Philosophy 101 Unit 1

We all know YouTube is great and wonderful. My post will be focusing on an hour-long video I recently watched (on YouTube of course). It is titled “An anthropological introduction to YouTube.” I highly recommend checking it out—it will probably show you a different, interesting perspective on the site.

The creator of this video, Michael Wesch, is a professor at Kansas State University. Wesch made one video, “Web 2.0” that became extremely popular, it’s less than five minutes, and it’s fun to watch. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

He teaches anthropology (the study of cultures/societies/development stuff like that). He has a class that focuses specially on YouTube, and it’s community. He worked with his students to prepare this 55-minute presentation (An anthropological introduction to YouTube), which he presented at the Library of Congress on June 23^rd of 2008. 

Here is an awesome statistic about the site. In 1948 ABC became the 3^rd large network to start broadcasting. That was 60 years ago. Imagine these network have broadcasting 24/7 for every day of the year. That would be 3 (networks) x 60 (years) x 365 (days) x 24 (hours/day) = 1,576,800. This is over 1.5 million hours of programming! But… YouTube produced more than that in the past 6 months. Crazy. YouTube gets around 9232 hours uploaded per day. Most of these hours are in the form of 3-minute videos. You’re probably thinking this isn’t original work—but in reality 88% of the videos are new and original content (better than the networks do. A large percentage of the videos are meant for about a hundred or less people to view.

That whole above paragraph is basically directly taken from the first few minutes of the video that you all should check out. Wesch then goes into what kinds of videos are on youtube, like the Numa dance and other things like that. Then there are 5% of the videos that are personal vlogs addressed to the youtube community. He discusses a possible reason is the loss of community over time. Which is the way our world is headed. We now are in massive disconnected communities, suburbia. We are now much more individualistic and isolating (for example, televisions are isolating). So we find new ways, like cell phones. We now have a networked individualism (more person to person, not place to place). Then he talks about cultural inversion. The more individual we become, the more we long for community. The more independent we are, the more we want relationships, etc. This is where a youtube community comes in. To study the community the class participated in, making vlogs themselves.

After this Wesch talks about the webcam: everybody is watching where nobody is. This is basically about how you are talking to this webcam, and you have no idea who will see it. Everyone, no one, and even yourself could see it sometime in the future. This leads to a re-cognition and new form of self-awareness. This video does a great job of explaining this, so if I’m confusing you, go look at it about 25 minutes in. Generally when people are making these vlogs, there are in very self-reflexive kind of mood. There is also the idea that the watchers of these videos are anonymous. Here is a quote about the subject from some from time magazine, “Some of the comments on YouTube make you week for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.”

With this physical distance, anonymity, and rare and ephemeral dialogue we get the freedom to experience humanity without fear or anxiety. You can stare at people, and see them for who they are, without feeling socially awkward for gazing directly at someone’s face for a long time. You don’t make someone uncomfortable by just looking at him or her.

He also discusses youtube stars, striving for views and popularity, youtube dramas (lonelygirl15—big controversy and outrage over her when people found out she wasn’t a real person, but rather a made up identity), and other awesome things.

It’s a sweet video. check it out. “An anthropological introduction to YouTube”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

All credit on this post goes to Wesch and his class.

I think it would be kind of fun to share how many videos we’ve watching on youtube. Not everyone can do this, but those of us that have an account that you automatically log into, it should tell you how many videos you’ve watched on youtube. I’m a bit of an addict—I’ve watched around 3,614 videos.

There is nothing like the highly philosophical room of requirement example. Given to the general public by the source of all things good and magical, Harry Potter, through the words of the wise and deep modern day philosopher, JK Rowling.

Seriously though, Harry Potter is good stuff. Any philosophy teacher shouldn’t be able to call him or herself a philosophy teacher unless he/she has read and meditated over it.

Now onto the real post…

When thinking of the room of requirement and technology, I remember the matrix. Outside of the matrix, on the ship in the real world, they had simulators that they used. These simulations would be used for practice (before going into the matrix), and other things. The simulations could take the person to whatever time, location, and supply whatever materials they needed. This simulation is basically a room of requirement, simply replacing magic with technology (another example where magic and technology can (with the help of imagination) serve the same purpose!) we hope to have in the future.

I recall the image where they would be in the certain room that was just a vast, open, white expanse (This wall-less white room was also popular in lots of commercials and stuff). Before entering the matrix they would need weapons, so all these racks of weapons would just come flying from nowhere. Then they could load up, and be prepared to enter the actual matrix.

This makes it seem like a virtual room of requirement is plausible with the proper technology. If we have technology good enough to trick our minds, then we find ourselves with a “room of requirement.” In such a room people would be able to be in whatever situation they wanted, including flying around, being 10 years younger, making love to someone, or whatever you could think to do.

We already have things like flight simulators, videogames with ever-better graphics, and other equipment that might fit into a virtual room of requirement.

The problem with this room (because it is virtual and ultimately not real) is that many people might prefer it to reality. Think about it, if you have a mediocre life, but then you get the opportunities to use a simulator to give you whatever experience you wanted, a room of requirement, you’d probably prefer the exciting virtual world to your own life. We would be removing ourselves even further from the real world. We already somewhat remove ourselves from contact with other humans with the help of iPods, television, videogames, and other things (yes, I’m sure that are cases where these specific example don’t exactly apply, like watching tv with a friend or multiplayer games. But for the most part, they are a way for individuals to isolate themselves). So for the trade-off of getting a simulation of any experience you want, we might end up losing all love for real life.

That sounds kinda like a bummer. Lets talk about something more fun… oh! I’ve got it. What does everyone think about the weather lately? Crazy huh? Yeah I know. Warm is beautiful. Everyone loves talking about the weather!

(if you’re reading this a while after it was posted, then it might be cold again, but it was warm when it was written)

For this post I would like to present a hypothetical situation, and then hear your comments and thoughts on it!

With current trends, it wouldn’t be surprising if one day we have physical robots that are indistinguishable from humans. Perhaps it won’t be anytime soon, but programming has come a long way, and robotics is also moving along. So, in our hypothetical situation, taking place sometime in the future, we are still in the United States and our governmental system is still in place. In our situation we have this robot who looks exactly like a human, and has incredibly complex programming, that allows him (the sex of our robot friend in this story is a male, thus “him”) to behave indistinguishably from a human. Let’s also say he capable of learning, and he can do all the complex things humans are capable of doing. 

To listen to my hypothetical situation, you have to be able to accept all of the above paragraph.

Let’s name him… Aidan (or if you prefer, A.I. Dan).

Now, lets say Aidan is an experiment, of a robot that has been let out into society to see how he’ll interact with people, the environment, and what he’ll learn. It doesn’t really matter why he is out on his own, the point of our hypothetical situation, is that Aiden is out on his own.

One day Aidan is out wandering about, and runs into an angry looking man, vehemently hitting the bottom of a small defenseless child (we would recognize this as a father spanking his child, and maybe look the other way, but Aidan does not). The child is profusely weeping, and the father continues to look upset. Aidan runs over and commands the man to stop hitting the poor child. The father says something along the lines of “mind your own business” but with more profanity. As the father continues to spank the child, Aidan reaches out his hand to stop the man from hitting the child any longer. The man is now even more enraged (our hypothetical man could use some anger management), so he gets up to confront Aidan. As the man rises, he accidentally trips over something and falls. The man now has a broken arm. Aidan tries to assist the stubborn man, but he refuses help. Because the man looks seriously hurt, Aidan calls for an ambulance. When it arrives Aidan comes with the man and his son to the hospital, to make sure he is okay.

Later on the man is informed that the person who helped him get to the hospital, Aidan, is a robot (he couldn’t tell before because robots behave indistinguishably, remember?). 

This really upsets the man, and so now he is convinced he needs to take the robot to trial and see justice. The man accuses Aidan of battery (because he grabbed the man’s arm against his will).

Let’s say it goes to court. Aidan pleads guilty to grabbing the man’s arm.

I’m going to stop my situation here, and ask some questions that I would like discussion about:

-Does Aidan deserve to be on trial, should a robot go to trial? If not, why doesn’t he deserve the justice that any human would get?

-If he deserves to be on trial (innocent until proven guilty, that’s our system of justice) can there be any argument that A.I. Dan doesn’t deserve to be treated with the exact same respect we would give any human?

-What kind of punishment should Aidan get? No punishment, a fine, community service, jail time, be shut off?

-If you answered that Aidan should be shut off, why should he be? That seems to me like killing a person, and what right do we have to do that to Aidan? (Because Aidan is indistinguishable from a person, Aidan confessed that he doesn’t want to die, or be shut off).

-If you answered that Aidan should receive any other punishment: what good is it to punish a robot?

Please add any other thoughts or questions to our fun hypothetical future situation! 

In class one fine day we had a show of hands of who had read the Wikipedia article. I believe I was the only person who raised their hand. So I’ve decided to share some points of that article, along with my views and maybe some other’s. Feel free to share your on view on the subject, or share some profound wisdom or just a comment on the post will be awesome.

In this article (on page 167 of that blue booklet we had to buy) there is a special report by nature (magazine or journal or something) about internet encyclopaedias—and there is a big picture of a guy holding a mac laptop (and just because he is holding a mac, you know he is super awesome).

If you don’t know (which I’m sure all of you do (I just like typing more cause it uses more words (parenthesis are good for that))) Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Pretty sweet. This way, professionals (or people that just know a lot) in some field can share insight with the rest of the online users. However, idiots can also add and edit, and the average user of Wikipedia won’t know if it was a professional or an idiot that posted the information. So, Wikipedia is really controversial as an accurate source for information.

Nature decided to compare Wikipedia to the well-respected Encyclopaedia Britannica. The results were surprising. Among 42 (good number—if you’ve read hitchhiker’s) entries tested, the average science entry in Wikipedia contained four inaccuracies, and Britannica had three.

Wikipedia is growing incredibly fast, and Jimmy Wales (a co-founder) says, “Our goal is to get to Britannica quality or better.”

The article gets more into numbers from their tests and stuff like that, so if you’re interested in that check out the article, it’s pretty cool. Overall the article made the point that Britannica and Wikipedia don’t differ much in their number of overall errors.

If you find this surprising, think about how Wikipedia is edited by experts from all over, and it has live updating (which is very important if you want an accurate encyclopedia).

I am a heavy user of Wikipedia, and I think it’s wonderful. I’m not usually afraid of it being from a bad source, because many people watch for mistakes, and sometimes authorities from Wikipedia will suspend editing on an article if too many issues keep arising. I love the atmosphere of society pooling together knowledge for the good of mankind.

Of course, there are many opposite views. My high school librarians, for example, are convinced that Wikipedia is the root of all evil in the world, and it is ruining our generation. To them, it isn’t reliable unless it’s from a gigantic 42 volume set of heavy dusty books.

I can’t easily carry around huge encyclodaedias, but I can carry around my iPod touch and easily check my beloved Wikipedia if I have a question about anything from Descartes to neodymium magnets. And because the two sources are comparable, why not go with the one that has universal access and can fit in my pocket (assuming I have a good wi-fi hot spot)?

I was surprised at first when I read about there being only a few differences between the errors in Wikipedia and Britannica. After I’ve been thinking about it, I’m not surprised at all. And what’s so great about it all, is that the experts from nature who found mistakes can easily fix them on Wikipedia, and suddenly it would have fewer mistakes than the printed encyclopaedia for those articles. The same can’t be said for Britannica.