Comment on Modularity and Buzzy

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:56:28 GMT

I have produced an offspring. It has friends, teachers, its own room, allowance, personal tastes.... It has a separate name and existence from me. It operates according to compatible, but distinct, purposes, opportunities and choices to mine. And, if I accomplish my goal, it will operate even more independently in the future than it does now, and may at some point, exist entirely separate from me. But, I'm not tempted to attribute an "I" to it.

When a system achieves sufficient complexity, we have a tendency to reify it. That bias might be called "parenthood". But in the spirit of not giving preference to biological human people, why would you consider your business to be less alive than a turkey? I agree that there's a point where we start to call it a conscious agent, and if left to itself, your business would act irrationally, and possibly die, but it -would- act. This just means that you are not finished programming yet. If there's no possibility of ever calling your business conscious, given mind-bogglingly clever planning, then we can all give up and go back to bed now. My point is that I think we have a tendency to attribute agency to things because it is useful to treat as if they had agency, even if they really don't. If you can predict accurately using the wrong model, you may be wrong but at least you're predicting accurately.

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