Am I A Robot Part 1

Gauracandra · January 12, 2004

This week’s Srila Siddhaswarupananda television program looks at the media’s likening of human beings to robots.

There is a TV guide in today’s paper. Its interesting how people are starting to identify computers and machines as having human like personalities. One of the shows is about a Volkswagen named Herbie. Apparently the car has a relationship with its owner.

They (from an article he quotes) compare a tire mark of a robot to the fingerprint of a man.

There are so many examples, this is just one. There are so many examples in the mass media. One of the most popular movies in recent times was Star Wars. Two of the main characters were robots – R2D2 and C3PO. You find the same thing with the robots having conversations with each other. They experience suffering. One exclaims “We seem to be made to suffer.” They have emotions saying “No, I don’t like you either.” They experience love and concern for others. One robot (C3PO) mistakes cries of joy for cries of death. They insult one another, with C3P0 saying “That malfunctioning little twerp… help, please help…” At the end R2D2 is hurt and a concerned C3PO asks if he can be repaired.

There is a toilet paper commercial of a robot guarding the Charmin to prevent people from squeezing the toilet paper. But the robot can’t help it and goes against the programming and squeezes it anyways.

I didn’t see the movie, but in 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL the computer defies his programmers. Another series Battlestar Galactica has a robot pet dog. As far as materialists are concerned a dog is just a machine. We videotaped one episode where a bad computer robot was the fastest draw. Then the good guy had to go and kill the bad robot. Afterwards the good guy felt remorse for killing the robot. “No, I didn’t feel good killing him.” The moral of the story is its not good to kill people.

Perhaps it takes someone as paranoid as myself to see a hidden danger in all of this.

Blowing up your television set, smashing a computer, there is no difference with killing a person. Its just that the body is a more complex computer. This is what they are propagating directly or indirectly to children.

One British psychological association defines man as: sensory devices, a computing system, an amplifying system, and mechanical linkages.

They don’t include awareness because consciousness can’t be seen. Since the body is constantly changing how can there be a consistent self? This is their view. There is no being in the computer body. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

They are no-self theorists. The human body is just reacting. Can you show me awareness? Can you show me your self? The body is surely a machine, but I am not my body. A person is more than a body. So if they can get a machine to behave like a human then they are the same. The robot says “I love you”. All they see is behavior but not the internal experience of the person.

These sounds are symbolic representations of an experience. The robot has no experience. When you say “love” it is an internal experience. Just because you can make a robot behave in certain ways does not negate the self.

In dealing with words we need to understand that they are symbols for something else. They are not the object itself. Certain sounds, and certain symbols may mean “banana” in one language, but a banana may be other sounds and symbols in a different language.

It would be impossible to cover this all in 30 minutes. But you have to make a distinction between behavior and inner experience.

Gauracandra · January 19, 2004

So symbols without the reality behind it is just empty talk. Like a lady’s man who says “I love you”, the lady knows the word love is empty.

A computer robot is simply a machine made to behave and act in a certain way by the programmer or engineer. Somewhere behind the robot is a person. The joke from the robot comes from a person. Someone maybe 50 feet away is pushing the buttons and he has a voicebox to talk to others. He speaks into a microphone which distorts his voice to sound robotic. And the audience thinks “Ooh, this is interesting.”

You can’t create intelligence. The no-self theorists will argue in a certain way. Not able to find a self they conclude that there is no self. With a computer robot they start to relate to it as if it were a person. Their argument is that since there is no self in the robot there is therefore no self in a person.

They will argue you must accept either there is a self in both the machine and the person or you must accept there is no self in either the machine or a person.

Why is this argument not acceptable?

1) It is based on the idea that behavior is identical with awareness. They are two different things. A person is connected to the awareness of his own existence and the existence of others. Without this you only have symbols without the essence.

2) They are saying that because people are deluded into thinking there is a self in the robot that therefore they are deluded into thinking there is a self in a person. What is the faulty logic here? That just because they are wrong in one situation that therefore they must be wrong in all situations. Yes, he is deluded to think of an airport robot is conscious. But now he sees his wife and sees a person with awareness. Just because they can be deluded doesn’t mean there is no self.

3) A person projects onto someone else what they themselves can experience. If a person makes the signs of fear, you think it is fear. What is this based on? It is based on your own experience of fear. This is evidence that you exist. You could not conclude someone was in the body unless you were aware of your own existence. If you did not know what it was to exist you could never conclude that someone else exists or feels certain emotions.

4) These people are not taking into account self-awareness. They are looking at how a person is deluded into thinking of a self in something else. A person makes a mistake of awareness in another form. Here is a computer here and a person here. They make a mistake. But they don’t try to answer self-awareness. Forget considering another person’s existence. What is this “I am” “I exist”? Awareness itself is aware of its self. Who can be deluded if no one is there? “Oh, you are just in an illusion that you exist.” Who is in the illusion that they exist? Who? You are. How can I be in illusion that I don’t exist? One of the statements of the Buddha is that one must break out of the illusion he exists. Nonsense. A robot cannot be deluded to think it exists. A robot has no experience of I exist. Just actions and reactions based on programmers.

It is time for the no-self theorists to give up deluding the people that robots are conscious entities. They want you to consider that you are no different than a robot. That’s their point. Its is an identity crisis. They identify the body as the self. Since the body is a machine they conclude that we are simply robots. It is depersonalization. Trying to get rid of the self. So soon it will be believed there is no difference between things and people. This is most unfortunate.

January 19, 2004

maybe we really really are robots and krsna is playing with a computer, deciding what we'll experience, like the matrix i guess. the soul/being capable of existing outside the computer program if it would ever be tame enough. like letting a lion loose from the zoo to wander around downtown. but all aspects of the being also existing/electrically tied into the program. if we could ever become intelligent enough (morally and otherwise) we could walk around and exist with all the whole, real people. yeah, i guess that's pretty much just like the matrix except i added krsna