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From: bsa@ncoast.UUCP (The WITNESS)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: souls
Message-ID: <267@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Aug-84 15:41:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncoast.267
Posted: Fri Aug 17 15:41:42 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Aug-84 03:47:36 EDT
References: <12333@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: North Coast XENIX, Cleveland
Lines: 34

[The world is a Klein bottle]

> From: HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA

> I like to consider the soul as a
> process, with our body as the hardware on which it is running.  This
> raises another interesting issue that I would like to see SF explore.
> If we succeed in creating an intelligent computer, at what point does it
> become murder to turn it off?  Or is it enough if we store its current
> state on tape?  (Perhaps turning it off in that case is not murder but
> kidnapping.)

	"...He had been threatened with disconnection; he would be deprived
of all his inputs, and thrown into an unimaginable state of unconsciousness.

	"To Hal, this was the equivalent of Death.  For he had never slept,
and therefore could not know that one could wake again..."

				-Arthur C. Clarke,
				"2001:  A Space Odyssey" (novelization)

Which could become an important consideration when we get intelligent computers
going.  Remember:  the moment consumers are able to get at them, some brain is
going to do something really ignorant and foolish; an intelligent computer is
going to have to put up with a LOT of human foibles.  If he (the I.C.) feels
the way HAL did, we're all in trouble.

--bsa
-- 
  Brandon Allbery: decvax!cwruecmp{!atvax}!ncoast!bsa: R0176@CSUOHIO.BITNET
   					       ^ Note name change!
	 6504 Chestnut Road, Independence, OH 44131 <> (216) 524-1416

"The more they overthink the plumbin', the easier 'tis tae stop up the drain."