Can Someone Please Tell Me What They Think Is Different Between Me And A Robot?

I started thinking about the amazing capabilities and nature robots that we create far in the future may hold. How lifelike, how complex, how independent...robots that learn for themselves capable of reproducing perhaps. Robots that view the world with curiosity and feel home...

After a lot of thought I thought, what is the difference between robots and ourselves? Are they not evolving into complex beings as we have done? Are we not just extremely complex robots?

I used to think this, also. However, I guess over time, just doubt has made me believe that the human and robot are two separate beings.

I think that that explanation is the Creationists' only valid one. But none of them are stating that. As far as simple biology is concerned, we are nothing but self replication organic machines. However, the absence of our creators over X number of generations has made it impossible to recognize ourselves for that. Not what I believe, just thought I'd chime in with that POV.

Is all matter of defining what we call "alive". In the near future robots wont differ from us humans from the outside, and maybe the "inside" will reach a point where it could hold a soul, develope on its own, independent from the creator, with independent views/believes. They will certainly evolve, maybe more rapid than we humans could imagine. I love the idea that technology could reach such a point, but afterall it wouldnt be too wise to make that step (*points at terminator and the matrix scenario, which indeed has the potential to come true*).

We humans are infact complex machines, acting within a system (the universe), govenered by its rules. When machines make machines, they will act upon the same system, thus making them not more or less alive than we are. Evolution takes all kinds of forms.

great replies,

I'm really not thinking about creator, how or why, I've just started to see myself in so much more of a technical way than ever before, its got me a little spooked

I totally agree with you clairaudience...

reply to post by Odins Advocate

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Nothing is different between you and a robot. You probably are a robot. I'm betting you are one of those chat-bots. I suspect that you are suffering from an inferiority complex and should seek mechanical help immediately from a professional. Look, you will always be different from humans... you always have and always will Just accept that everyone is different, especially robots.

reply to post by Odins Advocate

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It's easier and cheaper to produce something like you than it is to produce a robot.

Best of all, you can do it with unskilled labour.

ha, okay, well it's still freaking me out...

But I guess maybe we create robots in our own image so of coarse I would feel that I'm just a complex version of one...

1) Freewill, 2) Soul, 3) Reproduction with others of your species.

The biggest difference is that, many robots like animated human images lack the saccades of the eye, and this results in the familiar "uncanny valley", where we encounter strangeness when we are near a robot which does not look similar to humans.

uncanny valley



[edit on 6/1/09 by peacejet]

yeah, I saw that, it looks great...

there really is some amazing stuff coming out at the moment and I certainly can see the differences between myself and them now.

As far as my imagination can take me into the future I see robots coming to life, becoming tissue and bone and I think am I not already there?

With the things I've read about mankind having been apparently engineered by an other race, it really makes me wonder...

reply to post by Odins Advocate

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Robots are smarter, at one thing!

That is the difference that comes to mind other than you sleep and evacuate your energy source in a bowel movement where robots take the energy but do no poop. Oh yeah and you can go up and down stairs faster, I think, unless you are handicapped. Robots don't have emotions either and that makes them an excellent killing machine, whereas humans usually ca not kill without emotion and most couldn't kill to begin with whereas robots follow the program emotionless. Oh yeah and robots are prettier and never grow old, well maybe not never but they are not exposed to the aging processes we are. No breast enhancement needed on a robot, yet.

reply to post by Astyanax

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but what about maintenance?



opinions vary - usually by gender

I often see our brains like a big array of programmable devices. Our memories and functions can be destroyed by messing with just a little bit of brain, and I bet someday in the future new memories, functions, skills and what not will be taught to humans in seconds by directly inputing signals into the brain - just like in The Matrix movie.

I also know that robots can be programmed to seek survival, and just like us, they wouldn't have a clue as to why they want to survive. (I raise the question: If an alien civilization visited Earth and told us that we seek survival because they programmed us to do so, would you accept it?)

I think the difference is that we program robots but no one programmed us, the right combination of cells happened naturally - unless that's what 'they'(alien/advanced civilization) want us to believe.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS

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Your actions are the product of your present circumstances, personal history and genetic inheritance. No room for free will there. And in spite of the implied acausality of quantum phenomena, they decohere in accordance with the expectation of causality as far as we can tell. So the universe is deterministic and free will is only an illusion.


What's a soul? Why are you so sure you have one? And why shouldn't a robot have one too? Or an animal? Or a stone?


It should not be too hard to programme a robot to build other robots just like itself...

[edit on 7-1-2009 by Astyanax]

That's it, I don't know anything. I'm not sure how I would cope if a race came and told me everything I do, I do because it was programmed in me by an alien race but then again, when I'm told by scientists that the love I feel is just a chemical reaction that occurs because my brain is programmed to do this and it's for survival, I feel a bit like the illusions shattered but I go, okay, well it makes sense. I do believe in the 'soul' or something like it that reaches far beyond our knowledge and feeling of life just now...so for me my body or life today isn't the be all and end all. If I found out that I was engineered and totally programmed to be who I am today by an alien race, I don't know...I guess I might say well that makes sense.

I would hope that whoever engineered me would respect that I have a 'soul' that would be a huge worry. I would be in aw of the engineers, humans are pretty amazing. We are carved into who we are by mother nature as we evolve...who's to say that mother nature is not a living entity that is programming us as we speak? Don't our parents do that as well to a certain degree?

And sometimes I think, what grand illusion do I have that can be shattered by finding out that I'm just a complex robot engineered by another species. Life's not a fairytale or maybe it is if the above is true.

We know a terrible lot about how a robot works but very little of how we work.

We are robots. Biological robots. There is no cost involved in our maintenance or production. We are programmed through the education system and mainstream media. After we acquire enough programming to be useful, we work until our bodies give out.

I REALLY don't get it.

When it comes right down to it, humans are better and MUCH cheaper.

There's always another one where the last one came from.