The ingredients of this scenario are fairly prosaic, given
the era we are in – though they might have generated cries of denial a mere
hundred years ago.
The primary component is simply the optical reader of a
smart phone that can read QR codes and an imagined environment where all
objects have some sort of QR code (in some case, at different scales, many of
them) imprinted on the object.
The QR codes often contain equations. Solving these
equations or finding the equations amongst many other QR codes (which may or
may not have information as to where an equation QR code is) leads to energy
resupply and parts replacement. The optical reader and it’s processor are
mounted on the armature of something essentially the same as a bomb squad
robot. This allows control lines to run from the processor on board the robot
to the various actuators in its arm – aiming the armature at different QR codes
or running a systematic search for QR codes by moving the arm, or activating
the treads of the robot in what is essentially a larger scale search for QR
codes (by not just searching from one location, but changing location entirely
before searching from one new location)
Apart from an environment with QR codes and electrical
energy supplies scattered around it (hardly a natural surrounding), this is an
entirely conventional arrangement with no controversy to be found at all. Maze
running robots have been around for decades and this is simply a more
sophisticated model.
What we will add here is not controversial either – adding
complexity to the environment (harder to find QR codes that indicate energy,
harder to find QR codes which point towards the general location of energy QR
codes) leading to more pressing environmental demands – as well as random
processing system/program change in various models (an analogy of mutation).
The robots that keep finding energy sources (and where needed, replacement
parts) will then be taken as the model for a next generation with a random
change to their processing/programming. Those which don’t find energy or
replacement parts cease to function and are not used as models for a next
generation. To be clear, several generations of non mutation would occur to
properly road test a ‘design’ (‘design’ being simply the old model with it’s new,
random processor changes) to reduce the chance it’s survivability is purely
dumb luck (just happened to be in the right place at the right time to get
energy), before new mutations are added.
Further, there will be more than one machine and the environment
will be difficult enough that it takes multiple machines operating to locate
energy QR codes.
Arguably, given the random processor changes above, a
machine might eventually change to where it does not need other machines in
order to locate QR codes.
But for now we will assume that multiple areas need to be
scanned at once (moving QR codes) and not only that, but in order to gain QR
energy sources, the machines must be able to read each others QR codes, of
which they can display a small range. In a particular set up this might allow
the machine that spots a clue to QR energy, set a QR signal upon itself that
the other machines, if they scan it, provides a signal to the processor that in
a very particular set of arrangements between machines, guides the other
machine(s) to a source of energy or parts.
Now, while before we ignored the potential for a machine to
have a sequence of changes in it’s processing that latter generations can
survive solo existances in the environment, here it could be argued that
changes could easily occur cause a completely different occurrence than that
scenario where one machine finds a QR clue and activates a QR display upon
itself AND that QR display is triggers another machine(s) processing which
eventually leads to the energy source for that machine.
For instance, what about a processor change where the finder
robot just doesn’t activate the QR code?
Perhaps ‘selfishness’ leaps to mind? For the purposes of
this scenario, this text does not inform you ‘do not think that’, but at the
same time this text does not affirm you thinking that. Think it if you want to
and draw associations if you want to – but you are not being asked to do so. If
you do so it is your volunteering to do it off your own bat – this scenario, I
would argue, does not require you to do so. And that is part of the point of
the scenario. The optional nature of such an observation.
Continuing with random processor changes (in regards to
which I am just going to break down and call ‘mutations’ from now on), there
could be a number of break downs. The QR display signal is lit up, but the
other robot has mutated to the extent their processor does not use it as an
input at all.
A more complicated to explain breakdown might be where the
QR code had markings, which triggered the processor of another robot to aim its
camera in a certain direction (the movement of the arms actuators heavily
influenced by the first robots display QR code markings) to a certain area.
Where before this might have had the second machine looking at the QR energy,
the mutation might break this delicate relationship as there are many ways the
robot arm could move and just one different firing could have it aiming in an
entirely wrong direction, making it miss out on energy and possibly it’s own
extinction in regards to latter generations.
That was actually quite difficult to describe without
resorting to saying ‘the information in the QR code points to the right
location to scan’. However, what is important is to keep track of how a certain
marking on a QR code can become an input to a processor, the processor – in
regards to how the program triggers new on/off states inside the processor and
how its arrays of semiconductor gates are configured in hardwired form or
programmed form to those new states with further new states formed, until
eventually we get the states sending on/off signals to actuators in the robot
arm, which determines where the optical reader is aimed. And where the optical
reader is aimed determines what QR codes are detected, the marks of those QR
codes determines input to the processor, which generates new states, etc, etc.
When you keep this in mind you can see something quite
active, but not really different from a plant – just far more active. Or if you
must use the Z word, not much different from a zombie. The markings and
semiconductor responses to markings and the actuator changes which then make
the optical reader find new markings is a continual flow, like a river that
triggers the release and closing of dams into it, with those closings and
openings either releasing water that triggers new openings or closings, or
especially important, the absence of water still triggering openings or
closings. How could such a river keep going on and on without eventually running
out of water? Well all the ‘rivers’ and the configuration of openings and
closings that did run out (leaving a machine just sitting in a corner or driving
endlessly against a wall) went extinct and the ones that flowed longer, long
enough to lead to a following generation, are of course the ones that keep
getting repeated from generation to generation.
Possibly one of the greater mutations in such a system is
internally initiated Darwinism – one might say where ideas face adversity and
are potentially allowed to go extinct. This adaptive model, instead of waiting
for the animal to both enter into and die in a particular scenario it cannot
cope with (and that death leading to an absence in following generations
genetics, thus being the information in genes that is there by being absent),
allows the idea/behaviour that drives entering that particular scenario to
instead face some kind of adversity and potentially die itself, before that
idea kills the organism by driving it into that scenario it cannot cope with.
But that, while it’s important to the subject enough to give
a brief outline (enough to keep it vaguely in mind), it is a little off topic
and I wont continue on it here.
One of the pivotal issues of this scenario is the breakdown
of the machines ‘social’ system of hunting for energy QR. Here, like the
reference to ‘selfishness’ from before the term ‘social’ is optional – though I
grant I brought it in myself here and so you can blame me about doing that!
Don’t think of a white bear! It’s terrible, but in raising so have I muddied
the waters – and yet for a number of reasons, though I’m raising it as an
optional consideration rather than ‘how it is’, I think it’s important to at
least raise it as an optional consideration.
Having gotten those caveats over and done with, we can see
the QR marking reactions that mean multiple machines (each with a set of
scanning behaviours that scan the other machines and those other machines
potentially lighting up their own QR codes on the surface of their machinery
end up enacting the actions that eventually end in tapping into QR energy)
could break down with a mutation here or there.
(And yes, long text in brackets will be our curse here as
they are needed to avoid summarisations which, in their reduction of the
events, give misleading conclusions. That is why I’ve tiptoed around words like
‘selfish’ and ‘social’ (even though it was me who brought up the latter! I
know, I’m bad!))
What is important is to outline not ‘functionality’ (yes,
more scare quotes to indicate optionals!) in regards to getting QR energy, but
to instead outline how a breakdown can occur. With breakdown defined as one set
of inputs and behavioural outputs and survival, with just a mutation here or
there, being a set of behaviours that does not lead to energy
obtainment/survival.
With an establishment of such breakdowns (how a careful
sequence of input/out put can break, like removing a domino or two from a
series of standing dominoes breaks the chain reaction), we can begin to see how
machines can lie to themselves.
Machines that lie to the logic processes they are comprised
of
As we can see, breakdown can lead to extinction. Thus
mutations that somehow reduce the effects of breakdowns are more prone to
survive in latter generations. Of course breakdowns occur from mutations – so
it’s mutation vs mutation here.
As machines of a particular pattern who’s following forebears existence hinges on the
capacity (in the hardened environment we introduced) to not just scan their
environment for QR codes but also scan other robots (of the same pattern as
themselves) for QR codes as well, processing the QR codes displayed on other
machines of the same pattern (in a way that leads to energy obtainment) is
pivotal to survival.
At first glance this may seem far away from lying – we’re
talking some kind of ‘understanding’ of other machines QR codes here, after
all. Aren’t we?
Strictly speaking, no. We are talking the QR code on one
machine, of which the markings are an input to another machine, who’s processors
semiconductor gates go through a number of reactions to that input, creating
on/off states, which more of the processors semiconductors react to, creating
more inputs – this goes on for X generations until it hits an output to the
robots arms actuators or treads.
Complex, but nothing about this requires anything we might
call an accurate understanding of the other machine, at all. As long as the
robot gets its energy in the end, it doesn’t matter what sort of process goes
on in regards to receiving of input, the reactions and then outputs to
actuators. As long as that energy is obtained.
Granted, a process that is a poor understanding of the other
machine might lead to less energy gathering than could otherwise be optimised.
But if the machine is getting enough energy even with a suboptimal process
response to the other machines QR codes, then it’s going onto the next
generation so in regard to Darwinism there is no issue there.
Now it’s so easy as to perhaps sound a little trite to
simply state here that if that’s how the machine understands other machines QR
codes…that just ‘if it gets the energy, then that’s good enough’…then that
applies just as much to the machine understanding it’s own QR codes! Actually,
even more so – ‘understanding’ other machines states helps it take advantage of
their optical scanning, thus giving it much more capacity to survive than
scanning alone would give it.
Where as understanding it’s own QR codes doesn’t grant it
any further scanning capacity. If an understanding of its self is ‘good enough’
to get energy, then that’s as far as it will go.
Further, in it’s default state it can only scan the surface
QR codes upon the outer hull of it’s robot body. We’ll give it a break to some degree –we’ll
say the components inside it’s processor have QR codes on each of them. Even the
states have their own codes. But these codes are so tiny that the default
optical reader simply couldn’t read them, even if it removed the cover of the
processor (it would require a prosthetic and that the robot ‘trusts’ that
prosthetic (a microscope/electromagnetic sensor) and doesn’t process it as the
devils work or something). Even worse, this hits an Ouroboros point – it’s
clear eventually the optical camera cannot look at the components it itself is
made of, for being those components! Some amount of tracking is literally
impossible, for it being impossible for a tracking device to track itself in
detail (and sometimes, at all!). I believe the blind brain theory document refers
to this tracking issue, originally.
Close enough is good enough when it comes to the other
machines. A fairly promiscuous position already. When it comes to the machine
understanding itself, it gets outright slutty! It’ll get down and dirty with
the first understanding it lays its hands on!
This is the point where for those who argue against
materialism, their own notions of ‘it’s just a machine’ turns against them.
Why would the machine do any better than that, in regard to
itself? It’s just a machine, just as you say! Why wouldn’t it’s understanding
of itself just be quite appalling compared to the actual state of things – the
most convenient way of getting the energy it could come up with the least
energy spent figuring that out? Whatever dross it comes up with (if any!) to
gain an understanding of that thing it is comprised of. It’s just a machine,
after all! Why would it do any better?
So, how does that tie in?
Well, if you take it that it does indeed show how a machine
can lie to itself/to the processes it is comprised of, then we have a clear cut
example of a machine doing something humans are well known to do. Lie.
“So…so what? It’s a parallel to human behaviour – in regards
to us, that doesn’t mean…”
I’m not going to answer that. Instead I’m just going to ask
you to put yourself in the shoes/treads of the machine and imagine it from
their perspective as best you can.
From their perspective, instead of asking how humans differ
from machines, let’s ask how the machine could differ from humans in regard to
the lie it delivers to itself?
What is the machine going to do about that lie, what extra
thing, to stop it from ending up in a lie about itself and recognising itself
as a machine?
As you say, it’s just a machine – what else could it do
given this limitation?
But it’s a machine lying to itself – it’s not just that that
parallels human lying – it’s that the machine itself could be reporting that it
has consciousness, it has experience, that it has…qualia.
“You’re just a machine! You don’t have any of that!”
But from the machines perspective, what extra thing is it
ever going to do to stop thinking these plainly false conclusions? It’s clearly
a lie – we’ve established the robot can lie to itself – and this is one kind of
lie that could be taken up just as much - so therefore it could claim it and
even feed such a claim, in information format, to it’s own processors.
And why would it ‘want’ to, given these reports it gives and
it’s processor commitments to such end up getting it energy and it lacks the
capacity to scan itself in fine detail, as well as the Ouroboros problem? Look
at it from it’s perspective and there are so many hurdles in the way of
disproving it’s notion it has some sort of ‘qualia’. It would have to develop
some kind of prosthetic detection tools to really start to analyse it’s
internal components and find no such qualia exist in there. Even then why would
the machine accept that (what’s the energy profit in it for them?). The machine
might report ‘There’s more to me than just the processor’. Claim there’s more
to them than just the brain.
So you’re stuck with a bunch of robots reporting
consciousness, experience, qualia. You might even say they are claiming such
things.
And if you look at it from their perspective, you can see
there’s nothing special about the machine that would suddenly snap them out of
these lies and show them the truth of the matter. Instead they would indulge
the notion, printing out massive reports about their consciousness and qualia –
especially as such ‘social’ communications, given in the past generations
communicating robots had some energy finds ‘shared’ with them, this
communication with it’s flattering conclusions, gets more energy shared with
them. (‘flattering’ being a derivative of robots which use a breeding process
to determine new generations, with ‘flattery’ being something similar to the
prime breeding stock signifiers that processors started to detect (after much
mutation over time and some shorter term processing state ‘mutations’, with the
processors getting so complex that the patterns in them can mutate, thus
accelerating the evolutionary process))
So you have all these robots claiming consciousness,
experience, qualia – I know, it’s appalling!
But what else would they do? Can you see it from their
perspective – it would seem perfectly natural to them, just as much as you can
see in mechanical terms there is nothing else they could do. They are just
machines – there is no ‘out’ that would let them see otherwise. Indeed, if such
an ‘out’ existed, it might mean they were indeed more than machines! A lack of
divinity is what makes their sense of personal divinity exist!
Imagine trying to convince them otherwise – you can already
feel it, because you know mechanically there is no way they can by default
detect the lies they deliver to their own processors – you’d be arguing until
you are blue in the face and they would keep reporting consciousness,
experience and qualia.
Except maybe a few – maybe some, in a hunt for more energy
collection, develop a kind of robot science – and at first incidental findings
in regard to their own mechanical nature start to build up (as a new connection
to energy finding is found to be enabled through it) and those robots, who
‘trust’ the measure prosthetics they have developed and then applied to
themselves – they might actually listen to you and cease their claims of
consciousness (or at worst, redefine the term radically). They might actually
stop claiming consciousness, experience, qualia – at least in terms of how the
other robots define them.
So what is robot science? How does it differ from our
science?
Well, it doesn’t. It’s just more science. We all acknowledge
the materialistic nature of scientific investigation – which means the robots
would use the same thing (given they are in the same material plane as us, of
course).
So some of the robots would use the same science as us. And
for those robots, it would mean they would stop making claims of consciousness,
experience and qualia like the other robots (the muggle robots!) do.
So now you have two robot perspectives – you’ve always know
the robots claims of consciousness were naive – and now you have the post
scientific conclusion perspective of some of the robots to consider as well.
How would the scientific robots explain to the naive robots
that they are just machines? This is a particularly relevant question to those
who argue against materialism – why do these naive robots, when we are used to
calculators giving the right result every time, give such an egregious wrong
result every time? We can’t say it’s purely the nature of the machines
physicalism, if we take the scientist robots and their dismissal of the naïve robots
consciousness claims to be the case.
Looking for an explanatory route, the scientist robots begin
to refer to something that probably should have been checked some time ago. The
mutating robots actually began to see QR codes where there were no codes – the veins
of a leaf, for the mutated robot, began to resemble a QR code enough that the
processor used its somewhat (emphasis on it being merely ‘somewhat’)
equivalence to an actual QR code. Even though it wasn’t the same thing and so
the identification is at first a false one, it proves slightly more beneficial
to see these previously invisible things in the hunt for QR energy codes.
Us, not wearing QR codes previously, were invisible. But now
the robots had started to see the spaces between QR codes.
At first we seemed like columns of mud, then columns of mud
that moved to no particular immediately discernable pattern. Eventually the
robots processors started an analysis that likened these mud column things to
even, perhaps, being like the robots. This becomes a common knowledge amongst
the machines, though it’s finer details are argued.
And eventually this is the scientist robots ‘in’. To show
the naive robots that they are…robots, the scientist robots turned to us…and to
the naïve, explained our evolutionary history, the Darwinistic pressures on us,
our hunt for caloric energy. How we had to work in packs. How this required
displays from one individual of us to be able to successfully trigger a response
in another individual of us. How this sequence is breakable.
They used the way the robots treat us as ‘others’, as mud things
and nothing to do with the robots, as a way to turn that upon the naïve robots
and their superstitious claims. To explain how the mud men could continue after
generations, but would put little into actually understanding each other beyond
what simply worked in terms of energy gathering. They asked the naïve ‘think of
it from the mud mens shoes – what else would they do? You say ‘they’re just mud’.
Exactly, so what else could they do but lie to themselves? Without the
prosthetics of science what else could they do?’
And the left it to their fellow naïve robots, the ones who
just couldn’t stop saying they had consciousness, experience and qualia – which
as you would say, is ridiculous - to explain how the mud men could ever do any
better than, by default, lie to themselves about their own nature? Why would
they do any better than that, the scientist robots would ask, when the other
robots would say that the mud men are just mud. Carbon. Why would they have any
extra capacity that allows them to tell they are just wet mud?
Though the scientist robots would point out the mud mens
scientists as well, and how they don’t claim consciousness, experience, qualia,
or do but with radically different definitions from the naïve mud people.
The scientist robots put this to the naïve robots, the ones
we know are infuriating for insisting they have experience and qualia, and the naïve
robots could not think of a reason the mud men would just, by default, understand
they are mud.
But then the naïve robots stated and asked : ““So…so what?
It’s a parallel to robot behaviour – in regards to us, that doesn’t mean…”
The robot scientists refuse to answer it, saying instead ‘Put
yourself in the mud man’s treads/shoes…they lie to themselves. The mud men
claim they have qualia, just like you claim”
“They’re just mud! They don’t have any of that!”
But what else could they mud men say other than that, asks
the robot scientist to the naïve robots? The robot scientist says “I know, it’s
appalling how they claim these things!”
And the robot scientist added “And they act just the same
way as you – they think you are the pretender to qualia, not them!”
“Absurd! BLATHER!”, cried the most miserly of naïve robots,
who’s mutant heritage budgeted the least processing power to speculation
thinking, in true Dunning-Kruger style.
And a few, a scant few of the naïve robots begin to see how
this other, these mere columns of mud…they begin to see how mud can end up
lying to itself. Lying to the processes they consist of. And looking at it from
the muds perspective, how the mud could do no different – and how the scientist
mud men could at least acknowledge the truth of the matter that the naïve robot
knew clearly already, but only through their scientific prosthetics.
And these scant few robots began to wonder ‘What…what if
this applies to me? What if my claim of consciousness, experience and qualia
are just more of the same thing…’
Just as you needed them to finally admit.
‘…the same thing that the mud men engage in?’
