Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

Seems to me you've been projecting.  Every example I give about context-in-truth sends you on a spiral of motivation-questioning and sleuthing.  You state I'm very clearly worried about this or that, or afraid of inclusion or exclusion of that-or-the-other, which I'm fairly clearly not.  You, on the other hand, are very much worried that I'm sneakily trying to undermine your world view, when in fact I'm trying to undermine ALL "knowledge" that is stated out of context, and to consider what one would need to bridge contexts and properly generalize such truths.

The example you just complained about described a generalization: "Seems like me, so likely feels like me" to a specific context that may not match, "seems like me, but maybe not actually like me."  The danger of the generalization (i.e. the "knowledge") is that if you ignore the change in context and continue anything that SEEMS humanoid, you may make very serious decisions that impact real people.  I don't care that much about AI robots (yet), but it's an example of "knowledge" which will need a stronger foundation, sooner rather than later.

If we're wrong for giving a victim machine rights because it -seems like- it's conscious...if that's a potential negative consequence we may wish to avoid...then we're wrong now for giving people rights because they -seem like- they're conscious.  If we need a better understanding than that to give robots rights, we actually need a better understanding now to make the same case for ourselves. The whole thing gives up the game, though, in that it's a direct rejection of how things seem.

I even threw you, specifically, a bone: an example of an overzealous QM zealot insisting that QM was the only good way to think about anything, on the basis that QM is the closest approximation of Reality™.  He "knows" that his position must be true, since no other view of the universe better explains how light travels through slits, or why electronics fail at small scale.  But I'd expect you, as an experienced botanist of a pragmatic type, to have issue with that view.  I'd expect you to say something like, "That's all very fine and well, but what does QM say about where I should snip this new bud, or what I should plant when we have a dry spell?"

And to the same person, with the same "knowledge," I'd say, "That's very fine and well, but what does that really tell us about why we experience qualia, and how we should live our lives?"

Well - I'm not a botanist - and knowing where to trim a plant isn't actually botany to begin with.  That'll be specific to a production method and equipment and market.  Agronomy.  Secondly, a physicist is far more likely than me to understand what I don't about the process of photosynthesis (or, for that matter, describe the missing bit of photosynthesis that we don't know) - botanists aren't our obi-wan on that count.

You and I are both in that same boat with respect to brains, minds, and nueroscientists - but knowing how the brain works doesn't make a person an ethicist, so....it seems odd to object to some fact of botany, of agronomy, or the brain with "but how does that tell me how to live my life?"  Don't you think?

That's very true, and it's a good example.  And we (I mean the primarily white West here) eventually included black people among full members of humanity largely on feeling: children loving a black maid, slave owners (some of them) being proud of how well their slaves learned the Bible, sex and babies and feelings that go along with them, admiration for incredible bravery in the Civil war and later in WWII, and so on.

The knowledge that black people are just like the rest of us actually expands our faith in our social feelings, i.e. in the context of "seems like, so is like."  But if we're willing to follow that same process for AI-generated characters, no matter how likeable, relatable, or "squeeee"-worthy, and if we're wrong, the consequences could be disastrous.  Such is the danger of accepting generalization without building a bridge to a new context.

As disastrous as the consequences of extending human rights to black people, or at all...sure?  Look, you tell me that you're unbothered and unconcerned and I'm projecting - but here you are listing off something you think could be disastrous. Do you think that granting personhood to things that seem like people is the disaster - or are you using the disaster of what people might do, in that event, ala historic examples..as the disaster? I mean, at the very bottom of it, we think we're people and that affords us some rights, so why wouldn't we think that things that seem like us in that regard wouldn't qualify on those same like grounds? Isn't contending otherwise a rejection of the claim on whatever grounds we offer in our own cases, as fellow seemers? Or, lets go the other way with it. Let's say that what a nueroscientist tells us is that we're not doing whatever we seem to be doing. Does that, then, "tell you how to live" - and eradicate the foundation of your rights as you see them, as a person? That truly would be disastrous, I think - if human rights hinged on some biological fact of how the human mind worked, such that finding out it worked one way and not another meant that they didn't exist.

For the record, while I can mention that we're swirling around an argument to consequence, and while I can suggest that you're defending that argument to consequence as though it's my own projection, and while I can mention that an argument to consequence cannot sell a dispute to fact - I actually enjoy the argument to consequence much more on it's own grounds as an argument against consequences. What we'll do the next time something pops up and says "I'm like you, I feel, I'm a person!" is definitely an area of concern...but me..personally, I'm not concerned that we're going to give out rights willy nilly. We don't have a history of that, at all, and I can't think of any time that human rights have been afforded or extended that I think was a bad thing in and of itself. Give me some of that truth in context. In what context is the broader conception of human rights to include things that seem relevantly or meaningfully like us a bad thing?