On differences in attitudes between religious and secular people

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asked 9 years ago

1. How would you characterize the people who approached you with questions about artificial intelligence? You are not a psychologist, but what is the subtext of debating with a religious person about artificial intelligence? What dialogue did they expect? What scares them about artificial intelligence? Is it a fear of machine recognition in the future, or rather a doubt about the uniqueness of the human soul?

2. I quote the last paragraphs of your discussion with “Yonatan”:

Jonathan: “I never understood Searle’s Chinese room parable. At the highest level of abstraction, humans think, feel, and understand, but when you zoom in to the level of neurons, we are all colonies of ants running around freely in Searle’s room. There is no contradiction.”

Michael: “Intelligence is based on judgment and the exercise of choosing a technique or one option among several in a non-deterministic manner. When it is deterministic, intelligence has no meaning. I assume that according to your method, water and electrons also have intelligence, like a computer and like a human. There is no real difference between what they do and what the human-machine, as you define it, does. So there is no need to wait for the formation of what you call artificial intelligence. In principle, it is possible to fall in love with water (although talking to them is a bit difficult, but with the right interface, that can also be arranged).”

As a secularist, I’m not sure it would be tragic for me to fall in love with water, or to know that my neurons look like colonies of ants running around, please and please. You chose to believe that there is a power that can distinguish between man and machine in an age when humans can no longer distinguish between them, and that that is what matters. I don’t know if there is such a power, and I don’t know how important it is to me that it can distinguish between me and a machine when I can no longer.

How does such an issue sharpen our differences in positions? Are these the only things that differentiate us when it comes to similar questions about artificial intelligence?

thanks,

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מיכי Staff answered 9 years ago

Before I address your question about the subtext, I must say that I completely disagree with the subtext I see in your words (the links you assume are self-evident between different perceptions and religious or secularism). I will try to clarify this within my answers to the various points. 1. First, I get inquiries from all kinds of people (especially on the subject of neuroscience and free will, on which I wrote a book), and I don’t always know the applicant’s views, certainly on issues not directly related to the question. Still, I would like to say with caution that in my experience there is no significant difference between religious and non-religious people in these discussions. Some of the most ardent materialists and determinists I have spoken to have been religious, and vice versa. Furthermore, as far as I remember, I have not encountered fear in the religious applicants, but simply a desire to clarify the matter. Incidentally, this is the case with me too. I am not afraid of anything like that. I am simply trying to clarify the issue and my position on it. And now for the subtext. In my opinion, the fears surrounding this matter (as well as regarding cloning and other tangential issues) are more secular than religious in nature. I can attribute this to several explanations (here I am of course in the realm of hypothesis and speculation): A. For the religious, it is clear that this is not true, so what is the point of being afraid? on. Religious people have God to protect them from the aliens and robotic demons. third. Religious people have halakhic and intellectual principles according to which they discuss this issue and in general (in my opinion, they are usually much more rational than secular people). In contrast, ethical discussion in the secular world is usually emotional (sometimes people speak in vague terms like “proportional” or “disproportionate,” which usually hide vague feelings behind them). Fear, as we know, belongs to the emotional world. 2. I also don’t think it’s tragic to fall in love with water and sing serenades to them under your window in the middle of the night (as long as they love you back, of course, otherwise it’s a classic tragedy), but I think it simply won’t happen, and even if something does happen there, it won’t be love in the normal human sense. People fall in love with people, not with their simulations or with stones or clouds (and yes, I saw the movie She. In the fictional world, there are also older stories, like Pygmalion). And two more notes on the subtext: A. Here is an example of mixing emotional concepts in an intellectual discussion. You asked whether it is terrible to fall in love with water?, while I am dealing with the question: Is it possible to fall in love with water? And is it love? B. Why do you link this to being secular? You are also a woman and I am a man, so maybe the difference lies in that? Or maybe just a difference in tastes or the philosophy that exists between us. If you ask me, I really don’t think it has anything to do with secularism and religiosity. 3. I did not say that we have the power to distinguish. I do not rule out a situation in which we cannot distinguish (on the contrary, it actually seems not that far-fetched to me). What I claimed is that there is a distinction, meaning that these are essentially different creatures. I did not claim that diagnostically each of us would be able to distinguish between them. This is the discussion of the Turing test. On the contrary, I have written more than once that even if she passes the Turing test, she is still not a person. And if I know that she is a computer even though she passed the Turing test, I will not fall in love with her, and even if I see someone who did fall in love with her, I will not define it as love, but as a hallucination or some kind of Pygmalion-style disorder. 4. The freedom to define is of course infinite. You could also talk about an electricity pole falling in love with a cloud. And it doesn’t even have to bother me if someone talks about it (certainly not if it’s done in a song). And yet, in my opinion, it won’t happen, and it’s not love in the conventional sense. 5. Neurons running around like ants is fine. But as you can see in John Searle’s example, it’s running around but not thinking. If it’s thinking, then even a flow of water (whether you’re in love with it or not) is thinking (in whose mind?). And again, we’re back to the freedom of definition in the era of postmodern nonsense where metaphors become reality. The Happy Prince was once thought to be a metaphorical story about humans. But now you’re suggesting that it’s a real story about a statue (which is moral and loving and emotional and speaks). I know that seems paternalistic, but I’ll say it anyway, and it seems to me to be a kind of confusion rather than a philosophical position. As I understand it, the neurons perform the act of thinking but do not think. It is the mind that thinks, and the brain only performs the action for it. Just as the leg muscles perform the act of walking but do not walk. It is the person who walks and thinks. The brain and the legs are organs through which we perform these actions. 6. I didn’t understand the distinction “between us” that you talked about at the end. Do you mean the distinction between religious and secular or between me and the Lagite? Of course, it distinguishes between a materialist-determinist and someone who is not one (an interactionist dualist, like me). But not necessarily between religious and secular, because there are religious people like this and that and secular people like that and that. Again, the subtext. —————————————————————————————— Asker (another): From your correspondence, it appears that you do not deny that a robot can be a more intelligent and wise creature than a human, but that it is not a human. This makes it difficult for those who believe that the image of God means intelligence, because a robot certainly does not have the image of God. —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: 1. I didn’t understand the comment. According to them, a robot has the image of God. 2. Why do I need to defend the opinions of others? 3. As far as I understand, a robot cannot be an intelligent creature, just as the sky cannot be intelligent. It has no intelligence because it is programmed and does not decide and consider.

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