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  • Laurent posted an update 4 years, 9 months ago

    This first definition of Robot was gathered by typing in a web search engine: robot definition.
    Here is the result.

    robot
    noun
    1. (especially in science fiction) a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions automatically

    Example: “the robot closed the door behind us”

    Please pay careful attention to the first part of the definition, a machine resembling a human being.

    I made this search because a few days ago I met with a friend and we discussed things of the world: Biden, crypto, covid, AI. We hadn’t seen each other in a while so we were catching up a bit and it took a while. When we discussed AI, I mentioned that I believed that like most things nowadays, AI was subject to gross manipulation and misunderstanding and this was being taken advantage of to support transhumanist ideals. Although computing power and database will grow, I don’t believe it will ever become self adaptive to new tasks and behaviors and AI will be limited by severe physical limits. I suppose it is possible to overcome the hardware memory problem by having AI and their robot counterpart connect to a world grid not unlike what is being developed today with 5G networks but you still will have these physical limitations.
    In my conversation, I said AI is a kind of misdirection and I made the leap to the following.
    What if the physical limit of robot problem (or physical labor/slavery) can be solved by convincing people that they are robots themselves. I am not talking about the readers of this website per se but in society-at-large, how many people right now could be convinced if they were chipped from birth, had neural interfaces available and were raised in controlled environments. If this is just a silly thought, consider how many people in the last ten years have been convinced to mutilate themselves with drastic surgeries?
    We see this very scenario adapted in Blade Runner 2049, but instead of robots we have engineered humans who seem to be property, can be killed at will, are told they are not born, yet some are and most importantly, share human emotions. This is just a movie but as I was watching it recently, I asked myself how easy could it be to convince someone that they were a replicant/robot especially with the stated promise of gene modification though mRNA.
    The Turing test asks at what point does computer interaction become indiscernible from human interaction. At that point, could we be convinced that we are robots?

    In the beginning , I asked to pay attention to the definition because it was so close to another definition that I can definitely say changed my life. It is hard to find nowadays but long ago, when I found this definition, I made sure to purchase a physical copy of the dictionary it was found in. At the time, the book was rare and expensive and yet I can say as poor as I was, it was worth every penny and to this day, as I have slowly released some of the law books in my library, this will stay with my family for this one definition.

    Here it is as it appears in Ballentine’s Law Dictionary (1948)

    human being. See monster.

    monster. A human being by birth, but in some part resembling a lower animal. ” A monster … hath no inheritable blood, and cannot be heir to any land, albeit be brought forth in marriage; but, although it hath deformity in any part of its body, yet if it hath human shape, it may be heir.”

    • look up the definition of born alive in blacks fifth. its the second coming? fetal after berth,.decedent.legal person

      • Major WOW. I always appreciated the old legalese style of writing legal briefs. It was very detailed, precise as to who, what, when how, even down to numbers written-out in letters, followed by the numeral in parentheses. All of this was based on the English Common Law, which included the way the Nobles/Royals (French speakers) and the commoners (native language of England) spoke (i.e.: Wilson by and through attorneys). No pronouns. Laurent: your definitions of robot are a huge example of gnositic thought and change of language. Miracles: I looked-up “born alive” in Black’s 5th, which was on my bookshelf. No question there: abortion is the killing of a living human being.

          • Hi Rheba, the definition of robot is found as I described. I knew through popular culture what we understand to be robot but I had never looked at the definition and only took it upon myself after having the conversation with my friend. I’ve taken to look more terms up as my understanding was common and not as succinct as the one that first popped up in my web search. Since english is my second language, this helps me quite a bit in learning some of the subtleties that can be missed. I suppose you can look at it as a gnostic definition but I tend to take it at their word that an important part of the being of robot is that it reflects a human capacity in some way otherwise, it would be called a device or mechanism.
            In my quest for better understanding of such things I have in mind to buy an oxford dictionary. The type which has 26 volumes! I had no clue that there could be such a thing.

              • The inclusion of so many languages as part of American English makes it a very difficult language to understand even for native speakers. Appreciate your desire to find meaning rather try to get by trying to interpolate as many do.