Download The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin by Keith E. Stanovich PDF

By Keith E. Stanovich

The concept that we'd be robots isn't any longer the stuff of technological know-how fiction; a long time of analysis in evolutionary biology and cognitive technology have led many esteemed thinkers and scientists to the realization that, following the precepts of common Darwinism, people are basically the hosts for 2 replicators (genes and memes) that experience little interest in us other than as conduits for replication. Accepting and now forcefully responding to this annoying concept that precludes the probabilities of morality or unfastened will, between different issues, Keith Stanovich the following presents the instruments for the "robot's rebellion," a application of cognitive reform essential to increase human pursuits over the restricted curiosity of the replicators. He indicates how options of rational considering from cognitive technology have interaction with the common sense of evolution to create possibilities for people to constitution their habit to serve their very own ends. those evaluative actions of the mind, he argues, satisfy the necessity that we have got to ascribe importance to human lifestyles. merely by means of spotting ourselves as robots, argues Stanovich, will we start to build an idea of self in keeping with what's really singular approximately people: that they achieve keep an eye on in their lives in a fashion exact between existence types on Earth—through rational self-determination."Stanovich bargains readers a sweeping journey of concept and study, advancing a programme of 'cognitive reform' that places human pursuits first. . . . by means of making the purpose that cognition is optimized on the point of genes, no longer of people, Stanovich places a clean spin at the widespread declare that individuals are often woefully irrational. . . . With The Robot's uprising, he units himself except unreflective thinkers on each side of the divide via taking evolutionary money owed of cognition heavily, whilst he urges us to enhance on what evolution has wrought."—Valerie M. Chase, Nature

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These are frequently incompatible alternatives” (1982, 51–52). When biology went looking for what adaptations were in the service of, the answer turned out to be the active, germ-line replicator—the gene. A truly scientific stance thus 16 Chapter One supports a truly odd religious stance—one where God’s beneficence (in the form of the biological adaptations he has designed) is directed not toward humans or any of his other creatures, but toward tiny subcellular replicating macromolecules. ” We now know, to our chagrin, the answer biology gives: People as survival machines were good at helping the genes they harbored to replicate, so genes that cooperated to make human bodies survived quite well.

We are built as gene machines . . but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators” (Dawkins 1976, 200–201). Thus, only hu- Staring into the Darwinian Abyss 23 mans really turn the tables (or at least have the potential to) by occasionally ignoring the interests of the genes in order to further the interests of the vehicle. As yet, humans have failed to fully develop this profound insight. Escaping the Clutches of the Genes To avoid underestimating the possibilities for cognitive reform that could improve human lives, the different interests of the replicators and vehicles must be recognized.

And now that the robot exists as an autonomous entity, why shouldn’t it dump you in the desert and go about its own business? And as for allowing itself to be dismantled so that you can get aboard the supertanker in order to make it to 2404—well fuhgeddaboudit! Which, when you think about it, is just what we should be telling our programmers—those freeloaders who got where they are by in the past sometimes trying for immortality at our expense: our genes. The Pivotal Insight: Putting People First We now have in place the terminology we need in order to begin to construct an escape from the Darwinian abyss—not to replace the disturbing Dawkins metaphors of “lumbering robots” and “survival machines” but to contextualize them and to take away their sting.

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