Marcel Heerink's Blog - Posts Tagged "robots"
The Enchanted Cave
We humans can only perceive a part of our world and of course this limits our knowledge. We might know much more if we could perceive in more dimensions and see all colors, types of radiation, and dark matter.
What we experience as truth may perhaps come by chance in the vicinity of the absolute truth, but it may not do so at all.
We should know that there is a lot that we don’t know.
Long ago, the Greek philosopher Plato illustrated a similar view with the example of a cave where people live who have never been outside. They are bound there in such a way that they can only see the wall of the cave and cannot look back.
Behind their backs, some light comes in, and some things from the outside world cast shadows on the cave wall. They see shadows of animals, trees, plants, and so on, from which they form an idea of the world.
They thus have a very limited picture of the world. They see everything only in hazy forms, in shades of gray, and in two dimensions, but they don’t have a way of knowing any better.
If anyone who visited the outside world would tell them what everything ally looked like out there, most of the cave-dwellers would probably not believe it and stick to the ideas that are familiar to them.
But let’s consider another aspect of human nature. Let’s imagine a cave where humans live with a bit more freedom. There are undoubtedly a few who will dress up things. They’ll put candles down, paint the walls, chop some beautiful statues from the rocks. Perhaps they will even hang a nice flowery curtain in front of the entrance.
They might put some rocks in a circle around a fire, where they’ll tell each other exciting stories or do a nice dance, and before you know it, they have made the drab, chilly cave into a really cozy place.
They’ll have enchanted the space with their creativity, and it is no longer a cold cave but is instead a place that really belongs to them. A place where they feel at home.
What would they do when it comes back to report on what is out there? Would they be ready to believe? Or would they tend to stick to the ideas that are familiar to them?
Except for the images, this post is an excerpt from A Compassionate Guide For Social Robots
What we experience as truth may perhaps come by chance in the vicinity of the absolute truth, but it may not do so at all.
We should know that there is a lot that we don’t know.
Long ago, the Greek philosopher Plato illustrated a similar view with the example of a cave where people live who have never been outside. They are bound there in such a way that they can only see the wall of the cave and cannot look back.
Behind their backs, some light comes in, and some things from the outside world cast shadows on the cave wall. They see shadows of animals, trees, plants, and so on, from which they form an idea of the world.
They thus have a very limited picture of the world. They see everything only in hazy forms, in shades of gray, and in two dimensions, but they don’t have a way of knowing any better.
If anyone who visited the outside world would tell them what everything ally looked like out there, most of the cave-dwellers would probably not believe it and stick to the ideas that are familiar to them.
But let’s consider another aspect of human nature. Let’s imagine a cave where humans live with a bit more freedom. There are undoubtedly a few who will dress up things. They’ll put candles down, paint the walls, chop some beautiful statues from the rocks. Perhaps they will even hang a nice flowery curtain in front of the entrance.
They might put some rocks in a circle around a fire, where they’ll tell each other exciting stories or do a nice dance, and before you know it, they have made the drab, chilly cave into a really cozy place.
They’ll have enchanted the space with their creativity, and it is no longer a cold cave but is instead a place that really belongs to them. A place where they feel at home.
What would they do when it comes back to report on what is out there? Would they be ready to believe? Or would they tend to stick to the ideas that are familiar to them?
Except for the images, this post is an excerpt from A Compassionate Guide For Social Robots
