I think I have a general idea of the plot, but before that, I want to analyze a problem alone: Theseus’s ship. This is a very important point in my works.
what is the paradox of Theseus’s ship?
It describes a ship that can sail at sea for hundreds of years, thanks to uninterrupted maintenance and replacement of parts. As long as a board decays, it will be replaced, and so on, until all the functional parts are not the original ones. The question is, is the ship finally produced the same as the original Theseus ship, or is it a completely different ship? If it is not the original ship, when will it no longer be the original ship?
Later, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes extended this. If a new ship is rebuilt with the old parts taken from the ship of Theseus, which of the two ships is the real ship of Theseus?
From this, the editorial team of Guizhou Guest discussed the paradox about the ship of Theseus, human sensibility and rationality, as well as some social phenomena such as restoration of historical sites, renovation of objects, imitation and imitation, and even after the full development of artificial intelligence in the future, it brought about the existence of human beings, such as: Is human cloning human? Human beings replace most body parts with intelligent machines, even replace brains, leaving only memories, are they still human beings?
Is theseus paradox a question of human perceptual cognition or rational cognition
In people’s perceptual cognition, as long as an object remains the same, it can arouse people’s memory, and this object is meaningful to people themselves. In rational cognition, as long as an object is replaced at any point, it will not be the first one. If the emphasis is on the first object, no parts can be replaced in the whole process.
For people’s feelings: repairing an old object and restoring a scene at that time are mixed with people’s emotional needs. Once mixed with people’s feelings, everything will be given its meaning and emotional meaning.
Will human beings be replaced with the development of artificial intelligence in the future?
When discussing the theseus paradox, we also discuss the future development of human artificial intelligence. As the future approaches, things that used to be in science fiction are realized in reality. Human beings make life better through their own imagination, and human beings trigger creativity through imagination, which also makes the real world closer to the imaginary world.
When the imaginary world is realized, we begin to panic. Will artificial intelligence in science fiction replace human beings? All science fiction stories have such concerns. Will artificial intelligence have wisdom when it reaches its limit? Will it produce consciousness like human beings? Have feelings? All science fiction writers assume that it exists, and at the same time, they are also discussing the coexistence of man and machine.
For example, science fiction writer Asimov put forward three principles of robot:
Rule No.1: Robots must not harm human beings, or stand by while seeing human beings hurt.
Rule No.2: Robots must obey human orders, unless this order contradicts the rule No.1.
Rule 3: Robots must protect themselves, unless such protection contradicts the above two rules.
Because of these three principles, Asimov is called the father of robots. However, this principle is constantly overturned by science fiction writers and directors. Robots can always find loopholes in this rule. The loopholes are: How should robots define themselves as human beings?
This brings us back to our original question: if human beings give up most of their bodies in order to become stronger and use synthetic metals to increase their strength, are they still human beings? If human beings give up their flesh completely and leave their memories in electronic products, can they still be called human beings? Or a human memory bank? Such as movies: “I, Robot”, “Matrix”, “Terminator” and so on
How to define human beings?
Are clones human beings? Because of the controversy, even though cloning technology already exists, it is still not approved to be used on human beings, which is the reason. Cloning human beings goes against the way of human natural evolution. Scientists deny that the species created by science and technology belong to the category of human beings, which is a controversial science and technology. Does the human beings created by technology belong to the category of human beings? This is the focus of debate.
In the development of the times, we can certainly find a reasonable solution. How can we call it human? If part of it is replaced, is this person still the former one? For example, in some movies, the rejection reaction caused by changing human organs: possessing the characteristics of organ owners. So if most of this person’s organs are changed, will he still be him? Or become another person?
Or use the cloned human body to transfer the human brain to the cloned human body, then who is this person? Or the original person? All human concerns will exist, but the answers are still being explored.
The paradox of Theseus’s ship will be discussed again in the future.