Posts by kameko

I'm responding to myself here since I don't have a single specific comment in response to mine to respond to, but I would just like to say, I hate every single person who responded to my comment and I'm reconsidering even posting another comment ever again. I understand it was my fault to post a comment innocent enough to allow you all to project your political opinions on to it, but I really hope you people seek mental health support.

Re: Cars don't have legs...

The funny thing is, before cars were mainstream, there was a man who invented a "stream-driven man" that carried a coach (this is a real invention. I'm not sure if it was ever successfully implemented, but it's not sci-fi, it was a genuine proposal/prototype). The reason? Because he thought a "horseless carriage" would frighten horses, so he assumed a steam-driven robot in the shape of a man that carried a carriage wouldn't frighten the horses pulling traditional carriages.

The point here is, while the idea of a car with legs is an interesting idea, it definitely isn't new, in fact, it predates cars. And yet, here we are, with autonomous vehicles still using tires.

If I can go off on another tangent, this also reminds me of when I looked up "why are there no animals with wheels". The best answer I found was that, wheels are designed for roads, and roads must be maintained. They are a social contract between a species, not something inherent in nature or accidentally formed from the consequence of any other animal. They're deliberately made for the sake of one's own species. It's something that can't be compared in the wild, which is why nothing in nature has wheels. It's kind of why we don't "need" a car with legs, because our society cares enough for itself to make it easier for our transportation to more effortlessly convey itself. Our machines don't need that extra gear to survive, we take care of them.

This is a very "um acksually" fueled comment.

The point of my comparison was that people thought robots would be visible and human-like, when in reality most of our appliances and home automation systems are invisible. You don't need the human robot when everything simply moves by itself.

That also comes to another funny point about sci-fi. Robots are expensive to make, so you assume you would only have one expensive robot that used many cheap appliances. They fail to take into account how society, economics, trade and industry would evolve over time, and how, if you have an intelligent robot, your technology is probably so advanced that they're relatively cheap to make and thus cheap to embed robotics into everything to have cheap, simple, single-purpose machines, instead of a single complex all-purpose machine.

It's funny, this is exactly what happened with computers. People thought computers would get bigger and bigger. The "personal computer" envisioned in the 60s? A single mainframe in the center of your house, controlling everything. And what happened? Computers got smaller and cheaper, and now they're in everything, tons of simple, cheap, single-purpose computers, everywhere. The same is and will continue to happen to robotics and AI.

A Keurig is a machine that uses a microcontroller to operate a motor. Maybe your definition of what a robot is doesn't include that, but for most people, their standard definition of a robot does include that. The motor is the key part, a robot is a machine using a computer to make decisions in order to operate a physically moving apparatus (technically cars are robots but I've never seen anyone call one that). Are Keurigs overly-engineered? Yeah, I'd say so. But they are robots, and definitely not as simple as a kettle with a timer, even if that timer is digital.

For reference, your theory has a proper school of thought, called "embodied cognition" (you can look it up on Wikipedia, it's an interesting article). Humans have been pondering this problem for millennia, most notably it's a staple feature of Buddhism (a bit buried in all the theatrics, but it's there)

And while I consider embodied cognition common sense, it is a shame that people seem to never consider it and just like to carry on assuming that the body and mind are two entirely separate things and the mind is fully capable of existing completely by itself with no sensory organs attached to it. Never mind how much of a radical, painful change the brain goes through if you so much as chop someone's limb off (phantom pain syndrome is due to the brain reclaiming neurons that were used to communicate with the lost limb to give them to neighboring regions, which is where the pain comes from, ghost signals from neighboring brain regions).

I mean, geeze, even flinching from imagery should be a good sign that a simple picture can cause your entire body to convulse. People are amazing at maintaining ignorance at some things.