The Talos Principle
Dear members of Less Wrong, this is my very first contribution to your society and I hope that you might help me to get out of my confusion.
Back a few months ago, I tested for the first time a video game created by Croteam Studio which is called ‘The Talos Principle’.
At the time, i was astonished by all the philosophical questions that the game was rising. It has kinda changed the way I see the world now, also the way I see myself.
I wanted to share my thoughts with you on the subject of ‘What does being a Human mean ?’
First, I’d like to introduce you to this principle.
In Greek mythology, Talos was a giant automaton made of bronze which protected Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders.
He was known to be a gift given to Europa by Zeus himself.
He was so strong that he could crush a man’s skull using only one hand, and so tall that he could circle the island’s shores three times daily.
He was able to talk, think and act like he wanted to. (Except he had to obey Europa’s will)
Even though his body was not organic, he was composed of a liquid-metal flowing through his veins who behaved like blood.
And here is how the principle begins. What is the fundamental difference between Talos and us, Human ?
Considering the fact that like us, he’s able to think by himself, move thanks to his will and communicate like everybody does. Is he really different from us ? Sharing our own culture, history and language don’t make him Human as well ?
I’m pretty sure that your first thought might be ‘No way ! We are part of a biological specie. We have nothing in common with a synthetic being’.
But does our body really defines us as a Human Being ?
From a strict biological point of view, Sir Darwin would say yes, of course. And we won’t be able to argue with that.
But if you take a Human being, for instance Platon, and you just cut his leg off and replace it with a synthetic prosthesis.
Would this person still be Platon ?
It appears that the answer to this question is yes, according to all the people who suffered from any kind of accidents which led them to give up a part of their body.
They were still the same. Of course they suffered from phantom pains and others psychological damages, but in the end, they remain the same as before.
Let’s get back to our example. Now imagine that this synthetic-leg-equipped-Platon just had an accident that has made him lose his right arm. Profused with empathy, you accept to give him a prosthethic one.
Now, would this person still be Platon ?
Again, the answer is yes. Indeed, these accidents would not leave a man without leaving any kind of trauma, but he is still able to think and act like a normal Human. Thus we are assuming that he’s still one of us, and that he’s still himself.
So, how many times do we have to repeat the process in order to touch something that we can’t exchange with anything synthesis in order to preserve Platon’s Humanity (and sanity).
The answer appears to be the brain.
Deleting Brain remains the same as deleting our being. We can live with artificial heart, lungs, stomach, etc. but we can’t live without our natural brain.
The brain is one of the biggest unknowns in the Human body. Doctors are claiming that we only know less of the half of how does the brain work, mystify it by the same time.
But still, we can resume the brain to its physical material. Estimated to contain 15-33 billion neurons each connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons which communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons carrying trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body targeting specific recipient cells.
Indeed, even if we do not really know for sure how every cell interacts with others we know that everything is bounded by chemistry. Every kind of information transfer can be reduced to a chemical reaction, something physical.
Every thought of our being started and ended with a chemical reaction. And we know how to replace a chemical reaction by another. We know how to simulate a potential transfer and thus we are today able to simulate a very simple brain on a computer.
( You may want to check the Blue Brain Project which illustrates everything that i’m writing. This simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network but involves a biologically realistic model of neurons )
So if in a close future we are able to simulate correctly a Human’s brain, and therefore a whole Human body as well, can we considerate it as a Human being ?
Being aware of the material reality of the brain might make you think twice about yourself and your specie in general.
How do you describe a human being now ? Would you describe Talos as a human being as well ? Or just call it a being, refusing to give him the title of ‘Human’ because of the biological difference between you and it ? Therefore, can a man entirely simulated in a computer still be called human ?
Also, do not forget how the body influences the brain. Just look back on what happened to you during puberty, when sex desire overwhelmed you, making you impossible to remain calm. This happened thanks to chemicals, but it’s still very interesting to see how a single chemical can have a huge influence on your consciousness.
I’m for now in a haze, so instead of lying on my bed thinking, i’d rather ask for your point of view. I’m very curious, would you kindly give it to me ?
Thanks for reading it all, I’ll see your reactions in the comment section below.
[By the way, i’m a 19 years old french engineering student, i beg for your pardon concerning my english expression]
What is your true question here? What are your trying to achieve by getting a correct answer to this question? The answer depends on that, because the “question you should have asked” itself depends on that.
If by “Human” you mean “member of the homo sapiens species”, of course sharing culture and history and language doesn’t achieve any of that. This question and answer could be useful for example in context of medicine—just because the robot with the liquid metal in his veins speaks our language, it wouldn’t be a good idea to try transplating his organs to humans or vice versa.
If by “Human” you mean “someone we could interact with just like we do with ordinary humans”, seems like you have already answered positively. (Except for the fact that the robot is programmed to obey Europa. That would perhaps make him more analogical to a slave, who is always in a risk of having his wishes trumped by his master’s wishes. Or perhaps analogical to a drug addict, whose promises are quite unreliable because using the drug always takes priority. Depends on how often and in which manner does Europa influence the robot’s behavior in everyday life.)
Downloading and reading this free book could help you answer many similar questions.
Seconding this recommendation. The questions you are starting to ask are ones which have been considered here, and we mostly feel we have sound answers to them (or dissolutions of the questions). Chapters likely to be relevant to your current thoughts:
N — A Human’s Guide to Words
O — Lawful Truth
P — Reductionism 101
R — Physicalism 201
I think the lesson here is not to be too much attached to words.
They are important only inasmuch as they “pay rent”, that is, they describe a useful distinction in the real world. Once it’s seen that “identity” is a fluid concept, there’s no point in trying to distinguish where exactly its boundaries are in the space of possible ideas. You just accept that the concept does not live up very well to reality, and it’s your duty to update your mental model.
(BTW, I’m playing Talos these days and I find it cute...)
Welcome!
This is a known philosophical discussion. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
I’d like to ask the question that I care more about—why does it matter? How can we apply the answer (either yes it’s the same person; no it’s not; or a different answer) to RealLife (tm) and become more effective.
There is an unclear split between epistemic rationality (the theoretical) and instrumental rationality (the practical). I think this falls on the epistemic side of “knowing the truth”. I prefer my rationality on the instrumental side of things. although I felt I had to learn a lot of epistemic ideas first.
To be clear: why does it matter? and how can we apply this knowledge? are the questions worth caring about, shortly after the “wow this weird thing happened”. Good luck on moving forward to these questions.
One of the potential applications of this problem is to determine if we have a soul and what that means? Though not explained the best in my opinion it appears to me through this explanation to be asking is it a robot or a human equivalent which looks and works in a fundamentally different than us and in that is it ok to segregate it as not if “one of us” (which is part of but not entirely what this is asking us in fact the subquestion interpretations are more related to another similar but different philosophic ghost in shell question not the talos principle?) The better question to ask in my opinion for this topic and one of the things the talos principle tries to teach us is what is the difference between between intelligence consciousness and sentience. A few of the questions this can answer are Is there a soul? If so- Is it a part of realated to or disconnected from conscience thought? What is its purpose? Can we detect it? Did God give it to us or can it be scientifically explained? What is it and how does it work? Can we recreate it or have we already? If not- Does that disprove religion? What is consciousness and is it dictated on a whim, or a will and who’s will is it? In conclusion I think that though related an incorrect fusion of topics caused confusion and talos addressed sentience in a dissimilar way to ask what it is, verse ghost in the shell which asks how much of us is required to remain who we are So stay on target though they do meld together they are fundamentally different questions. Hopefully I helped
Just finished this game. I really liked it, reminded me of Portal. I was surprised at the end.
Spoilers:
Your char is just another iteration in some kind of test. God reiterates and starts up the next one in the sequence.
This sometimes falls by the wayside in discussions of whole brain emulation, but I think it’s really interesting. I talked to a transgender person once, who said that she felt like a different person while taking hormones vs. not taking them, to the point that her memories of times she was off her medication felt like someone else’s memories, or a past life. Brain emulation can probably simulate this somehow, and it’s probably also more configurable than stuff within the brain.
Which opens up some interesting possibilities. People with emulated brains would have better control over this sort of thing than today’s bio humans do. They could adjust the chemical inputs to be the best (in their opinion) version of themselves—energetic, focused, patient, and never craving caffine. And then maybe they’d want to experiment with more unusual chemical settings, and end up with a very different personality than before. Are they still the same person, after going from gloomy to peppy, or from iritable to serene? Does having this much control make them less human-like?
This is further complicated by the possibility of improvements in hormone and psychiatry medications for bio humans. If everyone could and occasionally did change their daily supplements in ways that made them feel like a different person, would we be less “human” while still biological?
Same and different are terms we apply to things.
When you know how you plan to use those terms, and what you’re trying to achieve when you do, you can start to answer which term you want to apply.