I can never help but be put off by the trivial “as my 30 year life cycle comes to an end…” when I read this comic. I wonder if we’ll ever be at a stage where we produce/program biological “robots” that are capable of having this kind of relationship to their own existence.
It doesn’t sound too far off from my experience of depression. When I was in my 20’s I fully expected to be dead (one way or another) before 30 and I felt pretty blasé about it. Having 50+ more years of misery seemed intolerable by comparison. Then 30 kinda snuck up on me and things really had gotten a little bit better, so I just kept on going just to see what would happen, and have kept keeping on ever since.
there’s a few essential differences between animals and plants, and one of them is that plants try to maximize their surface area to collect more sunlight, while animals try to minimize their surface area because surface area is attack area.
as a consequence, animals are kinda sphere-shaped, or at least they center all their body relatively closely to some center point. I.e. humans have 2 m diameter max, from tip to toe, while plants can easily have roots that stretch for kilometers.
i assume that robots are much closer to animals than plants, and as such, they have a rather narrowly centered body, and as such, that center point automatically gains a lot of significance. So, it is quite likely that robots would have an “i” awareness similarly to how a sphere is clearly distinct from everything around it.
What else do you need for an “i” awareness? I mean, “i am a particle in space” is pretty dependent on the thought of being at a well-defined position in space, which is only possible if your body is relatively compact.
I can never help but be put off by the trivial “as my 30 year life cycle comes to an end…” when I read this comic. I wonder if we’ll ever be at a stage where we produce/program biological “robots” that are capable of having this kind of relationship to their own existence.
It doesn’t sound too far off from my experience of depression. When I was in my 20’s I fully expected to be dead (one way or another) before 30 and I felt pretty blasé about it. Having 50+ more years of misery seemed intolerable by comparison. Then 30 kinda snuck up on me and things really had gotten a little bit better, so I just kept on going just to see what would happen, and have kept keeping on ever since.
there’s a few essential differences between animals and plants, and one of them is that plants try to maximize their surface area to collect more sunlight, while animals try to minimize their surface area because surface area is attack area.
as a consequence, animals are kinda sphere-shaped, or at least they center all their body relatively closely to some center point. I.e. humans have 2 m diameter max, from tip to toe, while plants can easily have roots that stretch for kilometers.
i assume that robots are much closer to animals than plants, and as such, they have a rather narrowly centered body, and as such, that center point automatically gains a lot of significance. So, it is quite likely that robots would have an “i” awareness similarly to how a sphere is clearly distinct from everything around it.
What else do you need for an “i” awareness? I mean, “i am a particle in space” is pretty dependent on the thought of being at a well-defined position in space, which is only possible if your body is relatively compact.