If we had droidsFollow

yeah, but why wouldn't it be conciodered the same as "raping" a toaster?

we already have blow-up dolls and electric vaginas, where would the difference enter into play?

Personally I think that things like that would only encourage mankind to sink further into depths of depravity.

I kinda feel the same way about **** and such things too though.

I think that "wehn the **** goes down" the entire planet will be like a giant William Golding novel.

yes, but would say that before the advent of waht we know as "****" that people were such perverts?

I mean, if I have never known about "certain things" then perhaps I wouldn't be the total horn-ball that I am now. So in that light, if there was some really Sick person out there, they may not have ever had the notion to "rape" a person were it not that their head was filled with such images of sexual debauchery.

I think therein lies the key.

Wehn a person commits an "evil" act on somthing(anything), wether it be sexual or violent in nature, they are in fact causing themself psychological distress. You are hammering the nail of depravity farther into yourself with every horrid act that you perform, or on a smaller scale; with every 'bad' thought that you have in your head. Upon acting on these thoughts you allow your mind to more easily submit to these animalistic passions. Balance is the key. This is why positivity really does work. Thinking positive and saying positive things to a person and to yourself can work wonders.

For my part, yes, of course, they are sentient as much as we are at that point.

I wan't a Cherry 2000 no matter how badly the plot sucked.

Of course I'd be polite to my droid.




I'd even offer her a towel to wipe herself off afterwards.

We gang raped this thread

.....

I think it's actually pretty simple, and to be honest, I'm quite surprised by some of the perspectives I've read above. The morality and legality of it should have *nothing* to do with our perception of how real or lifelike the robot in question is, and *everything* to do with whether or not the robot is self-aware.

If the robot is simply programmed to act human and designed to look human, yet doesn't actually experience anything from its own perspective, there's no harm in doing anything to it that would normally be considered evil or cruel if committed towards a real human being. Even if its realism is perfected to the finest detail, it's still a lifeless, thoughtless machine, and it won't actually *feel* any sort of unhappiness, even if it's programmed to emulate such unhappiness. The only danger involved with doing something like "gang raping" such a robot would lie in the possible negative effect it would have on so-called rapists themselves (but if you ask me, anyone who gets his kicks from gang rape has his own problems from the start).

On the other hand, if the robot is, for some reason or another, truly believed to have a sense of self--something inside that is experiencing rather than just reacting--then of course it deserves a certain degree of respect and protection under the law. The problem, of course, would be how to determine if a robot is self-aware in the first place. After all, it's not like you can just ask the robot if it's self-aware after you programmed it to respond that it is. However, I believe that we can safely assume that no machine will be self-aware--or even anything close to it--until we explicitely program something with self-awareness in mind. This will involve more than just copying human reactions. It will likely be a sort of "next level" of programming that we haven't even touched upon yet--that is, if it's even possible at all.


But what if we developed a way to upload, download, and change the data in someone's brain? Even today, we know what the various parts of the brain are used for, and in a way we can alter a person's behavior, albeit extremely crudely, by physically manipulating his or her brain.

It shouldn't be any less legal than to have sex with androids that are designed to look like adults. However, I stress the word "shouldn't" in that sentence. Things tend to be made illegal simply due to unpopularity.

At the point of them have three of the following four: (1) passing the Turning test, convincingly; (2) having active learning (3) having order of magnitude same brain "complexity" as we do and (4) having order of magnitude same memory storage as we do. I think (2) and (3) will be necessary to achieve (1), and (2) is commonly achieved now. Both (1) and (4) are (intentionally) ambiguous. This is my way of reserving judgement until I see the final product.

As for us begin "mindless" I think people define "mind" as something we humans have by definition. At a single synapse level, though is a quantum event and not predictable in a mechanistic sense (or any sense except statistical).

So we are not machines, and I think the "driod" we're talking about won't be either. Invoking quantum mecahnics, with it's unpredictability, to speed computation may be necessary, but may have the side effect of making the "droid" brain more human. The great thing is that they may be human; the terrible thing is that they may be human. The safety to us (fleshy humans) in an individual and collective sense may prevent widescale adoption of the technology. I don't buy Asimov's solution. It makes great fiction but the central issue is the use of vague terms like "harm". Perhaps your droid will kidnap you and restrain you until you go to the dentist and have that cavity filled because to allow it to continue would be "harm". /shrug.