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POPSDo animals understand death? Do humans? "One example is famadihana - the turning of the bones - a traditional ritual carried out by the Malagasy people of Madagascar. Every seven years, the dead relatives are exhumed from the family tomb, re-wrapped, and danced around the tomb."
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POPSCreating Friendly AI Imagine, for a moment, that you walk up and punch an AI in the nose. Does the AI punch back? Perhaps and perhaps not, but punching back will not be instinctive. A sufficiently young AI might stand there and think: "Hm. Someone's fist just bumped into my nose." In a punched human, blood races, adrenaline pumps, the hands form fists, the stance changes, all without conscious attention. For a young AI, focus of attention shifts in response to an unexpected negative event - and that's all.
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POPSAnimals aren't as complex as we imagine. We spend a lot of time presuming that animals are smart and somehow like us. This is not my experience. The more we learn about them, the more realize exactly how primitive their cognition is. At some point we have to draw the line between science and fantasy. It's lonely being humans.
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POPSThe God Experiments Over millennia, as natural selection bolstered our unconscious anthropomorphic tendencies, they reached beyond specific objects and events to encompass all of nature, goes Guthrie's theory, until we persuaded ourselves that "the entire world of our experience is merely a show staged by some master dramatist."
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POPSAre we in anthropodenial? - by Frans de Waal Some challenging observations & thoughts by Frans de Waal on the 'inner life' of animals, especially primates Right now, I'm reading "Good Natured" , by Frans de Waal. A book which I highly recommend to anyone; especially those who are interested in a basis of morality; the complex emotions which give rise to it; social cooperation in the animal kingdom, altruism, etc...
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