Sympathy vs. Empathy w/ humans, robots, and animals

In our last class we talked about empathy and sympathy, and I wondered about how that applies to differentiate between people and other beings. We’ve already had the discussion about robots and humans, and whether one can become the other and how that’s different from one being treated the same as the other and so on. I’ve already expressed my opinion about that (In case you didn’t read that post, I’m of the opinion that humans and robots cannot become each other, but once robots have the same traits previously only seen in humans, like emotions and creativity, they’re entitled to equal rights), and I was just wondering: what about animals? And it seemed to me that once robots can empathize and sympathize with humans, they would be entitled to the same rights as humans; animals, however, will never be able to empathize/sympathize with us; that’s what makes them animals. The only non-humans that are completely human-like in that regard are beings like robots and fantasy creatures, such as vampires. Notice that neither currently exists (though we’re making headway on the robot front). Basically I’m just thinking that the criteria to gain “humanity,” or rights equal to humans, is the ability to sympathize and empathize with them. And animals don’t fit into that category. I found that really interesting.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

In our last class, we discussed the differences between sympathy and empathy, when Professor Parham brought up the example of mock slave auctions.  Whites would make themselves slaves and act as though they were being auctioned.  This type of performance elicited sympathy from whites; “through emotion, the power structure can learn to do the right thing.”

The example brought up in class made me think about the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a Holocaust film centered on the friendship of a German boy, whose family is part of the Nazi regime, and a Jewish boy in a nearby concentration camp.  The two boys have an instant bond despite the grave situation surrounding them, as they are young and naive. This was also an interesting  film because you got to see it from the “villain’s” perspective and you saw that Nazis were normal people with families, but at the same time, went out killing other families; needless to say, I still felt contempt toward the German boy’s father and the Nazi regime, which brings me to my next point.

Towards the end of the film, the German boy’s father decides to have his family move to a safer country, but as they are about to leave, the little boy is nowhere to be found. They have no idea that he’s off helping the Jewish boy find his father on the other side of the fence. The boy puts on striped pajamas and the two being their quest.  The German family searches frantically for their son, when they realize that he’s in the concentration camp. They attempt to get to him before the group of Jews goes into the gas chamber, but to no avail.

As I watched the end of the movie, I kept thinking to myself, “they better not let this German boy live, or else imma be tigghhht,: a.k.a. very upset.”  I felt evil for wanting the cute little boy to die, but I realized that it wasn’t that I wanted the little boy to die,  but that I wanted something to happen that would elicit the very thing we discussed in class, sympathy and empathy.  That thing just so happened to be the death (violent act) of one’s own. And as Professor Parham stated in class, “it has to be a child.” The two little boys in the film created a powerful form of affect.

Snowbot

Only because I hate snow and I approve of anything which gets it out of my face (and my shoes) faster:

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/26121565/detail.html

Amherst should invest in some of these.  $6000 each?  Let’s put that $1 billion+ endowment to good use.

I was reminded the other day of a book called The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age by Stanislaw Lem.  

The Robot as Human

On Thursday, someone brought up a very interesting point on why we keep trying to make robots human. And I felt this was a very legitimate question because robots are not human. There are intrinsic differences, differences of definition that make the two categories completely non-superimposable. A robot just isn’t a human. They can look like humans, look like them, live like them, and die like them, but they are still manufactured. A robot can have intelligence and consciousness, but that does not make them a human. So why do we keep saying that they’re human?

Maybe everyone else has figured this out already, but I realized during that class that we don’t have another way of speaking about them that imparts equality. Our discourse centers around robots becoming human because we don’t know another way to express that they are almost entirely just like us, but are still different (however, those differences don’t make them our inferiors) and we all deserve the same right.

Dare I Say A True Liberal Arts Education?

In somewhat relation to my previous post:

https://passinginlitandfilm4.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/education-and-man-as-machine/

I came across some really interesting videos about the paradigm shifts that need to happen in education in order for us to grapple with todays technological/digital age in which the only thing that is certain is change. Basically Sir Ken Robinson makes the argument that within the institutions of education we must make the leap in consciousness from “an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity, and conformity, and batching people” to “a model that is based upon principles of agriculture, we have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do is like a farmer create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.” What makes mature adults think that education is supposed to create an end product? to produce a certain kind of human being? I think that what education forgets is that even children and young adults have their own ways of knowing and perceiving that may be obscure to those who are older and supposedly more experienced. This way of knowing that children have that can be misunderstood and improperly nurtured or stamped out is expressed beautifully in these lines from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran:

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

I wonder how things would change if

Memories

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep brings up the role of memory in relation to who and what you are. If you have someone else’s memories implanted in you, or entirely new but made up memories implanted, does that take away from who you are? Why does it matter that your memories are not your own, so long as you have them?

How would you react if you found out your life was a lie? That everyone around you was just participating in an illusion to shape you into who you are?

Such as in Spiderman 3, when Harry Osborne loses his memory and Peter/Jane use this opportunity to mend the relationship between Harry and Peter.

“Cybracero: The Sci-Fi Immigrant Laborer”

When Professor Parham brought up the easily replaceable immigrant work force, I thought of Alex Rivera’s documentary called “Sleep Dealers.”  I haven’t watched the movie but I know of it because last year, a peer in my Soc. class recommended it.  In this documentary, Rivera offers a satiric solution to the U.S.’s immigrant influx, but in an interview (written interview; video interview), he mentions that he strayed from abstract concepts and instead, used concrete metaphors to eerily resemble an immigrant’s reality in the U.S.  In this movie, immigrants offer their labor via technology (surgical gloves) so that while they stay in their homelands, they can still do work a thousand miles away in the U.S.  Though I haven’t watched it, I still consider Rivera’s idea very powerful.  He makes a powerful statement by showing that the U.S. exploits the labor skills of immigrants while denying them citizenship and social integration; that the term in Spanish for these migrant laborers, “braceros,” meaning “one who works with their arms,” encapsulates their employees’ perceptions of them; that these laborers wish to remain in their homeland, amongst their people and culture, and that their migration to the U.S. does not necessarily translate into a desire for assimilation, but a desire to attain a freedom that their countries do not provide or to financially support their families.  The image of random arms working the fields resonates in my mind because that is how laborers in this country are literally treated, as a pair of arms that work mechanically and whose attached body holds no significance whatsoever.

Transformers

I realized in class today that a lot of our considerations of robots and/versus humans posited a divide in that robots were not human and therefore incapable of xyz. But in the movie Transformers, the robots occupy this strange space between what we consider the essential differences between robots and humans. They can grow, reproduce, learn, and die, just like humans. None of the robots we’ve talked about can do all of that, some, but not all. I firmly believe that robots cannot be humans, in the same sense that dogs cannot be cats. That doesn’t mean that they are inferior to humans, it just means that they aren’t the same. And I do think robots that can learn and feel are entitled to the same rights as humans because those rights are based on what had been the uniquely human capability to think and feel that these robots now have. But in Transformers, because the robots occupy this odd space between the two, they’re not really robots at all. They’re humanoid creatures; inorganic humans, I suppose, would be an appropriate term.

Value of Children

I was thinking about our conversation today about A.I., and how Monica thought of David as a robot and therefore not really her son because she ended up abandoning him. However, I disagree that it was the fact that he was a robot that drove her to essentially pick Martin over David. In our society, our biological children take precedent over all other children; if you read We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan, one of the characters is adopted and then “returned.” It is never revealed why, but there are many other narratives about foster children and adopted children being neglected in favor of the biological child. So, I would argue that Monica’s abandonment was not fueled by her thinking that Martin is more important because David is a robot, but that Martin is more important because David is not her biological child. The robot factor doesn’t help of course, but I don’t think that was the principal factor in play. If David was her biological child, then I doubt she would have abandoned him, but then again the conflicts raised by David’s presence are directly linked to his being a robot. But even if David were human but not her biological child and his presence raised as much conflict, I think she would have abandoned him, or “returned” him.