ZetaTalk: Lack of Choice
Note: written May 15, 1997.
To humans, who observe that their computers often seem more intelligent
than other humans, our assertion that the rules we must observe regarding
sentient or conscious thinking machines prevent our machines from becoming
alive must seem confusing. A retarded human who can barely recall the
sequences necessary to put one leg into a set of trousers is alive and
conscious, but a powerful computer monitoring a myriad of logic threads
simultaneously is not. Just how does that compute! The
difference is subtle, and where the line may seem blurred to humans who
are confusing performance with intrinsic intellectual
independence, i.e. choice, the issue is not confusing to us. We
will expand on the differences between performance and choice.
- Quite often, and in fact most often in machines developed in
higher densities, the performance of the machine is superior to the
performance a life form could attain. This should not be surprising in
that the machine was developed for this reason - because the
life form desired more rapid or reliable performance than they could
attain, or tired of the redundant activity required when the life form
itself was performing the activity. This is precisely why humans
invented computers, which at first did simple calculations rapidly and
with almost unerring accuracy. This is still why humans press for faster
speed and the ability to handle more complex calculations, as the
computer allows for insights requiring the processing of immense amounts
of data, or rapid analysis of the data for on-the-spot decisions.
Nevertheless, the computer is performing as its masters directed.
- Entities form in the life forms that DNA makes possible not because
there is activity, which in any case takes place in a swirling nebula,
but because of the possibility for choice. The readership can
relate to this if they think of common situations they themselves face
almost daily. They rise in the morning. In this they have a choice,
as they can choose not to rise, to sleep on for more minutes or hours,
to refuse to rise ever until they die in bed, to engage in all manner of
activities in bed from affectionate or sexual interchanges with their
mate to reading or masturbation or simply scratching. In all of this the
choice is theirs. Now imagine that one was required to rise
automatically, no choice, and proceed through a regimen of steps such as
tooth brushing and dressing in a pre-defined outfit, every day, day
after day, without any foreseeable change. Too boring! Humans have been
known to kill themselves due to unrelenting boredom, and forming
entities simply do not incarnate into such situations.
- Machines are not intelligent as in being capable of thought,
they are simply well programmed and capable of adaptive reasoning. Where
this differs from the free choice that DNA that has evolved into complex
organisms can sustain, it is the degree to which the initial programming
dictates the outcome of conclusions. Machines adapt to the
environment, but always within the dictates of their initial
programming. Living organisms have multiple branches in their logic
trees, in that these branches can be grown in response to the
environment and past choices, where machines in fact do not
have branches. What might be taken for a machine's logic tree is in fact
a predetermined branch dictated by the initial program.
Thus, the rule that machines, no matter how complex, cannot carry
incarnating souls is not one that needs enforcement. It happens quite
naturally as the entities simply don’t linger!
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