[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment.

[Randall Randall]

On Aug 23, 2007, at 12:16 PM, John K Clark wrote:

> "Randall Randall" <randall at randallsquared.com>
>
>> I don't know whether emotions are
>> necessary for intelligence, but the argument
>> that if they weren't, they'd have been
>> removed by evolution also proves that you
>> can't build airplanes without feathers,
>> because if they weren't necessary for flight,
>> evolution would have removed them.
>
> There is however a rather obvious difference between these  
> examples. Yes,
> I can point at an airplane that flies just fine despite a lack of  
> feathers,
> and I can point at a creature that is very emotional but has little  
> or no
> intelligence; but you can NOT point to an intelligence that is not
> emotional, it remains as mythical as the Unicorn. I can supply  
> concrete
> examples to support my view, you can supply none to support yours.

There are various psychological abnormalities
(autism, etc) that seem to point at the
possibility of intelligence without emotion,
but I'll agree that we have no clear-cut
evidence for the possibility.  On the other
hand, I think that biological evolution
probably does favor emotions, because they
serve as useful heuristics.  While this
suggests that entities of the future which
survive will be emotional on some level, it
doesn't seem to give any guidance on whether
it's possible to build AI without emotion.

In this case, absence of evidence is only very
weak evidence of absence, in my opinion.

--
Randall Randall <randall at randallsquared.com>
"Who made up all the rules / We follow them like fools ;
  Believe them to be true / Don't care to think them through."
  - "They", Jem Griffiths