I was thinking about religion and belief in supernatural.
I think hope and fear and this belief in supernatural is what I would define as the distinguishing feature of man.
No animal [other than man!] has this supernatural hope and unexplainable, meaningless fear bordering on paranoia.
More than rationality, I think irrationality and supernatural belief defines us as human beings!
[That is my reason to think, robots will never be human beings - they will be too perfect and too intelligent to be irrational - our brain makes "us" .
I am my brain. rest is appendage.
- Sherlock holmes
Our quest for spirituality defines us as human beings. In a sense our limitation in bruteforce arithmetic differentiates us from computers.
We are a product of our unique evolution! Even if another alien consciousness has evolved somewhere in the universe, it may not necessarily have these traits, because our "limitations" [spirituality etc.] may be very unique to us. It is very unlikely it traces the same evolutionary path, particularly with respect to flaws - I am sure it will evolve eye. But I am not so sure it will evolve religion!
I am not advocating belief in sai baba and all that nonsense. I would rather have knowledge than happiness! I am fine being Atheist but I don't think I am happy as one [exactly because of my evolution, I would think!].
That is not to say religion is harmless. How many poor people commit suicide bombing in the belief there is heaven and hoories! Sai baba and other exploitations are due to that too. Galileo faced all the problems because of religion.
A world full of hard rational atheists may not be very different from intelligent robots and not very intersting!
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