But, if a child is born, never seeing any parents, never taken care of by any person or animal, it would be missing something its whole life. Say a baby was born and instantly put into a room, the room had no animals and no pictures or anything, there was a food source, if the child grew up, he would be missing something, even if the room was huge, so big he could never travel the whole area, there would be something missing, add in a parent when he was young, and he would be content with what he had.

Yeah, I've seen that kind of stuff on television. And it makes me sick to my stomach. Animals do not deserve that at all. I've heard stories of kids in my school setting cats on fire just for their own sick enjoyment. Boy howdy, if I were dictator....er... president of America, they'd be shot dead. Then I'd go to their families house and kick their asses for not slapping their child when they behave like that.

-Chris

That cannot be proven until it is actually done, so what your saying is only theoretical, and highly unlikely. The child would only experience natural feelings, like eating and trying to escape since it would be uneducated, well in the most likely situation of that actually happening. But that would be totally inhumane. Plus its an impossible study, since babies can't thrive without help, and that would require a large human intervention.



<<>>Kusanagi<<>>

Just like a human, we die because we can nolonger last in this world(and because our natual instinks say that we have done our job on earth, and we would be more usefull dead). And who says they will not be able to cope? You? You are not them, they will know, we will not. And people go insane because things get to complicated dont we? See, we are not that diffrent after all.

When a human is conceived, all that is happening is that existing parts are being arranged in a particular order and a language of code (DNA) is input into the finished product. We are machines assembled by tiny living things and computers are machines assembled by large living things. Now, when our reproductive cells assemble parts in order to make a new person... you could say that they're acting out nature. So is building a computer somehow... supernatural? No. It's all chemical and physical changes, same as human conception.

Where does the difference come into play that makes us alive and them not?

I'm not saying the difference isn't there... I'm just trying to get you to acknowledge that this difference isn't something that can be described in physical terms, as you stubbornly insist. "Born" or "made" is an artificial distinction.... both computers and animals are, on the physical level, merely conglomerations of physical parts with a complex information retrieval and switching unit at its core.

If you want to say that human beings have a soul and computers do not, I can't argue there... although I don't discount the possibility that anything complex enough can gain a soul, that's more metaphysical than I wanna get.

Sticking to the physical level, though, the only difference between us and a kung fu practice dummy on a stick (a very simple "robot"... the kind where you strike a lever and it swings around, so another lever comes at your head) is that we have trillions more levers to push. Our environment causes chemical reactions in our skin cells, our optic receptors, our nasal receptors, etc.... these chemical reactions spread chemically and electrically to the brain, where more chemical reactions occur and another chemical reaction is sent back. It's a cause and effect chain from start to finish. Where the hell does "choice" enter into that?

Again, I'm not denying free will... I'm just saying you're not going to find it in our brains. There's no "free will organ" that we have and robots don't.

We don't need a free will organ, its that we have expansive minds that aren't limited to how we are told to react in situations. Sure we have instincts that naturally occur, but we can take control of our instincts, computers on the other hand will always choose the option that is most likely to succeed, or more logical, unless of course told not to. If you were hold a gun to your head, and someone told you to shoot yourself, you would have the option of doing it and not, you yourself would probably not do it, unless you were suicidal. A computer could sit there in a situation like that, on the verge of destruction, and a person can sit there and order it and tell it to destroy itself. It was told what to do, so it follows instructions and destroys itself, if capable. Therefore, computers are incapable of free will. The only way this could possibly done is through advanced AI, but you can only keep programming it to react to new things for so long. Hence the option of free will or not. Perhaps if we developed a program that learns whats happening and physically adapts to a situation, and mentally chooses what to do in an existing/destroying situation without listening to someone, then you could consider an animal.


<<>>Kusanagi<<>>

The fact that we don't automatically obey a command given to us isn't evidence of free will. The decision on how to respond to a stimulus (hearing someone tell us to shoot ourselves) plays out entirely in the physical world, with an interpreter in our brain parsing the situation and generating an appropriate response... all electric signals jumping the gap between organic switches.

Looking only at the physical world, whether you shoot yourself or not, there's still no "choice" involved... electricity jumps and chemicals react and the cause yields an effect. If all the switches in your head are set up so that you will shoot yourself given this stimulus, then you will... if they're not, then you won't. It's all action and reaction.

Go up to a computer. Say, "Kill yourself." It won't do anything. Open notepad and type, "Kill yourself." No response. Open a DOS prompt and type "Kill yourself." It'll spit an error message. Now, if you give it the proper stimulus, you -can- force the computer to terminate itself, but only if it's in the right operational state and other variables are set properly.

Same thing with a person. On the physical level, your brain is a computer, nothing more, and nothing less, and it does nothing more than a computer does... store data and respond to stimulus according to the terms of its programming.

IvoryWizard wrote:

I wanted these posts to stay on the topic of animal cruelty but it slowly drifted away.

What else would you expect from a group like this?

Anyways, I shared my opinions, and then I was done. That's that. Didn't argue with anyone but myself.

I'd say getting beaten to death by rubber pipes would be much worse.

Imagine, the world gathers around and puts a global ban on animal cruelty. Now animals are treated like gods.

Then all the world has to deal with is child abuse, poverty, the crazy weather, earthquakes, destruction of the rainforest, global warming, diseases, child prostitution, malnutrition, biological warfare, crime, slavery, Dareb and funny monkeys everywhere.