Based on how some actual humans I know speak and act, I'm less and less convinced the human brain is much more than a stochastic next-thought prediction stream.
reply35 years old and just as relevant today - https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
replyA silicon alien coming to earth might poke us, we would say ouch, and just determine the ouch sound is just the result of a bunch of chemistry - not really conscious or feeling pain like it can, just emulating.
And were programmed through evolution to not want to be shut off. So I don't think we can really trust the human behaviour to protest its own destruction. That's just plain reasonable design!
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replyHow would someone know whether one has a soul or not? Is there any sort of introspection that can reveal the presence of a soul or any of its properties?
replyThere is no soul. Just a bunch of systems nudging each other to action. What people call soul is literally the same as the concept of personality. In essence, the way all systems in your body have been calibrated to exist.
replyI believe that the moment an artificial inteligence is going to "receive" a soul, is the moment it is going to be made to sustain itself. Either as a larger package (some bots working to keep an AI farm running) or as an individual (a bot which is tasked with not only fulfilling human desires, but also sustaining itself)
It's an interesting hypothesis. I think there's something elegant about "soul" or even consciousness being an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system. But I struggle with really squaring that with my own first-person sensation of experiencing existence (which I assume you and everyone else has but I can never actually know for sure).
replyBabies don't sustain themselves. Do babies have souls?
replyI swear I remember once reading about a culture where babies don't have souls until they're named. Maybe something about gaining their own distinct identity?
replyusername checks out!
replyDefine the word “soul” first before asking this question.
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