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Comment by distcs | Hacker News Reader

> Define human.

This comment is such a shallow dismissal of a good post that brings up a genuine and legally complex question that many readers of HN care about.

Are you trying to be clever? Because this comment is anything but clever. It is not hard to define humans. The humans are biologically animals and have a certain set of properties that can be easily searched online. For instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

And no you cannot just weasel your way into somehow fooling us or a jury that machines and AI algorithms that exhibit similar properties are also human! I frankly don't understand the point of your comment.

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Well while I see your eagerness to defend the definition of human, it may for futures sake be a very valid question. It may not be too far in the future here we will see brain enhancements, or maybe even ocular implants which a "human" will read with but extra processing takes place elsewhere by machines. What if its a blind human, using machine assisted reading, what if humans are reading and inputing data into the machine ? All these questions and more should be asked now....so we can plan for the future. Right now is a great example, we are beginning to see the explosion of AI creation, yet nothing to govern it. Dont be so quick to smack down questions until you consider the broader implications is all I am saying

> I see your eagerness to defend the definition of human

I am not eager to defend the definition of human. Your comment has interesting points that could start an interesting discussion in its own thread. I see you do have a separate comment thread about it. So that's all good and fair.

But in this comment thread, you are completely missing my point! The OP has a very specific question that many HN readers care about. The question is complex and there aren't any easy answers for the question. My point is that the OP does not deserve shallow dismissals. Heck, no post deserves shallow dismissals. If a post is so bad that it should not be on HN, flag it and move on!

So my point is not to defend any definition or any particular school of thought or any particular view of AI. My point is to defend the OP from shallow dismissals. I am seeing these shallow dismissals more and more often these days and it makes reading HN comments a chore sometimes.

Your first paragraph: This comment is such a shallow dismissal of a good post that brings up a genuine and legally complex question that many readers of HN care about.

My first thought when looking at this thread was: I wonder if someone will try to claim their robot is a man and that it has been created. What might that imply?

> My first thought when looking at this thread was: I wonder if someone will try to claim their robot is a man and that it has been created. What might that imply?

It implies that they are wrong, and raises no interesting legal or philosophical questions.

Come back in a couple decades and we can check if we're getting closer.

A tangent to pondering the sci-fi future isn't entirely unwarranted, but it should be presented as a hypothetical and not as if it's a practical barrier to OP's question. "What if some day an AI approaches being human?" or something.

On the other hand if the meaning was supposed to be about human assistance, it would help to specify that and also talk about what kind of assistance might present meaningful trouble.

Or maybe they meant something else too. Such a wide breadth of topics being gestured at with only two words is not a good way to get a point across.

I disagree. I think the brevity was warranted and beneficial to the message. I think it is easy to link the logic and thus contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way has a lower barrier for entry.

I don't think attacking people for asking questions is contributing anything at all however.

Your response to my immensely simplified question with "they are wrong" fails to acknowledge a potentially real problem. A problem where too late is immediately followed by a successful attempt.

I see a lot of this today, much more so on HN lately too. I see people failing to be creative and resorting to some kind of "pics or it didn't happen" stance.

The idea that an AI that might be pushed through a legal challenge related to the constitution isn't far fetched in the slightest. It is guaranteed to occur. Not preparing for it is expected and while I love the feeling I get every time I predict the obvious but I would rather it stop occurring. It's short lived and the consequences have been growing.

You think AI is 20 years off. I happen to know for a fact it is already here.

Humans are not complicated.

> I think it is easy to link the logic and thus contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way has a lower barrier for entry.

It's two words. The problem is that it's too easy to link it to multiple, different arguments.

As a more extreme example, if I say "Well, except..." that is a bad comment even if people can fill in the blank with stuff.

> The idea that an AI that might be pushed through a legal challenge related to the constitution isn't far fetched in the slightest.

As being human? Today's tech? Yes it is.

Well i did not see it as shallow, rather more of a succinct question.... but we all have different perspectives and views i guess.

Out of the entire thread, it was the only question I found that was worth reading. Pity people had to go and take issue with it instead of engaging properly and as the guidelines suggest.

These topics don't get much time before whatever force is at play flags them out of view.

Perhaps humans are well-defined, but are the OP's requirements so well defined? If I train a chimpanzee to complete `foo = "` with `bar"`, is that in the spirit of the OP's wishes?

> Perhaps humans are well-defined, but are the OP's requirements so well defined?

And that would be a good and insightful question and make an interesting discussion. Posting a two word comment like "Define human." without substantiating it as if the two words are supposed to communicate something very clever is not! It is lazy and presumptuous.

Agreed.

Much like your response, but yet you did it anyhow

>> It is lazy and presumptuous.

> Much like your response, but yet you did it anyhow

Their initial response was not lazy.

And how do you not be presumptuous in response to such a vague two word comment? A Rorschach test is not a good way to communicate.

>>Their initial response was not lazy. Yes it was, it didn't consider what could have been meant and instead of asking they presumed the worse and attacked. Yes the initial comment was short, but also a very valid question even if it was lazy as well. If one wants to critisise, it should not be done by doing the same as what the criticism is about...in my opinion of course

They didn't presume the worst. They called it a bad comment because it's a fast dismissal that also basically forces you to presume to get any meaning from it. The two words reference a handful of arguments, specify none, and don't make a case for anything.

Not wanting to play "guess the deeper argument" is not laziness. And they wrote a perfectly reasonable length response to get across their entire point, which is also not lazy.

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