Transhumanism/AI Worship is Evil

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: A computer can modify its own programs under certain circumstances.  A computer is NOT a rock.  It has a complicate internal state structure.  All the rock has is thermodynamic microstates. And a few chemical potentials.

Kyle Jacob Biodrowski wrote on another thread: AI's have already passed a Turing Test. They passed it in the sense that the humans couldn't consistently distinguish human from machine. end quote

A plot twist at least one SciFi writer has used is to create an immersion program *for a seemingly sentient computer program.* During that program, the computerized brain experiences life as we know it, including joys, and dangers that can terminate it. It learns to avoid pain and to conquer danger. And to seek joy and companionship with other programs. The result is growth and eventually sentience.

In one of the old letters I referenced there is also the possibility of allowing both sides of human brains to grow and from conception or at some point in growth and programming/experience the two halves are severed and one half is transplanted to a cloned, brainless, human body.    

Peter  

[Brant Gaede]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

*A thing apart*.

The biggest problem to me in my life has been figuring out how individuals view their own consciousness.

Appears they see it either:

1. as a spiritual entity,

2. as a mental calculator.

Both times it is something OF them, but not THEM. For both, consciousness is 'unknowable'.

If it was religion, Descartes, Hume, Kant -or all those- to answer to that, is less important against what are its destructive effects.

Why is that "the biggest problem" for you in your life? If there is a problem, why not introspect? My consciousness, for instance, is not unknowable to me--only yours, and everybody else's. You, btw, haven't seemed to have figured out anything about others' except for what they told you. How and when did they? You seem to lack any real data. If we say "1" and "2" are correct, why have you made it either or? Relabeling thinking as calculating--now, that's somewhat interesting. It imparts some lucidity to what our brains are used for.

--Brant

I suspect you have introspected--"I suspect" is a courtesy throw in

[Brant Gaede]

24 minutes ago, Peter said:

Ba’al wrote: A computer can modify its own programs under certain circumstances.  A computer is NOT a rock.  It has a complicate internal state structure.  All the rock has is thermodynamic microstates. And a few chemical potentials.

Kyle Jacob Biodrowski wrote on another thread: AI's have already passed a Turing Test. They passed it in the sense that the humans couldn't consistently distinguish human from machine. end quote

A plot twist at least one SciFi writer has used is to create an immersion program *for a seemingly sentient computer program.* During that program, the computerized brain experiences life as we know it, including joys, and dangers that can terminate it. It learns to avoid pain and to conquer danger. And to seek joy and companionship with other programs. The result is growth and eventually sentience.

In one of the old letters I referenced there is also the possibility of allowing both sides of human brains to grow and from conception or at some point in growth and programming/experience the two halves are severed and one half is transplanted to a cloned, brainless, human body.    

Peter

A brainless human body is a dead body. Sticking a brain into it won't make it come to life.

--Brant

but good luck, Dr. Frankenstein, wherever you are

[anthony]

25 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Why is that "the biggest problem" for you in your life? If there is a problem, why not introspect? My consciousness, for instance, is not unknowable to me--only yours, and everybody else's. You, btw, haven't seemed to have figured out anything about others' except for what they told you. How and when did they? You seem to lack any real data. If we say "1" and "2" are correct, why have you made it either or? Relabeling thinking as calculating--now, that's somewhat interesting. It imparts some lucidity to what our brains are used for.

--Brant

I suspect you have introspected--"I suspect" is a courtesy throw in

My problem, if I wasn't clear, is with ~other~ individuals. You've not known those who demonstrate little sense of self? For all their calculating there's nobody at home.

[anthony]

And btw it's not something you have to be told, you induct it over time from their actions and words.

[anthony]

Apt here, I think.

"I am I".

The breathtakingly simple truth of that statement with which Stephen Boydstun concluded a recent essay. Identically and consistently, there are many who have no awareness of, or disparage: "A is A".

 

[BaalChatzaf]

9 hours ago, anthony said:

*A thing apart*.

The biggest problem to me in my life has been figuring out how individuals view their own consciousness.

Appears they see it either:

1. as a spiritual entity,

2. as a mental calculator.

Both times it is something OF them, but not THEM. For both, consciousness is 'unknowable'.

If it was religion, Descartes, Hume, Kant -or all those- to answer to that, is less important against what are its destructive effects.

Consciousness is a brain activity.  It is electro-chemical in nature.  There is nothing about us humans that is not physical.

[Peter]

Don't know about that Ba'al. I am not saying molecular, electro-chemical is spiritual but beginning with perhaps mammals, there is more than instinctual, hard wired machinery. Just consider the emotions you have. Does your blood boil? Or do you experience SOMETHING? If you were without a psychological essence you could not experience satisfaction. You can't have the psychology without the molecular, electrical, and chemical but it is a least the illusion of a self . . . but could a machine have an illusion? Think. Stop that numbers crunching you robot!

Peter 

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, Peter said:

Don't know about that Ba'al. I am not saying molecular, electro-chemical is spiritual but beginning with perhaps mammals, there is more than instinctual, hard wired machinery. Just consider the emotions you have. Does your blood boil? Or do you experience SOMETHING? If you were without a psychological essence you could not experience satisfaction. You can't have the psychology without the molecular, electrical, and chemical but it is a least the illusion of a self . . . but could a machine have an illusion? Think. Stop that numbers crunching you robot!

Peter 

My blood will boil if the ambient pressure is sufficiently low.   My blood is a physical  brew in the liquid state with a lot of solid thing floating around in it.  What is your blood? Experience is an epiphenomina  of the electro chemical processes taking place in my brain (mostly).  Don't let subjectivities fool  you into thinking something unphysical and supernatural is happening. 

[william.scherk]

On 4/10/2016 at 1:29 PM, Peter Taylor, quoting former Mrs Dr Hsieh, now Brickell and unpublic. said:

Bissell inverts the hierarchy of concepts by explaining the lower-level concept of consciousness in terms of the dependent, higher-level concept of introspection.  Consequently, the meaning of “introspective awareness” is rendered completely unclear, given that it usually refers to awareness of our own mental states, not awareness of our brain states.  Additionally, by describing consciousness as awareness of brain states, Bissell seems to have provided a theory of mind more consistent with idealism or representationalism rather than the realism espoused by Objectivism.

           

Despite these critiques, Bissell's arguments are often interesting and compelling—and deserve more attention than given here.

Roger, have you read much of Antonio Damasio?

Edited May 17, 2016 by william.scherk
Added reference to mythical huntress of the Objectivish moors ...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Roger, have you read much of Antonio Damasio?

Or how about David Gelernter?

Here's a book that just came out that I am now reading: The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness by David Gelernter. He's into artificial intelligence and neuroscience. This guy is one of the heavies. (He even got bombed by Unabomber for his work.)

See him speak at Google Talks (he's not a good speaker, but he has great content). 

This talk is very good, but his book is turning out to be so much better.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Or how about David Gelernter?

Here's a book that just came out that I am now reading: The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness by David Gelernter. He's into artificial intelligence and neuroscience. This guy is one of the heavies. (He even got bombed by Unabomber for his work.)

See him speak at Google Talks (he's not a good speaker, but he has great content). 

This talk is very good, but his book is turning out to be so much better.

Michael

I get the impression that the Unabomber took Gerlenter's right hand.  It seems to be a prosthetic. 

[william.scherk]

 

 

On 5/17/2016 at 6:01 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

On 5/16/2016 at 10:06 AM, william.scherk said:

On 5/16/2016 at 10:06 AM, william.scherk said:

On 4/10/2016 at 1:29 PM, Peter Taylor, quoting former Mrs Dr Hsieh, now Brickell/Mertz and retired from public duties, said:

Bissell inverts the hierarchy of concepts by explaining the lower-level concept of consciousness in terms of the dependent, higher-level concept of introspection.

Roger, have you read much of Antonio Damasio?

Or how about David Gelernter?

I hadn't heard of this guy. I was curious if he and Damasio had some overlap in their concepts of consciousness, and they do to some degree. Both are chary of a categorical functionalism that disregards the body, embodiment, emotion, proto-consciousness. I will read a bit more of Gelernter to see if his spectrum of consciousness intersects meaningfully with Damasio's theory, but so far it does only in opposition to the strict materialists in current squabbles in the philosophy of consciousness. 

Gelernter has a hate-list, though, and it is extensive, and it seems to intersect modern Objectivish concerns at several points -- in culture war, rotten higher education, individualism.  When I get the book you recommend I will be interested to see who he cites as scientific support for his opinions. It looks like he weaves Jungian psychology in with literature and philosophy in a fun way, so there you go.  His book America Lite looks like a total rouser.  I think he would very much appeal to Bob Kolker. He seems to have a few good civilizational tips for Christianity that comport with Bob's moral anchoring in Judaism. 

I was hoping to draw Roger out on the subject of consciousness, and the fragment of oomph from fmr Dr Mrs Dr. The Damasio concept of levels of consciousness (my crib term) might be close to that cited as Roger's, and thus fruitful indeed. Anyhow, the Wikipedia article on his theory is brief and to the point so the comparison can be made ...

Quote

Here's a book that just came out that I am now reading: The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness by David Gelernter.

Here is some material from a fairly long Gelernter article a couple of years back. It is concerned with consciousness and much else, and shows  a rousing style and harsh rhetoric. That is sometimes attractive around here, whether the arguments are sound or  valid or not. 

Two excerpts from The Closing of the Scientific Mind: Reflections on the zombie-scientist problem, Jan 1, 2014.

 

Quote

 

Bullying Nagel.

The modern “mind fields” encompass artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind. Researchers in these fields are profoundly split, and the chaos was on display in the ugliness occasioned by the publication of Thomas Nagel’s Mind & Cosmos in 2012. Nagel is an eminent philosopher and professor at NYU. In Mind & Cosmos, he shows with terse, meticulous thoroughness why mainstream thought on the workings of the mind is intellectually bankrupt. He explains why Darwinian evolution is insufficient to explain the emergence of consciousness—the capacity to feel or experience the world. He then offers his own ideas on consciousness, which are speculative, incomplete, tentative, and provocative—in the tradition of science and philosophy.

Nagel was immediately set on and (symbolically) beaten to death by all the leading punks, bullies, and hangers-on of the philosophical underworld. Attacking Darwin is the sin against the Holy Ghost that pious scientists are taught never to forgive. Even worse, Nagel is an atheist unwilling to express sufficient hatred of religion to satisfy other atheists. There is nothing religious about Nagel’s speculations; he believes that science has not come far enough to explain consciousness and that it must press on. He believes that Darwin is not sufficient.

The intelligentsia was so furious that it formed a lynch mob. In May 2013, theChronicle of Higher Education ran a piece called “Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong.” One paragraph was notable:

Whatever the validity of [Nagel’s] stance, its timing was certainly bad. The war between New Atheists and believers has become savage, with Richard Dawkins writing sentences like, “I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sadomasochistic, and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad….” In that climate, saying anything nice at all about religion is a tactical error.

It’s the cowardice of the Chronicle’s statement that is alarming—as if the only conceivable response to a mass attack by killer hyenas were to run away. Nagel was assailed; almost everyone else ran.

The Kurzweil Cult.

The voice most strongly associated with what I’ve termed roboticism is that of Ray Kurzweil, a leading technologist and inventor. The Kurzweil Cult teaches that, given the strong and ever-increasing pace of technological progress and change, a fateful crossover point is approaching. He calls this point the “singularity.” After the year 2045 (mark your calendars!), machine intelligence will dominate human intelligence to the extent that men will no longer understand machines any more than potato chips understand mathematical topology. Men will already have begun an orgy of machinification—implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-tuning their own and their children’s genetic material. Kurzweil believes in “transhumanism,” the merging of men and machines. He believes human immortality is just around the corner. He works for Google.

Whether he knows it or not, Kurzweil believes in and longs for the death of mankind. Because if things work out as he predicts, there will still be life on Earth, but no human life. To predict that a man who lives forever and is built mainly of semiconductors is still a man is like predicting that a man with stainless steel skin, a small nuclear reactor for a stomach, and an IQ of 10,000 would still be a man. In fact we have no idea what he would be.

Each change in him might be defended as an improvement, but man as we know him is the top growth on a tall tree in a large forest: His kinship with his parents and ancestors and mankind at large, the experience of seeing his own reflection in human history and his fellow man—those things are the crucial part of who he is. If you make him grossly different, he is lost, with no reflection anywhere he looks. If you make lots of people grossly different, they are all lost together—cut adrift from their forebears, from human history and human experience. Of course we do know that whatever these creatures are, untransformed men will be unable to keep up with them. Their superhuman intelligence and strength will extinguish mankind as we know it, or reduce men to slaves or dogs. To wish for such a development is to play dice with the universe.

...]

That science should face crises in the early 21st century is inevitable. Power corrupts, and science today is the Catholic Church around the start of the 16th century: used to having its own way and dealing with heretics by excommunication, not argument.

Science is caught up, also, in the same educational breakdown that has brought so many other proud fields low. Science needs reasoned argument and constant skepticism and open-mindedness. But our leading universities have dedicated themselves to stamping them out—at least in all political areas. We routinely provide superb technical educations in science, mathematics, and technology to brilliant undergraduates and doctoral students. But if those same students have been taught since kindergarten that you are not permitted to question the doctrine of man-made global warming, or the line that men and women are interchangeable, or the multiculturalist idea that all cultures and nations are equally good (except for Western nations and cultures, which are worse), how will they ever become reasonable, skeptical scientists? They’ve been reared on the idea that questioning official doctrine is wrong, gauche, just unacceptable in polite society. (And if you are president of Harvard, it can get you fired.)

Beset by all this mold and fungus and corruption, science has continued to produce deep and brilliant work. Most scientists are skeptical about their own fields and hold their colleagues to rigorous standards. Recent years have seen remarkable advances in experimental and applied physics, planetary exploration and astronomy, genetics, physiology, synthetic materials, computing, and all sorts of other areas.

But we do have problems, and the struggle of subjective humanism against roboticism is one of the most important.

The moral claims urged on man by Judeo-Christian principles and his other religious and philosophical traditions have nothing to do with Earth’s being the center of the solar system or having been created in six days, or with the real or imagined absence of rational life elsewhere in the universe. The best and deepest moral laws we know tell us to revere human life and, above all, to be human: to treat all creatures, our fellow humans and the world at large, humanely. To behave like a human being (Yiddish: mensch) is to realize our best selves.

No other creature has a best self.

This is the real danger of anti-subjectivism, in an age where the collapse of religious education among Western elites has already made a whole generation morally wobbly. When scientists casually toss our human-centered worldview in the trash with the used coffee cups, they are re-smashing the sacred tablets, not in blind rage as Moses did, but in casual, ignorant indifference to the fate of mankind.

A world that is intimidated by science and bored sick with cynical, empty “postmodernism” desperately needs a new subjectivist, humanist, individualistworldview. We need science and scholarship and art and spiritual life to be fully human. The last three are withering, and almost no one understands the first.

The Kurzweil Cult is attractive enough to require opposition in a positive sense; alternative futures must be clear. The cults that oppose Kurzweilism are called Judaism and Christianity. But they must and will evolve to meet new dangers in new worlds. The central text of Judeo-Christian religions in the tech-threatened, Googleplectic West of the 21st century might well be Deuteronomy 30:19: “I summon today as your witnesses the heavens and the earth: I have laid life and death before you, the blessing and the curse; choose life and live!—you are your children.”

 

That Dang Kurzweil Kult!  Wait till Ed Hudgins reads this. 

Okay, to wind you down from the excitement engendered by Gelernter, Damasio having a live think at a TED thing. Their webpage contains a transcript of the Youtube version of the think. He is no Gelernter, but in his remarks captures the wonder and mystery of our senses of self, the individual human consciousness.

-- see more from Gelernter at Big Think, including a great potted bio.

 

Edited May 19, 2016 by william.scherk
Added link to Big Think's pages on the Gelernter.

[BaalChatzaf]

Kurtzweil is a genius inventor but I would not trust his judgement as a futurist.  Computers are not going to out-think and out-smart humans any time soon.Why? Because computers can only do what their human programmers tell them to do.   So called AI  is  nifty heuristic programming  and none of it emulates how humans think.  Humans can get outside the box.   Computers cannot.  

There is no recorded and vetted instance of a computer coming up with an original and creative idea with general application.  So far no computer has come up with a proof for any of the important theorems outstanding in mathematics and what is even more important is  that no  computer has ever formulated an important theorem to try to prove.  Human programmers  have yet to put subtle judgement  into their programs.  And do not think me a reactionary.  I worked in AI  for ten years during my misspent youth. 

[Brant Gaede]

Bob doesn't know God is a computer.

--Brant

quiet--don't tell him

[Peter]

If there were a computer program to help stock market traders make money, it would exist. Instead, the guys who make money *technically* use speed of response to what is occurring world-wide, as their big advantage. There was just a scandal where some dudes used phone lines more closely aligned with Wall Street lines to be a second quicker than others with their trades. I think their offices were in northern New Jersey and their lines went under the river.

There is too much chaos AND volitional human control over events to be able to predict what will happen in the short term. Now if there is a drought in Argentina that agricultural market is easily predictable. But the guys who scrutinize the Wall Street Journal or daily trade magazines on the internet and use computer programs to predict- do slightly better than the average “day trader.” I’ve never done that but I’ve read fictional books about it :- ) A local High School class a few years ago let the students use monopoly money to day trade and some were lucky and some were successful, rational investors but I don‘t remember the complete outcome. To me it is similar to going to the Casino to spin the wheel or pull the bandit’s arm.  Investing in general is similar. Mixed risk funds are better in the long term for your wallet and your potential nervousness. The bubble of debt now, and world market volatility is worse than in 1929. It's only a day away.  

Peter 

[Peter]

It's interesting that Jonah sent this to a site one minute after midnight. Some edited clips from, Who Are the Real Deniers of Science? By Jonah Goldberg, Posted: May 20, 2016 12:01 AM:

As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Science is the language of facts, and when people pretend to be speaking it, they're not only claiming that their preferences are more than mere opinions, they're also insinuating that anyone who disagrees is a fool or a zealot for objecting to "settled science."

Scientists are constantly questioning their understanding of things; that is what science does. All the great scientists of history are justly famous for overturning the assumptions of their fields.

Even more outrageous: If you dispute, say, the necessity of spending billions on windmills or on killing the coal industry, you are not merely wrong on climate change, you are "anti-science."

In the law, truth is a defense against the charge of slander, but for liberals, inconvenient truth is no defense against the charge of bigotry.

[Peter]

From: Ellen Moore To: Atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: Permission to Psychologize - Walter Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 14:35:02 -0500. Ayn Rand defined "The Psychology of Psychologizing" in her essay reprinted in The Voice of Reason, originally published in The Objectivist, March, 1971. 

"Psychologizing consists in condemning or excusing specific individuals on the grounds of their psychological problems, real or invented, in the absence of or contrary to factual evidence."

 

She described psychologizing as a "game that has many variants and ramifications, none of them innocent, a game that could be called a racket.  It consists, in essence, of substituting psychology for philosophy." She stated that many people use psychologizing "as a new form of mysticism: as a substitute for reason, cognition and objectivity, as an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment, both in the role of the judge and the judged." Rand explained why some people are psychologizers, it gives them - "The unearned status of an "authority," the chance to air arbitrary pronouncements and frighten people or manipulate them, are some of the psychologizer's lesser motives.  His basic motive is worse. Observe that he seldom discovers any virtuous or positive elements hidden in his victims' subconscious; what he claims to discover are vices, weaknesses, flaws.  What he seeks is a chance to condemn - to pronounce a negative moral judgment, not on the grounds of objective evidence, but on the grounds of some intangible, unprovable processes in a man's subconscious untranslated into action.  This means: a chance to subvert morality."

 

"The basic motive of most psychologizers is *hostility*.  Caused by a profound self-doubt ...  he feels a chronic need to justify himself by demonstrating their evil, by seeking it, by hunting for it - and by inventing it.  The discovery of actual evil in a specific individual is a painful experience for a moral person.  But observe the almost triumphant glee with which a psychologizer discovers some ineffable evil in some bewildered victim.  He deludes himself into the belief that he is demonstrating his devotion to morality and can thus escape the necessity of applying moral principles to his own actions." She speaks of the "humanitarian cynic" who turns psychology into a new "scientific" version of determinism - by means of unintelligible jargon derived from fantastically arbitrary theories - declares that man is ruled by the blind forces of his subconscious ..." Rand's description fully characterizes the Walter Foddis approach -  a self-declared psychologizer is his chosen title of this post.  If he had really understood what he was publicly admitting, he would never have asked permission so thoughtlessly.  Big mistake! NO! Permission is not given, either rationally or objectively, to psychologizing - not by Objectivists, and not by its victims.

 

Walter has attacked my psychology before because he knows I disagree with his psychologizing - in theory and practice.  He recently accused me of the fallacy of ad hominem, and I explained what it is and why what I said was not ad hominem.  He ignored it.  Russ Madden explained again that stating criticisms of a person's ideas is not ad hominem - that the fallacy really means attacking the person as a substitute for not directly attacking the ideas.  Did Walter grasp his error, did he admit it was an error?  No, he offers this psychologizing posting about my psychology instead of dealing with my ideas or criticisms at all.

 

While accusing me of psychological problems, which he invented for this purpose, he stated, "For those interested, I can explain it this way. Ellen presents herself as the epitome of rationality and objectivity, reminding us quite often of this. Yet all reliable indicators, like her insular reasoning (e.g., reasoning only within the box of Randian Objectivism), rhetorical style, which often includes insults, a condescending tone, and self-righteousness, inability to understand basic points, and the like, point in the direction that she is not rational or objective. This really bothers me. It bothers my sense of intellectual honesty or integrity. "

 

He adds: "I see her as incapable of having a reasoned argument about issues she is fixed on. In addition, that she often resorts to insults and a condescending tone, I think reflects deep insecurity." And without me quoting all of his next three paragraphs, he accuses me of lacking self-confidence and self esteem, and that I have not reached my "conclusions with a truly rational and objective attitude.", and I lack "humility" and "intellectual honesty" because he says I should be thinking that my ideas "might be wrong".  He offers no evidence to show where or how I might have been wrong. Walter has offered *not one piece of evidence*, or even one argument, here or elsewhere, to prove his psychologizing claims about me are true.  His are arbitrary assertions, and unfounded accusations without evidence.  When faced with the need for philosophical analysis and rational evaluations, Walter seeks instead to substitute his own emotional responses for a reasoned analysis, and he resorts to psychologizing.

 

He never once, that I can recall, presented arguments to oppose my stated views about libertarianism.  Walter resents my disagreement with his psychological assertions, and his dedication to libertarianism.  My expressed certainty about my ideas, presented and proven as true and morally right, brings out all of Walter's hostility.  He does not argue against the contents and conclusions of my ideas, he offers psychologizing as a substitute for philosophy and reasoned argumentation [just as Rand described as quoted above].

 

Libertarianism offers as its base two arbitrary rules, rights and the non-initiation of force.  These are arbitrary rules that have no foundation within the frame of libertarian politics, and worse, they are, as applied, invalid, subjective, emotionalist, and without rational or objective foundation.  The critical evidence I have offered is against such libertarian positions as anarchy, religion, anti abortion, competing defense agencies, "minimalist" political Statism, and defense of terrorism, among others.  I have explained that these positions do not objectively advocate and defend their own rules about individual rights or the non-initiation of force premise.  Libertarianism is such an irrational mix that it cannot succeed as it is, and guarantees its own demise.  Those members who wish to read my full arguments may find them in the archives.

~~~~~

Walter offers no opposing evidence or argument; instead, he psychologizes. Here is Walter's own psychological theory: He believes the "processes" of thinking are more important in developing self-esteem than the achievement of the knowledge contents and conclusions reached.  He actually thinks it is the "processes" that builds self-esteem and self-confidence, but not the contents or the true evidentiary conclusions one has achieved and validated contextually – always allowing for the open-ended nature of knowledge.  He implies that a thinking process is more advantageous than knowing clearly one has arrived at the right conclusions.  This is the state of never being certain that the contents of one's conclusions are right or moral, and it leaves one being indiscriminate and dispassionate about one's ideas and values.

 

Here is Walter's stated psychological premise, it is - "the ~processes~ that allow them to arrive at conclusions. Their confidence does not depend on the conclusions themselves." "part of my empirical research attempts to address this issue of process vs. content as a basis for self-esteem." Well, there it is, Walter's rejection of the values required by life and objectivity as viewed by Objectivism: Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem, and the corresponding virtues of Rationality, Productivity and Pride. Walter's theory places the value and virtue of the ~processes~ *versus* [as opposed to] the ~content and conclusions~.  Why does he think that the means are *opposed to* the conclusions?

 

Actually, Reason is the human method [means] of cognition; Purpose is the goal of validating human knowledge; Self-esteem is the consequence [conclusion] of one's achieving knowledge of reality, developing personal efficacy, and being worthy of living.  Thinking is the process, but only reasoning will achieve and validate contextual knowledge, truth, and the certainty that one is right and competent.  What is the

goal - thinking processes are inconclusive, therefore, to know one has achieved the goal and purpose one sought, to achieve one's earned reward in self-confidence, self-esteem, and pride is clearly the accomplishments of reason, knowledge, purpose, and self-worth.  Thinking alone, but never reaching any fully consistent, well-reasoned, principled contents and conclusions is a wasted effort leading to no firm sense of purpose, or confidence, or worthy of self-esteem.  The realistic achievement of reasoning is actually reaching the conclusions of cognitive certainty.

 

Walter's real error is philosophical and epistemological - he does not agree that processes of thinking are inconclusive and psychologically undermining, whereas reasoning is the only method that brings one knowledge, contextual certainty, and self-esteem. The facts of this case are that Walter has no grasp of my knowledge and understanding of Objectivist philosophy.  He has no appreciation for the immense effort I have made in becoming philosophically certain of my conclusions.  He is a very young student, an amateur in the field of learning and of psychology, which is itself in its infancy as a science.  Although I do not view age as a sign of rationality, I do know irrationality when I read it.  I know many people as young as Walter whose knowledge of Objectivism and general achievements in life and career surpass him greatly by comparison.  Based on Walter's general comments, I suspect that he is not, and does not want to commit to, being a rational Objectivist.  That would be acceptable if he was just honest enough to say so straightforwardly and publicly.

 

I have maintained and argued at length against the irrationality of the ideas and policies of libertarianism and libertarians.  I am certain I am right in my analysis and conclusions.  Walter has offered nothing substantive in his accusations, and he offers no evidence to show that I am what he claims I am by psychologizing.  My suspicion is that what I write, and my certainty, makes him feel unsure, resentful, and inadequate in opposing my conclusions [since he never directly opposes them], and his emotions are directing his thinking, accusations, and rationalizations as seen in this nasty unsound kind of post.

 

But I have to say this:  The insufferable, arrogant presumption of Walter's psychologizing about me as a woman he cannot understand by reading the arguments I offer - as if he were a condescending "authority" explaining my psychology to Atlantis members - would be laughable if it were not so manipulative - his methods are the work of a shyster.  Another aspect to this is that Walter is neither sufficiently self-aware nor objective to realize what he is confessing about himself in the process of his own self-exposure in writing this, his invented psychologizing drivel. He'd have earned more respect if he had admitted his own errors and omissions, and walked away from his computer in silent frustration.  Instead, he publicized his chosen disvalue, psychologizing. Will he never understand his own use of ad hominem? Ellen Moore

[kluss]

`will objectevist stop use tech and smart druges when it get allowed  becuse it dont fit ther belifes? soundes a bit like some claim muslims are thinking only they think steamcell r&d are more ok the christans...

 

Following from this, the AI would be free to pursue his own course of action and values, but herein lies another problem

we dont do that to dogs so why do that to ai ? and would that evre be build whioute any moderation just think torjan horses and virus make enhugt probelms in make tech whioute any kind laws

 

T The AI would probably have totally different values from humans making them unpredictable

souds a bit like how pll and govermnent think abut aspergers sick ppl and they try to transform them and regulate them(if thats fair and ok are a other topic )so would we not do that whit AI?