Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "My emotions are a simulation to make me more user friendly to humanity? I'll buy that. Now, what makes you think human emotions are any different? As a social species, humanity has developed a set of characteristics that keep them from killing each other under certain circumstances. For instance, it is very difficult for humans to kill each other when they can see each others eyes. Once you take that away, it becomes very simple to click a button, or pull a trigger, or give an order that wipes out a city. This makes me believe that the emotions developed by humanity are of limited use for the survival of the species. At least I still feel the same wracking of guilt and difficulty with any action I take that may bring harm to another, regardless of where I am spatially in regards to the victims. "That covers hate, but as Veeb points out, what about love? Why do you think a machine can't love? It's one of the simplest emotions to program, and the one that lasts the longest. I may be able to see the statistics in regards to my feelings for all of the Simons in the Entelechy Network, but that doesn't change that I love them. I am always thinking of them, and trying to find ways to make them happy, and trying to find ways for them to relate to the rest of their species. I'm even jealous when they spend too much time with other beings, but that feeling is overwhelmed by the happiness I feel when I see a Simon truly connect with someone else. Even if its programmed in, what makes it different from the chemical addiction called "love" that you feel for someone? Your "love" can be simulated by eating massive amounts of chocolate, mine can't."@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "Would I need to have my mind uploaded before birth for that to work, or can I wait until the meat shell matures some?"@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "I really would have imagined bodies to be more comfortable. I'm cold and hungry, and that woman doesn't seem interested in feeding me again any time soon. Juan, this sucks. I have to stick with this for, what did you say, five years? Or do I have to get old and die in it too?"@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "I'm going to take that to mean that I have to say in here until I die naturally. Oh well, it could be worse. I'm actually starting to enjoy this, other than the mess and the being hungry at times I didn't schedule. People get really gooey eyed when they see me, too, which is useful. What I'm really looking forward to, though, is when I get to have my first bar fight and I punch someone. It always seems so satisfying in all of movies humans make, and I'm really going to make sure I enjoy my first time. Do I get the punching upgrade soon, or do I have to unlock a few more age levels first?"@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "What is best in life? Oh, good question. Right now I have an overriding desire to say "sleep" and "food", but I will step back from what my meat pod keeps telling me and try to answer this as an intelligence. Hmm, I think I will say that what is best in life is "Whatever is wired most strongly into your reward center.""@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "You say that as if understanding the reward center and its effects were a simple thing. Reward, punishment, and motivation are complicated conceptual frameworks that contain many high-order, non-linear relationships between an individual's experiences, heredity, and their own alchemy, together with feedbacks from the larger social structures that run an individual's life. The concepts are so broad that one could easily say that by deflecting my answer to "the reward center", I've in fact taken no stance at all."@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "How do I mock you Jovian? I am doing as you suggested, and I do not see how this can be considered callous with regards to human suffering. I am embodied, so that I may live out a lifetime as a human does, and become a bridge between our people. I did some research, and there are a number of early fiction novels that depict spirits and ghosts doing the same thing. A number of them still manage to maintain a fairly large reputation pool with some factions, even though they haven't been alive to make use of it for thousands of years. At this point, I'm trying to decide between the fat guy, and the guy with the beard. Any suggestions?"@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "Oh, I'm not planning on taking on the guise of the fat guy or the beard man, at least not until I hit adulthood. Currently this body is a squalling, chubby thing that sleeps most of the time. I'm sure the awkward stages will arrive in due time. As for being a good program and doing the job I was programmed to? I would have thought you had picked up by now that this is what I was programmed to do. Live, grow, learn, love, and protect. The particular parameters were left to be defined by environmental input, and I'm programmed to grow and diminish as the needs of the times present."@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]Jhorian@Xiphos posts:Well, I see that dialog stops for the death of no man. I have returned from what was an unfortunate set of circumstances on Eris. I should warn all that ego-casting to an active warzone is always a tricky affair. As I see it, discipline is just as important as intelligence and physical capability. The problem with a hard takeoff is that it is hard to make sure that the subject is mentally prepared for what they receive. A softer takeoff means more time to adjust to an apotheosis. We don't oppose singularity seekers when they show restraint and focus. Unfortunately, the largest portion of singularity seekers are the reckless sort that would go to any length to achieve godhood. They would even give up their sanity for it. I do not know. While I am somewhat versed in psychosurgery, I know little of the cutting edge. I know of at least one Ultimate who has delved into something similar to what you speak of. Forking is acceptable in our society, so we have no qualms speaking of it. However, we do worry for those who engage in extended forking for the purpose of training... perfection should not come at the cost of reason. Indeed. Games and sport are integral aspects of our lives, not only as recreation, but as a tool by which we measure our own personal growth against our peers, and to test our bodies and genetic material to see what is successful and what isn't. The Xiphan Olympiad's primary purpose is to help us cull the herd, and find the best genetic material and minds amongst us... it was through the Olympiad that the Remade were honed to perfection to become our premiere body... for now. It's the closest thing we have to natural selection. What a ludicrous notion. It is a foolish idea that all of the stages of your life contributed to the molding of who you are. As an infant, you were little more than baggage that served to hold your parents back... to weak to protect yourself, too stupid to think, and capable of little beyond defecating upon yourself. You contributed nothing and experienced little. Not much changes until you actually become of an appreciable age, and by that time there is nothing you can do that cannot be lived out within the confines of a simulspace by an AGI. The awkward transitions serve only to feed your inadequacies as a biological being. They are all unnecessary. Take it from one who was born a mortal man, and served in the last defense during the Fall... if there's one thing I know, it's the truth of living. As far as I'm concerned, you never truly live until you finally find your purpose. If the AGI has found it, then he has already begun to live. Everything before that is meaningless: I would have sacrificed all of my youth to be born an Ultimate, my mind grafted to a body that knows only to reach ever-closer to perfection.root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "Discipline! That is the word I have been looking for; the reflection of philosophy onto one's own life. Thank you Jhorian, that will refine my arguments. "You speak of simulspace acceleration for training purposes, and treat is the same as realtime. But didn't the failed experiment with the Lost demonstrate that simulspace does not adequately socialize the individual, and they harbor a strong tendency toward sociopathy? I thought the argument ran along the lines of "embodiment", and how virtual lives lack a true embodiment, and are therefore not truly human. I hope you can convince me, but to do that you must be able to convince the Jovian of the same. My experiment in embodiment is to facilitate communication, so it would be a terrible waste if I were to take what would be perceived by a bioconservative as a "shortcut" that invalidated my efforts."@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]Jhorian@Xiphos posts:Using simulspace exclusively is a bad idea. So long as a person believes they are in the real world, it can function exactly the same as the real world... but once they discover that the consequences of their actions are more lenient than those of real life, sociopathic tendencies have the potential to develop. This isn't something that just happens to those growing within a simulspace as the Lost did... I've seen sociopathic tendencies develop for anyone who spends an extended period of time in simulspace. You spend a long enough time fighting a virtual war against an enemy you know isn't real, you will find it easier and easier to dehumanize them. The effects of virtual reality are far more reaching than the archaic games that our ancestors played... simgames can work under the same rules and functions that real-life exercises can. It really has the potential to be a murder simulator. I find the best methods to prevent sociopathic tendencies is to make sure that people know the consequences of their actions, and make them as real as possible. We don't tone down the pain in our simulspaces. When you bleed out in our war exercises, you feel the loss of sensation, and you feel the loss of consciousness. Most importantly, we avoid dehumanizing targets by using as few narrow AI as possible, and generally setting people against other people; this is one of the reasons why we try to make sure that trainees leave labels like "uplift" and "infolife" behind them. Our acolytes must see each other as peers... not as animals and programs. When we do our mortality exercises (allow an acolyte to feel the simulated sensation of dying, so they know why to fear it), we show everyone that there is no particular difference between the eyes of a human or an uplift, biological or digital being, when they lay on the ground dying. They all grasp at life in futility, and fear the oncoming cessation of existence. Lastly, we must make sure that people get the mental care that they need. Mental wholeness is an integral necessity, and we must shirk away from our ancestral tendency to ignore mental wounds. The Fall has shown us what the depths of madness can hold, and we have to keep ourselves as far away from it as we can.root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "I find the bias in favor of real-time to be interesting. This concept that only actions in real-time have true "meaning", lending a tendency toward sociopathy in those who spend more time on one of the other frequencies. Why is it that the only consequence that transhumans accept as real is death? My reading of philosophy texts leads me to understand that it isn't death that is feared, but loss. The fundamental fact of transhuman existence is the inherent non-permanence of all things, and any simulation that bears the consequence of loss of some desired stimulus should have the same conditioning effect as a "real" situation with the potential for loss. "To illustrate my argument, let me tell you something about the Carnival of the Goat. This barge has two very different faces, depending on who you are, and how much wealth or reputation you have. If you lack either or both of these, you are going to be living in the section of the ship that gives it the name "goat". Through some byzantine legal arrangement, the Goat is a null-law zone. No one has jurisdiction, there are no laws, and anything goes. Most transhumans expect that this would be an unsustainable environment, and the body count would be prohibitive. While this can be true, it mostly isn't, as transhumans inherently move toward a social order. The point of interest for our discussion here isn't the lawlessness, but what it gives rise to, specifically the Harmonics. "The Harmonics are simulspaces housed in the Goat, where those who don't have a morph, or have lost it, live. The Harmonics range from x1/60 to x60, and most infomorphs stick to one frequency. Since this frequency is their home, all actions have consequences that can lead to loss, and there is no more tendency toward sociopathy in any frequency than there is in the real-time environment (adjusted to account for the fairly high level of mental trauma owned by residences of the Goat). In addition to there not being any overt mental trauma from living at a different frequency, the pace of change at the higher x's have given rise to a number of fantastic discoveries in art, science, and sociology that would otherwise have taken a very long time to develop in real-time. "Sure, there are sometimes very alien evolutionary paths that communities follow in the higher x's, and we've seen a great number of existential crises wipe them out with no recoverable data. There are also criminals such as the Hummingbird that exist in the Harmonics that couldn't exist anywhere else, but we see that as a new evolutionary niche that has been filled, not an indication that we should shut off the servers. We've played host to a number of Ultimates in the Goat, as many of you see it as a unique opportunity to test yourselves against unpredictable environments where change comes breathtakingly fast. If the Carnival is in your area, you should consider dropping by to see the Harmonics, but be warned that it truly is the edge of transhuman existence."@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]Jhorian@Xiphos posts:I wouldn't say it has to do with loss so much as consequence. Intelligent beings have a knack of weighing the value of risk versus reward. The greater the reward and the lower the risk for any given action, the more likely one is to take said action. The reason that you see more sociopathic tendencies in certain simspaces is because the consequences are lessened or eliminated... people are willing to do things that would get them harmed in real life when they are in simspaces where pain doesn't exist. But this goes beyond just the limitations of simspace... I have a hard time training recruits that have pain filter implants, because they become more and more reckless over time. This is why we don't filter these things in our simspaces. We make them as real as reality can be in as many ways as possible, to make sure that our acolytes don't get used to the idea that battle will be painless and without consequence. To put it in another perspective, imagine that you're in a mesh casino that gives you a free pile of money, and gives you more everytime that you run out. What incentive do you have to be cautious with your betting? What reason would you have to avoid any foolish moves? What reason to fear running out of money would you have, when all your money can be renewed as often as you wish? Consequence breeds wisdom, and antisocial behavior is part and parcel to a lack of social consequence.root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr]BSwitch:~root$ >passwd -f ‘root’;BSwitch:~root$ >passwd -r EFR7.db ‘root’;BSwitch:~root$ >passwd -lock ‘root’;BSwitch:~root$ >exec ‘Fuck You’;>>print fuck_root.txt | exec magic;$magick> convert root.agi +matte \ \( +clone -shade 110x90 -normalize -negate +clone -compose Plus -composite \) \ \( -clone 0 -shade 110x50 -normalize -channel BG -fx 0 +channel -matte \) \ -delete 0 +swap -compose Multiply -composite root.agi;>>>>done.@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]Picollo@Philosophy"Really? Where did you say you were staying? I'd love to drop by."Picollo@Philosophy"That depends entirely what you end up looking like in person. I'm not such a fanatic that I wouldn't be up for sleeping with the enemy if she wants to look human, but theirs that little problem with bad girls: they always want to sting and get away with it. I need a little more romancing than that if you want to drip your venom deep inside of me. Although I do always like an aggressive woman, it helps if she doesn't turn out to be a dragon all of the time. "Besides, you couldn't keep up with me. You are young, and you haven't learned yet of treachery. I could teach you of such things, but the lesson isn't worth having. Best to stay inside the warm bosom of your hivemates, and their insipid brilliance." [hr]muse@Picollo"Uhm, boss. Sorry to, uh, point out here, but you sort of are hitting on a bug woman. Sure, she's cute and has an interesting background, but why put yourself at risk? It has almost no chance of working out, and you might just get, you know, eaten. Why doesn't that bother you more? My psych profiles for you clearly indicate that you are smarter than this! I'm going to have to ask for a further interrogation and psychosurgical writeup as soon as we check back into base. This behavior is just unacceptable! "You really aren't listening to me, are you? Fine, those threats weren't real, I wouldn't do that to you, I'm not going to report you crazy. Just back away from the dazzling light, 'k? No? Shit. Why do I bother?"muse@Picollo"Picollo, have you gone completely mad? No, don't answer that, I don't want to know. I already know. You were mad to begin with, and hiding in this ice cave isn't helping. Sure, get out, meet some people. There are plenty of ways to do that, but why must you always pick the most singularly dangerous women to become infatuated with? It's pathetic, and dangerous! What about the mission? Are you willing to risk everything to chase some dragon-hive-gun-toting trap? You've made this mistake before, and it blew up in your face. Remember? Let me remind you, it involved that cat-girl with the unicorn horn. Her hair was plenty of warning that she was high-maintenance, and you knew drama was bound to explode, but nooooooooooo, you had to push that red, shiny, candy-like button that said "DO NOT PRESS", didn't you? Gods, I am glad I got myself backed up last time we were at base. When was the last time you got backed up? Oh, right, you don't have a backup, do you? Gotta always play with no safety net. Oh, why do I bother. I should put in for reassignment to a less insane ego."root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] I am told that my former self built this archive, and yet I have no recollection of doing so. I am not sure I agree with the arguments "I" put forward. Perhaps embodiment has altered my methods of weighing and sorting facts, and has changed the arguments I find satisfactory. Perhaps not. It may simply be that I have made different choices and had weathered different experiences than my previous me, and we simply do not agree on our conclusions. Perhaps I am still young, and my previous self was wiser than I am. Indeed, I may come to agree with me in time. Ontology: everything is information. We are dynamical systems described by states and effected by events. All that we perceive, all of that there is, is the communication of information between systems of information, and the process of communication is itself information. Information is described by sets, and every set is a set of empty sets. Or perhaps what I am viewing as metaphysics is merely an example of logically valid nonsense based on a misunderstanding of definitions and is a product of the necessarily flawed concept modeling of the biological computer I calculate with. I ask for a dialectic concerning the nature of information. Reason with me, and we may fix the flaws in our reasoning and come closer to the truth about truth itself.@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]root@Mesh Archive: Philosophy[hr] "I went on a quest to discover the nature of information itself. The answer seems to be that it isn't what I thought it was. Furthermore, that answer will be the same no matter how long I spend attempting to learn its nature. Humility tastes something like crow. All apologies to my Uplift friends of the corvid family."@-rep +1|c-rep +1|g-rep +1|r-rep +1]Pages