Hiro Antagonist

From the department of "Gosh, we never sat down and considered this for very long", I bring you two very different views on robotics:


Versus


So Nike uses this spiffy chalkbot to print out dot-matrix style messages with chalk at the Tour de France (video here). Apparently they're primarily in support of the Livestrong foundation, raising awareness of cancer victims.

All well and good, right? Not quite, it seems. Apparently Nike's chalkbot had an eerie resemblance to a previous robot, StreetWriter, a robot created by the Institute for Applied Autonomy to "...protest the militarization of robotics research...".

Namely at the DARPA Grand Challenge "...where its mission was to print Isaac Asimov’s First Rule of Robotics "A ROBOT MUST NOT KILL" at the starting line of the military robotics event."

So the IAA is getting all huffy about a evil corporation stealing their robotic thunder (which is covered in excellent detail by Near Future Laboratory here) and it struck me that the hullabaloo was really over a certain idea, namely that robots are somehow inherently moral devices.

To be moral to begin with, something must be capable of good and evil, or be inherently one way or the other. Humans can make moral actions that are 'good' or 'evil', because there's free will behind it, along with intent.

Inanimate objects; tools, on the other hand, can't be moral in the sense that they're inherently evil or good. The same hammer can be used to build a library or break knees - did it suddenly become evil or good because how it was used?

If you pause to think about it for a second, you'd realize that a hammer doesn't act on its own. Human beings direct the hammer, and it is the actions of the human that are moral - the hammer just helps.

To be certain, there are some tools or inventions that have very limited or no moral use in one category or another - torture chambers or pretty paintings, for example. It'd be difficult to do good by using a torture chamber, and it'd be hard to do evil by using pretty paintings. Not impossible, mind you, just difficult.

I hate it when some artistic group, or political group gets all worked up about something they didn't think through for more than ten minutes. Because frankly, if you go nuts over a concept and berate people over it, and make press releases, it should be over something that can't be proven to be false in a single paragraph.

Robots can be easily used in either moral direction, but protesting their militarization is just stupid. It isn't robots that are being militarized, it's just that people are militarized and they keep on finding news tools to aid them in this.

So NPR airs this bit about how odd it is that the same black pastors that led the civil rights movement are against gay marriage.

It's fine by me if someone doesn't hold with something. I personally don't believe people should be screwing outside of marriage, regardless of gender. But any people that are capable of loving each other getting married seems like it can only be a good thing.

So why would a group of people who led the civil rights movement in the 60's be against what is essentially more of the same? One of the black pastors who'd been in the civil right's movement was recorded saying "If anybody can get married, that devalues marriage".

I sat there, stunned for a second. This was quite possibly the most stupid thing I'd heard in a long time, not to mention quite possibly the worst argument I'd ever heard.


Because, as we all know, 'If anyone could have civil rights, that'd devalue civil rights!'

The thing is, basic rights belonging to all human beings cannot be devalued by letting all humans exercise them. Rights are not like gold in the sense that the more everyone else has, the less your own supply is worth.

I'm not sure which I hate more, hypocrisy or people who make stupid arguments that aren't logically sound.

"I don't use P2P but for everyone else I say go for it. Rob those bastards blind. Why? One sentence: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. Think about that for a minute. That man has been worm food (or a Popsicle depending on who you believe) for a half a fricking century and yet his first work, one made when cars were started with a crank and antibiotics were just a crazy dream, is STILL under copyright.

Copyrights were a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People got a richer Public Domain. Instead they used outright bribery to corrupt our politicians and buy our laws away from us. So I say screw the thieving bastards. Let them rot. They used their money to steal our public domain away from us so if someone wants to steal from the thieves I say more power to them. I just can't be bothered because I honestly think their product is shit and isn't even worth stealing. But frankly expecting us to feel so sorry for those thieving bastards is just pushing it too far. Put the copyrights back to the way they were for over a century and quit robbing our public domain!"
-hairyfeet


Certainly raises a few interesting points. Especially one that's usually forgotten in the US - what is legal is not always right, and what is right is not always legal. Just because you do something does not mean you can demand compensation for it.

Music used to only be something one could get money for by performing live (pre-1800's). It's actually still that way today for artists, just not the parasitic companies that represent them.

I have a few good LJ friends that help remind me when I'm unspecific to the point of not sending the message I intend with the things I write.

In regards to my previous post, re-reading it with no particular context makes it sound like one shouldn't trust people because they cannot be trusted in general.

Specifically, all humans have best interests - being a good member of society, being a good parent, being a good friend.

Most of the time, people don't have conflicting best interests. It's not in the best interests of your neighbor to steal you property when you leave your doors unlocked. It's not in the best interests of parents to do things that would not be beneficial to their kids in the long run - ie, not making them brush their teeth may make them happier in the short term, but less so in the long term.

People get along great as long as their best interests don't come into conflict.


You can't trust without reservation that
A.) the best interests of others will not conflict with your own, and
B.) that the best interests of others are not subject to change.

My previous entry was prompted by people I know who were surprised and hurt when they assumed the best interests of someone else and their own coincided without any conflict. And in a few cases, that the best interests of the people they knew were never subject to change.

This is something that is completely obvious to a fair number of people, though oddly enough, not everyone.

The ultimate message is 'don't go through life assuming that the best interests of others have no conflict with your own, or are never subject to change. From time to time, think about / examine / contemplate what the best interests are for others around you, to avoid being surprised if they come into conflict.'

Something I've seen every now and then from overly-trusting people is that other human beings are trustworthy by default.

In other words, that people will never act against your best interests.


Life is too short to be paranoid about every other human in existence. Being unable to trust anything is a very time-consuming principle to operate on.

However, there is a third option that eliminates the disadvantages of the other two while preserving the advantages of both complete trust and complete distrust.

People act in their own best interests above all others. In short, if there's something someone cares about, they won't mind sabotaging your efforts to achieve the same thing if you stand in their way.

This applies to all sorts of things outside politics and business. Bake sales, 4H competitions, being acknowledged as the best parent at a school, etc. All humans are subject to human nature, no matter how nice or innocent they are as individuals. Some might be resistant, but no one is completely immune.


So when it comes to your friend Jo Ann covering you when your oven fails the night before the bake sale, or your friend Bill helping you finish your project when you're both in the same science fair, don't assume they won't act against your best interests. Especially when theirs conflict with yours.



While you can't trust everyone by default, you can safely assume that others aren't out to get you unless it is in their best interests to do so.

In short, don't actively distrust people, but constantly understand that no one can be trusted to the point where they'll never act against your best interests. Human beings are human. Never underestimate them, or you do so at your own peril.

Something I've never liked about the USA is the thirst for blood. Here in Texas, the public fondness for executing people is perhaps more obvious than in other states. In a fit of extreme irony, you often hear people who are against abortion and the execution of the unborn who are pro-death penalty.

I've been against killing people for as long as I can remember, more from philosophical reasons than any particular religious ones. You should never kill anyone unless your own life is under immediate threat. There's simply no *need* to kill people unless they're trying to kill you and can't be stopped otherwise.

Honesty needs to come first. Life is cheap, and on the whole, humans don't value it that highly. People have always been willing to die and kill for just about anything.

Civilization has been a story of triumph, of man over man's own nature for the last few thousand years. We've been winning more than we've been loosing for a while now, and we shouldn't give up, especially on a battle this important.

Security:
The death penalty is no longer about this. Modern prisons are secure, and can keep society safe from violent criminals. It can no longer be said that a criminal is so dangerous that he must die, otherwise everyone in the country is otherwise at risk. Most people in this country recognize this is a bullshit argument and no longer resort to it.

Vengeance:
Killing people never brought back anyone, or made anything better. I'm reminded of a famous popular saying by Holly Near "Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?" We act as if somehow, when we kill someone as a group (the State), we are less guilty than when we kill someone as individuals.

One of the most respected thinkers on law, William Blackstone, once said "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

In the last *three* years in Dallas county alone, NINETEEN people have been freed from death row on DNA evidence showing they could not possibly have been guilty of the charges they had been convicted on. Dallas county currently leads the nation in number of prisoners on death row proven wrongfully convicted. It's not a statistic to be proud of. Probably one we should be abhorred by, really.


I have yet to run into anyone who was pro-death penalty because of anything based on reason. It's always been vengeance. An eye for an eye ends up with a nation of blind people when you let animal instinct triumph over reason. There is no animal on the planet more vicious than human beings. But there's also no animal on the planet capable of such great triumph over their negative qualities. Hopefully the chain of victories over the worst aspects of human nature doesn't end here.

Expanding on an interesting Slashdot article about the IGDA having internal heated arguments over 'crunch time' being a bad or good thing (the irony is that the IGDA is supposed to increase the quality of life for game developers in general, so being pro-crunch time would be doing the opposite of their stated goals), in general, the concept of 'crunch time' is a bullshit concept.

Back from my dotcom days, when I had no connection to video game development, we did 'crunch time' on a regular basis. With every single project, actually. What is came down to was "We need you to do 85 hour weeks to make up for our lack of planning."

Companies love crunch time. You can get employees to do insane amounts of overtime and not pay them for a minute of it. You can work them to death, then lay all of them off when the project is finished, and bring in a fresh batch of people too naive to catch onto what's going on. You can burn people like matches and get away with it.

Until your company collapses, anyway. Like mine did. And lots of others. But unintelligent management types who *think* they're awfully clever can keep this up for a few years, then move on to the next company, so it's no big deal to them.

Coming from someone who used to do 85 hour work weeks during 'crunch time mode', if the management can't "see a viable strategy to meet these deadlines without crunch time", you have idiots in your management, and quite possibly incompetent idiots, or even worse, malevolent idiots who think they can burn workers like a cord of firewood.

Between solid planning, and the sound business sense to not take on projects that have idiotic and unrealistic deadlines, crunch time can be entirely avoided. Don't take the line of bullshit they feed you that 'it's inevitable'. It's not.

I recently got around to watching "A Waltz with Bashir" and while it was a powerful and well made film about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, at the end of it, I was unhappy with the film because intellectually, it did not have anything to say about the horrors that had occurred.

It recounted the experiences of one man dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder that he suffered from as a result of participating in the fighting, but past that, it did not have anything to say of weight about the events, beyond perhaps 'humans are good at killing each other, one revenge inciting the opposite side to do the same'.

By the end of the film, it's just the feel-bad movie of the year, and you feel if there was nothing of worth to take from the film. Not that there has to be a positive message. Or a negative one. Just *any* message of *any* intellectual depth.

If you make a movie about explosions, no one expects Shakespeare. If you make a movie about events you compare to the Nazi holocaust, you'd damn well better have something to say about it.

In some ways, the film just made me feel like the residents in a thousand mile radius of the area were all guilty, either for participating in the violence on either side, or doing nothing to stop it, or get away from it.

All of those people that live there and accept their fate and lot in life like lambs to the slaughter are in my mind, just as guilty as those carrying out the slaughter on both sides.

To use a notion from Kant, humans have a moral imperative to act, and inaction does not bear any less guilt than actively participating in the wrongdoing.

Get up and walk away. Don't stop walking until you're dead or you're somewhere else where war is not a daily fact of life. Short of 'they will shoot me the moment I try to escape', there is no valid excuse for the failure to do so.

Inspired by descendingchaos's entry on the same topic:

There's an Indian show 'Dadagiri', where the contestants do their best to survive 3 rounds of bullying for a cash prize. Apparently the abuse heaped on the contestants is pretty fierce, and got out of hand during the taping of a recent show.

A dominatrix type woman started insulting one of the guests as usual, but then he told her off. She slaps him and he slaps her right back. Then the studio devolves into chaos and people are pushing and shoving everywhere. You can see the video on Youtube here, though the audio is NSFW.


Some people have been commenting that there was nothing wrong with the guy slapping her back, because, hey, equal rights means equal responsibility, right? In general, if you go around slapping people, you'll get the same or worse in return.

Most women haven't figured this out yet, and are enjoying some of the happy benefits of chivalry that have yet to die. Women hitting men isn't rare, and often people are told 'you shouldn't hit back, because women can't fight someone bigger and stronger than they are'.

However, you'll notice that most male geeks who weigh 150 pounds sopping wet don't go around hitting 240 pound muscle-bound types. Of course a slap from a scrawny geek wouldn't be much of a threat to someone like that, but the male geeks are smart enough to know that starting physical violence means you have to be able to take what you dish out.


So is the guy in the wrong for slapping her back? Or should we shed our foolish notions of chivalry and let everyone compete on an mostly-equal playing field and get the snot smacked out of them if they're stupid enough to start something they can't finish?

Medical abortion is no different than shooting an adult in the head, when you get down to it.

To be a bit more accurate, it's more like being a politician that orders some third world guerrilla leader to be assassinated. They don't shoot the guerrilla leader in the head themselves, but in the chain of people that made it happen, they bear the most ethical responsibility for the action. It's a bit easier being the person that gives the orders, less messy and easier to rationalize away. Human beings are big fans of such things.


Often people will debate abortion on theological grounds. In the United States, that's often the only grounds that abortion is debated on. Theology is problematic though, as your debating opponent has to be of the same religion or close enough that the theological grounds your argument rest on hold sound in their view of the world. In other words, an evangelical christian is going to have a hard time convincing an atheist that abortion is wrong. Mostly because the desires of some god the atheist doesn't even believe in tend not to hold weight for them in any argument.

And if the two people in an argument about abortion are of two different religions that have differing views on abortion? Phew! Talk about your lost causes.


Reason, however, is universal to all humans. People might not agree on the existence of a supreme being, or even one that's particular on how people get killed, but every human being with two brain cells to rub together can understand why the statement 'sheep eat grass, therefore all things that eat grass are sheep' happens to be problematic.

Most human beings will say that shooting people in the head isn't a good thing in general. Human life tends to be a universal good in every human society, given how you'll find prohibitions and laws against murder in pretty much every one of them. It *is* easier to kill someone than not if you disagree with them in a heated argument. Especially if you both have guns. Take disputes about cheating in gambling in the Wild West era for example.

But if you go around shooting everyone you have a problem with, society just goes down the drain. Getting good dental care will be tough if the dentist thinks you'll have no problem shooting him in the head when you see the bill. This applies to every facet of society in general - murder isn't something that can be tolerated if you want civilization to work well.

Murdering people who are classified as being outside of a given society is far less problematic though. People from another country that become enemies, people of a different race, color or creed, etc. Gradually people have come to understand that even with these differences, people are no less human for them. The life of a Civil Rights protester is worth no less than that of any other person's life, as it turns out.

"Clearly it must be so Socrates!"


If we can all agree through logic that human life and the preservation of such is a good that we all value, the next question is 'where does human life begin?'

This is often the topic of fierce debate - is a human being still human if it's only a few cells? If it's so many months old in the womb? Only after it has drawn its first breath of air? Only after it has the right to vote?

No one argues against the idea that a fetus *will* be human at some point. To shed light upon this dilemma, perhaps it makes more sense to ask at what stage something will not be human. In other words, if you grow a kidney in a laboratory and keep it alive, it isn't going to become a human being in the natural course of events. A sperm by itself, will never become a human being. Nor will an ovum.

However, get the two together and unless the natural course of events is interrupted, the result will end up a human being. Perhaps even one that ends up reading this, who can say?



Is a human being any less a human being at any stage in their life? Is the life of an elderly person of any less worth than that of one in the prime of their life? Logic implies that human life, regardless of the stage it is in, is worth equally as much at every point from beginning to end.

While it might be hard to declare when something is a human being in the world of biological science, in the world of reason, logic and philosophy, it is far less so. Logic implies that it is human unless it is not. While that statement may seem simplistic, it is very important. For it is much easier to decide what will never and can never be a human being than what is a human being.

Given the two groups, things that will never and can never be human beings, and things that are not present in the first group; eg a baby, one can safely say that killing things in the first group could never be considered murder in the sense of one human killing another.

That leaves that second group then. Things you can kill that are or will be human. Logically, if a squalling infant turns into a polite adult with table manners, the squalling infant is no less human for its lack of table manners. Continuing in that chain of logic, a zygote is just as human as an individual of voting age is.

Logic implies that killing a zygote is an act of no less weight than shooting someone in the head.