Life, Technology, and Ethical Philosophy
Audio of the first chapter introducing the author’s goals for the book and how he thinks 5 specific areas of science are impacting our lives. I haven’t read it yet, posting it here because it sounded like it might be a good read. So this is a reminder to me to look into it.
Add popped up on FB feed here.
I presented a paper on robotic personhood more than 10 years ago, and most people laughed at my conclusion. I said that whether a robot could pass a Turing test or not was irrelevant. Robots would be given citizenship just because people wanted them to have it. Whether or not robots will become self-aware, feel emotions, or other indices of personhood, Sophia has been granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia. Now there are problems with robotic personhood. Robots were created to do work humans don’t want to do (too dangerous) or are unwilling to do (unpleasant, monotonous, repetitive). So having robot persons do them introduces slavery all over again.
The first article below points out that at this point of development, Sophia is primarily a chabox like Alexa, not a self aware sentient being expressing emotional desires for her personal happiness. I do not think Sophia has in any way demonstrated “life” as we currently define it, and yet a legal precedence has been set. Science fiction has become science fact.
A really great article popped up on my feed by David Grimm in Science magazine. He stated that research has been done which shows cows can be potty trained, just like many other animals. My first thought was, of course, “Cool, now I can have a house cow!” but there is a deeper moral implication to this. Industrial farming locks animals up in tiny cages because its easier on the humans to sluice down a waste trough than to clean up after free ranging animals. The dairies that tried to give their cows more freedom had cow droppings every where – inside the barns as well as out in the barn yards. So utilitarian ethics reduced cows to bio-machines that produced milk and dairies became giant warehouses for cows.
The experiment cited said 16 calves were led down a corridor to a specific area technically called the cow commode. Grimm said the use name was the Moo Loo. The calves were given a diuretic so the team could control the visits. As soon as a calf peed, it was given a treat by the researcher. The team reported that 10 of the calves very quickly learned the desired behavior, and looked to the researcher immediately after they peed, some of them mid-stream. This also has the moral implication that cows are aware of their behavior. According to Grimm, the research team said cows have the cognitive ability of at least a human two year old. It took only 10 visits or less for each calf to use the Moo Loo properly.
The environmental impact could be staggering. Cow urine creates ammonia, which can transform into the highly toxic nitrous oxide. Jan Langbein, co-author of the study, said that given that there are hundreds of millions of dairy cows in the world, “studies have shown that capturing 80% of cow urine would lead to a 56% reduction in ammonia emissions.”
So rather than fear mongering about green house emissions and how toxic cows are, maybe we should just use the simple solution and teach them how to use a Moo Loo.
I confess, I play Facebook games. When a game annoys people and they complain on the community chat boards, someone always responds, “It’s just a game. If you don’t like it, quit.” But its far more than just a game. The fact that the complaint is posted on a community chat board indicates that computer games are often an interactive experience that requires having “friends” or “neighbors” – complete strangers you will probably never meet in real life but you will interact with on a daily basis. You will probably spend years with these people, spending far more time with them than with your biological family and far too often, more time with them than your spouse or partner, unless said spouse or partner is part of the same online community. With Facebook games, you join a team, and they become a surrogate family.
With the creation of MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games, like World of War Craft for example, that sense of community expanded to the thousands. People have become profession YouTube gamers, making money by letting other people watch them play these games, which seems very weird to me. I can understand how playing video games is fun, but watching someone else play a game holds no personal appeal. And yet people do this for a living, so obviously quite a lot of people do enjoy watching someone else play a game. And there is a very strong sense of community that is built by doing this.
This sense of community used to be created in person. There was no “online” 50 years ago. Today’s teenager cant even conceive of not having friends from all over the globe, or of not having instant, 24 hour access to social contact.
How gaming keeps people connected, according to a professional YouTube gamer
Plant Protein Science and Technology Forum
AOCS online forum October 12-14, 2021
$299 non-member, $199 member, $59 student-member
(AOCS – the American Oil Chemists Society)
Unfortunately I will not be able to attend this for financial reasons. It is of particular interest as we see the rise of the vat grown burgers becoming a mainstream product instead the small niche market vegan burgers have traditionally been. The vat grown burger, both cell-cultured and plant based, are marketed under the rubric of reducing animal cruelty and being better for the environment, hence this event’s categorization under Animal Rights.
Technology is not always the answer.
Rather than use heavy machinery to cut huge swaths of land down to the bare earth, a couple in Alberta, Canada have spent two decades renting out their herd of goats. Heavy machinery is almost as disruptive and dangerous to the animals that live on land as a fire itself, destroying nests and burrows and frequently grinding up animals unable to escape in time. Goats, on the other hand, just eat around the critters and leave burrows and nests in place.
Pesticides to kill off invasive species of plants do the same deadly damage to the native fauna as well as invasive flora. Grazing animals eat poisoned plants. predators eat poisoned grazers. Both types of animals get coated with the poisons as they wander through their home territories and then injest the herbicides when they groom themselves. Goats…well goats may annoy the natural fauna but they aren’t deadly, and goats can be directed to eat only the invasive plants while leaving the natural plants alone.
Goats also have the advantage of producing milk as a by product of all this munching, so it seems like an obvious win-win situation. Fire reduction, natural flora protection, happy and healthy critters who live in the area, and Chevre cheese. Why are we not using goats as the standard go-to more often?
RECOMMENDED READING:
Alberta couple spent decades using their goats for fire mitigation, invasive species in B.C.
We live in a sick and twisted society where narcissism is rewarded and hard work and integrity are punished. We no longer have community values, we have “What’s in it for me” values. As for the “Why should I care” question, this is what happens when the people who are the biggest weasels make it to the top and you become inconvenient to their goals. The historic old-age pension plan of community life – the young are cared for by parents who are then cared for by their children when they grow old – does not exist as a societal norm in the 21st century. No, when you are old and inconvenient, we are not going to take our resources and help your life be better, we are simply going to make death the easiest choice. And package our greed and laziness in such a way that it doesn’t bother our conscience and makes you the bad guy if you object to be told to go die because you need help.
RECOMMENDED READING:
“Suicide Machine” That Lets You Experience Death Now Ready for the Public to Try