Star Trek (TOS): The Ultimate Computer

[Durandal_1707]

To play devil's advocate, he could be working through some Human cargo cult. Data sees and mimes out what people are doing, in order to become more human. He repeats jokes because people say they are funny. He dates and gives gifts because that is what people do when they are in love. He paints because that is what people do when they are creative. He has a cat because it is what people do. He doesn't understand the emotions behind them, he just does it because what people do.

To play devil's advocate's advocate, how much of us is just doing stuff because it's what people do? I'm not saying we don't have 'natural' emotions and behaviours, but there's undoubtedly a whole heck of a lot of monkey-see monkey-do going on (I mean, hands up who hasn't felt they need to do something for Valentine's Day because that's what you do) - I forget the source, although good money's on Pratchett, but it's something along the lines of 'We learn how to be human from other humans'. If Data's observing and imitating his peers, does that really make him that different to us?

Soong complicates the question too - I feel it's pretty clear that his goal wasn't 'create artificial life' but 'create artificial human'. Even assuming the most benign possibility, Data being found on a human colony, evidently the work of a human inventor, and (barring the colours) looking human, it's not unreasonable for the possibility to occur to him that he was meant to imitate humanity, and therefore regard any human trait he lacks as desirable. I mean even if you don't know, having an inkling of what you were created for has got to be a pretty strong influence. Soong may even have hardwired into Data some 'subconscious' predisposition to that path. From his work on the emotion chip, he obviously regarded a fully human-style emotional spectrum as the goal of Data's development - he wasn't just making a life and letting it find its own path, he had a fixed end in mind.

I do feel that Data has emotions of his own, prior to the chip - 'android emotions' if you like, obviously not identical to ours, but I believe they're there. We often enough have stories about complex enough computers developing consciousness on their own - why not a conscious computer developing emergent emotion? He may not recognise them - his aspiration to human emotion and constant imitation of human behaviour may be causing him to 'subconsciously' dismiss the evidence of his own native emotions as just byproducts of his incredibly complex programming - but I feel like they sneak out when he's not paying attention. I have trouble believing 'Ode to Spot' comes from a being who genuinely has no capacity for 'friendship' as anything but a cold mimicry of other people's behaviour - I don't feel, just for the sake of composing a poem, he'd call Spot a friend if he didn't in his 'heart' believe it on some level, and that's good enough for me. Maybe he tells himself it's not inappropriate to use the word to denote a non-feeling tendency he's developed, but self-delusion is very human.

That raises the worrying prospect of whether the emotion chip truly benefits Data, or whether it's an artificial substitute that appears more 'genuine' owing to very good imitation of the psychological and physical effects we expect to see in an emotional human, and in fact relying on it is stunting the growth of whatever kind of unique being he was becoming on his own. I don't think it's impossible Soong overlooked the possibility - this is a guy who had trouble grasping that his other son was a homicidal maniac. Is Soong's work on 'perfecting' Data truly in Data's best interests, or is he just the science equivalent of a parent pushing his child to excel at whatever pastime the parent values?

Incidentally the first time Spot was introduced, I misheard the line and thought Data had named his cat Spock. I wish he had, that'd be a brilliant pet name in-universe.

Every once in a while someone shows up and finds a much better and more eloquent way to say what you've been trying to say. Just ignore everything I wrote and pretend I wrote the post above.

[Beastro]

I never really understood the whole reason why the total collapse of human civilization (and the death of homo civilis) isn't good enough for some people. If civilization collapses I don't care if some homo sapiens are alive somewhere on Earth.

Because it means we can eventually rebuild and that Mankind is a at least still around to keep perpetuating, because I'd assume that would be something I wish all poeple could agree upon is a Good Thing?

Rebuild partially at least, given how much oil we've used up for example we may never be able to get back to this point.

You assume technological develop is linear in the sense the box for oil needs to be checked for something further to developed. It certainly does help, but it's not the end all be all.

Because it means we can eventually rebuild and that Mankind is a at least still around to keep perpetuating, because I'd assume that would be something I wish all poeple could agree upon is a Good Thing?

I've always taken the opinion that what matters about humans are the ideas, knowledge and technology; the civilization. Not the biological parts. Now honestly, it would take a very bad climate catastrophe or no holds barred nuclear war to destroy civilization enough, but it doesn't leave them as the scenarios that can be ignored as out of hand, given that enough people would survive to continue the species.

So humanity in and of itself doesn't? That's an interesting take on misanthropy, which it is whether to realize it or not (and one only our narcissistic modern age could produce).

There's no civilization without the biological parts. If things collapse keeping those parts around and perpetuating is the only way of making sure something else can arise to continue on.

[TGLS]

You assume technological develop is linear in the sense the box for oil needs to be checked for something further to developed. It certainly does help, but it's not the end all be all.

My understanding is that the powerful and relatively cheap supply of energy that fossil fuels provided is largely the reason that society has built it self up to this point so quickly. Without it, it is fairly plausible that technological development could stall out (Nick Bostrom refers to this kind of catastrophe as a Whimper, see 5.1 here).

So humanity in and of itself doesn't? That's an interesting take on misanthropy, which it is whether to realize it or not (and one only our narcissistic modern age could produce).

There's no civilization without the biological parts. If things collapse keeping those parts around and perpetuating is the only way of making sure something else can arise to continue on.

Of course there's no civilization without humans (Well, unless technology advances a lot first.) What I'm arguing is if enough of civilization is destroyed, it qualifiers as a lose state for humanity all the same, thus we should work to prevent civilization from being destroyed, not vacillating over whether a disaster will cause extinction of the human race.

[TrueMetis]

You assume technological develop is linear in the sense the box for oil needs to be checked for something further to developed. It certainly does help, but it's not the end all be all.

It's more that I assume we needed access to an easy source of energy. Oil very much was that energy source. All the other options are either to hard to access, to hard to do anything with, don't provide enough energy, or some combination of the above. Coal is still pretty abundant, but it's not very energy dense and not very useful for a lot of applications. Natural Gas is more energy dense, and it's possible we could figure out how to use it in a motor vehicle, but much like oil we've used lots of the more easily extractable stuff, and it's harder to work with. Anything Nuclear requires a society with a fair bit of an energy structure already to have advanced enough, and so does large scale wind and solar.

[Antiboyscout]

You assume technological develop is linear in the sense the box for oil needs to be checked for something further to developed. It certainly does help, but it's not the end all be all.

It's more that I assume we needed access to an easy source of energy. Oil very much was that energy source. All the other options are either to hard to access, to hard to do anything with, don't provide enough energy, or some combination of the above. Coal is still pretty abundant, but it's not very energy dense and not very useful for a lot of applications. Natural Gas is more energy dense, and it's possible we could figure out how to use it in a motor vehicle, but much like oil we've used lots of the more easily extractable stuff, and it's harder to work with. Anything Nuclear requires a society with a fair bit of an energy structure already to have advanced enough, and so does large scale wind and solar.

We already know how to run an internal combustion engine on natural gas. With development of biogas plants we aren't about to run out of the stuff ever. We also know how to run a car on coal as well, and I'm not talking about steam. Gasification of coal is an old technology only displaced by electricity. I wonder if anyone has done an efficiency study on running a gas turbine with steam co-gen plant on coal gas compared to natural gas.

[TrueMetis]

You assume technological develop is linear in the sense the box for oil needs to be checked for something further to developed. It certainly does help, but it's not the end all be all.

It's more that I assume we needed access to an easy source of energy. Oil very much was that energy source. All the other options are either to hard to access, to hard to do anything with, don't provide enough energy, or some combination of the above. Coal is still pretty abundant, but it's not very energy dense and not very useful for a lot of applications. Natural Gas is more energy dense, and it's possible we could figure out how to use it in a motor vehicle, but much like oil we've used lots of the more easily extractable stuff, and it's harder to work with. Anything Nuclear requires a society with a fair bit of an energy structure already to have advanced enough, and so does large scale wind and solar.

We already know how to run an internal combustion engine on natural gas. With development of biogas plants we aren't about to run out of the stuff ever. We also know how to run a car on coal as well, and I'm not talking about steam. Gasification of coal is an old technology only displaced by electricity. I wonder if anyone has done an efficiency study on running a gas turbine with steam co-gen plant on coal gas compared to natural gas.

We're talking about the collapse of civilization mate, if all those technologies survive than civilization hasn't collapsed, and I seriously doubt the viability of any of those things in a rebuilding society. But I'm not terribly familiar with many of them so I may be wrong.

[Antiboyscout]

We're talking about the collapse of civilization mate, if all those technologies survive than civilization hasn't collapsed, and I seriously doubt the viability of any of those things in a rebuilding society. But I'm not terribly familiar with many of them so I may be wrong.

Considering the first technological explosion in mankind was first powered by water and then coal, clawing back from the stone age is much easier than you are making it out to be. There is something to be said about the inspiration that oil brings. There is an interesting effect when Rebuilding. Because a technology is already known and the effect is known, substitutes can be found to replicate the effect of the tech. If you want innovation in a society with no oil simply look to NAZI Germany. By the end of the war engineers were designing coal powered ram jets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippisch_P.13a would they have designed such a device if oil was never discovered? no way to tell. This does mean that Rebuilding is easier than building.

[CareerKnight]

There is an interesting effect when Rebuilding. Because a technology is already known and the effect is known, substitutes can be found to replicate the effect of the tech.

And there is the problem in your line of thought. We're not talking about civilization collapsing and the rebuild starting within a decade or so. No idea what could knock out civilization yet have that quick of a turnaround. If civilization gets destroyed, we are talking hundreds if not thousands of years before the whatever caused the destruction to pass and the survivors (if there are none this line of thought is irrelevant) have recovered enough to start rebuilding and expanding. By that point our technology will be half remembered at best, fallen into myth and legend more likely, and the remnants of civilization will be horribly decayed if even recognizable. So rather than just having to relearn a few things it will likely be much closer to how it went the first time only with a vague end goal this time around.

[Beastro]

If civilization gets destroyed, we are talking hundreds if not thousands of years before the whatever caused the destruction to pass and the survivors (if there are none this line of thought is irrelevant) have recovered enough to start rebuilding and expanding.

Not with a nuclear exchange or something equivalent. The World would be pushed back to the 16th Century only with practical knowledge of important, easy to make things surviving, like bolt-action rifles, batteries, radios and such.

The bigger issue would be aspects of modern society interfering with the practical realities as the massive deaths from starvation and infection dig their claws in. Things like Women's Lib and modern sexual mores around age would be dead. The survivors would need to go back to breeding like rabbits to counter attrition and that would mean women getting knocked up back to back and starting the process once puberty kicks in meaning a return to what in the Western world are now considered child marriages.

It would be a massive shock to all survivors no matter what their political/value bent, everything would have to be sacrificed for survival.

Here's an series of articles someone in the defence industry I know has done on the political realities of nuclear warfare, how an exchange would pan out and its aftermath: http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3 ... 11&t=21315

[TGLS]

Not with a nuclear exchange or something equivalent. The World would be pushed back to the 16th Century only with practical knowledge of important, easy to make things surviving, like bolt-action rifles, batteries, radios and such.

I doubt a nuclear exchange would lead to that severe a dieback; true, the period (~20 years) immediately following would see massive death and movement towards a subsistence agricultural economy, but the value of rebuilding advances that were lost (mechanizing agriculture to prevent famines for example) would lead to a push back towards modern technology. The main problem is that key equipment and people may very well be destroyed, and it is probable that the equipment and the people are in the wrong places. But the world wouldn't be knocked back 500 years, especially if it isn't nuclear stupidity (i.e. "FIRE ZE MISSILES AT BRAZIL!" "But Mr. President, we're at war with Russia!")

The bigger issue would be aspects of modern society interfering with the practical realities as the massive deaths from starvation and infection dig their claws in. Things like Women's Lib and modern sexual mores around age would be dead. The survivors would need to go back to breeding like rabbits to counter attrition and that would mean women getting knocked up back to back and starting the process once puberty kicks in meaning a return to what in the Western world are now considered child marriages.

It would be a massive shock to all survivors no matter what their political/value bent, everything would have to be sacrificed for survival.

I'll hold my tongue here.