Science Vs. Religion | Black Vs. White | A vs. Z

Well, as long as that addition or subtraction of anything serves to make the allegory ring more true to our current situation on this planet... you can do whatever you'd like on this boat.
 
Ah gotcha. Hypothetically of course, and I should have clarified "iPwn jumped up to help [put the mutiny down]" :) In the sense that eventually it would seem that there always seems to be a group of people who conspire to gain control of the boat for their own intent.

I'm sure through your years of experience on this planet (and I've noticed in a few posts), you've seen that you can't please everyone. So in this analogy let's pretend a vote was cast and iPwn was named captain. Well, celegorm and lowndsey have been awfully silent in this entire exchange. Come to find out they freaking hate captain iPwn and where he is steering the ship. Over the course of the next few weeks, they subtly influence smart_guy, bk_123, janet_h, root, and even my former rowing mate celery to plot a mutiny for various reason. Now again, each of the members all have their reasons.

smart_guy was told iPwn was going to make everyone wear pink dresses, Smart_guy hates dresses.
bk_123 was told iPwn planned to implement metered downloads and he REALLY likes watching netflix after nightly deck swabs.
janet_h was told iPwn is going to burn the ship as soon as it reaches an island and she plans to continue on to a different destination.
root was told iPwn has been taking double rations and felt this was highly unfair.
celery was told that iPwn has been putting additives in the whiskey to dilute it, and keeping the good whiskey for himself.

Only celegorm and lowndsey are the keepers of the true agenda once the mutiny succeeds, if it does, but the stage is set. They learned each persons likes/dislikes and played to them to form a bond and then took advantage of that.

Only after the trap has been sprung and iPwn is tossed overboard, the democracy crumbled, a faux one setup in it's stead, are celegorm and lowndsey able to carry out their true intent. It gets more interesting too. Let's say these two made a pact that celegorm was to get elected captain but they would keep the same plan. Lowndsey doesn't trust celegorm anymore, and celegorm has a plan to get rid of lowndsey this whole time. So after the mutiny, lowndsey attempts to kill celegorm but it fails, so then he spills the beans about the plot exposing their entire plan from the start!

The boat is rocked by this confession. Sadly, most don't even believe what they just heard and toss lowndsey overboard with iPwn.

I feel like I'm writing an after action report for many countries' history....
 
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I think if we accept that premise, our next question has to be - what is the best approach we can take to solving fundamentally opposing problems?

To put a 21st (or possibly 22nd) century twist on the rowboat, what happens if we introduce an AI whose sense of "self" is defined as some sort of amalgam between every individual on the boat and the boat as a whole?

It would hold each individual's needs and concerns in the same regard, while keeping the big picture in mind too. The decisions it makes may be undesirable for an unfortunate few, but what more can we ask than a decision that has been made as fairly as possible?
It's what our current governments were idealistically put in place to do after all, they just tend to fail spectacularly due to inherent human selfishness. The "selfishness" that this AI would display would at least be as fair as possible in that it truly considers all units as well as the whole to be part of its self.

I guess we could make another analogy with how your brain controls your body - you consider every part of your body just as much part of your "self" as your whole body, and the decisions you make take that into account.
 
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Now the introduction of the AI adds a very interesting twist.

Let's go back to your example of the child falling overboard, dwindling food and the island up ahead.
Because it's a child, how many would attempt to override the controls because it was a child?
Contrast that with someone dying of a terminal illness? Does anyone attempt to stop the ship? Maybe a friend?

It's interesting that we as humans can sometimes operate in this very manner (citing the AI acting in a fair, big picture manner). At other times though, we fail to and sometimes very miserably so.

Is it because of our sense compassion? Empathy? If so, one may very well make the argument that a race is best served without such features, but would this life be worth living without such a dichotomous experience that these emotions (along with all others) provide?

As I ponder this, I would almost think an A.I. would need some awareness of such emotions. Why? Perhaps simply to understand humans as more than just another animal on the planet. That's a catch 22 though. By giving the A.I. awareness of them, you may risk exposing it to the very traps we ourselves fall into. Imagine the A.I. turns the boat around for the one child because the child played war games with it every morning.


So I was going to pose a question earlier today, but didn't get to it due some work project (stupid work and it's false sense of importance!).

What's the most important item(s) on the ship, including people, materials and the ship itself?

Our own ego is probably the biggest hindrance to human progress... true progress, that I can wrap my own head around. Every business, every project, every group I've ever been a part and even in my own life, it's always that personal desire for glory and recognition that seems to stifle the progression of mankind. Does it matter who holds the position of captain? Would there be a captain without the boat? Would the captain be anything without all others under his charge?

What's the most important item(s) on the ship, including people, materials and the ship itself? Are they not all equal? I'm not making a creationism argument here, but I'm going to borrow one for this. Irreducible complexity fits quite nicely here. A mousetrap is worthless without any one part, therefore all parts are important. One could argue they're all equally important.

Perhaps we should be discussing how to build a pipe dream?
 
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