From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!37.1!avl0 Sat Oct 24 20:44:46 EDT 1992
Article 7366 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!37.1!avl0
>From: avl0@cine88.cineca.it
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (killing boring wife)
Message-ID: <1992Oct22.154730.585@cine88.cineca.it>
Date: 22 Oct 92 15:47:30 +0100
Organization: CINECA, Italian Interuniversity comp. centre
Lines: 47

In article <tim.719734523@giaeb> tim@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au (Tim Roberts) writes:

!>Great! When you'll make such an android I'll be the first to buy it.
!>It will be my preferred toy and if it will bore me I'll can switch it off.
!>By the way ... can you tell me why I can't kill my boring wife?
>
>Well, you can....but I suspect you don't want to, for a huge variety of
>reasons, not the least of which is that she is unique, and if you kill her
>there is no known way to replicate her or make any sort of duplicate.  The
>same would be true of anything unique and incredibly complex.

So, I CAN! That's the point, I CAN.
Why to replicate her if she's boring? (out of the example the question is serious).
There are a lot of people troubling me, why can't I kill them? ... because their
incredible complexity? There are more 6 billions of such incredible complexities
around, loosing some tens of them is not a dramatic trouble.

Perhaps because I can have trouble with the human Justice. Could be.
But this Justice is not just, I'm a pure mechanism, why it punishes Me?
Does punish Physical and Biological Laws
THEY have the responsibility of my actions!

If robots and humans are equivalent which is the value of You and Me.
Can I sell or buy a robot? Yes? THEN I can sell or buy a man, Slavery
is not wrong in principle.
And there's a lot of similar tragical consequences, about Freedom, Life,
Happyness and so on.
All that sound like a theorem proved "per absurdum": neither Me or You found
the difference between man and machine but there MUST be a difference or
our world is absurd.

I can agree  with you: there's no positive proof that there is a difference.
But, also, we have no positive proof of the contrary.
It is an epistemological issue: no science can find out anything that it excludes
"a priori". As A. Einstein said "No science is possible if the cathegory of
Possibility is not kept" (perhaps the words are not these but the concept does).		

One related question... why do you merely skip over the fact that I can switch off
my boring android?

Moreover. Who give the value you gave to every incredible complexity?
Anyway, I'm happy to read you gave it some value ... but where's its ground?

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
! avl0@cineca.it	Marco Voli - Supercomputing Group
! ph. +39-51-598411	CINECA Interuniversitary Computing Centre
! FAX +39-51-598472	via Magnanelli 6/3 - Casalecchio (BO) ITALY


