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12/26/24 07:06:14 [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ]

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Date Posted: 13:19:44 06/18/03 Wed
Author: IDAHO
Subject: Unfortunately we aren't more complex
In reply to: Crysknife 's message, "Answer..." on 12:57:09 06/18/03 Wed

I've taken classes on war. 99 percent of the time the real motivation behind it is the battle for limited resources. The differences between the groups, like race, religion, etc. are all factors and part of the reason why people won't share the resources.
Now take something like the crusades. You say, well that is motivated purely by religious purposes. I'd say religion was a big factor. However, what were they fighting over? The Holy Land. There was a specific resource that had some type of value to both groups and they fought over it. If there was a free holy land for the Christians to have which was just as valueable as JErusalem, than there really is no reason to fight.
In any case, the point is that wars are fought over resources. A wants something that B has.

In Dune, what motivates all the wars? Control of Arrakis. Why is Arrakis so important? Because it is the home of the Spice Melange, the most valueable commodity in the universe. The Kanly between Harkonnen and Atreides as far as we know was never all out war even though they absolutely hated each other. It wasn't war until the Atreides possessed Arrakis which is something that the Harkonnens wanted.
The Fremen are also fighting for control of Arrakis. And there is a lot of talk about infidels and desert scum and this and that, but ultimately the battle is for control over the land.

As far as machines...we are extremely close right now to developing full AI. When we do that, machines should theoretically have awareness of their own existence. Look even at the Butlerian Jihad. The android Erasmus was constantly trying to figure humans out and asking the question, what makes someone human. Of course his experimentation did not really make much sense, but that doesn't take away the fact that he was trying to ask questions learn and understand and grow.
Look at Data from Star Trek, a fully sentient Android who strove to be human and became more than simply what his programming entailed.
Now these are fictional examples, but we are on the cutting edge of technology that will duplicate this. We actually do have computers that can learn. We still have to feed them the data and then they make extrapolations and can do things better. Check out some cognitive science books.

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