Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Sat, 29 Aug 1998 04:47:58 +0100
Mon, 24 Aug 1998 14:49:43 -0700
Don Yamandu Ploskonka y Rivas <yama@adinet.com.uy>
wrote:
> Bodvar Skutvik wrote:
> > Diana McPartlin wrote:
> > > 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.
> Something like this happened to the US Communist Party as it became
> infiltrated by the FBI. It might not be metaphysical, but the example
> serves at least on the sociological level
> > But what about the Intellectual value dimension, would the robots
> > enter that plane too?
> I am not sure of the details, and I do not know if those agents were
> actually aware that they already were a majority of the higher level
> commitees. As far as I know the Party kept functioning, issuing
> manifestoes and such, until the FBI was prohibited to continue there,
> and thus left a sort of empty shell when it eventually quit.
Don Yamandu. Welcome to the Lila Squad.
Not metaphysical? This is meta-metaphysical, and "infiltrate" is
perhaps the correct term for Magnus' original robot example.
Diana doubted if robots would be able to react to or "perceive"
social quality (signals) such as fashion, shame, ego, charisma and
humour. In other words, that would not be a true "society". I
doubted it (Magnus' assertion) on the ground that the robots would
not be truly "living", but maintained that if the imitation were
faultless they would operate as long as it lasted. On the question of
Intellect: again - if they mimicked society perfectly, nobody could
tell.....as long as it lasted
And I think what Don Yamandu here says sort of supports that.
A virus isn't true life, but it may infiltrate an organism by
mimicking certain features (that fools the Bio-immune system
(the self-not self caracteristics are faked). This ability is
harmful to the particular organism involved, but hardly to Biology as
such.
Transferred to the spaceship and/or political party examples it
can be said that even if one particular society is infiltrated the
social level as such is unscathed. The communist party went on for
a long time, and no one could tell the difference. But as I hinted
to: if robots are destroyed Q-evolution would start along the
original (carbon molecular) lines. Likewise a "communist" party
run by FBI was an empty shell when abandoned. A similar
social body would have to start anew as a marxist devoted
movement.
Unless - in Don Yamandu's example - one or two agents were brainwashed
by their own undercover activity and became convinced communists and
in turn "infiltrated" FBI in a spy vs spy fashion, whereupon I
capitulate :-).
Bodvar
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