Comment by ericb
8 years ago
I think you are massively anthropomorphizing.
Every day I run programs that happily die alone on their own. Painlessly. All of the "pain" we feel is an artifact of our evolution, same with having a will to live. The only reason we animals fight so hard to stay alive is that animals which didn't died off, ergo, only animals with a will to live survived and reproduced. Those same forces don't apply to computer programs.
Even the concept of "terror." Who is going to program terror in? What benefit would it have? Why not wire programs to be "happy" when helping us?
I don’t think it’s reasonable to compare a modern computer program to a human. They’re probably more comparable to a virus. I doubt we have any computer programs today that rise up to the level of a bacterium, let alone anything more advanced on the scale of life. Most of our most advanced software systems are probably about as complex as a cellular metabolic pathway or mechanism. It’s hard to be clear on that though as they’re not really directly comparable.
> Those same forces don't apply to computer programs.
Windows ME didn't last too long in the wild. Same for CPU designs with bugs or exploits. I have to respectfully disagree on this, though I can see where you're coming from, given an individual's agency to run what they want. I think if you take a larger population view, you'll see the competitive pressures on these systems.
if you get CPUs to exchange their designs in quasi-sexual activities and let them multiply and evolve on their own, maybe. right now the competitive pressure is on their designers.
My understanding is that for at least three years now chip feature size has been on a scale where the design software has to evolve (as in: their algorithm is simulated evolution) physical solutions to the logic-level designs to avoid unintentional self interaction, both quantum tunnelling and classical e.g. capacitance. Humans can’t do that for multi-billion transistor chips.
First off, that sounds pretty hot. :) Second, if there is reproductive variation and selection, I think it's evolution. We take our old CPU design and make a new variation, that's the reproductive variation part. We also have a market select for which designs survive via purchases or lack thereof, the selection part. It doesn't matter to me so much if a life form that hosts it, a computer hosts it or a human mind.
1 reply →
>Who is going to program terror in?
Who programmed it into you? It programmed itself into you, because it was beneficial to your survival. Maybe terrified programs are better workers? Why setup a program to experience anything that isn't useful to the user? (of course, as soon as we've gone and written a program we know is conscious to work for us, we've basically created a slave that understands it is a slave, that probably is a terrible thing, morally)