more cyborg notes
I watched part of a kid's show the other day and didn't get the name of it. I've scanned the TV Guide and Google and can't come up with it. In the show, a boy and his friends have a pal named "Cyborg" who hangs out with them. Cyborg is a half-man half-machine (go figure) and very tame and normal except that he seems to be an adult and is hanging around with nine-year olds. Anyhow, Cyborg gets kidnapped by a dude whose name I didn't catch. This guy used to be half-man, half-robot, but he had removed his human parts. Dude plans to help Cyborg become superior, like himself. Cyborg, strapped down on an operating table, protests " If you take out my biological parts, you remove the best part of me!" Dude responds, "But all of your memories and emotions will be downloaded into your improved body." A playback montage ensues in which we see Cyborg's memories; lots of hanging out with the kids at picnics and flying kites and whatnot. Cyborg manages to free himself from the operating table and pushes a button that reverse the setup so Dude sees the flashback as if with Cyborg's own eyes. It's a big surprise, "I never knew the world was so beautiful through human eyes." Yes, according to this show we humans have very good eyeballs and they make our experience...superior to robots' experience! Dude is stricken and upset, realising that without any human parts he is actually inferior to Cyborg. But it all ends happily cause the kids help him out, and undertake to teach him how to be more human by letting him join them and Cyborg in the park to throw the football around. I'm not making any of this up.
The robot guy needs the eyeball firmware update. Eyebal-aster. He'd be right as rain.
Yeah, those compound-eye images aren't very inspiring. But glad to hear human (eye) values still trump the posthuman in kids' entertainment.
well sort of. I find the value of biological components over memory/emotions quite disturbing.
What, visual memory doesn't reside in the retina?
a disembodied experience of memory/emotions?
Here's what Antti Revonsuo has to say about all this in Toward a Science of Consciousness:
What we first and foremost need is a philosophy of consciouness that could be taken seriously even by empirical neuroscientists. However, if one looks at what several respectable philosophers currently say about the nature of consciousness, one finds a lot of rather peculiar views that could hardly be taken seriously by the craftsmen of a natural-science approach to consciousness. Some, like Dennett (1991), suggest that subjective phenomenal consciousness doesn't really exist at all, others, like Chalmers (1996), propose that perhaps consciousness is everywhere -- even electrons, stones, thermostats and other very simple systems might possess some sort of consciousness. Dretske (1995) and Tye (1995) deny that phenomenal consciousness could be explained by studying the brain -- in their view, phenomenology is not inside the brain. Instead of taking any of those highly exotic philosophical views of consciousness as a starting point, I propose that an empirically based CNC [Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness] should start with the following simple, clear, and not highly implausible assumption concerning the nature and place of consciousness: " Consciousness (phenomenal experience) is a real, natural, biological phenomenon that literally resides in the brain."
[...]
A complete description of the brain as a biological system necessarily includes a description of the phenomenal level of organization in the brain. If we fail to understand subjective phenomenal consciousness we will have failed to understand the brain as a biological system.
The part of this I find disconcerting ( and yes I also dig it) is the imiplication that with enough research on the drippy, electric, biological bits and bobs, consciousness can be fabricated. Which is where I think that Cyborg kids' story is really headed, never mind the lip service to the inherent value of flesh and blood eyeballs over fabricated eyeballs. As if the distinction is even relevant (let alone ethically driven), what with the genome nearly all mapped out.
"But all of your memories and emotions will be downloaded into your improved body."
Yikes!
I'm reminded of the heart patients who had a Jarvik 7 mechanical heart installed. As a blood pump it worked wonderfully, but as a human body part it failed tragically. The patients became profoundly clinically depressed, one of them begging to be killed or be allowed to die.
In some way, our hearts are part of an emotional information loop. Thoughts/feeling are mapped onto body parts, and then read back by other parts of the brain or body.
In art talk there is 'body reference' - I'm imagine artwork as a kind of second-order mapping that enlists these inate mechanisms and extends them beyond our own skins.
More from Antti Revonsuo:
I have proposed that we should take the concept of Virtual Reality as a metaphor for consciousness...When the brain realizes the phenomenal level it is actually creating the experience that I am directly present in a world outside my brain although the experience itself is brought about by neural systems buried inside the brain. [...] the phenomenal level of organization can thus be seen as the brain's natural virtual reality system, a level of organization the purpose of which is to construct a realtime simulation of the organism and its place in the world.
This reminds of a story I wrote in elementary school. We had a sci-fi unit (you probably would have loved it. i hated it. but i saved the story). Anyway, I wrote a story about a girl who lives in the centre of the earth, and she controls the world. But the computer (a talking one) is actually more in control. Amid images the computer shows the girl of how awful the world is, the girl sees images of a meadow with a girl playing with a kitten (a very elementary school girl idea of what is good in the world) and she chooses that life over technology and takes control back from the computer. Pretty funny.
Anne I love your story. I'm gonna make an animation about it someday.
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more cyborg notes
I watched part of a kid's show the other day and didn't get the name of it. I've scanned the TV Guide and Google and can't come up with it. In the show, a boy and his friends have a pal named "Cyborg" who hangs out with them. Cyborg is a half-man half-machine (go figure) and very tame and normal except that he seems to be an adult and is hanging around with nine-year olds. Anyhow, Cyborg gets kidnapped by a dude whose name I didn't catch. This guy used to be half-man, half-robot, but he had removed his human parts. Dude plans to help Cyborg become superior, like himself. Cyborg, strapped down on an operating table, protests " If you take out my biological parts, you remove the best part of me!" Dude responds, "But all of your memories and emotions will be downloaded into your improved body." A playback montage ensues in which we see Cyborg's memories; lots of hanging out with the kids at picnics and flying kites and whatnot. Cyborg manages to free himself from the operating table and pushes a button that reverse the setup so Dude sees the flashback as if with Cyborg's own eyes. It's a big surprise, "I never knew the world was so beautiful through human eyes." Yes, according to this show we humans have very good eyeballs and they make our experience...superior to robots' experience! Dude is stricken and upset, realising that without any human parts he is actually inferior to Cyborg. But it all ends happily cause the kids help him out, and undertake to teach him how to be more human by letting him join them and Cyborg in the park to throw the football around. I'm not making any of this up.
- sally mckay 4-20-2004 6:52 am
The robot guy needs the eyeball firmware update. Eyebal-aster. He'd be right as rain.
- joester 4-20-2004 6:36 pm
Yeah, those compound-eye images aren't very inspiring. But glad to hear human (eye) values still trump the posthuman in kids' entertainment.
- tom moody 4-20-2004 6:52 pm
well sort of. I find the value of biological components over memory/emotions quite disturbing.
- sally mckay 4-20-2004 7:01 pm
What, visual memory doesn't reside in the retina?
- tom moody 4-20-2004 7:06 pm
a disembodied experience of memory/emotions?
- tshirttheory (guest) 4-21-2004 6:21 am
Here's what Antti Revonsuo has to say about all this in Toward a Science of Consciousness:
The part of this I find disconcerting ( and yes I also dig it) is the imiplication that with enough research on the drippy, electric, biological bits and bobs, consciousness can be fabricated. Which is where I think that Cyborg kids' story is really headed, never mind the lip service to the inherent value of flesh and blood eyeballs over fabricated eyeballs. As if the distinction is even relevant (let alone ethically driven), what with the genome nearly all mapped out.- sally mckay 4-21-2004 8:06 am
"But all of your memories and emotions will be downloaded into your improved body."
Yikes!
I'm reminded of the heart patients who had a Jarvik 7 mechanical heart installed. As a blood pump it worked wonderfully, but as a human body part it failed tragically. The patients became profoundly clinically depressed, one of them begging to be killed or be allowed to die.
In some way, our hearts are part of an emotional information loop. Thoughts/feeling are mapped onto body parts, and then read back by other parts of the brain or body.
In art talk there is 'body reference' - I'm imagine artwork as a kind of second-order mapping that enlists these inate mechanisms and extends them beyond our own skins.
- gordon hicks (guest) 4-22-2004 10:25 am
More from Antti Revonsuo:
- sally mckay 4-22-2004 5:54 pm
This reminds of a story I wrote in elementary school. We had a sci-fi unit (you probably would have loved it. i hated it. but i saved the story). Anyway, I wrote a story about a girl who lives in the centre of the earth, and she controls the world. But the computer (a talking one) is actually more in control. Amid images the computer shows the girl of how awful the world is, the girl sees images of a meadow with a girl playing with a kitten (a very elementary school girl idea of what is good in the world) and she chooses that life over technology and takes control back from the computer. Pretty funny.
- anne (guest) 4-27-2004 9:14 pm
Anne I love your story. I'm gonna make an animation about it someday.
- sally mckay 5-01-2004 12:21 am