Aug 29, 2017 · 1 min read
Good point, and it’s an interesting question, what ‘purpose’ if any this ‘faculty’ serves. And you’re right, excepting the mystical explanations, any self-aware organism is also likely gonna have a sense of ‘self-preservation’. So I can see the evolutionary value of a built-in ‘placebo’ to cope with the inevitability of its eventual demise.
Although if so, that also has some interesting implications for the future of AI development … like, the possibility of a robot religion?!!