X-Message-Number: 8219
Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 14:13:47 -0500 (CDT)
From:  (Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8214 - #8218

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>
>Message #8218
>From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
>Subject: Re: CryoNet #8203 - #8204
>Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 21:57:19 -0700 (PDT)
>
>I would be the last to claim that we cannot build DEVICES which will really
>be intelligent, just as we are. I'm a whole lot more doubtful that we can
>make COMPUTERS --- at least in the present sense of the word --- very
>intelligent at all. As for making those devices, it seems not only unwise
>but cruel --- cruel to the devices, which would have a human brain and
>human desires in a body incapable of satisfying them. But after all, human
>beings have done many cruel things in the past, so why not this one?
>
>As for the uses of similar devices, which are NOT like us because they
>have no desires, I'm sure that such devices will become very useful. Without
>desires they will have no consciousness. Since they are built for our use
>rather than their own, a lack of desires is important. No doubt they will
>be a great help to us on many different occasions and situations, extending
>our brains just as the invention of speech, writing, printing, and all those
>other inventions have done.
>
>			Long long life,
>
>				Thomas Donaldson
>


   The subject line should obviously have been "Devices and Desires." <g>

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