Aw, Facebook, quit blaming AI for your goofs and shady practices

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 17, 2018

Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

One thing to be said for granting personhood to intelligent machines is that we could then blame them for things that go wrong.

From Sarah Jeong at The Verge:

Over the course of an accumulated 10 hours spread out over two days of hearings, Mark Zuckerberg dodged question after question by citing the power of artificial intelligence.

Moderating hate speech? AI will fix it. Terrorist content and recruitment? AI again. Fake accounts? AI. Russian misinformation? AI. Racially discriminatory ads? AI. Security? AI.

It’s not even entirely clear what Zuckerberg means by “AI” here. He repeatedly brought up how Facebook’s detection systems automatically take down 99 percent of “terrorist content” before any kind of flagging. In 2017, Facebook announced that it was “experimenting” with AI to detect language that “might be advocating for terrorism” — presumably a deep learning technique. It’s not clear that deep learning is actually part of Facebook’s automated system. (We emailed Facebook for clarification and have not yet heard back.) But we do know AI is still in its infancy when it comes to understanding language. As The Verge’s James Vincent concludes from his reporting, AI is not up to snuff when it comes to the nuances of human language, and that’s not even taking into consideration the edge cases where even humans disagree. In fact, AI might never be capable of dealing with certain categories of content, like fake news.More.

Of course Facebook would not be able to deal with “fake news.” For one thing, much of the normal news stream is fake news. But the only possible remedy is the cultivation of good judgement. In any event, the term has become a catch-all for things someone with a position somewhere finds it inconvenient or distasteful that others should hear.

Highlights from Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony

See also: Experts slam EU proposal to grant personhood to intelligent machines

Part I: What is fake news? Do we believe it?

Part II: Does fake news make a difference in politics?

Part III: What can we do about fake news that would not diminish real news? Critics of ‘fake news’ should go to China — only the government has the right to post fake news.

And

Extra! Extra! A handy guide to the normal fake news: Surviving information overload

Comments

The option of granting you true, and real, personhood is simply unavailable to me. I am not God!
And yet you've seen fit to actually make that decision when you've told me that I am not a person, apparently without any guidance from God.Bob O'H_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
03:09 AM
3
03
09
AM
PDT}

Bob, again the issue of you being a real person is an issue between you and God. If you want to argue with God that belief in him is not important for being a 'real' person do it.,,, He may even give you some pointers on how to argue properly with Himself (see Job for example) again, The option of granting you true, and real, personhood is simply unavailable to me. I am not God!bornagain77_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
03:02 AM
3
03
02
AM
PDT}

ba77 - OK, so I'm condemned. But that doesn't say that I'm not a person. You're the one telling me that I'm not a person. I'm trying to find out what scriptural authority you are using to make this determination.Bob O'H_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
02:50 AM
2
02
50
AM
PDT}

Bob, you certainly are treading some very thin ice there. You want the status of being a real person without believing in God. Yet God himself, who alone has the authority to grant you personhood, as apparently you yourself have now repeatedly agreed, holds belief in Him to be of tantamount importance.
John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And I'm certainly not going to try to tell God that belief in Him is unimportant if He Himself holds it to be of tantamount importance. Your beef with being granted the status of being a real person is not with with me but is with your Creator, and more precisely it is with your belief, and/or lack thereof, in your Creator, i.e. in God, Again, the option of granting you true, and real, personhood is simply unavailable to me. I am not God!bornagain77_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
02:42 AM
2
02
42
AM
PDT}

ba77 - I was under the impression that God had made everyone a person, whether they believed in God or not. Am I wrong? Where in the Bible does God say that only Christians (and, I guess, possible Jews and Muslims) are people?Bob O'H_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
02:14 AM
2
02
14
AM
PDT}

To repeat:
you want me to grant you the status of being a real person in spite of the fact that you have rejected God.,,, That option is simply unavailable to me.
See the parable of Pinocchio, remember that only when Pinocchio learned to stop lying, and to be brave and unselfish, was he granted his desire of becoming a real boy. Who knows, maybe you, like Jiminy in the story, will also eventually be rewarded with a solid gold badge that certifies you as officially conscience.
Pinocchio (1940 film) - plot Excerpt: Back home, the group mourns Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy, however, decides that Pinocchio has proven himself brave, truthful, and unselfish, that he is reborn as a real human boy, and everyone celebrates. Jiminy steps outside to thank the Fairy, and is rewarded with a solid gold badge that certifies him as an official conscience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(1940_film)#Plot
bornagain77_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
02:07 AM
2
02
07
AM
PDT}

ba77 -
To repeat, you yourself have denied yourself the status of being a real person since you have rejected the only Person, i.e. God, who has the authority to grant you that status.
You've said that God is the only person with authority to grant me personhood. You have also said that I am not a person. So who made you God?Bob O'H_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
01:54 AM
1
01
54
AM
PDT}

I agree that AI is too rudimentary at present to be granted personhood (legal status as a person). Even Sophia doesn't deserve citizenship/personhooduncommon_avles_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
01:53 AM
1
01
53
AM
PDT}

Andrew states in post 1:
Personhood isn’t something that is granted by people to other people or things. It’s endowed to humans by their Creator. Any other position is error/stupidity/evil.
Bob states in post 2
asauber – can you persuade ba77 that? He seems to think he can remove personhood from people, which is rather bizarre.
Again Andrew in post 1 stated:
Personhood isn’t something that is granted by people to other people or things. It’s endowed to humans by their Creator.
Thus it follows (post 6),,,
1. Humans are endowed by their Creator alone (i.e. God) the status of being a real person. (Any other position is error/stupidity/evil.) (Andrew post 1) 2. Bob adamantly claims he is a real person. (post 2 and even post 4) Conclusion,, 3. Bob believes he is a real person who was created by God.
And yet in post 8, as usual, Bob (and weave) backtracks and states:
,,,I don’t believe in a creator.,,,
Thus, I don't know why you keep going on with me about me personally granting you the status of being a real person Bob, (even though it is your very own atheistic worldview that says you are a neuronal illusion with no moral agency). In post 2 you agreed with Andrew that God alone endows a person with personhood, and that it is not up to people to do it. And in post 8, you then backtracked and denied that you believed in God. Thus you yourself denied that you are a real person since you denied the only Person, i.e. God, who has the authority to grant you the status of being a real person. As you yourself agreed, I simply don't have the authority to grant personhood to anyone. Only God can do that. Yet you want me to grant you the status of being a real person in spite of the fact that you have rejected God. To repeat, you yourself have denied yourself the status of being a real person since you have rejected the only Person, i.e. God, who has the authority to grant you that status. It certainly is not on me, as you yourself agreed, to grant you that status of being a real person instead of an illusion.,, That option is simply unavailable to me.bornagain77_{April 18, 2018
April
04
Apr
18
18
2018
01:33 AM
1
01
33
AM
PDT}

ba77 -
I, as a Christian, certainly think everybody, from fetuses to Down syndrome people to the most rabid Darwinian materialist, are ‘real persons’ who deserve respect (and more importantly they deserve the right to life) because it is, as Andrew pointed out in post 1, a right that is ‘endowed to humans by their Creator’ of being a real person.
If you think everyone is a person, why do you repeatedly tell people like me that we are not people? You don't tell us that under our world-views we should not consider ourselves people, you literally tell us that we are not people.Bob O'H_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
11:25 PM
11
11
25
PM
PDT}

To further drive the point home that the entire concept of 'personhood' will forever be beyond the scope of reductive materialistic explanations, it is good to remember Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Gödel's incompleteness theorems can be stated simply as such, “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”
"Gödel's incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel (ref. on cite), halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”. Thus, based on the position that an equation cannot prove itself, the constructs are based on assumptions some of which will be unprovable." Cf., Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010) @ 15-6
Gödel went on to state this in regards to the implications of his incompleteness theorems for reductive materialism.
“In materialism all elements behave the same. It is mysterious to think of them as spread out and automatically united. For something to be a whole, it has to have an additional object, say, a soul or a mind.,,, Mind is separate from matter.” Kurt Gödel – Hao Wang’s supplemental biography of Gödel, A Logical Journey, MIT Press, 1996. [9.4.12]
Gödel incompleteness theorems have now been extended to physics and now prove that the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution will forever lack the explanatory power to be able to explain why any particular organism may take the basic macroscopic form that it takes:
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
That is to say that, in order to explain why any particular organism may take the specific form that it does, it is necessary to go beyond the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution and, via Gödel, posit "a soul or a mind". Moreover, positing a soul answers the simple, but profound, question of what is it exactly that keeps the trillions of cells of our material body from disintegrating "precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer"
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings
And to add further empirical evidence to the claim that it must be a 'soul' that is keeping our material bodies together "precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer", advances in Quantum Biology now reveal that there is a transcendent, non-local, i.e. beyond space and time, component to our being that is found in every molecule of our material bodies...
Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology - video https://youtu.be/LHdD2Am1g5Y
,,, A transcendent component to our material bodies that is "conserved". That is to say that it cannot be created nor destroyed,,,,, as Stuart Hameroff states in the following video: “the quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300
To further back up the claim that we need to posit "a soul or a mind" in order to explain 'the whole' of an organism, as well as to draw all this together into the present discussion we are having about the concept of "personhood", if a person were merely the brain, as materialists hold, then if half of a brain were removed then a 'person' should only be ‘half the person’, or at least somewhat less of a 'person', as they were before. But that is not the case, the ‘whole person’ stays intact even though the brain suffers severe impairment:
Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics' Lives: - 1997 Excerpt: "We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child's personality and sense of humor,'' Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining,, Dr. John Freeman, the director of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Epilepsy Center, said he was dumbfounded at the ability of children to regain speech after losing the half of the brain that is supposedly central to language processing. ''It's fascinating,'' Dr. Freeman said. ''The classic lore is that you can't change language after the age of 2 or 3.'' But Dr. Freeman's group has now removed diseased left hemispheres in more than 20 patients, including three 13-year-olds whose ability to speak transferred to the right side of the brain in much the way that Alex's did.,,, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html
In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study:
"Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications."
Further notes:
Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One - May 2007 Excerpt: Most Hopkins hemispherectomy patients are five to 10 years old. Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and personality develop normally. ,,, Another study found that children that underwent hemispherectomies often improved academically once their seizures stopped. "One was champion bowler of her class, one was chess champion of his state, and others are in college doing very nicely," Freeman says. Of course, the operation has its downside: "You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost," Freeman says. Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. ,,, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole How Removing Half of Someone's Brain Can Improve Their Life – Oct. 2015 Excerpt: Next spring, del Peral (who has only half a brain) will graduate from Curry College, where she has made the dean’s list every semester since freshman year. http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70120/how-removing-half-someones-brain-can-improve-their-life
The following study is particularly interesting because it lists many case studies where even more than half a brain is missing from a "whole person"
Discrepancy Between Cerebral Structure and Cognitive Functioning: A Review - 2017 Excerpt: The aforementioned student of mathematics had a global IQ of 130 and a verbal IQ of 140 at the age of 25 (Lorber, 1983), but had “virtually no brain” (Lewin 1980, p. 1232).,,, This student belonged to the group of patients that Lorber classified as having “extreme hydrocephalus,” meaning that more than 90% of their cranium appeared to be filled with cerebrospinal fluid (Lorber, 1983).,,, Apart from the above-mentioned student of mathematics, he described a woman with an extreme degree of hydrocephalus showing “virtually no cerebral mantle” who had an IQ of 118, a girl aged 5 who had an IQ of 123 despite extreme hydrocephalus, a 7-year-old boy with gross hydrocephalus and an IQ of 128, another young adult with gross hydrocephalus and a verbal IQ of 144, and a nurse and an English teacher who both led normal lives despite gross hydrocephalus.,,, Another interesting case is that of a 44-year-old woman with very gross hydrocephalus described by Masdeu (2008) and Masdeu et al. (2009). She had a global IQ of 98, worked as an administrator for a government agency, and spoke seven languages.,,, https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/12/Discrepancy-between-cerebral-structure-and-cognitive-functioning-JNMD.pdf
Thus, as far as empirical evidence and logic, via Godel, is concerned, the Christian Theist is sitting VERY well in his claim that he has a soul. A soul created by God in which the "whole person" can be rationally grounded. Whereas the "neuronal illusion" of the atheist is, once again, at a complete loss to coherently explain why he is should be considered a 'real person' instead of just being a 'neuronal illusion' of a person (Coyne; Dennett),, as well he is at a complete loss to coherently explain why any of the preceding evidence should be as it is: Verses
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” George MacDonald - Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood - 1892 Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
bornagain77_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
07:10 PM
7
07
10
PM
PDT}

BS77,
Hmmm interesting, AK wants me to freely concede to him that he is a real person ...
Not at all. I know that I am a real person. It is you, because I am an atheist, who is claiming that I am not. The last person I am aware of that was making such a claim was a little Austrian corporal who rose to power by claiming that Jews were not persons. You find yourself in good company.
I, as a Christian, certainly think everybody, from fetuses to Down syndrome people to the most rabid Darwinian materialist, are ‘real persons’ who deserve respect...
Really? When are you going to start demonstrating this?
My point all along has been to point out the sheer logical contradiction within the Atheist’s worldview.
No. Your point all along has been to point out the logical contradictions within your strawman version of the atheist’s worldview. You have steadfastly refused to listen and accept what atheists claim their worldview to be.
Only on Theism does the concept of ‘real persons’ have a coherent foundation.
Sorry, but this is just bullshit. What coherent foundation are you talking about? The coherent foundation of an omnipotent and omniscient god who gives you free will but punished you for using it? An omnipotent and omniscient god who knows everything that you will do, tells you you have free will, and then punishes you for what he knows you will do? Sorry, but that is just incoherent.Allan Keith_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
06:22 PM
6
06
22
PM
PDT}

I'm still not clear what is meant by "personhood" here and I don't remember the Bible saying anything about it either. Is God a person, for example.Seversky_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
05:05 PM
5
05
05
PM
PDT}

Hmmm interesting, AK wants me to freely concede to him that he is a real person when his very own atheistic materialism denies that he is a real person. I, as a Christian, certainly think everybody, from fetuses to Down syndrome people to the most rabid Darwinian materialist, are 'real persons' who deserve respect (and more importantly they deserve the right to life) because it is, as Andrew pointed out in post 1, a right that is 'endowed to humans by their Creator' of being a real person. My point all along has been to point out the sheer logical contradiction within the Atheist's worldview. The atheist desperately wants to be recognized as a real person, but his own worldview denies him the privilege of what he so desperately wants (see Pinocchio in post 25). Only on Theism does the concept of 'real persons' have a coherent foundation. And, as pointed out in post 16, only in Christianity is the maximal respect for human 'personhood' attained in that God himself grants that respect to humanity by becoming a human Himself. Verse:
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
If AK and Bob, per Pinocchio, want to be real people someday, I suggest they start to recognize the numerous self-defeating logical contradictions within their very own atheistic worldview.bornagain77_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
04:11 PM
4
04
11
PM
PDT}

BS77,
It is certainly not me demeaning you. It is your very atheistic materialism that is demeaning you as a ‘non-person’. Don’t believe me??? Perhaps you will listen to a holocaust survivor who was denied the legal status of ‘personhood’ because of the materialistic thinking of Darwinists.
I love irony. Here is BS77 denying atheists personhood because of their world view, and talking about the horrors of the Nazis denying personhood to Jews because of their world view. Do you ever think before you type? Do you ever think?Allan Keith_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
03:46 PM
3
03
46
PM
PDT}

First off, 'rational thought' requires free will. Which is something that your very own atheistic materialism denies that you have:
Sam Harris's Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It - Martin Cothran - November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state -- including their position on this issue -- is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn't logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html
It is certainly not me demeaning you. It is your very own atheistic materialism that is demeaning you as a 'non-person'. Don't believe me??? Perhaps you will listen to a holocaust survivor who was denied the legal status of 'personhood' because of the materialistic thinking of Darwinists.
"If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present him as an automation of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instincts, heredity, and environment, we feed the despair to which man is, in any case, already prone. I became acquainted with the last stages of corruption in my second concentration camp in Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment—or, as the Nazis liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers." —Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, University of Vienna Medical School; from his book, The Doctor and the Soul: Introduction to Logotherapy, 1982, p. xxi). 8 Horrific Times People Groups Were Denied Their Humanity - July 02, 2014 Excerpt: According to Ernst Fraenkel, a German legal scholar, the Reichsgericht, the highest court in Germany, was instrumental in depriving Jewish people of their legal rights. In a 1936 Supreme Court decision, “the Reichsgericht refused to recognize Jews living in Germany as persons in the legal sense.” Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans to justify exterminating them. http://www.personhood.com/8_horrific_times_people_groups_were_denied_their_humanity
bornagain77_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
03:38 PM
3
03
38
PM
PDT}

BS77,
AK, under atheistic materialism you are not a person. You can’t be! You are a automaton, i.e. a mindless puppet, with no free will and therefore no moral agency. Only moral agents can give and have ‘respect’.
It is well known that those who are incapable of rational thought often resort to demeaning those that they disagree with to bolster their fragile egos. Thank you for being the poster boy for this malady.Allan Keith_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
03:19 PM
3
03
19
PM
PDT}

AK, under atheistic materialism you are not a person. You can't be! You are a automaton, i.e. a mindless puppet, with no free will and therefore no moral agency. Only moral agents can give and have 'respect'. You are only under the illusion that you really are a real person that deserves the moral respect of being a real person. Both you and Bob are very much in a situation similar to Pinocchio's
“The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Italian author Carlo Collodi. It was written for children, but in reality it contains some deep metaphors and moral truths. ,,, Pinocchio is a boy trapped in the body of a wooden puppet. He is able to do whatever all the other kids of his age can do, but nobody takes him seriously, because he is just a puppet. Pinocchio studies hard and rises to the top of his class, but this makes the other schoolboys jealous. People continuously make fun of him for the way he looks and dresses. The Fox and the Cat, two swindlers, lead him astray and unsuccessfully attempt to murder him. Pinocchio listens more to them than to the good people such as his father Geppetto, the Talking Cricket and the Fairy with Turquoise Hair. Even Candlewick, his best friend, misleads him. Pinocchio soon realizes that he is much more than a talking piece of wood, much more than the other puppets in Mangiafuoco’s theater. He has feelings, he can think and can learn from his mistakes. He gains wisdom through the long series of misadventures which lead him to becoming a real boy as reward for his good deeds. https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Pinocchio-so-excited-about-being-a-real-boy
And much like Pinocchio, there is hope that you and Bob can someday be real persons also:
Darwinian Cognitive Dissonance Disorder (DCDD). Yes folks, it is a mental disease. But there is hope: Cognitive Conditioning and the Distortion of Reality - Brian Miller - April 17, 2018 Excerpt: On the bright side, I have found that the cognitive conditioning, (i.e. DCDD), can be overcome by those who have a very strong desire to know the truth. And people who leave philosophically oppressive academic institutions often find work in environments that are much more congenial to exploration. The conditioning can then wane, and their design-detection capacities and critical thinking can reengage. At that point, many describe a process where “scales seemed to fall from my eyes,” and the evidence for design in nature becomes self-evident, as does the logical incoherence of many materialist rationalizations to deny it. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/04/cognitive-conditioning-and-the-distortion-of-reality/
bornagain77_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
02:33 PM
2
02
33
PM
PDT}

BS77,
Faulty programming is discarded, even cursed, and is certainly not ever given ‘respect’.
The approach I take is to respect everyone, regardless of worldview, until they demonstrate that they don’t deserve it. I respect Bob O’H, Seversky, jdk, Gpuccio, Dieb, kurx78, johnnyb, Dr. Hunter and many others here. You, on the other hand, base whether a person deserves respect on whether or not they agree with you. And your overriding determination to respect is whether or not the person is a theist (specifically, Christian). Sadly, most atheist I know behave in a more Christian manner than you do. But, such is life.Allan Keith_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
02:07 PM
2
02
07
PM
PDT}

Bob doesn't really have positions. He has opinions. That way, he can write whatever he wants, bob and weave, leave behind whatever idea he might have implied he actually holds, and waste everyone's time. Andrewasauber_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
01:36 PM
1
01
36
PM
PDT}

bs77 - I didn't say I agreed with asauber in my comment 2, though. You read more into my comment than was there.Bob O'H_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
01:34 PM
1
01
34
PM
PDT}

Bob, you can't have it both ways. You can't agree with Andrew, as you did in post 2, when he says personhood can't be had in any other worldview save for Theism and then turn around in later posts and try to argue that personhood can be had in atheism. But then again I forgot, I was addressing the automaton of Bob (and weave) who is notorious for his inconsistency, and who, even if there is a person in there who is aware of his actions, does not have the free will necessary to change his actions, i.e. his faulty programming, even if he wanted to. (faulty programming that was wrought by the illusory designer substitute of natural selection I might add). Faulty programming is discarded, even cursed, and is certainly not ever given 'respect'bornagain77_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
12:52 PM
12
12
52
PM
PDT}

Delete FaceBook and join the better alternative: www.minds.com. Minds.com is open source, decentralized and not censored or spied on by the fascist left or anyone else.FourFaces_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
11:56 AM
11
11
56
AM
PDT}

Bob O'H,
This is, as I have told you before, is simply not true. I dom’t know why you repeat these falsehoods, but I guess you have very different moral values, where respect for the truth is low on your list of priorities.

9th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.
There must be a bug in BA77's programming. Maybe a reboot is needed. :)Allan Keith_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
10:52 AM
10
10
52
AM
PDT}

Like I said on a previous post (my two cents) Even if I disagree with Bob's worldview en many things, I thing he's one of the most reasonable agnostics I've ever seen on a forum. If you go to the Discovery Institute Facebook page or Stephen Meyer's page you will find some of the most nasty, obtuse and agressive a/mats on the Internet. Situation gets even worse if you go to Quora or Youtube. https://www.facebook.com/discoverycsc/posts/10155522060303131 You don't need to believe in god to be nice to other people, to be respectful and have empathy. For me materialism is a good framework to study many aspects of nature, it may be limited in terms of making sense of the ultimate reality (we need quantum mechanics for that) Sorry if I made a mistake while redacting (my natural language is spanish) :)kurx78_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
10:40 AM
10
10
40
AM
PDT}

ba77 @ 16 -
2. Bob’s atheistic worldview denies that people are real persons and it also holds his preferred morality of respect for persons to be subjective and illusory, i.e. not real.
This is, as I have told you before, is simply not true. I dom't know why you repeat these falsehoods, but I guess you have very different moral values, where respect for the truth is low on your list of priorities.Bob O'H_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
09:49 AM
9
09
49
AM
PDT}

1. Bob believes it is (morally) disrespectful to believe people are not persons. 2. Bob's atheistic worldview denies that people are real persons and it also holds his preferred morality of respect for persons to be subjective and illusory, i.e. not real. 3. Bob's atheistic worldview denies Bob himself to be a real person and thus disrespects Bob and his moral preferences. ,,, 3a. Bob's atheistic worldview could care less if Bob wants respect for being a 'real person' since Bob, and his morals, are illusions. Conclusion 1.,, 4. If Bob wants 'respect' for being a 'real person', then Bob needs to change his worldview to Theism in order to be consistent within his worldview and to get respect. And I would further add that Christian Theism in particular offers the most 'respect' for human personhood since God himself became a human person in Jesus Christ. i.e. No greater 'respect' for human personhood can possibly be found than God Himself becoming a human. Conclusion 2. 5. If Bob wants the most respect he can possibly have for being a real person, then Bob should become a Christian.bornagain77_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
08:59 AM
8
08
59
AM
PDT}

LarTanner has clearly never read Dawkins. Well heck every evo says that those who disagree with them are in error, stupid or wicked/ evil.ET_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
08:36 AM
8
08
36
AM
PDT}

Replace "AI" with the ever hypothetical "Somebody Else"; only, with the further expectation of this universally noted personage's ever awaited arrival being ex silico.LocalMinimum_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
08:30 AM
8
08
30
AM
PDT}

I think respect for people is a good thing, regardless of how one gets to that respect.
Your problem Bob, is that what you consider respect for people is not what I consider respect for people. And the reason we differ is because you don't recognize the truth about personhood. You derive your position on personhood from political arrangements. I suspect that you feel the need to conform. I derive mine from the nature of the human being. I know you want to gloss over/smear the differences for diplomacy's sake. But the truth is what it is. It doesn't change as a matter of political convenience. Andrewasauber_{April 17, 2018
April
04
Apr
17
17
2018
07:51 AM
7
07
51
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply