Nov 23 2011: True. I can see it happening. My question is, can society remain stable within such a system. Will the increased wealth from robotics serve to increase the general well being of society, or will it serve the elite who own the facilities that house and maintain them and who control the dispersement of their production, leaving the ordinary citizens with very few employment prospects due to their inability to compete with a roboticized workforce. I personally lean toward the former, but I can see the danger of the latter.
Nov 21 2011: 1 - Aging controls population, and eliminates those organisms that are no longer better suited to the environment.
2 - The illusion that evolution is there to solve problems is just that, an illusion. Evolution is merely the name we have given to the process by which living species adapt to their environments and in general become more complex. In order for evolution to work, honestly, the species needs to keep dying to make room in the environment for the young.
3 - If you must look at evolution as a process that benefits something, I think Richard Dawkin's has it pretty much wrapped up in the selfish gene. It is not the individual but the genes which are served worse or better by a trait, and aging is extremely beneficial to the adaptation of species, which in turn is beneficial to the survival of the majority of genes in that species. A species that does not age becomes either stuck in an adaptive rut, or consumes all the resources.
Nov 18 2011: I think Integrated Information Theory (IIT) explains it quite well actually. The brain is not a single processor, it is many billions of very weak micro-processors all functioning at the same time. The power of the brain is not it's ability to compute accurately, but it's ability to integrate portions of many streams of information into a single "picture" which is an instant of consciousness.
Nov 18 2011: I think that perhaps the problem is in the term "map", I think a better term is "model". Certainly any improvement we make to the model will improve our understanding of how the mind arises from grey matter. The question then becomes, will a perfect model perfectly explain how that mechanism operates. My first answer would be that by definition the model would be imperfect without explaining that mechanism. My second answer would be that the sort of map that you seem to be talking about would be far inferior to a perfect model, and therefore would not perfectly explain consciousness.
Nov 18 2011: I think personal universal language translation is about a decade away. Language is one of the great barriers to the inter-connection of cultures, and if that technology becomes a reality I think we will start to see a lot more travel between areas of the world, and more importantly it will become much more difficult for countries like China to filter what information their population has access to. Already things like website translation have revolutionized access to information from other cultures, I'm looking forward to the day when language is more of a thin film than a brick wall in terms of our communication.
Nov 18 2011: I would say the obvious answer is to make those stories into experiences. I posted already a diatribe on the subject, but I think interactive media would be the perfect way to bridge that gap between telling someone about an experience which evokes empathy, and having a person actually experience that emotion. I have long thought that the best way to help the first world appreciate what it is like to live in the third world would be to create an engaging interactive story which takes place there, and put the user in the role of someone trying to survive. Perhaps as a young woman in Somalia right now for example. I have no doubt an interactive piece of entertainment like that would change minds. The hard part will be creating one which is engaging enough that the user will not turn it off to protect their more comfortable model of the world. I think it can be done however.
Nov 18 2011: As a software engineer and avid "Gamer" I am struck by the type of interactions that are being promoted in video games and have been since the inception of the medium. Video Games are the media of the next generation. They are playing call of duty far more hours than they are watching television. For the developed world I believe this is becoming the norm. If we are going to increase empathy in the next generation, cross culture, I think we need to provide experiences in this medium which are engaging and create empathic reactions in the player. One amazing example (while somewhat sexist) is the game ICO by Japan Studio. It's rather dated now, but nearly the entire game mechanic is driven off of causing the player to empathize for and want to protect Yurda (a frail young girl). What's more, the character interacts with the player entirely without words (she does not speak english or japanese) and instead uses body language and physical emotes, so the experience is the same no matter which culture you are from. Upon reading this topic I immediately thought of the juxtaposition of ICO (which was made in Japan) and Call of Duty (which was made in the US). One is an amazing training tool for empathy, while the other seems to be an amazing training tool for shameless one-up-manship and the disregarding of any human life not "on your team". We need artists with vision in this industry if we are going to create cross-cultural experiences like ICO that expand the next generation's capacity for empathy. I could go on for hours, but the conversation is closing :]
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A reply on Conversation: If menial labor is necessary for society to function, can society be made more equal by robotic automation?
A comment on Conversation: Why evolution could never solve aging?
2 - The illusion that evolution is there to solve problems is just that, an illusion. Evolution is merely the name we have given to the process by which living species adapt to their environments and in general become more complex. In order for evolution to work, honestly, the species needs to keep dying to make room in the environment for the young.
3 - If you must look at evolution as a process that benefits something, I think Richard Dawkin's has it pretty much wrapped up in the selfish gene. It is not the individual but the genes which are served worse or better by a trait, and aging is extremely beneficial to the adaptation of species, which in turn is beneficial to the survival of the majority of genes in that species. A species that does not age becomes either stuck in an adaptive rut, or consumes all the resources.
A reply on Conversation: Can a map of the Brain really explain the complexities of consciousness?
A reply on Conversation: Can a map of the Brain really explain the complexities of consciousness?
A reply on Conversation: How can creatives use new technologies to increase empathy across cultural and geographic distances?
A reply on Conversation: How can creatives use new technologies to increase empathy across cultural and geographic distances?
A comment on Conversation: How can creatives use new technologies to increase empathy across cultural and geographic distances?