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robot slurs (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 4 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

Yeah, that is why SHODAN is the likeable one :D.
/s

But for real, offering an alien creature kindness where your agenda is different (or at least indifferent to that creature) is a very inhuman thing to do when you look at us on average.
If humanity would pilot an AI like that it would act like SHODAN (we do act like SHODAN to other creatures of meat and bone ... well, 'other' somehow very much includes other humans too).

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I would argue that, while yes, humanity is capable of and currently enacts horrific violence on other humans and creatures...

    We also love and cherish and nurture many humans and nonhumans.

    This is more commonly known as the duality of man... great capacity to do both good and evil.

    I dunno if you've read Ender's Game and the sequels... but super long story short, Ender is a genius who, with the aide of AIs, and also by basically being tricked into thinking he is testing simulations...

    Actually commits a xenocide, of an entire alien species humanity has deemed as a potentially humanity ending threat.

    He then travels from Earth all the way out to the remains of the alien species he has destroyed, finds a single fertilized pupae (they're bugs), and then basically tries, in secret from the human government, to revive the otherwise extinct species... such is his guilt over what he has done.

    There's just one character who is maybe a decent example of this duality, our paradoxical nature.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Yes!!

    Exactly!
    Ender was set up to show the duality of what we are capable of (the result), but made things ez(ish?) for the cause (high stakes). A few other works "of fiction" (well, basically every sci-fi empire, modeled ofc after non-fiction ones, or even a controlled experiment like in the Rama series) show how are we capable of such duality for much more mondaine causes (petty personal/political/economical interest, even if not really effective or just temporary - one smol personal win over an entire species if practically possible).

    But, imho, both is just self-interest (not the unobtainable "objective greater good"), appreciating something when humanity has nothing to wage it against is ez. It just adds to our life experience - much the same way it adds to it to enslave that thing & subject it to horrors beyond imagining for some profit.
    Basically Ender looking at it as individual got the best ("most"?) experience he thought he could, didn't he? (I'm not saying it was premeditated.) All the saving/slaughtering and all the saving. I think the duality (def a real thing ofc) is just the entitlement of wanting everything & on our terms.

    Eg. on Earth even in the most oppressive slavery regimes you always find stories of how someone "liked" some slave & gave them a """better""" life (only very comparatively to the system they support).
    It is the duality of human nature, but bcs both things sum up better for us - if both isn't possible we default to the first one (again, on average/historically speaking).

    Tl;dr: yes, duality, but I never understood why there is mysticism around it's existence, it's just that we want as much things as possible & when pleasurable.
    We mostly just take ("what we can" being the limit).

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I don't think that... generally, nor specifically in the case of Ender... that it is about wanting to personally have some kind of total spectrum experience of all possible experiences, as some kind of... maximalist sensory/mindstate fetish kind of thing.

    There for sure are probably some people like that, but I'd say thats very uncommon.

    What I think is more commone is two things:

    Despite having base tendencies we often fall back to, humans just vary, significantly, in terms of how they tend to act toward others.

    and

    People are capable of actual, real world character development, of doing something and thinking it was good at the time... and realize they were wrong, learning, growing, changing, maybe not in totality, but in very significant and impactful ways.

    This is not often as common or extreme in the real world as it is in our stories... but that we emphasize this in our stories also means something about us.

    It is about a wide spectrum of potential in all humans, not necessarily a single person exhibiting the whole spectrum, not out of some kind of... experiential hedonism.

    At least, thats how I see it.

    Another defining trait of humans is that we will do things explicitly against our own self interest, out of an adherence to a moral doctrine or dogma, or, making ones own moral decisions about what is wrong and right, to the point of great personal sacrifice.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Oh, no, I never meant Ender as about "total experience" or hedonism (that also why I pointed out that it wasn't premeditated).

    Just that the duality is a sort of step-by-step consequence where firstly Ender had/chose one experience & only after that one the other (when presented with the second choice he already "just" had the first experience and wasn't wishing more of it).

    We are made of experience & less of premeditation.

    Sorry, I don't actuality think Ender works as this example, too young & the story/the genocide presented as an too easy choice (and I'm to clumsy with words to express myself properly).

    But, with a lot of changes imagine the characters first choice being on the planet to save the eqq queen (as if that was a separate Ender) - the choice between not being destructive & assuring humanity is safe.

    And I still agree with everything you wrote abut humans basically, my sub-point was somewhere within that

    Another defining trait of humans is that we will do things explicitly against our own self interest, out of an adherence to a moral doctrine or dogma, or, making ones own moral decisions about what is wrong and right, to the point of great personal sacrifice.

    Yes, but in Ender's that against self interest is saving a bug, not eg deciding to stop fighting & let humanity fall (if he had known it wasn't a sim).

    The 'against self-interest' is usually so smol that it's basically like having a pet - I have to feed it & sometimes it's work (the return is in the feeling, the experience, and friendship - and to that, I'm saying that saving a potentially dangerous species is a bit similar to that one person).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Sorry for not replying to this for a while, been busy/distracted.

    Basically: Ah, I have misunderstood you somewhat, thank you for the corrections, and well basically I agree completely.

    Only possibly thing I could add is that uh... yeah, Ender's version of 'against self interest'... is itself potentially genocidal to humanity, it is very extreme, so... yeah that aspect of it is pretty rare in fiction, its usually nowhere near that grand...

    So yeah I agree, Ender probably is not the best example of a more 'normal' version of that.

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