As technology evolves people devolve physically. We no longer need to remember when somebody’s birthday is. We don’t need to know what 23543 * 325 is because we have a calculator to do it for us. Here’s my question: Is thinking strainful? Does thinking hurt us? Is it the motivator behind AI technology?
Technology only does the mundane things Homo Sapiens find tedious and not worthy of their attention. That’s not to say that this isn’t a double edged sword. We only use nine to ten percent of our minds due to the fact that our average day consists of the same basic gestures. Get a glass of water, drive to work, walk here, do this thing you’ve done a thousand times before. The more we rely on technology, the less we rely on ourselves (obviously).
But to play the Devil’s Advocate, technology does a lot of things to allow our facilitation, just as it may halt it in other ways. We’re able to communicate with people around the world instantaneously. That alone, my friend, is a great asset.
After doing meditation for an hour or so, I can’t stand to look at that box flashing pictures known as a television for a couple hours. Besides the media beating you over the head telling you what to believe, think, and do, it’s like taking black spray paint to your Third Eye as Bill Hicks once put it (the Third Eye is one of the things I believe hold validity for our evolution).
So it, in my opinion, has it’s ups and downs. There’s my two cents.
If anything technology has placed more mental strain on us. Just learning now to use all our gadgets is a full time job. As for AI technology, that’s more complex. Partly I suppose it’s humanity trying to usurp God, creating our own synthetic life. But it’s also a desire to transcend the limitations of the human mind. Predictions for the evolution of AI border on the terrifying, and truly the potential may be there for computers of the future to possess intelligence that dwarfs our own. Assuming this super-AI doesn’t mind serving us still, its resources could be harnessed to solve many complex social and scientific problems.
I agree, but I also think it’s man’s want to have other life like him to exist that drives forward the evolution of A.I.
Alien’s don’t seem to be coming anytime in the foreseeable future, so we move to the next best thing, creating it ourselves.
-Daniel
It’s like excercise. A meticulous political discussion with a friend or a close reading of Kant are tough mentally, but a good kind of toughness. This kind of thought strengthens the mind, enables it to grasp more things in greater detail and clarity. It’s good, it’s like a workout. You may feel tired after it, but you’ll “ripped” after afew weeks of it.
So not really… like the hamburger victims lolling around on couches across America, most people are just too lazy to do it.
I don’t think so. I think thought is rather liberating actually, the imagination, guided by logic can free the soul (I’m taking poetic license, I’m not a dualist).
I don’t think so. Technology makes rote tasks much easier, and takes them out of human hands. But it cannot replace creative thought, which, to this day, is still something only humans can do. In fact, the dynamism of our brains, which lets us craft scientific theories and develop languages and sculpt and paint and solve differential equations, is what makes us human and what sets us apart from machines. Through thought, the dynamic minds we call home can maximize their potential.
I think this whole strong AI movement nonesense is just a nice pipe dream cooked up by computer nerds. We ain’t anywhere close to The Singularity.
theonefroberg wrote :
[size=117]“… like the hamburger victims lolling around on couches across America…”[/size] 
Here, I found a picture :
Oh my lord, after that long ass Carin quote in the ‘How can we make school systems better?’ thread, this only backs it up further…
Wow… poor fat people. They’re getting pwned on two threads at the same time…
I must say that the term “hamburger victim” rocks though. I got it from a French foreign exchange student. It’s amazing.
Well, if you accept Kant’s view that human reason is architectonical and apply it to the field of science, you understand that the purpose of research and invention is to expand on the basis of what is already known and set the premises for further advancements. In other words, technology emerges as a byproduct, but becomes instrumental in the development of more advanced features. Yes, you got it, technology is meant to provide a step for future progress, a step which you will never take if you watch watch TV in the sole purpose of dulling your senses.
Yes, yes, I mean you.
Me?
I dissagree. What I proposed, poorly, in my post was that technology is replacing what we feel strainious; thinking. As technology advances our mental capacity decreases.
I haven’t really given this too much thought. It just hit me yesterday as I was using my calculator to multiply 12 * 14, that at one point in my life(before I came to America) I was able to do this in my head.
Yeah, man, but what I was trying to say is that technology is built with the purpose of providing help. There are things that we can do, but it requires great effort and time – we use machines to simplify that process, so we can concentrate now on bigger, more important issues. Things were once hard, now they’re easy – this allows us to take the next step. You use the calculator to find out what 12*14 is, so that you may find out the mass of the electron. You eliminate certain strains and move on to bigger strains.