Are robots existing with us?

[diny]

I brushed over a topic in which I am highly interested and I would love to see the viewpoints of others. That is, robots with computers possibly attempting to pass themselves off as humans. This could be something which a more highly advanced culture than our own could achieve. The Japanese have amazing human like robots with AI technology. They have had for several years.

The reason this interests me is that among the other strange people I have met, there are those that appear to be machine like to me. My best example of this is that years ago I attended a breakfast with several coworkers. The topic turned to recycling. While my coworkers were discussing plastic recycling, I thought about the possibility of stepping on laundry detergent bottles to flatten them. As soon as I thought of this, one of my coworkers stated it as a possibility. Then I immediately thought but we could not do this since these plastics are so thick and strong. As soon as I thought that, the coworker said "Oh, but we couldn't flatten laundry detergent bottles". This could have been a coincidence except for the fact that I have had a few similar situations, back to the strange people I have met.

I don't know if these strange people are robots, aliens or what but the ones who seem this kind of strange also seem to not completely understand common human behaviors and responses. There is something a little off with their programming. They don't appear to be emotionally disturbed. They just seem to not understand certain things that every human being knows.

What are they?

 

[Randall]

... there are those that appear to be machine like to me ... What are they?

There are people who believe that aliens are among us. The concept takes three main forms.

1. The aliens are biologically human, but come from another world.
2. The aliens are hybrids that are barely distinguishable from native humans.
3. The aliens are very different from native humans but appear superficially human

There are some sub-types in each category. For example, the aliens that are very different might be robots ( as you suggest ). We don't know for sure what the actual case is. Perhaps there are no aliens at all among us. Perhaps some of us are part alien and we don't know it. Perhaps humanity itself is an alien experiment. But even if there are no aliens among us, there are still plenty of people who are weird enough to be one all by themselves.

( I know - I am one of them )

 

[diny]

There are people who believe that aliens are among us. The concept takes three main forms.

1. The aliens are biologically human, but come from another world.
2. The aliens are hybrids that are barely distinguishable from native humans.
3. The aliens are very different from native humans but appear superficially human

There are some sub-types in each category. For example, the aliens that are very different might be robots ( as you suggest ). We don't know for sure what the actual case is. Perhaps there are no aliens at all among us. Perhaps some of us are part alien and we don't know it. Perhaps humanity itself is an alien experiment. But even if there are no aliens among us, there are still plenty of people who are weird enough to be one all by themselves.

( I know - I am one of them )

Why do you not think that robots might also be possible?

 

[Randall]

Why do you not think that robots might also be possible?

Robots would be a subtype of the third possibility.

 

[stalepie]

Robots do not look or behave nearly real enough, and may never be real enough, to pass off as humans, but I think there is the beginnings of "bots" online, like on social media, making posts. Usually of a more automated format, like for news items. I'm not sure if there is legitimate chatbot interactions passing themselves off as humans -- probably not.

Recently I noticed "wanna be friends?" comments left on various YouTube videos that didn't have much traffic. I assume that's a bot thing or a joke I don't get. I started to look it up, so maybe it's a bot: "wanna be friends" bot at DuckDuckGo
but I'll get back to reading that later I need to do something

 

[Peacekeeper]

Define robot! A robot is a machine with a computer program. It will do if well designed only what the proger ordered it to do. A self-aware A.I. (Skynet) in the other hand, is us humans! Organic vs mechanical is relative. Alien life forms for example could consist of metals and be living beings too. And there's no perfect material, everything reacts with something. Being a "mechanical" being is not necessarily better than "organic" being due to everything has got its pros and cons.

Even technology has pros and cons. Pros of technology is it can safe your life. The cons would be more effort of work required, it makes the environment (nature) toxic.

Does technology make our lives easier? No because you've got to work even more to sustain it!

Technology is not the only way to evolution, "will power" (magic) would be another possibility. Of course would require a lot of research to do something amazing. I'm in fact already moving in this direction. I'm trying to become more by will power only. Any belief involved you ask? I have faith in my ambition. I'm still a knowledge guy though.

 

[Randall]

Define robot!

ro·bot (plural ro·bots) noun​

1. mechanical device programmed to perform tasks: any machine that can be programmed to carry out instructions and perform particular duties, especially one that can take over tasks normally done by people. These mechanical devices are best suited to sensing, gripping, and moving objects or to performing repetitive tasks such as welding.​

2. imaginary machine like human: a machine that resembles a human in appearance and can function like a human, especially in science fiction​

3. person like a machine: somebody who works or behaves mechanically, showing little or no emotion and often responding to orders without question​

4. South Africa traffic light: a set of automatic traffic lights (informal)​

​

[Early 20th century. Via German, from Czech, from robota, “forced labor”; coined by Karel Capek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) (1920).]​

​

Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999,2000 Microsoft Corporation.​

I particularly find the word origin interesting: "... from Czech, from robota, 'forced labor.'"

 

[Lou_Sheehan]

I recently read about 1/2 of Dr. David M. Jacobs book "Walking Among Us" which, in part and generally, seems to describe some of such people (awkwardly trying to learn how to integrate into Human society). If you and or others ever take the time to read it, let me know if you think if you have met such people.

 

[diny]

I didn't buy the book but I previewed it on Google Books. I always wonder how we could possibly know if something is a robot, a time traveler, an extraterrestrial, an inter-dimensional, a spirit being or something else. What would tell us what something really is if it is very different from the humans who are familiar with? How could we figure it out?

 

[diny]

There are people who believe that aliens are among us. The concept takes three main forms.

1. The aliens are biologically human, but come from another world.
2. The aliens are hybrids that are barely distinguishable from native humans.
3. The aliens are very different from native humans but appear superficially human

There are some sub-types in each category. For example, the aliens that are very different might be robots ( as you suggest ). We don't know for sure what the actual case is. Perhaps there are no aliens at all among us. Perhaps some of us are part alien and we don't know it. Perhaps humanity itself is an alien experiment. But even if there are no aliens among us, there are still plenty of people who are weird enough to be one all by themselves.

( I know - I am one of them )

That all makes perfect sense. It just bothers me to not know what might be walking among us. Why do I care? I just want to deal with humans. I want to know that the reactions and behaviors are human, not pretend or done to try to prove any sort of point to us for whatever their reason might be.

 

[henris42]

What about avatars? That could be also interesting explanation to why aliens look so human. Maybe the "humanoids" people describe, are some kind of robotic-type avatars, just to ease up the interaction between potentially extremely different species.

 

[marduk]

Anybody read Identified Flying Objects by Michael Masters? He makes a pretty solid case for these things being time travelers, and why. Not necessarily everything, but man, things fit fairly neatly.

 

[Randall]

Anybody read Identified Flying Objects by Michael Masters? He makes a pretty solid case for these things being time travelers, and why. Not necessarily everything, but man, things fit fairly neatly.

Typical sci-fi type time travel doesn't seem logically possible. That being said, perhaps my logic is flawed, but if so, I need help identifying where.

 

[henris42]

There is also one very fun notion, that comes from a physics paper:
When you start time travel, that is your starting point. You cannot go anything past that... So in that point, you'd receive messages from the future...

 

[marduk]

Typical sci-fi type time travel doesn't seem logically possible. That being said, perhaps my logic is flawed, but if so, I need help identifying where.

I'm with you - he predicates it on the concept of 'block time' which essentially means we live in a deterministic universe with no past or future, only a locked in present. Which I don't buy.

However, I have to say he makes a fairly systematic and fairly bulletproof set of logic around craft occupants and abductions, which are now clearly in my mind somewhat cemented in as being some variant of humanity. Something that struck me after reading the sci-fi novel "Nighteyes" from Garfield Reeves-Stevens - if they are hybridizing with us, then by definition they probably are us, or at least kissing cousins.

They are, for the most part, bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal, hominid appearing beings. Sure, you see some edge cases of weird creatures, but the vast majority are funny looking bipedal big-headed, big-eyed creatures that don't have any problems breathing our air.

He also somewhat theorizes around the differing variants of creatures seen, and the less human they are, the further from the future they are he posits.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Not for everything, but the connections between us and whoever "they" are seems deep and well-worn.

 

[Randall]

I'm with you - he predicates it on the concept of 'block time' which essentially means we live in a deterministic universe with no past or future, only a locked in present. Which I don't buy.

If what you're calling block time is the way that time works in the "block universe" model [ HERE ], then that idea is theoretically possible, but it necessitates that such a universe be prefabricated. The fabricator might be a natural process or an engineer, but either way, logic also requires that such a fabricator be external to the "block" it created, and there is nothing that logically necessitates that this external universe is also a block.

 

[marduk]

If what you're calling block time is the way that time works in the "block universe" model [ HERE ], then that idea is theoretically possible, but it necessitates that such a universe be prefabricated. The fabricator might be a natural process or an engineer, but either way, logic also requires that such a fabricator be external to the "block" it created, and there is nothing that logically necessitates that this external universe is also a block.

In my mind, block time is a simple logical game invented to allow for the ability of retrocausation without causing paradoxes. It logically holds, but it doesn't seem very parsimonious at all given we need to lock in the whole universe (or at least your local chunk of it) which doesn't have a lot of evidence for it except that time travel is a convenient answer to some physics problems and some UFO occupants seeming to be variants of human beings.

This is where Eric Wargo's work comes in with his (admittedly bit of a slog) book "Time Loops."

What he posits is that time travel and precognition is indeed possible - but the universe itself limits the impact of such things to avoid paradoxes. Meaning, you can have precognition, but it will never be clear enough to actually use it. You could get an insight about the future, but not one clear enough to say, buy a lottery ticket, buy stock, or otherwise impact the future that you saw and is now locked in. And he posits one way this might work is not by viewing the future, but by viewing your experience of the future when you're in it.

He doesn't get into time travel per se but it is an intriguing idea.

 

[henris42]

In block universe models, there is one that says that the past is fixed, but the future is not. Block is created, as we live through the Universe.

This would mean still, that time travel would not work, but peeking in the past could be a possibility.

Personally, I refuse to believe in any pre-determined stuff. If we do not have a choice, why are we here in the first place? I'm not favourable to these block models at all. To me, it looks like an attempt to define there is a "creator".

 

[Randall]

In block universe models, there is one that says that the past is fixed, but the future is not. Block is created, as we live through the Universe.

This would mean still, that time travel would not work, but peeking in the past could be a possibility.

Personally, I refuse to believe in any pre-determined stuff. If we do not have a choice, why are we here in the first place? I'm not favourable to these block models at all. To me, it looks like an attempt to define there is a "creator".

I share your sentiments. At the same time, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have a "block universe" that is dynamic rather than static, similar to some video game universes. In such a situation, time travel would be an illusion, but a very convincing one.

 

[marduk]

I share your sentiments. At the same time, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have a "block universe" that is dynamic rather than static, similar to some video game universes. In such a situation, time travel would be an illusion, but a very convincing one.

In other words, we live in a deterministic universe, and our free will is just a convincing illusion?