Philosophy 101E

How to stop worrying and love the Internet

by Douglas Adams

Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back - like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust - of course you can’t, it’s just people talking - but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV - a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.

Robots Inherit Human Minds

by Hans Moravac, who also appeared in the movie Love Machine screened last week.

Our first tools, sticks and stones, were very different from ourselves. But many tools now resemble us, in function or form, and they are beginning to have minds. A loose parallel with our own evolution suggests how they may develop in future. Computerless industrial machinery exhibits the behavioral flexibility of single-celled organisms. Today’s best computer-controlled robots are like the simpler invertebrates. A thousand-fold increase in computer power in this decade should make possible machines with reptile-like sensory and motor competence. Growing computer power over the next half century will allow robots that learn like mammals, model their world like primates and eventually reason like humans. Depending on your point of view, humanity will then have produced a worthy successor, or transcended inherited limitations and transformed itself into something quite new. No longer limited by the slow pace of human learning and even slower biological evolution, intelligent machinery will conduct its affairs on an ever faster, ever smaller scale, until coarse physical nature has been converted to fine-grained purposeful thought.

This is just a really cool video that inspired me and I wanted to share with the class. No matter how bad life is, you can always make the best out of it

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/307183/video/

In the movie there was a sex machine developed in Illinois known as Sybian that was basically a rotating dildo on top of a vibrating seat. This really brought the odd idea of sex with robots into play. Would it not be considered cheating if you had sex with a robot because it is man-made? Man-made is ontologically different from evolutionary and everything natural, but what if robots grew on trees? Would it be acceptable then to have sex with them? For those females who invested in the Sybian system, it is not a substitute to sex but an addition. There can be no true substitute for intercourse, hence when people masturbate they do not say they just got laid by themselves. This Sybian is an addition not a substitute because no man can spin around in circles while he is inside a woman, but no Sybian can kiss a woman after she is finished and tell her how good it was.

Now if you had been dating a girl for a long time and you liked her, then you found out that she was a cybourg, would you break up with her? Cybourgs are not part of our moral ingroup so the natural thing to do would be to break it off. Similarly, in the 1940’s a white man dated a woman for many years and they fell in love. Then one day he found out that his lover’s great grandmother was black and he broke up with her because of his beliefs. He was white and, that being a different time, he rejected blacks from his moral ingroup. Historically people have rejected the idea of robots in their moral ingroup. Can you love someone that is not a part of your moral community?

For those who went to the movie screening tonight, here is a chance to comment on some of the things we saw. For those who did not attend you missed what I thought to be the strangest and most interesting screening of the entire semester, not to mention the discussion held afterwards. The central theme of the movie was robots and love. Can people fall in love with robots the way they do with pets? I think this is possible to an extent similar to that of a man’s love for his dog. When you play with your dog he shows affection by wagging his tail, jumping up on you, and licking you. The robots in this movie showed not similar signs of reciprocity, but signs on the same level. They had eyebrows, eyelids, mouths, and ears and could adjust all of them to run the gamut of facial expressions depicting emotions that are merely programmed in their silicon memories. We do not have a problem with people falling in love with with their pets, so why should matter if a human loves a robot that is just as smart as a pet? This kind of companionate love may be possible from a robot but I would still be skeptical of a robot telling me how much it liked me. Would that not just be the programmer speaking through the robot?  Even further, can humans have a passionate relationship with a robot? Some men do not require Sartrian reciprocity in their sexual encounters. When visiting a prostitue, a man will not care if the woman is into the sex because he has such a low life that he sleeps with prostitutes and does not care what happens to her as long as he gets what he wants. So is it acceptable to have a relationship with a robot if it will just be the same as that with a prostitute? One of the many aspects that the robot lacks is that of feedback. You do not know how the relationship is developing if the robot cannot tell you. As discussed after the movie you can have a relationship with cocaine but it still will not give you any feedback (unless you hallucinate and have an out-of-body experience or something). We are not yet at the point where robots can tell us how to grow in life and until we reach that point I do not believe that a relationship with a robot is possible–and even then it would be weird.

I made the point today that we are embodied on the internet. I hadn’t planned to discuss this, so my response was a bit scattered (stream of consciousness, heh). Let me try to make it a bit clearer:

We are embodied on the internet. Technology doesn’t simply extend our capacities, but it also changes the kinds of environments in which we act. This in turn changes the kinds of actions that are required for engaging in those environments. Sometimes this results in actions that are very different from the kinds of behaviors we make while engaging nature, but that doesn’t make them any less engaged actions.

It is harder for Dreyfus to make his arguments about technology stick now days, because the technology we use today is literally engaging our bodies in ways it never could before. Take a look at any video on YouTube that shows people using the Wii. These people are clearly engaged with their whole bodies.

But there is a sense in which the Wii example is too easy and superficial. I think it is better to think of the skill required to navigate any complicated website or program. Think about people who use Photoshop, or Final Cut, or any other big, complicated program. It is impossible to doubt that there is a learned skill involved in using this kind of software. It is something that requires practice and training; its the kind of thing that some people are better at than others. But Dreyfus’ argument is that skills are acquired through the use of the body. If he’s right, then we must be embodied when we are using these programs.

Or think about all the social rules and norms involved in interacting with any online community- your favorite message boards; Facebook; MySpace; Wikipedia; this blog. These are all very complicated social environments. We all have some sense of what is appropriate for these environments, and what is inappropriate, and how to behave. Some people do it better than others. MySpace is full of social cues- music, backgrounds, images, links, friends, etc. MySpace is just like a fashion accessory to your online identity.

If these places on the Internet are really environments that take skill to navigate, then you must conclude that we are embodied on the internet. If that’s the case, then the Internet doesn’t pose a threat to our humanity. At most it poses a threat to our current understanding of ourselves and our environment, because in a real sense it changes what we are, and what we interact with. But that doesn’t undermine our humanity; it reaffirms it.

Facebook and MySpace users aren’t examples of people who despise the body, or who think that the body is obsolete. They are people who desperately want to integrate these new possibilities and forms of expression into their lives. They are people who want to make their online identity real and meaningful and relevant. They are people who are trying to find a stable social environment, not just as an abstract mind or identity, but as a real person.

We disscussed this point and I wanted to raise it as a comment on other posts but it did not follow completely. When I sit down to play guitar, more specifically to write a song, I may already have a melody in my head that I want to figure out the notes for it on guitar. So I find the root note of the melody, and use the relative pitch in my mind and play notes on the guitar until the pitches match up–relative pitch is where given two notes you can hear how far they are apart, say a third, a fifth, or an octave. I now have a root note and the next note of the melody, which is still fresh in my mind. From there it is usually pretty easy to match up the rest of the melody with the notes on the guitar using relative pitch. Viola, the melody in my head is now one that I can play on guitar, move it up an octave, and even tease it when I am soloing over a chord progression. Then there are other times where I may be soloing or just messing around on the guitar and I play a string of notes that sound good together, repeat them, decide I like the sound, and turn that into a melody. Can you say that in the first instance I wrote the melody and in the latter situation the guitar wrote a melody? If the mind is the homefront of all ideas, and I hear something after I have played it, without really thinking about what I was playing, and decide that I like this new sound, did I actually create this sound myself or does the guitar deserve credit?

I wanted to pose a question at the end of the semester that we never really talked about in class, even though it has a lot to do with technology.  Hopefully it will also give an easy opportunity for posts before they’re due.

Movies have portrayed the end of the world coming about due to the advancement of technology.  Normally they have something to do with machinces becoming super intelligent and fighting back.  But there are also cases in which it was not a machine making descisions, but humans using obedient technology.  Think about the cold war and how close the world was to total destruction by means of nuclear weapons being fired from both sides.  So technology can help extend possibilities, but sometimes those possibilities lead to destruction.  So i guess the question is this-

WHen you think about the new weapons we are inventing and human nature (which seems to always create fights and wars with other peoples), and then you also think about the scenarios presented by movies like THE TERMINATOR and THE MATRIX where machines become smart and take over, do you think that the technology we invent will ulimately lead to our own destruction?

Well, we got quite a bit into this, but I felt there was more to explore. An example that I thought of, which I believe shows Squarepusher’s point without being anthropocentric is as follows: Consider a symphony orchestra. Ultimately, it is the conductors interpretation and version of the symphony that gets performed. The instrumentalists merely play what the conductor wants to hear (also consider that this is an orchestra in which this holds completely true). Then, one could say that the final work is solely the conductor’s accomplishment. It was he who controlled the whole thing, after all.

However, I don’t think there is a single person that would argue that the conductor is the only one who deserves credit for the work, even though the instrumentalists were just ‘tools’ that the conductor used to realize his vision of the song. So why would we credit these musicians who are doing the brunt of the work, when we wouldn’t consider any of the work an instrument is doing? The music would not be possible without the instrument. Furthermore, the song might sound different with a different instrument.

So it is this that leads to the bigger idea. It is my opinion that we should no consider the whole group, artist(s) and tool(s), as a team. There may be one coach, or controller of the project, but his role is just to set the process in motion. A paint brush won’t hang out with some paint and make a masterpiece on their own. They need the coach to set the project in motion. Then, as a team, the work is completed.

In the end, the finished piece is, for the most part, what we admire. No one goes to a Van Gogh exhibit expecting to see cat scans of Van Gogh’s brain during the process, or pictures of him painting. So if the end result, which includes the brushstroke textures, paints, and canvas are what everyone wants to see, then how can all of that credit go solely to Van Gogh. Surely without all of these other contributors the work would not have been completed. Furthermore, abstract pieces where the canvas is left absolutely blank is a perfect extension of Squarepusher’s idea. When humans try to control the tools, instead of working with them, the result is an artifact of human stupidity. The blank canvas is just the artist’s refusal to collaborate with the paintbrush and paint, in my opinion.

Even though class is basically done, I would love to get this dialog going so we can get a good conversation out of this.

On Tuesday, we will discuss Bleecker and Jenkinson, and we will move on to the Chaing short story. Please come to class prepared to discuss all these works.

Remember, your second 10 comments are due by this thursday at midnight!

Finally, we will have our final screening on Thursday at 7pm. The room has changed: it will be in 113 Davenport Hall. As always, I will bring snacks. Feel free to being your friends, although seating may be limited.
We will be watching the local underground cult class Love Machine. The documentary interviews a wide range of famous philosophers, roboticists, sex experts, and tech wizards to ask the burning question: can you ever love a machine? You can read more about the film in the official press release from the original screening at the Beckman Institute a few years ago. You will definitely recognize some of the names in the film, as well as most of the topics discussed.
Because this movie is so wildly popular, a few other classes might show up. Additionally, a lot of my fellow philosophy grad students are coming to see the film, many for the first time. So be prepared to see some new faces. Hopefully this means we will have a good discussion afterwards.

University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for the Digital Future recently released a study of of online relationships. Here are some highlights:

Ars Technica: We love our Internet friends, really.

Online friends are just as important to people as their offline friends, according to the results of a recent survey.

[…]

The survey included 2,000 households in the US and defined an online community as “a group that shares thoughts or ideas, or works on common projects, through electronic communication only.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, well over half of those participating in online communities reported doing so at least once a day. 70.4 percent “sometimes or always” interact with other members while logged in.

The report also found that as Internet users increasingly use the web to socialize, they also translate those online social connections to real-life activities. 20.3 percent of those who participate in online communities also participate in offline activities related to the online community at least once a year… Similarly, 40 percent of the respondents reported being more involved in social activism since they began to participate in online communities, with two thirds of those involved with social causes saying that they are now involved in activities because of the Internet.

What might be a surprise, though, is that all of this online interaction is apparently not detracting from interaction with close friends and family offline. While 37.7 percent of respondents said that the Internet helps them communicate more with family and friends, “almost all” users reported that increased Internet interaction has no effect on the amount of time spent with those people in real life.

[…]

Most importantly, the report says that 43 percent of those who participate in online communities feel “as strongly” about their online buddies as those offline. What this shows is that—due to the proliferation of chat rooms, blogs, sites like MySpace, forums, games, virtual worlds, and other communities online—Internet users are reaching out to more people, not less, as technology critics have feared.

Take that, Dreyfus.