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June 7, 2006 Technology and science have advanced very rapidly during my lifetime, which began in 1939. The invasion of Poland and much "ethnic cleansing" followed. Today in Africa and in other "developing nations" there is "ethnic cleansing" as well. The more advanced the technology, in fact, the more rapid can be the "ethnic cleansing." Sci-tech has advanced exponentially since Archimedes and Pythagoras, but over the world at large, ethics has scarcely advanced at all. In his U-K article entitled "Answering John Waters: Humanely-Treated Octopi, Brutal Chimps And Computers That Kill", Fred Smith says, "science itself isn't moral or immoral," but the question I asked was how scientists are going to program empathy into supercomputers or "singularity" machines. In my U-K paper "Programming Empathy Into A Computer" I made an error in not stating exactly what empathy is. Empathy is not just "feelings." "Feelings" includes jealousy, anger, hate, envy, spite, and combinations of these. Here are some definitions of empathy found on the Internet: 1. A psychological sense of understanding and "feeling for" another person's situation. highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072486694/student_view0/glossary.html 2. feeling others' emotions www.clearstone.net/definitions.html 3. feeling of concern and understanding for another's situation or feelings. Also, an emotional feeling of identification or understanding of a work of art. www.worldimages.com/art_glossary.php 4. understanding another person's feelings by remembering or imagining being in a similar situation. www.lymphomainfo.net/lymphoma/glossary.html 5. For more, go to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&defl=en&q=define:Empathy&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title An empathetic person is not going to promote or commit "ethnic cleansing," for example. Empathy is not taught in schools or rewarded in schools. Fred scarcely addresses the issue. That's partly my fault because I brought up several side issues. I am basically in favor of math, science, and technology. But intelligence is the big issue. Fred asserts but does not prove the claim, "Technology is the only hope for mankind." I agree that sci-tech needs to be respected, and those asteroids need to be harnessed or kept at bay! I think that Fred didn't really get my point, however, and so I need to present it again. Science is sweeping the nations and dazzling the imaginations of bright creative people such as Ray Kurzweil. Millions of younger people jump on the sci-tech bandwagon without reflecting. When you provide high tech to "ethnic cleansers" you get non-empathetic terrorists. Science needs to study the higher intelligence that makes saints (like Mother Meera and Meher Baba) and geniuses (like Charles Darwin) so insightful... If it's just brain circuitry, well, scientists need to prove that, and produce more empaths. Modern humanity is in deep trouble, and Albert Einstein recognized this after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked in 1945. Technology and science continue being heavily funded, and hundreds of millions of students study science and/or technology each year. But this doesn't address the "new way of thinking" that Einstein referred to. I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, and during these years many intellectuals were pondering this issue. Millions of boys aspire to be winning baseball players, or winning scientists, or some winners in some other profession, but how many boys aspire to be a saint? A saint or a genius submits to a higher intelligence that does good work on behalf of many other people, even when society doesn't encourage that genius to work! This independence is, in fact, what makes a genius or a saint so valuable. So why hasn't science made a great effort to define the independence and the altruism that inspires saints and geniuses to labor so hard even though society ignores them or attacks them? In differing with Fred, I would say, rather than technology "genius is the only hope for humanity." A saint has a spiritual genius. Right now there's quite a lot of controversy between the promoters of hard science versus the promoters of some religion. Since the times of the prominent atheist speaker Robert Green Ingersoll, one hears or reads the same old arguments over and over. Science needs to roll up its sleeves and get dirty hands in this study of altruistic and rebellious intelligence. A genius is uncommonly intelligent and uncommonly devoted to some unpopular study. What makes a genius go so hard against the social grain? How do you program a supercomputer to negate its own programming by society (the programmers) and produce a deviant programming for itself? This is what geniuses do. A genius converts his/her self to new ways of thinking. Sometimes the genius finds followers, and sometimes not. Empathy makes a soldier-deviant stop fighting and lay down his gun. The man becomes empathetic to the other man who is preparing to shoot him. Obviously empaths don't win the battle, and this is why boys are socially conditioned to be tough and thereby minimize their empathy. Witness the culture of tough boys in our own culture. Virtually all human cultures had to produce strong tough hunters and soldiers. A genius or saint, however, rebels against old social conventions and may refuse to fight. The majority condemn this refusal as evil or insane. In a future world of even more advanced technology, however, peaceful relations will need to be maintained by all the leaders. Saints and geniuses will be more common, because science will know how to produce super-humans. This future science has nothing to do with implanting hardware into humans. There were inspired persons long before there were any digital computers. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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