this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
79 points (87.6% liked)
Asklemmy
42521 readers
2245 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If we set aside Hollywood for a moment to talk about something unexpected... this is a completely serious and rather interesting subject of study:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
My position on the matter is that it is quite easy to design systems that are to some degree "intelligent" (for most definitions of intelligence), without possessing qualia (consciousness, subjective experience). Several such systems exist, and you have probably heard of them!
Moreover, I think many natural persons can be intelligent without being conscious, at least sometimes. I think many people have this experience when working on difficult problems, e.g. programming.
For Hollywood-style zombies? I would start with chemistry rather than biology. There are many substances that can alter our mood, body control, aggression, and consciousness. Find a mix that creates the effect you want, and create an implant (or make it an addictive drug mixture). Probably the result would be less consistent than hollywood-style zombies. It would not be contagious though.
Or if sci-fi, insert genes into a living person that encodes a system to internally synthesize the drug mix.
Edit: Something that makes most people into shuffling drones? Increases aggression? Spreads like a disease? A cynical answer would be that we have invented that already. We call it "capital".