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trickykitty) wrote2011-10-22 08:40 am
trickykitty) wrote2011-10-22 08:40 am
Entry tags:
What Choice Did He Have?
I was thinking more about AlexithymiaMan and some of the questions that were being asked of him. My original point for looking at such an article was to get an idea of how an AI might act without 'emotions'.
What I discovered was that AlexithymiaMan responds exactly as I would have predicted given the diagnosis. It's the other "normal" people, their questions and reactions, that has me pondering most of all.
There are still untold numbers of people that have no idea that the 10% brain usage rule is a complete and total myth fabricated by the stupid media after incorrectly translating, "We only use ~10% of our brains at any given moment in time." Likewise, most all humans believe that choice cannot exist without want and desire and emotional thinking.
First and foremost, emotional thinking and rational thinking are almost always at odds with one another. However, there is an advantage to having emotional thinking versus not having emotional thinking when it comes to survival. The Enterprise would have exploded and everyone would have died if Spock hadn't logically realized that he could sacrifice himself for the greater good of saving the rest of the ship. Rationally, survival of the many outweighs survival of the one, but emotionally it's every man for himself. The big question remains, though, of WHY did he still CHOOSE to do it?
Years ago, I had heard about how Deep Blue won against Kasparov in a chess game. It was an amazing thing to behold, yet I was unimpressed when people kept calling Deep Blue an 'intelligent' machine. "Did Deep Blue CHOOSE to play?" was, and still is, my common interpretation of that event.
The question at the top of AlexithymiaMan's page, and one that was proposed a couple of times later just in different ways, was (paraphrased):
"What motivates you to care about anything?"
"What pleasure do you derive?"
"What compels you to do something if you can't derive any satisfaction from it?"
Another person comments: "I've always felt that emotion is what makes us human, but clearly your condition throws that belief into question."
There is the crux of it. There is a default underlying assumption that emotions are required in order to be human or, by extension, intelligent. I've had many similar conversations with people once they discover that I'm in the AI field. An assertion of fact that I hear quite often is, "A computer can't be intelligent/alive because it can't feel." It is very difficult for many of the neurotypical (NT) people asking questions to assign humanity to AlexithymiaMan.
Without emotions, decisions are made rationally. People with alexithymia as well as anyone else with a specific type of prefrontal cortex damage (VMPFC) will rank shooting yourself in the head equal to buying a pack of gum in the grand scheme of things. Decisions are made based on a cost-benefit analysis alone.
An example given in Damasio's Descartes' Error comes from an actual experiment done on patients with VMPFC damage. Patients were given a dollar and the choice of purchasing a $1 soda or a $1 lottery ticket guaranteed to win $1mil. Neither choice had preferential ranking, and in fact, if the patient was thirsty at the time, they would opt to purchase the soda. A neurotypical (NT) would have picked the lottery ticket, giving more weight to future gains over immediate gains.
Further down that reddit page, a person asks, "How do you choose which cereal to buy?" It's funny that this is asked, because marketing is such a huge industry that prides itself on being able to sway people's choices. Ask any NT how they chose what they were going to buy and the answers are all over the place, yet no one ever says, "Because I saw enough of this product's commercials and enough positive reinforcement was created which highly influenced my decision to pick this item over that when I was in the grocery aisle." Name brands, anyone?
We are masters at misattributing our own decision making processes. Emotions most definitely have a role in making quick, gut-feeling decisions, and they are great at masking themselves into being "my" decisions. However, decisions can be made strictly without emotional content, a concept so amazingly foreign to most NTs.
Can a computer ever WANT to play a game of chess? Is this the same as a computer DECIDING to play a game of chess? What is the difference between making a decision and wanting something?
This leads back to the first question on that reddit page: "What motivates you to care about anything?"
Now, there's an obvious assumption that acting within the environment is the equivalent to caring about something, so I'm going to take out the bad assumption and rephrase that question to, "What motivates you to act?"
As humans, we have good ol' Maslow's hierarchy of needs to guide us. At base are the physiological needs required for sustaining life. That alone is enough to motivate actions within an environment.
What is the motivation for someone with no emotions to act beyond the basics? To a NT person, this is too cumbersome to understand, but it's really not that difficult. Which is better: complying with a police officer when he pulls you over and not having him turn into a jerk, or complying with a police officer who thinks you're being a smart ass (because you are talking like an emotionless robot) and starts berating you? This is an interaction that even an emotionless person like AlexithymiaMan may encounter while driving to the grocery store to fulfill one of his basic needs. Hell, how does he pay for his food? With a job, hopefully. (Maybe his job is being a thief.) How can he hold down a job if he cannot correctly interact within society?
What begins to unfold is a pattern of social interactions that are required for even basic living within our society. Even someone without emotions must make discrete decisions that will maximize the preferred outcomes on a regular basis.
I feel like I have a lot more to say about this, but I've been going at writing this for a while now. I think I'm going to go stretch my legs a bit.
On a completely separate note, I was just reminded that the lateral sides of the brain can sometimes be referred to sinister(left) and dexter(right). It reminded me of the show Dexter, and now I'm curious if that's where they got his character name.
What I discovered was that AlexithymiaMan responds exactly as I would have predicted given the diagnosis. It's the other "normal" people, their questions and reactions, that has me pondering most of all.
There are still untold numbers of people that have no idea that the 10% brain usage rule is a complete and total myth fabricated by the stupid media after incorrectly translating, "We only use ~10% of our brains at any given moment in time." Likewise, most all humans believe that choice cannot exist without want and desire and emotional thinking.
First and foremost, emotional thinking and rational thinking are almost always at odds with one another. However, there is an advantage to having emotional thinking versus not having emotional thinking when it comes to survival. The Enterprise would have exploded and everyone would have died if Spock hadn't logically realized that he could sacrifice himself for the greater good of saving the rest of the ship. Rationally, survival of the many outweighs survival of the one, but emotionally it's every man for himself. The big question remains, though, of WHY did he still CHOOSE to do it?
Years ago, I had heard about how Deep Blue won against Kasparov in a chess game. It was an amazing thing to behold, yet I was unimpressed when people kept calling Deep Blue an 'intelligent' machine. "Did Deep Blue CHOOSE to play?" was, and still is, my common interpretation of that event.
The question at the top of AlexithymiaMan's page, and one that was proposed a couple of times later just in different ways, was (paraphrased):
"What motivates you to care about anything?"
"What pleasure do you derive?"
"What compels you to do something if you can't derive any satisfaction from it?"
Another person comments: "I've always felt that emotion is what makes us human, but clearly your condition throws that belief into question."
There is the crux of it. There is a default underlying assumption that emotions are required in order to be human or, by extension, intelligent. I've had many similar conversations with people once they discover that I'm in the AI field. An assertion of fact that I hear quite often is, "A computer can't be intelligent/alive because it can't feel." It is very difficult for many of the neurotypical (NT) people asking questions to assign humanity to AlexithymiaMan.
Without emotions, decisions are made rationally. People with alexithymia as well as anyone else with a specific type of prefrontal cortex damage (VMPFC) will rank shooting yourself in the head equal to buying a pack of gum in the grand scheme of things. Decisions are made based on a cost-benefit analysis alone.
An example given in Damasio's Descartes' Error comes from an actual experiment done on patients with VMPFC damage. Patients were given a dollar and the choice of purchasing a $1 soda or a $1 lottery ticket guaranteed to win $1mil. Neither choice had preferential ranking, and in fact, if the patient was thirsty at the time, they would opt to purchase the soda. A neurotypical (NT) would have picked the lottery ticket, giving more weight to future gains over immediate gains.
Further down that reddit page, a person asks, "How do you choose which cereal to buy?" It's funny that this is asked, because marketing is such a huge industry that prides itself on being able to sway people's choices. Ask any NT how they chose what they were going to buy and the answers are all over the place, yet no one ever says, "Because I saw enough of this product's commercials and enough positive reinforcement was created which highly influenced my decision to pick this item over that when I was in the grocery aisle." Name brands, anyone?
We are masters at misattributing our own decision making processes. Emotions most definitely have a role in making quick, gut-feeling decisions, and they are great at masking themselves into being "my" decisions. However, decisions can be made strictly without emotional content, a concept so amazingly foreign to most NTs.
Can a computer ever WANT to play a game of chess? Is this the same as a computer DECIDING to play a game of chess? What is the difference between making a decision and wanting something?
This leads back to the first question on that reddit page: "What motivates you to care about anything?"
Now, there's an obvious assumption that acting within the environment is the equivalent to caring about something, so I'm going to take out the bad assumption and rephrase that question to, "What motivates you to act?"
As humans, we have good ol' Maslow's hierarchy of needs to guide us. At base are the physiological needs required for sustaining life. That alone is enough to motivate actions within an environment.
What is the motivation for someone with no emotions to act beyond the basics? To a NT person, this is too cumbersome to understand, but it's really not that difficult. Which is better: complying with a police officer when he pulls you over and not having him turn into a jerk, or complying with a police officer who thinks you're being a smart ass (because you are talking like an emotionless robot) and starts berating you? This is an interaction that even an emotionless person like AlexithymiaMan may encounter while driving to the grocery store to fulfill one of his basic needs. Hell, how does he pay for his food? With a job, hopefully. (Maybe his job is being a thief.) How can he hold down a job if he cannot correctly interact within society?
What begins to unfold is a pattern of social interactions that are required for even basic living within our society. Even someone without emotions must make discrete decisions that will maximize the preferred outcomes on a regular basis.
I feel like I have a lot more to say about this, but I've been going at writing this for a while now. I think I'm going to go stretch my legs a bit.
On a completely separate note, I was just reminded that the lateral sides of the brain can sometimes be referred to sinister(left) and dexter(right). It reminded me of the show Dexter, and now I'm curious if that's where they got his character name.