Philip K. Dick was right: we are becoming androids

[J_Rider]

Evolution

[FoolishOwl]

@Hypnosifl

The only one I can think of is with Rachael in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but she has the total lack of empathy typical of androids in that story, and from what I remember she wasn’t overly perturbed by the discovery.

As I remember the novel, after all the talk of how empathy was a uniquely human trait, we had a scene with androids in which it was clear they felt empathy just as much as humans. And then the protagonist shot them down while not feeling anything for them.

[popobawa4u]

Quite a few people have called me an android. But not many have described me as “becoming”!

[Hypnosifl]

I just read it for the first time about a month ago, I don’t remember any scene like that. Towards the end there was a scene illustrating their complete lack of empathy, where the mutant (or ‘chickenhead’ in the novel’s slang) J.R. Isidore was excited to find a spider in his apartment (all animals were rare in the post-nuclear future), where he was letting the androids hide out, and they horrified him by casually pulling half its legs off to see how it would affect its ability to walk. In addition, Rachael killed the goat which Deckard had just bought, as an act of casual cruelty.

[Kimmo]

@gurglegurglebangbang

but is the question really ‘what makes a human less alive’, and not more ‘what does it really mean to be alive’, ‘what is the true definition of living’.

What’s the meaning of life, you ask?

Experience.

To the extent that a system can experience stimulus, it is alive.

[Kimmo]

@popobawa4u

This all might be somewhat relevant to Dick’s religious tendencies, which could be classified as Gnosticism. This kind of thought/practice generally has nothing to do with “worship”, but rather overcoming unthinking, unfeeling behaviors to strive to be as alive as possible at any given moment. Which resonates, as dphilby said with the outlook of Gurdjieff.

Some modern cognitive scientists have gone so far as to suggest that people are not particularly “sentient” - they just like to think that they are. The “self” is just a handy wrapper which ties your sensory impressions together, and helps them to jive with memories. Analyze the habits and they pass through one’s fingers like sand. Likewise with ideas, identities, memories, etc. In practice, this tends to be alarming for many people, so they put up a big edifice and choose to be deaf and blind to its contradictions and inconsistencies. Humans may not attain Truth with a capital T, but I think their lives tend to be rather different depending upon how accepting they are of how their minds work in the world, versus clinging to preconceived notions of self and surroundings. I suspect these can seen as poles which all people tend to oscillate between.

Word to the man. Nice.

[gurglegurglebangbang]

@Kimmo

What’s the meaning of life, you ask?

Experience.

To the extent that a system can experience stimulus, it is alive.

I was not asking, but do not mind your input.

I would tend to say life is love, and the meaning of life is love.

Could the word “experience” be synonymous with that? Perhaps. After all, “love” like “experience” are both very abstract words and can mean many different things. Someone who truly loves skiing, for instance, would have a much more powerful experience skiing then someone who does not.

“Love” is perhaps more abstract, because that gets into complex motives, and tracking back “why we experience” something according to “love” is very often not a straight line – especially when that love is related to other people.

If there is anyone whom I think might be said “not to be alive”, it is those who have little to no love. For instance, sociopaths incapable of any manner of empathy.

If they have no empathy, then they are not really aware of the existence of other human beings, and so they do not experience them as they are. Instead, it is simply mechanics, observations which have mechanical points, but no real understanding, and so, therefore, no real experience.

[spejic]

@popobawa4u

The ultimate “reality check” is that the universe does not care what you want! Nor does the rest of your biosphere. For the observant person, I think this can be a reliable way out of the maze of instinct and ideology.

If reality beyond the human condition is unpopular, it then merely suggests how the social structures which condition humans tend to foster delusion.

This is hardly new. From the moment mankind has had enough free time to think about the world they have realized this, as anyone who read the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes knows. The structures you talk about aren’t delusions, they are distractions. The world isn’t 1984, it’s Brave New World, and it’s just the way we want it.

[popobawa4u]

@spejic

This is hardly new. From the moment mankind has had enough free time to think about the world they have realized this, as anyone who read the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes knows.

What does being “new” have to do with anything? I agree that one can get this from the Christian bible, but my experience has been that many adherents simply project their person concerns onto their deity instead. I don’t remember Ecclesiastes specifically. But many interpret Christian thought in a way that anthropomorphises cosmology.

@spejic

The structures you talk about aren’t delusions, they are distractions.

They can be both. By “delusion” I mean to say that people’s models of reality are easily demonstrated as not keeping pace with their understanding of the world. Like how modern people still speak of sunrise and sunset, centuries after learning that model to be inapplicable. People might not think of this as delusion, but it can hardly be described as accurate.

@spejic

The world isn’t 1984, it’s Brave New World, and it’s just the way we want it.

Who precisely are “we”? I will recommend that you might want to speak for yourself, there.

[Steve_Nordquist]

Yeah, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop as far as Shortbus with contentedness pills being a satisfactory endgame, or the lede panning out into a nicer setpiece where nicer robot girls are seeing good things played out for them to make wonders of. Maybe there’s a film version of Book of Ecclesiastes or Brave New World that reads pretty much like Double Indemnity with nicer hardware.