LS Re: the four levels


Hettinger (hettingr@iglou.com)
Sun, 9 Aug 1998 17:49:25 +0100


Hi, Magnus, Diana and LS!

What fun!

> Magnus:
> > Let's see, imagine a small society, say a
> > spaceship on an interstellar voyage to a nearby star. The trip will
> > take several decades and every crew member have a specific job
> > during that time. Suddenly, one of them dies, but the brilliant
> > crew is able to build a replacement robot that does the job of the
> > dead crew member so that the society can survive. One by one,
> > the human crew members die but all are replaced by robots.
> > When the last human dies, the robot crew replaces her also and
> > carries on.
> > Now, what is this? Is it still a society? Is it not? If it's not,
> > when did it cease to be a society? If it is a society, where are the
> > biological building blocks? Or is a society not dependent on
> > biological building blocks?
>

Magnus,
I see no doubt that the robots are a set of social patterns, made with
inorganic building blocks, but not biological.

The social patterns are a subset of human social patterns, and they are
preserved within the robots' functions. As Diana says, not everything
human
has been replicated.

> Diana:
> According to the explanations of social value given by Pirsig it would
> be impossible to built robots that can function socially like humans.
> Such robots would have to understand and respond Dynamically to values
> such as charisma, fashion, celebrity, ego, shame, humor. That is what
> the social level of the MoQ is about and that is what AI has yet to
> prove.

  I think the deciding point on whether the robots are a "society" would
be
whether this social grouping can, itself, grow (ie react with DQ),
whether
on human terms, such as charisma, etc or on new hitherto-unknown
patterns
created from their own robot balance points.

Of course, you and I talk about "social" very differently, and I might
have
just figured out the difference. Perhaps it's the fact that when I say
sets
of social patterns I mean those interactions (within a society) that
oppose
biology (and intellect, where available). I think when you say
"society",
you are referring to viable sets of entities whose structure is enabled
by
what I refer to as social patterns.

But when I say patterns, I mean a function, and when you say pattern,
you
mean the society.

Help me out here.

Maggie

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