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If humans are machines, they are still a subset of machines and they (among other animals) are the only ones who can be demotivated and so it is still a mistake to assume an entirely different kind of machine would have those properties.

>Other living-person-machines treat "you" differently than other clusters of atoms only because evolution has taught us that doing so is a mutually beneficial social convention

Evolution doesn't "teach" anything. It's just an emergent property of the fact that life reproduces (and sometimes doesn't). If you're going to have this radically reductionist view of humanity, you can't also treat evolution as having any kind of agency.





"If humans are machines, they are still a subset of machines and they (among other animals) are the only ones who can be demotivated and so it is still a mistake to assume an entirely different kind of machine would have those properties."

Yet.


Sure but the entire context of the discussion is surprisial that they don't.

Agreed - There is no guarantee of what will happen in the future. I'm not for or against the outcome, but certainly curious to see what it is.



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