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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Without starting a big religious debate, I find felionoid aliens with over-c drive tech and some sort of horribly powerful weaponry in our orbit a lesser probability abberation than an omnipotent being...
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Without starting a religious debate, why? I'm not saying your wrong necessarily, but I'm curious why they would necessarily be more likely to exist than an omnipotent being. And for the record, their tech is appalling. Partly because it's all scavenged, partly the lack of opposable thumbs.
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- That's not my point. Yes, knowing the historical background, several things are easier to interpret in the bible. However: a) that doesn't mean it is actually being interpreted correctly *now*,
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...Unless you have a tradition of doctrine which has developed from before the Bible was compiled, and your belief structure was around at the time when it was all written, ensuring the passing on of knowledge about precisely what key passages me.
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Originally Posted by Gatac
b) it still doesn't say anything we could reasonably interpret to concern AI,
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It would be no more difficult than, say, extrapolating a logically highly probably position on AI from a Virtue Ethics standpoint, though...
The Tower of Babel could be seen as (very, very loosely) analogous (HTF do you spell this word?! Grr.) to AI. Granted, its not a perfect fit, but given that in all probability, no-one in Judaeism up until at least 70 AD would have in all probability had the faintest idea about an artificial mind...
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Originally Posted by Gatac
c) the opinions of the people you mention are not derived from the bible, hence it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you believe in the bible or not when you're against AI, because AI hatred is not a tenet of your religion.
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How do you know they aren't derived from their interpretation? And the point is, from that interpretation you are going to pull out a whole can of worms...
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Heretic! It's clearly being pulled by a winged horse!
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That's not a winged horse! It's the Butterfly of Chaos, trying to distract the Scarab from its sacral duty!
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Aside from being a nice strawman (Technology can be used for evil? The horror!), I'd actually argue that autoloaders are part of a positive overall trend in military manners toward smarter, fewer, more trained soldiers. Obviously, war is still hell, but atleast they're not rounding up the farmers for a crusade where half will die marching on their way, not to mention being probably killed in actual combat for lack of training and equipment.
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Are we killing fewer, though, in an age of total war?
And as for 'crusades', I thought I'd point out, without entering into this equally lead-balloon-shaped subject, that the 'Crusades' were largely done by volunteers.
While I don't like the developments made in the French Revolutionary Wars (and Napoleon's 'tactics', if you could call them that...), yes, they involved many more men, but in some ways only took longer because the French had military strength but economic weakness by comparison to their enemies...
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Originally Posted by Gatac
I hate war as much as the next guy, but when it is fought, we should use the best weapons we have so it is over quickly and decided with the least loss of life. I'm not usually one to argue "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few", but take the use of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it sucked, it sucked hard, and it was a horrible thing to do - but it doesn't remotely compare to the horror that would have been a conventional invasion of Japan.
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Really? You've seen that, have you?
And also, there are other ways to skin a space-cat...
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Ah, sorry. Misunderstood you. Is it ethically and morally right? I don't know, we're discussing that now, aren't we? You're sounding like it's a foregone conclusion of wrongness on the ethical/moral scale and just pursued for the potential scientific/economic perks. I'd disagree with that.
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I'm saying that rightly or wrongly a lot of people will see it that way.
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Does being the product of an omnipotent creator (should we believe in Him) mean that, being less than omnipotent, we can't create life? That doesn't logically follow. Even statistically speaking, we don't have enough sample cases to say it's probably so. (Unless you're going for hardcore creationism, where God made every species individually.) It's a statement about as logically rigid as arguing that being able to create new life would make us omnipotent.
Gatac
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The point was more about scientific hubris... *ducks pelting with rotten blowfish*