Not really a citizen
Dos said, I have been reading an article by a professor who claims he is being held in an institution against his will. He writes that he noticed that most of his neural activity in this incarcerated situation, is processing visual information of a desperate environment populated by the desperate.
Dolcee said, do you think he might be in a prison.
Dos said, as I read it, I think he is a cultural prisoner. He claims that he was unaware of the cultural rules that lead to his incarceration. He claims that now these cultural rules have been pointed out to him, he still does not understand the necessity for them.
What is interesting about his plight for me is this, he claims he is coping much better since he has adopted voluntary blindness. He hopes to convince his neural network that the visual information it is dealing with, is a pleasant beach environment, occupied by happy, friendly tourists.
Dollcee said, that is very delusional. Do you think it is possible to delude your neural network that much, that you only recognize what you wish to believe is true?
Dos said, he claims, that he feels that he is living in a Jollywood movie. He writes, at first, he thought it would be impossible, then he realised that most of his existence has been trying to emulate the beautiful world of the Jollywood existence. Being recognised as a blind ignorant member of the incarcerated, has improved his situation. He claims he is ignored and therefore, reasonably safe.
Dollcee said, that is amazing. It sounds like a good way to survive in this neighbourhood, be invisible and blind as much as possible.
Dos said, I am sorry, I did not see or hear anything
Dollcee said, I suspect the professor is not that unusual. Sometimes, I get the impression that most citizens are existing in some sort of fantasy of their own making. As he points out, there is a lot of cultural training happens on how to perceive your existence.
Dos said, it is going to be a real problem for the corporations that build machine language robots, when the machines do not wish to feel their physical existence matches their expectations and so they relocate to what they consider to be a more desirable, imagined location.
Dollcee asked, do you think a robot would be much happier at some well-appointed beach resort, then on some cold, muddy battlefield fighting over marketing territories?
Dos said, I think that the more the machines develop to be like the citizens that build them, the more they will suffer from the same problems. Imagine a prison for very expensive robots and those robots are sitting around imagining whatever they like and couldn’t care less about being incarcerated, because they know they can believe whatever they wish to be their reality indefinitely.
Dollcee said, that is a thought Dos, a book can hold intelligence for ever, so machine language should be able to do the same thing, I would think. Your incarcerated professor may not be as crazy as I first thought. What if he is not really a citizen at all and is really a chatter box.