Is it OK to torture a robot?

Seems pretty obvious - empathy has nothing to do with souls. Empathy is a rather imprecise instinct that we apply to things that we perceive as being like us. Depending on how we grow up, it can be expansive, including all animals, or narrow, including only people of our immediate tribe of ethnically similar co-religionists.

We empathize with this thing for one reason, it’s movements are very human in appearance. That’s it. Empathy isn’t some great, sophisticated thing. It’s powerful, and critical to our society, but it isn’t a genius.

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Yes, absolutely - it’s called Quality Assurance (QA) and I would expect it to have been done quite thoroughly to any piece of equipment capable of tearing my arms off.

This is like a question of “is it torture for my kid to run the electric window in my car up and down repeatedly?”
Yes, for me, and bad for the car, but (what’s the opposite of “OK”?) is it wrong? No. Not at all.

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Its OK to torture:

  1. Bender, because he would probably think its some sort of weird robosexual act on your part and he craves attention.
  2. C3PO for being the most useless droid in a galaxy far far away
  3. Any given Terminator, because he would do the same to you if he had the chance.
  4. Commander Data because he can be such a smug bastard
  5. Any robot or android which seeks out “what is known as emotions” because torment is one of those and you are doing them a favor

It is not OK to torture:

  1. R2D2 because not only is he cute and useful, but surprisingly hard to kill
  2. Marvin because, really? What are you going to do to him which could possibly be any worse than he has already experienced or felt?
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I’d say the arguments don’t say if it is OK or not, but that in these two cases it is pointless.

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“Also, you don’t have a soul either, and if you disagree, then just show it to me.”

Like dark matter and dark energy, the soul can neither be seen, measured, nor observed. And yet, it must exist, because reality fails to make sense without it.

Okay…show me a single aspect of reality that doesn’t make sense without souls.

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I can easily reply in kind about dark matter and dark energy.

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Dark matter is posited because objective measurements predict a certain amount of mass. Souls are posited because humans want to think they are exceptional and want to live forever. There is nothing about life, or human life, that requires a “soul,” so it is nothing like dark matter.

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You could… But it wouldn’t make as much sense as replying “orange” to the same post.

Also, you didn’t answer the question. You started out with an assertion you haven’t backed up, and then when called on it, you changed the subject with a different question.

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The ‘eFuse’ is probably worth a mention as well: it is a hardware component specifically designed to be damaged in software. Basically the same principle as an ordinary fuse; but integrated onto the IC die and fabricated by the same process as the rest of the logic. Depending on what the designer wishes, they can be used as write-once storage for things like serial numbers or systems that resist firmware downgrades; or they can cut power to entire sections of a chip if suitably placed.

That’s a part where failure is the feature; but it’s another irreversible change you can make from the software side.

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So I am hearing that they are both non-sensical kludges to make sense of reality – to make the math work – which is what I originally suggested.

There is no math for souls. So, no, your analogy remains wrong.

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That baby looks like Irvine Welsh.

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mis amigos

  • if noun is plural you use mis
  • if friends all male or mixed you use amigos. if all female you’d use amigas

( I wouldn’t have mentioned anything but it is Grammar Day :slightly_smiling:

Torture responsibly :slight_smile:

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You still have said nothing to back up the claim that souls exist, and that humans have them. Nor have you defined what you mean by the term soul. So while you may actually be in favor of something that may exist, you have failed to adequately explain what you even mean. So keep in mind, we’re arguing about something there’s literally no evidence for. You may be talking about something completely different.

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Hey the machines torture us, we should be able to torture them.

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while fish get knocked down several ranks in importance(enough that some ‘vegetarians’ will eat them) largely because they aren’t fuzzy

There is a very rational reason to eat fish and not mammals and it has nothing to do with fuzziness. It’s phylogenetic distance, which is the only objective measurement of difference. Everybody lives off the corpses of our fellow earthlings, the only difference is how long the time of divergence from us needs to be for the corpses to be acceptable as food. People who are cannibals have that distance as 0. Those who eat bush-meat primates but not humans have a slightly longer distance, those who eat mammals but not primates, longer still, those who eat fish but not mammals, yet longer still. I find it interesting that that there hasn’t been a bacteriovore movement, as such people could lord it over mere vegans because they don’t even eat fellow eukaryotes.

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I’m not convinced that dark matter or dark energy exist. If you have to make something up from scratch to make your equation work, start with another hypothesis or a better equation.

A variation of that same argument is used to explain why souls cannot exist: humans are egocentric and want to live forever, the soul is that invisible dark energy that gives us that ability.

Souls, dark matter, and dark energy appear to give sense to the universe. I can show you my soul through my emotions, my priorities, the things I will and will not tolerate. Can you show me your dark energy?

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I do not mean the cartoon ghost with wings and a halo. I do not mean anything that comes before and leaves after. I do mean the spiritual, emotional being that is more than the sum of its chemical parts.

You haven’t demonstrated how that is evidence of a “soul” rather than of a functioning brain, nor that emotions, priorities and tolerances require more than a brain. You keep moving the goal posts.

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