You're a fool if you think your dog likes you. Hippies feel a kinship with a tree. If you want to over-empathize with a wild animal, you need to wear a flower crown and a cheetah print. Many people don't understand why it's so naive to attribute human qualities to non human entities.
Deep roots of anti-anthropomorphism can be found. Scientists tried to see animals objectively in the 20th century. They attempted to remove human assumptions about biology, social structure, animal behavior and more. The ideal became a dominant ideology. A danger to the animal world was called the "worst of ethological sins". Jane Goodall and Frans De Waal were the next generation of field ecologists. Carl says he doesn't know people who study animals who insist that it's out of bounds
In conversations about animals and artificial intelligence, play- acting is seen as enlightened. We are more likely to see our ghost in machines as they get better and better at mimicking humans. Is existing technology really thinking or seeing? Is there a human name for the Amazon echo? According to some scholars, projecting our humanity onto artificial intelligence could have serious consequences, from further obscuring the way these minds function to reinforcing a dubious notion of the human mind as a sole, or superior, model of intelligence.
It is a tool used to better and worse ends in the pursuit of understanding a complex world. As the mass extinction snuffs out nonhuman intelligence and new artificial systems come on line, it's more important than ever to figure out when and how to use such a tool. One of the defining challenges of this century is how we interact with animals and artificial things.
Anthropomorphism allows us to compare ourselves and the world around us. The ability to distinguish one's mind from another's is one of the many byproducts of theory of mind.
Theory of mind is an important part of social interaction. It's still an imperfect instrument. Heather Roff is a researcher focused on the ethics of emerging technology. I have a theory of mind because I know you as well as I do. An n of 1 is a fragile thing, and anyone can find themselves stumped by someone they deem unreadable or by a culture very different from their own.
Humans seem to be driven to see others as well as they can. We think that other entities have their own thoughts and feelings. Many people deny the mindedness of children, women, people of color, people with mental illness, and nonhuman animals because of their beliefs.
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