terrasj
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Rossbond Connor Crew
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Post by terrasj on Oct 26, 2008 14:00:11 GMT -5
You're right. Dopamin is a neurotransmitter wich modulates signals between synapses. Like a valve on a pipe- the strength of our feelings depends on the amount of dopamin released in the brain. And in a program it's so easy to shut down or control such a thing. So, yes if we could shut it down, we would have no feelings. No love no hate no fear. Just pure logic. Then what would distinguish a human from a terminator? Oh yeah, the lack of strength! Thats practically what Vulcans from Star Trek are. Absolute control over their emotions, and relying on cool logic.
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tom
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Post by tom on Oct 26, 2008 15:40:26 GMT -5
I like your flow-chart matrix idea, it seems like something that could eventually work one day. My question is; as the chart gets bigger and bigger, doesn't it need a greater and greater input to reach the same level of 'emotion'? I mean a certain amount of input gets divided into more sub-branches in case of a big chart thus drifting the floating indicator point less to a particular direction than in case of a small chart which doesn't contain that much sub-branches. Because the input gets divided into less branches it has a greater effect on the indicator point. So if Cam had the simpler kind of chart brain she would have to kill one puppy to feel a certain amount of regret while having the complex chart she would have to kill a whole kennel to reach the same effect.
But I think I'm wrong, somewhere I miss a point.
Oh, and Vulcans does exist, they're called Buddhist monks. They are capable of absolute control over their emotions in the state of meditation.
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Post by vicheron on Oct 26, 2008 16:25:31 GMT -5
Well, if we stop getting dopamine we'd also have Parkinson's disease. Each neurotransmitter serve more than one purpose in humans. That's because emotion evolved as a survival strategy. The systems in Terminators don't have to be interconnected in the same way they are within humans since they didn't evolve over millions of years.
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terrasj
Sergeant
Rossbond Connor Crew
Posts: 445
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Post by terrasj on Oct 26, 2008 21:55:33 GMT -5
I like your flow-chart matrix idea, it seems like something that could eventually work one day. My question is; as the chart gets bigger and bigger, doesn't it need a greater and greater input to reach the same level of 'emotion'? I mean a certain amount of input gets divided into more sub-branches in case of a big chart thus drifting the floating indicator point less to a particular direction than in case of a small chart which doesn't contain that much sub-branches. Because the input gets divided into less branches it has a greater effect on the indicator point. So if Cam had the simpler kind of chart brain she would have to kill one puppy to feel a certain amount of regret while having the complex chart she would have to kill a whole kennel to reach the same effect. But I think I'm wrong, somewhere I miss a point. Oh, and Vulcans does exist, they're called Buddhist monks. They are capable of absolute control over their emotions in the state of meditation. I don't think your missing much of the idea. You've got the gist of it, its just I havn't quite worked out / figured out the flow chart's intricacies yet... I'm getting close though. It would be a cumulative progression with stages, and a number of levels or values per stage that'd keep on growing. I think if a puppie's death would result in immediate sadness early on. But later on there'd be greater range of values inbetween mildly sad to completely devastated. Later on a puppie's death would still have a decent value of sadness and regret like it originally did, but a kennel of puppies would likely translate into an immediate jump to being completely devastated... If we look as season 1, an episode like the highschool suicide jumper, Cameron just instantly replayed the distressed girl's outburst response word for word to the councillor. Thats like going from 0 to 100 in 1 or 2 seconds in acceleration on a speedometer gauge. You don't even see the needle climb, it a blurr as it just springs from one end to the other. Having a greater range of value inbetween 1 = mildly sad to 100=completely devastated, we'd see Cameron build up to that outburst replay (or any other situation). As well as recover from the extreme end more slowly and naturally than instantly switching off from completely devastated. Another way of looking at it is humor. While something hilarious might spike you to the "bust a gut" instantaneously, it lasts for a limited duration of laughing hard til your producing tears and your midsection hurts, but it begins to receed and wind down to chuckling, half chuckles and lastly a few sighs as it ebbs away while your catching your breath again... Well, if we stop getting dopamine we'd also have Parkinson's disease. Each neurotransmitter serve more than one purpose in humans. That's because emotion evolved as a survival strategy. The systems in Terminators don't have to be interconnected in the same way they are within humans since they didn't evolve over millions of years. Interesting point. While Terminators wouldn't suffer the same drawback from lack of dopamine and gaining parkinson's as a result, instead it'd be an utter lack of emotion. Devoid of emotion.
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Post by chrisimo on Oct 27, 2008 2:23:47 GMT -5
Interesting point. While Terminators wouldn't suffer the same drawback from lack of dopamine and gaining parkinson's as a result, instead it'd be an utter lack of emotion. Devoid of emotion. I think that's the standard mode of operation for Terminators (besides Cameron of course). But I am wondering if we humans would do anything at all without our emotions. We are certainly controlled by our emotions to a large degree. We sleep, when we are tired, we eat when we are hungry, we rather do things that make us feel good and don't like to do things that don't make us feel good or even make us feel bad. So, if we had no emotions, no 'incentives' to do anything, would we just do nothing until we die?
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terrasj
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Rossbond Connor Crew
Posts: 445
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Post by terrasj on Oct 27, 2008 4:02:23 GMT -5
We'd propbably just go about our business cool, calm and collected. Very robotic I guess... ?
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tom
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Post by tom on Oct 27, 2008 11:43:09 GMT -5
That's about right. We would be still alive cause we would still feel hunger, thirst, pain -so the basic needs to be alive- but we wouldn't be able to enjoy a movie or connect with other people. We would live in a really calm and boring world...at least that's how I imagine it.
Maybe it has already been said, but I don't get one thing about Cam; In the first season (Vick's chip) when she showed no sign of emotion (and wasn't blown up yet) she ignored John's order and sit behind him;
-What are you doing? -Just making conversation -Since when do you just make conversation? -I don't know, it just feels like something I should do.
Remember this conversation? "Should" and "feels like" derive from feelings or logic? Tough question.
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Post by chrisimo on Oct 27, 2008 11:52:54 GMT -5
That's about right. We would be still alive cause we would still feel hunger, thirst, pain -so the basic needs to be alive- but we wouldn't be able to enjoy a movie or connect with other people. We would live in a really calm and boring world...at least that's how I imagine it. No, I meant, no feelings. No hunger, pain, love, urge...simply nothing. Maybe it has already been said, but I don't get one thing about Cam; In the first season (Vick's chip) when she showed no sign of emotion (and wasn't blown up yet) she ignored John's order and sit behind him; -What are you doing? -Just making conversation -Since when do you just make conversation? -I don't know, it just feels like something I should do. Remember this conversation? "Should" and "feels like" derive from feelings or logic? Tough question. She is curious about a lot of things and simply tries them out. She writes a note after she 'killed' the Vick Terminator. She dances even after the mission with the dancer's brother is complete. She tries to do what Humans are doing to see what it's like. So maybe she connects some sort of feelings with it. It wouldn't make much sense otherwise.
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tom
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Post by tom on Oct 27, 2008 13:01:06 GMT -5
Oh, that case we would be sooo dead sooo soon. I wonder if Cam's gonna turn bad again. She's chip is still injured after all.
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terrasj
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Rossbond Connor Crew
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Post by terrasj on Oct 28, 2008 2:49:05 GMT -5
Oh, that case we would be sooo dead sooo soon. I wonder if Cam's gonna turn bad again. She's chip is still injured after all. Well, we'd still feel hunger or acknowledge the need to sustain ourselves. We'd still feel pain when using the hammer, missing the nail and hitting the finger again... Just would be devoid of emotion. Good question about Cam. I'm not sure if its her chip that got damaged by some short or powerspike or overload from the shrapnell that got lodged behind her skull when she rebooted... Or was there some internal chip damaged within her skull at the source where the shrapnel impacted, likely the tip of it wedging intbetween the seam of two plates. In her HUD upon rebooting, we see a circuitry schematic with some area outlined as damaged, along with the words "rerouting" to bypass the damaged area to other chips that aren't damaged. We do know its caused multiple personality disorder within her. But yeah, what will make her revert or snap into one of those modes again? Or is she somehow working on repairing or bypassing those damaged circuits to other ones so that she doesn't revert again? Now that she's overrode her Terminator programming, reverted to and same out of her Allison memories, does she still retain access to her Allison memories?
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Post by vicheron on Oct 28, 2008 2:53:57 GMT -5
Actually, there have been case studies done on brain damaged people who suffer from partial loss of emotions. They generally fare pretty poorly because they don't care about the consequences of their actions. Even though they can understand and predict the consequences of doing something bad, they'll still do that bad thing because they won't actually feel guilt after doing it. Since so much of our behavior is dependent on reward and punishment, once we take away emotions, we take away that aspect of our behavior and we do things that are actually contrary to reason.
Somehow I doubt that Terminators operate on a reward/punishment system. Otherwise, emotions would be pretty essential for their intelligence.
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Post by chrisimo on Oct 28, 2008 7:39:11 GMT -5
Somehow I doubt that Terminators operate on a reward/punishment system. Otherwise, emotions would be pretty essential for their intelligence. In my view, Terminator's don't need rewards or punishments because they cannot do anything else than what they have been told to do. So there is simply no need for something to punish them.
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terrasj
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Rossbond Connor Crew
Posts: 445
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Post by terrasj on Oct 28, 2008 7:53:43 GMT -5
Hence Skynet's objectives hard-wired into the Terminator's core programming. Numero uno would be selfless loyalty to Skynet. Then comes any other objectives, then said mission parameters.
They'd still be able to have enough independence / freedom to think and improvise to carry out their missions.
So as much as the Resistance tries to over-write / modify their programming, even write a mask over their hard-wired objectives, its still there.
Or how else would Cameron still have her original objectives?
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tom
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Post by tom on Oct 28, 2008 12:10:28 GMT -5
There's a point. I think it could be in the design of the chip itself. The primary objective as well as the AI could be burnt into the chip during the making. Unlike in the case of an EEPROM it can't be modified or deleted. Even the explosion couldn't have affected this part of her. The resistance has to build the chip to have a (non-kill-everyone) friendly terminator. So, hypothetically Cameron should remain glitchy till John scratches the chip's surface with a pin, and tells everyone he fixed it again.
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Post by vicheron on Oct 28, 2008 15:48:58 GMT -5
Since Terminators don't develop behavior and motivations based on reward/punishment then their consciousness would be quite different than that of humans. If Cameron does not have to follow preprogrammed objectives then her motivations may never be known or understood by humans.
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