From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: Psychobabble
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 07:50:31 GMT

In article <hx3m44h.barry@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>In article <1992Aug11.013442.15324@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
[...]
>>Why?  Because in *my* world, we're all (myself included) basically a bunch of 
>>highly complex, evolved (thus no intentional design and no ultimate purpose),
>>biological machines.

Note the "highly complex" bit, folks.  This is sufficient to account for all
the weird and wonderful behavior you see on the part of humans.

>	OK, let's try some more. Our pill is a product of science,
>and science doesn't know from "real" love. Your target _acts_ just
>like she's in love with you, and says she is, but there's no way
>to know it's really the same thing. Any doubts?

Nope.  Basically, what you're saying is that there's no evidence at all
one way or the other whether or not it's "real love".

Guess what?  This is *exactly* the same situation that people run into in
Real Life (tm).  You can't *know* that your sweetie is in love with you,
can you?  All you know is that it *looks* like love.

Unless, of course, you believe in telepathy and all that bunk.

>	Next step: turns out our pill won't work reliably on real
>people; too much water under the bridge, too much life-experience
>supplying its own, variant programming. But science still comes
>to your rescue. They can grow you a sweetie in a vat, program her
>to meet your specs, and to love you. Interested in her? This is a
>real human being, mind - only the programming is customized.

No problem.

>	Final question. Turns out even custom-programmed humans
>can't be made to love reliably. This time I'm offering a robot.
>It's completely human on the outside, a Stepford Wife, and its
>behavior is believably and satisfyingly human. But it's
>circuitry on the inside, and there's no way to even know if it's
>self aware. All that's certain is that that its brain's hardware
>is nothing like human wetware, and its "love", whether real or
>feigned (who can say?) is caused by very different mechanisms
>than human love.

Here we have a slight problem.  Reason: I have instincts that require my
mate to be human.  Otherwise I wouldn't be mentioning all this stuff at
all, because my cat would be sufficient (it, at least, loves me, at least
as long as I feed it  :-).

>	You say people are biological machines, but there's a
>ghost in the machine, 

Prove it.

>and it's that ghost that feels love, and
>is loved by other ghosts. 

Again, prove it.  Bet you can't.

And if you can't, then why do you believe in it?  Why complicate your life
with unprovable and unnecessary assumptions?

>Could you love an automaton? No matter
>its behavior, if you _knew_ it wasn't self-aware, that there was
>no one home in there, could you love it, love it like a person loves
>a person, and not like one may love a fine car?

Due to my instinctive needs, probably not.

Now, if I had a "Stepford wife" that I didn't know and *couldn't* know
was not human, and it passed every conceivable test of self-awareness and
of other things one might devise to determine humanity, *then* I wouldn't
have any problem loving her/it, because I would have no reason to
believe that she/it wasn't human, and much reason to believe that she/it
was.

In short, I can only go by what I see.

>	The myths of science deal with causes, not meanings. They
>aren't much help in romance.

Exactly.  *Humans* assign meaning to things.  And "meaning" is a purely
subjective thing.  It's like "value".

>-  From the Crow's Nest  -                Kenn Barry
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>ELECTRIC AVENUE:    			barry@netcom.com


-- 
				Kevin Brown

			    kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
			    kevin@taronga.taronga.com