X-Message-Number: 17941 Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 12:46:37 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: machine pain This is an off-topic post. David Shipman makes a really interesting point: If machines reach a level of complexity where they feel "pain," is it unethical to allow them to remain in that state? Obviously it will be necessary to include an "aversion response" in any robot that is freely mobile, to discourage it from running into things and damaging itself. Since the pain experienced by a biological organism is really just a set of chemical/electrical responses, I see no easy way to distinguish between this and a similar set of programmed responses in an artificial intelligence. But this leads me backward to question the empathy which causes distress when someone else is suffering. At the most primal level, we have very good reason to respond when a human baby is crying. But from a coldly rational point of view, how do we benefit from an empathic response when an animal is suffering? Of course, some people lack such an empathic response. As kids, they may burn live ants with a magnifying glass; as adults, they may enjoy tormenting cats or attending bull fights. Personally I went through a very interesting experience during a resuscitation experiment, where a dog that had been successfully revived was taken off pain-management medication. For a few minutes, the dog yelped in a way that I found so distressing, I had to leave the building. (And I am not a dog lover.) As I sat outside, I tried to analyze my feelings. Rapid pulse, fast breathing, slight trembling--I realized, with great surprise, that I was afraid! I concluded that most (perhaps all) extreme reactions to the suffering of other creatures are based on fear, because the observer identifies with the creature and is reminded of times when she or he went through painful experiences. From this I would guess that people who have suffered most in childhood are most likely to be moved by empathic responses later in life. I leave it to the reader to consider whether this explains the extreme actions of some animal-rights activists. So, to get back to the initial question, I'm not sure that it is really "wrong" to allow an entity to suffer--robotic or otherwise. It just _feels_ wrong (to some people, anyway). PS. Long ago, when microcomputers were such a novelty that many people felt intimidated by them, a friend of mine visited me and looked warily at the computer on my desktop, which was running a short program that I had written. "What's it doing right now?" he asked. "Well, it's waiting for someone to press a key," I said. "It's saying to itself, 'Has a key been pressed? Has a key been pressed?' about 500,000 times a second." My friend looked shocked. "That's awful!" he said, only half joking. "Can't you put it out of its misery?" Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17941