Geert van der Veen
Aug 28, 2017 · 1 min read

Are we just biological machines — albeit a bit complex in (brain)structure? The author says yes, we are. Humans are not unique. Humans will be copied. Its only a matter of time. I think this is a somewhat naieve vision. I hope it its true though. Would be nice to have a robot doing all my work so I could lay on the couch all day. The story reminds me of the science fiction books I read in my youth — about a race of robots who have intelligence and a body and complex planning and algorithms — but they dont have a soul. So their purpose is to acquire a soul. They feel fundamentally empty without it. . Alas, the robots dont succeed in their quest and so they collectively commit suicide — because their whole existence lacks purpose and they are intelligent enough to understand this. Its a sad story. Do humans have a soul —perhaps yes — is there a metaphysical reality — perhaps yes? Can we program a sense of humor and could a robot write Alice in Wonderland or compose Ramnsteins ‘Ich will’. I doubt that, I really do.. Programming a robot to learn is one thing — perhaps we shall succeed and make us very clever servants — we alredy have achieved much — but programming a robot to really live and really breathe and make him understand why this joke is funny ( “Why did the elephant sit on the marshmallow?” “Because he didn’t want to fall into the cup of hot chocolate. ) — is that possible?

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