos.

We have evolved a variety of functions to regulate our biological processes, the pores are part of that. We can program machines to self-regulate too, like when a fan kicks on if temp gets too high. And the self-regulation can fail in humans, as with allergies and immune disorders.

Self-regulation is not what makes life special, it's adaptive behavior that organisms develop because the individuals who lack it to some degree are less likely to survive and reproduce. Most life exhibits self preservation behavior because it evolved that way, because life without self preservation doesn't last long. Not because it is a fundamental quality of life. Just ask Heaven's Gate.

Life is special because it processes energy, eats food, grows, reproduces, using organic chemistry. We could maybe build robots that would mine metals and add on to themselves and build more robots. But they wouldn't be doing it with organic chemistry in a body made of cells that all grow and eat and reproduce and die. If we did build robots that worked that way, they wouldn't be machines, they'd be lifeforms. Replicants. Artificial organic life.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There is something to us that machines do not have. I can't define it, but its lack is visible in our automata.

No machine will ever have my memories, because no machine will have ever lived my life. My memories are the places I scrape my fiction from, plus my imagination, and no machine is ever going to come up with the idea of a spider in a top hat seducing a moth in a long grey dress. It simply will not have the right data set to do so, unless it is trained on the product of my brain.

But if I haven't written it yet, there's no data to for it to train on. So in a Occam's Razor sense, I'm always one step ahead. Like my spider, he's eight steps ahead.

The Fantastic Hotel

 

[TarnishedPenny]

It strikes me that any theory of he beginning of life (Genesis excluded, as laws are conveniently inapplicable there) requires a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Life is entropy diminished.

 

[djrip]

It strikes me that any theory of he beginning of life (Genesis excluded, as laws are conveniently inapplicable there) requires a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Life is entropy diminished.

Actually no. Life increases entropy. Every complex structure life builds comes at the cost of more molecules broken down and more heat produced than the complexity that is created.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It strikes me that any theory of he beginning of life (Genesis excluded, as laws are conveniently inapplicable there) requires a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Life is entropy diminished.

Not necessarily. The law applies to the whole closed system, which in this case is probably our planet. While life itself is a manifestation of order and a definite reduction in entropy, one could argue that the process of the creation of life increased the entropy of the surroundings. Without a definite and precise theory of the emergence of life it is really hard to argue one or the other, which in this case means there is no violation until proven otherwise

 

[Bramblethorn]

Not too sure about cats. Dogs however demonstrate sentience, though ours is vastly different to theirs.

Nitpick: "sentience" is merely the capacity for sensation. My cat meets the bar because she notices when I pet her, and she can taste the difference between the food she likes and the food she doesn't like.

I think what we're discussing here is sapience, the having of wisdom. Though there I'd still put her on a level with my dogs.

 

[nice90sguy]

After reading "Neither Ghost Nor Machine" by Terrence Deacon, which discussess all the stuff referred to in this thread, I heartily disrecommend it
Through weirdly convoluted arguments designed to smokescreen a naked emperor, he ends up saying nothing new, but ultimately reinforcing a strict Darwinian view of the origin of life, which is the exact opposite of what he attempted to do.

But, along the way, I did manage to get a good understanding of terms like sapience/sentience/intentionality/emergence, not to mention a fascinating lesson in biochemistry.

My conclusion is that life emerged by chance, as @onehitwanda posted above: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/cats-are-people-too.1586965/post-96859098

And yes, entropy is always increased by any interaction, but that doesn't stop localised order from being created (at the expense of increased disorder elsewhere in the universe).

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which is why I lumped dogs, but not cats in with "self-consicous" beings in my first post here.

My cat will go your throat for disregarding her sense of self. You've obviously not lived with a cat.

Dogs have masters, cats have staff, about sums it up.

 

[nice90sguy]

You've obviously not lived with a cat.

My cat read that post and I swear it said "hah, told ya" afterwards.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My cat read that post and I swear it said "hah, told ya" afterwards.

See, the cat is the wiser critter. A dog would have just said, "Throw the ball."

 

[onehitwanda]

My cat will go your throat for disregarding her sense of self. You've obviously not lived with a cat.

Dogs have masters, cats have staff, about sums it up.

Or, as many cats have taught me:

Dogs have masters; cats have chew toys.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I once asked somebody if they were a dog person or a cat person. He raised his eyebrows, smiled and said, “Well, who ever heard of a seeing-eye cat?” Sort of sums it all up, IMO.

On the other hand, cats are nature’s ultimate predators, perfect killing machines - and they know it. The problem is that they weigh five pounds and people keep picking them up, hugging them and talking baby talk at them. I’d have a pissy attitude myself…