QUOTE (hermit @ Jul 12 2010, 01:40 AM)

Oh please. What do many religious functionaries (catholic priests, buddhist monks, sadhus or the virgo vestalis) have in common? You see, it's broad generalisation and total disregard for historical and social fact that makes evolutionary biology the joke it is. If we were 'programmed' to procreate, society would not exist as it does, since many social functions - essential ones also - require to take a different focus than procreation. Marriage severely limits procreative activity, as does raising children, for instance.
Wow.... you have really no idea how evolution works then. Its really quite simple. Lets say you have an ultra high sex drive, and spend all day long doing nothing but having sex, lets also say for sake of argument, you're a male, just so we have the selection pressures of a single sex to deal with. Given that if you did this without regard for consequences, you're reproductive success would be low for a variety of reasons. a) because you place no energy in self maintenance, you starve to death b) because you place no energy providing for your mates, they have a lower incentive to mate with you in the first place (you generate fewer embryos), c) because you place no energy in providing for your children fewer of them survive to adulthood, d) because you are messing with other peoples carefully developed pair bonding, you will quickly learn WHY homicide was a leading cause of death in the ancient world. Thus the combination of genes which lead to your behavior in the first place has a lower chance of seeing itself reproduced when compared to people who put at least some energy into self maintenance, mate and child support, and not going out of their way to piss off every other male in their tribe.
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Human society works far more like a bee hive than a pack of apes. Check out how many bees actually procreate in their lives.
Actually no it doesn't, not even close. Bee's look after their sisters, because do to an oddity in bee genetics, the workers are actually more related to their sisters then they would be their own daughters if they could actually procreate. Thus it is genetically beneficial for them to tend to the needs of their sisters.
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That just kills the entire concept of Emergence. Not that I'd mind, but since your entire humanisation of AI depends on Emergence, I'd be careful not to obliterate it like that.
They also say A.I.'s inhabit systems like the one which gave 'birth' to them, and have a tendency to perform functions similar to the ones their parent program was intended for.
AI are, by the setting's definition, no comprehensible programs and do not work like programs ought to by way of computer magic. AI are computer magical beings, not programs. They are, if anything, the spirits to "resonance" computer magic.
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Source? Because I'd really like to see a type of spirit that would do that. What would that be, a toxic free spirit of cotton candy?
any book which references spirits, as well as refers to the meta planes as infinite. Given an infinite number of variable metaplanes, it is possible there are planes on which the laws of logic are not equivalent to our own, and thus the thought processes of such creatures will be truly alien. Shedim for example HATE metahuman life.... but 'why'?
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Especially Xenosapient AI. Sorry, but something with such an extremly different environment and experience as AI cannot possibly be as comprehensible as a spirit, which shares the same life experiences that at least 2% of metahumanity do.
For starters, only 1% of metahumanity is awakened, second only a small subset of that are mages, a subset of that is initiated, and a subset of that have visited any significant number of metaplanes. Of that tiny fraction of humanity, (say 1/10,000) they will have visited a combined total of approximately 0% of all available metaplanes,(yes I DID mean ZERO) and as a result have practically no clue what kinds of different spirits can and do actually exist, as well as the enviroments which bring those spirits into being(if they are actually made there), or what sorts of effects the spirits home metaplane have on said spirits way of thinking, and use/flavor/presence of logic. I'm sorry, but nothing I can imagine could possible be more alien then a creature from a place where the laws of physics as you know them, and the laws of logic do not exist in any way you could conceivably recognize.
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Wow, I guess you think Dawkins' long obsolethe thesis of the selfish gene is some sort of religious text.
No, I just happen to think it is, at present, a reasonable summation of a hypothesis, supported by the theory of evolution, and will likely continue to do so, until the hypothesis is demonstrated to be incorrect.
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Do you realise we're talking about the canon setting and not whatever fanfiction you have in mind, and hence, what you think might be cool is totally irrelevant?
If you can show me where in canon it says that A.I.'s can NOT feel fear, and under no circumstance will be afraid of their own deaths, then it is not unreasonable to assume somewhere at some point in time, some A.I. CAN feel fear, and WILL be afraid of death. Since the game DOES allow for the possibility of this happening, and also emphatically states that NOONE actually knows how an A.I.'s mind actually works from a physics stand point, asking me to explain how a particular out put could be generated from a particular input when all the intervening steps are unknown is an open invitation for me to engage in pointless technobable, and any answer I give is potentially correct.
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They have to abide by the same set rules in a universe as everything else, including SR's magic.
They are computer programs, and as such there are many reality based filters which can and should be reasonably placed upon them. This filters are not entirely dissimilar to that say things like bullets are consumed when used, and cars can not be poisoned.
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And why should it be probable for a spirit?
If you wish to speak from a mathematical standpoint, because there are an infinite number of metaplanes which are in some way different from eachother, and because it is only some nonzero chance that a any given metaplane will allow such a train of thought to be both possible, and probable, it is actually a virtual certainty that some spirit in some meta plane would safely and rationally come to the stated conclusion from the premise of footballs being hollow using whatever passes for logic in its home metaplane. There in fact doesn't even have to be anything 'toxic' about said spirit, it simply has to have a thought process adequately dissimilar to our own.
Human thoughts are shaped by our genes and our environment. Our genes are shaped by how they have interacted with the environment. As a result it comes down to environment ultimately anyway. Our environment is shaped by the true laws of physics(however closely or distantly they relate to our known laws of physics) and as a result we are defined in everyway that matters by the physical laws of our universe.
In the case of spirits, their thought processes are often shaped in distant metaplanes by forces no human may have yet experienced letalone comprehends, and as a result their minds can be totally and completely alien to anything a human has ever experienced, or even COULD ever experience. Its possible that a spirits mind may be so alien that no thought it has ever or will ever had would even be comprehensible to any human ever, regardless of the amount of explanation given by some kind of knowledgeable 3rd party who could understand both us and the spirit in question.