3.1 KiB
[HSF] Golden - a dog is uplifted to a human level intelligence
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Author: u/None *
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Score: 24
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Created: 2014-08-19T14:52:53
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+12] (26 minutes later)
Albert: Oh, it was lots of fun! Much of the time I was doing recorded exercise tapes, which to be honest were a little bit boring sometime – that was the doggy part as they say. But I would also get personal coaching where they would have a large room full of teachers who would ask me questions and work with me. These people were so nice, and I got to know them all quite well. Since my subjective time was so much faster than theirs, I had several dozens of private tutors at any one time. How’s that for a teacher-to-student ratio!
All right Bostrom, when are you going to turn this upbeat story about an uplifted dog into horror and woe? Or is that just Yudkowsky...
Albert: I want everyone to be the lucky one.
Punched the air around here...
Reaching the end... All right. No fear-mongering. Good job, Bostrom.
u/mynoduesp [+1] (32 minutes later)
I was willing it to be a horror tale... kind of disappointed now.
u/chaosmosis [+9] and with strange aeons, even death may die (4 hours later)
I like the idea that a dog would be a more trustworthy overlord than a human being. Romanticized concept of doggishness, but still interesting and cute.
u/Rangi42 [+4] (8 hours later)
That's not nearly as alien as I would expect an uplifted dog to be. Even though dogs have been domesticated and have learned to live with humans, they're still canines, not primates. Specifically, I can't imagine an uplifted dog dealing well with no senses of smell or taste, and probably also human-quality senses of vision (better) and hearing (worse). Albert acts more like an uploaded human with memories of being a dog.
u/tilkau [+2] (9 hours later)
Albert acts more like an uploaded human with memories of being a dog.
Well, no-one ever claimed that the upload process was 100% non-destructive. At such a stage of development, it would be surprising if it was.
u/None [+1] (15 hours later)
All his uplifts came from cognitive science that was probably done on humans. They've probably patched out large parts of his mind with "human code".
u/Rangi42 [+1] (15 hours later)
Yeah, I can imagine a lot of possible reasons for the uplifted dog being close to humans -- the out-of-story reason being that a truly inhuman character would be hard to empathize with. (Although some stories, like Peter Watts' The Things, have tried.) I think that simply taking a golden retriever and adding the appropriate genetic manipulations to allow it to communicate in human language, would result in something very different from human psychology, even though dogs are capable of (and bred to) pay attention to their human masters/alphas.
u/ianyboo [+2] (4 hours later)
I liked this. Reminds me a bit of "the gentle seduction"