Robot wars commence
I have been experimenting with a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit for the last few weeks, and recommend the Mindstorms suite to anyone who desires hands-on experience in the basics of robotics. The popularity of Mindstorms is such that there are four other kits available, in addition to the NXT. As of yet, I am still on kit one. With that said my robotics investigations are yielding a wealth of insights into mind, future, and reality, and today I will share some of the insights.
Firstly,the NXT kit has bluetooth capabilities. In other words, once the robot is built and programmed you can control him wirelessly via your laptop or mobile phone. The robot’s bluetooth functionality is useful for tricking 3 year old toddlers into believing that the robot is alive, with a mind of its own. On a more philosophical level, wirelessly controlled robots makes you contemplate if you are a robot who is wirelessly controlled.
Thorough speculation and investigation has shown that humans already live an existence that is not determined by free will. For example, Libet’s 1985 experiments (as cited in Libet, 1999) show that decisions to act occur outside of conscious awareness. Libet’s experiments, validated in several subsequent laboratories (Libet, 1999), shows objective evidence corroborating the philosophies of William James and E.T. Jaynes, both of whom explain how the conscious mind is not what makes your decisions.
With the above mentioned empirical evidence that humans don’t act how they consciously want to act, and with limited understanding of the unconscious mechanisms contributing to decision makling, we are faced with the possibility that our actions are not the product of a biological organism acting in the environment, but rather that our actions are decided by a strange, illusive phenomenon that science cannot explain.
Science advances by making inductions based on observable data, and because there is hardly a methodology to investigate the unconscious decision maker, we are forced to conclude that science has limited means to understand the internal sources of decision making. What sort of unconscious internal goings-on controls my actions? An advanced alien wireless bluetooth mechanism that is unobservable by any scientific methodology perchance? (As scientists though, we are obliged to accept that decision making will one day be explainable by science).
That’s it for insights gained about mind when building the NXT robot, with insights about reality and future to now be explained.
As for reality, the three years old toddler’s reaction to the wirelessly controlled robot, mentioned earlier, got me thinking about how adults might be fooled into believing that other people are experientially real beings, rather than robots . That our nearest and dearest are robots does not seem so far fetched when you see the latest humanoid robots from Japan.
The existence of such human like robots raises many, many philosophical issues. For instance, Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” argument is relevant here, in the sense that the only thing you cannot doubt is yourself as a thinking being (even if your thinking is decided by unconscious mechanisms that is advanced alien wireless bluetooth, or whatever).You cannot doubt that you think. You can, however, doubt the world as it is presented to you, as the world you perceive is a construction rather than a veridical portrayal of a reality that exists outside of your thinking. Descartes is, to my knowledge, the first to offer an argument in support of a matrix type set-up where you can doubt away the experiential existence of others (they are robots) to the point where the only process certain to exist is that of your thinking itself (which is controlled by wireless alien bluetooth technology).
In terms of the insights gained about the future when building the NXT robot; the evolution of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science is affording the future real world application of mind control. The DARPA augmented cognition programme, motivated by military interests, presages the integration of computer and human in the not so far future with the aim of extending information management (i.e. memory).
Cybernetics and information theory are two frameworks contributing to the merging of man and machine.
A user friendly analysis of both disciplines is to follow shortly. Right now I’m back to robot building, it’s like fishing; it gives you time to think.
Peace out,
Daisy Mabus Jr. X x x
Reference
Libet, B. (1999) Do we have free will? Journal of Consciouness Studies, 6(8-9), 47-57.
Isaac Asimov is in heaven right now with a huge hard-on for all that robotics technology going on in Asia. And who could blame him?
“I think, therefore I am” -- Bomb 20, Dark Star
Meanwhile back in the real world….
… and back to Dark Star..