matthew-m comments on The Blue-Minimizing Robot - Less Wrong

162 Post author: Yvain 04 July 2011 10:26PM

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Comment author: matthew-m 07 July 2011 07:55:17PM 1 point [-]

I predict this would not happen the way you anticipate, at least for some ways to cash out 'taking control of your motor cortex'. For example, when a neurosurgeon uses a probe to stimulate a part of the motor cortex responsible for moving the arm, and eir patient's arm moves, and the neurosurgeon asks the patient why ey moved eir arm, the patient often replies something like "I had an itch", "it was uncomfortable in that position", or "What, I'm not allowed to move my arm now without getting grilled on it?"

I find this curious. When a physician taps my knee with a knee tapping hammer I don't think to myself "I chose to jerk my leg." I experience it as something out of my control.

Perhaps endoself was mistaken in placing the robots programing in the motor complex, but I believe the point was that in the human experience there are two kinds of reactions: those we have at least some form of conscious control over and those we have no conscious control over; and the robot's blue minimizing programing would fall into the later. Thus the robot would not experience the blue minimization as anything other than a strange reflex triggered by the color blue.