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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (4435)	5/6/2000 2:29:00 PM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 9127

Nothingness. Last week Daedalus decided that consciousness, as a product of evolution, must be coded for in the genome of all conscious creatures. Anaesthetics abolish it selectively. 'Dissociative' anaesthetics, such as ketamine, even leave a degree of responsiveness. By identifying the gene or genes for consciousness, and working out the actions of the proteins they code for, DREADCO biochemists now plan to synthesize the ultimate dissociative anaesthetic. It will abolish awareness, but no other brain function. Like an alcoholic in a state of palimpsest, the user will seem entirely normal. But he will be a pure robot, reacting in all the usual ways but without feeling. Behind his fluent mannerisms and animated face, inside his skull, there will be nobody at home. 'Nothingness', as the new anaesthetic will be called, will bring compassion to modern farming. The ruthless brutalities of agri-business will still make its animal victims cry and cower in seeming misery. But these will be empty, robotic reactions, no longer denoting real suffering. Human demand for Nothingness will also grow rapidly. It will be smuggled into prisons, releasing the inmates from their extended ordeal without brutal warders or interrogators suspecting anything. A prisoner on Nothingness will still eat, walk, talk, spit defiance or yell with pain without anyone suspecting that he is not suffering. People trapped in ghastly jobs or marriages, debilitating illnesses or grinding poverty, will also welcome the chance to erase their miseries while still fulfilling their obligations. Nothingness will raise in an acute form the old philosophical problem of telling if anyone or anything is truly conscious, or is merely reacting without feeling. Alan Turing's famous test challenges a judge to distinguish the subject's responses from those of a computer simulation. In effect, the judge assesses the consciousness of man or machine by comparing them with an authentic sample of consciousness ? his own. A robotic individual on Nothingness, with no internal standard of consciousness, could not do this. So Daedalus, cunningly, will judge the effectiveness of his product by a 'meta-Turing' test. A robotic, unconscious man will reveal the fact by being quite unable to judge a Turing test. -- This is what I meant to post. But I liked the other one, as well.