501 research outputs found

    Hanging in there: Prenatal origins of antigravity homeostasis in humans

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    All life on Earth must find a way to manage the continuous perturbation of gravity. From birth, and even before, humans exhibit effortful antigravity work to enact bodily, postural and behavioural form despite gravity. Indeed, observable antigravity behaviour is a standard diagnostic indicator of neonatal sensorimotor health. Antigravity behaviour has been investigated extensively in its biomechanical details. Yet its motivational structure has not been a focus of research. What drives the human body to expend energy on this effortful behaviour? It is widely understood that thermic homeostasis in humans is organised around conserving core body temperature at a set-point of 36.5-37.5oC. There is currently no equivalent concept of a general homeostatic set-point driving antigravity effort. In this theoretical paper, we aim to establish such a concept. We make the case that the core developmental set-point for human antigravity homeostasis is neutral buoyancy (gravity and buoyant force are balanced), which is afforded to the foetus by its approximately equi-dense amniotic fluid medium in utero. We argue that postnatally, the general task of human antigravity balance is to emulate the conditions of neutral buoyancy, based upon prenatal experience thereof. Our aim in this paper is to sketch a high-level outline of a novel characterisation of antigravity balance as conservative homeostasis, and lay out some implications and predictions of this model, with the intention of spurring wider research and discussion on this hitherto little explored topic. Keywords: antigravity, posture, homeostasis, prenatal, buoyancy, density, fetus, foetusComment: 19 pages (including references) Zero figure

    Human Enhancement Technologies and Our Merger with Machines

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    A cross-disciplinary approach is offered to consider the challenge of emerging technologies designed to enhance human bodies and minds. Perspectives from philosophy, ethics, law, and policy are applied to a wide variety of enhancements, including integration of technology within human bodies, as well as genetic, biological, and pharmacological modifications. Humans may be permanently or temporarily enhanced with artificial parts by manipulating (or reprogramming) human DNA and through other enhancement techniques (and combinations thereof). We are on the cusp of significantly modifying (and perhaps improving) the human ecosystem. This evolution necessitates a continuing effort to re-evaluate current laws and, if appropriate, to modify such laws or develop new laws that address enhancement technology. A legal, ethical, and policy response to current and future human enhancements should strive to protect the rights of all involved and to recognize the responsibilities of humans to other conscious and living beings, regardless of what they look like or what abilities they have (or lack). A potential ethical approach is outlined in which rights and responsibilities should be respected even if enhanced humans are perceived by non-enhanced (or less-enhanced) humans as “no longer human” at all

    On the origin of synthetic life: Attribution of output to a particular algorithm

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    With unprecedented advances in genetic engineering we are starting to see progressively more original examples of synthetic life. As such organisms become more common it is desirable to gain an ability to distinguish between natural and artificial life forms. In this paper, we address this challenge as a generalized version of Darwin\u27s original problem, which he so brilliantly described in On the Origin of Species. After formalizing the problem of determining the samples\u27 origin, we demonstrate that the problem is in fact unsolvable. In the general case, if computational resources of considered originator algorithms have not been limited and priors for such algorithms are known to be equal, both explanations are equality likely. Our results should attract attention of astrobiologists and scientists interested in developing a more complete theory of life, as well as of AI-Safety researchers

    On the origin of synthetic life: Attribution of output to a particular algorithm

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    With unprecedented advances in genetic engineering we are starting to see progressively more original examples of synthetic life. As such organisms become more common it is desirable to gain an ability to distinguish between natural and artificial life forms. In this paper, we address this challenge as a generalized version of Darwin\u27s original problem, which he so brilliantly described in On the Origin of Species. After formalizing the problem of determining the samples\u27 origin, we demonstrate that the problem is in fact unsolvable. In the general case, if computational resources of considered originator algorithms have not been limited and priors for such algorithms are known to be equal, both explanations are equality likely. Our results should attract attention of astrobiologists and scientists interested in developing a more complete theory of life, as well as of AI-Safety researchers

    Are trolley dilemma judgement mechanisms evolutionary adaptations?

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    Law and Ethics of Morally Significant Machines: The case for pre-emptive prevention

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    Interest in the ethics of Artificial Intelligence systems is dominated by the question of how these sorts of technologies will benefit or harm human individuals and societies. Much less attention is given to the ethics of our interaction with AI systems from the perspective of what may harm or benefit the systems themselves. Despite this, there is potential for future AI systems to be designed in a way that makes them either morally significant entities, or gives them the tools with which to develop degrees of moral significance, perhaps even personhood in the moral sense. This thesis proposes how certain contemporary paradigms in AI might in the future create a morally significant machine, perhaps even a machine person; one which can be harmed to a degree similar to ourselves. This type of system would be the first technology towards which the design of law and policy would be obliged to consider not just human best interests, but the best interests of the technology itself: how it is designed, what we can use it for, what can be done to it, and what we are duty-bound to provide it with. The thesis proposes a wide range of legal and social problems that the invention of such a system would engender, particularly in relation to paradigms like property, legal personality, and rights of both positive and negative nature. It also explores the fraught line-drawing problem of establishing which systems matter and which do not, and what the legal implications of this would be. It establishes that the net demands such a machine would place upon humans informs an argument that there should be a pre-emptive policy to prevent their creation, so as to mitigate harms to both human society and the machines themselves. When closely examined, the reality of a social partnership between persons – both human and machine – is too problematic and too profoundly challenging to the conception of anthropocentric hegemony to be justifiable

    Mind and Matter

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    Do brains create material reality in thinking processes or is it the other way around, with things shaping the mind? Where is the location of meaning-making? How do neural networks become established by means of multimodal pattern replications, and how are they involved in conceptualization? How are resonance textures within cellular entities extended in the body and the mind by means of mirroring processes? In which ways do they correlate to consciousness and self-consciousness? Is it possible to explain out-of-awareness unconscious processes? What holds together the relationship between experiential reality, bodily processes like memory, reason, or imagination, and sign-systems and simulation structures like metaphor and metonymy visible in human language? This volume attempts to answer some of these questions
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