Janus
Hydrogen is a light, orderless gas which, given enough time, changes into people who pass the
baton to robots.
Chapter 1
“Janus is the Roman god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings, and hence represented with a
double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions.” From: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/j/janus.
html?esc
This is a story of a modern day man named Janus. Like most people, he had to adopt one
personality when at home with his family and another personality when doing his job at work.
Somewhere between his home's front door and his work's front door his basic attitude toward life
would change.
His job was to design androids and to program them to have many of the characteristics of humans.
In order to do this, he needed to understand humans in a ‘reducible’ way. By ‘reducible’ he meant
what all computer programmers mean when they define a project that needs to be programmed. A
computer programmer needs to understand what is going on in such a detailed and fundamental
manner that the common opinion of how humans work simply would not be adequate for the job of
simulating a human being.
Most humans live in a world in which if there is a clay pot, some human designed and made it. If
there is a sharp knife, some human somewhere designed and perhaps another human made it
according to the specifications of the first human. In short, when there is an object whose
organization is high and therefore whose entropy is low, humans look around for a designer.
When humans describe themselves, they are trying to describe what was put in place by evolution.
But evolution is simply a result of random variation and natural selection. It is difficult for a mind
which is used to the concept that there is always a designer and manufacturer to understand the
concept of evolution. One might think that objective truth would appeal to the human mind. Actually
what appeals is simply what fits into the patterns expected by the evolved human mind.
As a human designer, Janus had the job of designing androids that simulated humans. These
androids would know that they were designed by humans but that humans, which they were to
simulate, were products of evolution. To make matters more difficult, the environments in which
humans evolved had varied greatly over the time during which the evolution had taken place. You
could say that modern man was most prosperous in cities but felt most comfortable camping in a
tent surrounded by trees, lakes, streams and mountains. How does a human who was ‘designed’ by
evolving in environments in which they survived and which no longer exist feel at all at home in the
world? Often they do it by believing in God and in other such comfortable ideas. Janus’ job of
designing human-like androids was a job filled with ironies and double entendres.
Janus needed to do research into what humans were and how they acted. Janus watched Bill. Bill
got up early and prepared to go to work. Bill told his wife that he hated his boss. He said to his wife
before leaving for work, “Today I am going to tell my boss where to get off and I am going to quit.”
When Bill got to work he did nothing of the sort. He acted like his boss is a wonderful person and
asked the boss how he wanted the new job done.
“How can I program an android to act this way”, Janus thought. In this scenario, who is the real Bill?
Is he the husband who expressed a negative attitude toward his boss in the presence of his wife or
is he the worker who expressed a positive attitude toward his boss at work? Then, of course, Bill
went on to complain about his wife to his co-worker. Janus realized that humans are not fixed
personalities but have “context dependent personalities” or simply “multiple personalities.” For the
purpose of programming androids to act in a manner similar to humans, Janus decided to program
them as if they had multiple personalities that are triggered by the context of their surroundings.
Janus found that the most important part of the surroundings were often the humans that occupied
the current environment. Humans were a social animal and the most important part of a human’s
environment was other humans. At one point, Bill’s wife was standing in the office at work with Janus,
Bill and his Boss. The moment seemed awkward to Janus. But Janus found that Bill’s wife’s
personality also changed and she didn’t let on at all that Bill had told her that Bill didn’t like his boss.
“Androids are not going to be easy to program”, Janus thought.
At work, Janus decided, I will act as if people and androids have multiple personalities, but when I
go home or talk to a human psychologist, I will pretend that I believe that humans have a single
personality. Janus found that in order to relate to some people in the world, it was necessary to
pretend that he believed that he sun went around the earth. Other people knew that it was the
earth’s revolving that gave the impression that the sun was going around the earth. Human survival,
he decided, requires multiple personalities. To some humans, the sun goes around the earth and to
other humans the earth revolves about its axis. “Ironically some of my personalities must believe in
multiple personalities and some must believe that there is no such thing as multiple personalities or
at least that multiple personalities is a mental disease. Sort of two-faced”, Janus thought to himself.
End of Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Hydrogen is a light, orderless gas which, given enough time, changes into people who pass the
baton to robots.
Chapter 1
“Janus is the Roman god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings, and hence represented with a
double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions.” From: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/j/janus.
html?esc
This is a story of a modern day man named Janus. Like most people, he had to adopt one
personality when at home with his family and another personality when doing his job at work.
Somewhere between his home's front door and his work's front door his basic attitude toward life
would change.
His job was to design androids and to program them to have many of the characteristics of humans.
In order to do this, he needed to understand humans in a ‘reducible’ way. By ‘reducible’ he meant
what all computer programmers mean when they define a project that needs to be programmed. A
computer programmer needs to understand what is going on in such a detailed and fundamental
manner that the common opinion of how humans work simply would not be adequate for the job of
simulating a human being.
Most humans live in a world in which if there is a clay pot, some human designed and made it. If
there is a sharp knife, some human somewhere designed and perhaps another human made it
according to the specifications of the first human. In short, when there is an object whose
organization is high and therefore whose entropy is low, humans look around for a designer.
When humans describe themselves, they are trying to describe what was put in place by evolution.
But evolution is simply a result of random variation and natural selection. It is difficult for a mind
which is used to the concept that there is always a designer and manufacturer to understand the
concept of evolution. One might think that objective truth would appeal to the human mind. Actually
what appeals is simply what fits into the patterns expected by the evolved human mind.
As a human designer, Janus had the job of designing androids that simulated humans. These
androids would know that they were designed by humans but that humans, which they were to
simulate, were products of evolution. To make matters more difficult, the environments in which
humans evolved had varied greatly over the time during which the evolution had taken place. You
could say that modern man was most prosperous in cities but felt most comfortable camping in a
tent surrounded by trees, lakes, streams and mountains. How does a human who was ‘designed’ by
evolving in environments in which they survived and which no longer exist feel at all at home in the
world? Often they do it by believing in God and in other such comfortable ideas. Janus’ job of
designing human-like androids was a job filled with ironies and double entendres.
Janus needed to do research into what humans were and how they acted. Janus watched Bill. Bill
got up early and prepared to go to work. Bill told his wife that he hated his boss. He said to his wife
before leaving for work, “Today I am going to tell my boss where to get off and I am going to quit.”
When Bill got to work he did nothing of the sort. He acted like his boss is a wonderful person and
asked the boss how he wanted the new job done.
“How can I program an android to act this way”, Janus thought. In this scenario, who is the real Bill?
Is he the husband who expressed a negative attitude toward his boss in the presence of his wife or
is he the worker who expressed a positive attitude toward his boss at work? Then, of course, Bill
went on to complain about his wife to his co-worker. Janus realized that humans are not fixed
personalities but have “context dependent personalities” or simply “multiple personalities.” For the
purpose of programming androids to act in a manner similar to humans, Janus decided to program
them as if they had multiple personalities that are triggered by the context of their surroundings.
Janus found that the most important part of the surroundings were often the humans that occupied
the current environment. Humans were a social animal and the most important part of a human’s
environment was other humans. At one point, Bill’s wife was standing in the office at work with Janus,
Bill and his Boss. The moment seemed awkward to Janus. But Janus found that Bill’s wife’s
personality also changed and she didn’t let on at all that Bill had told her that Bill didn’t like his boss.
“Androids are not going to be easy to program”, Janus thought.
At work, Janus decided, I will act as if people and androids have multiple personalities, but when I
go home or talk to a human psychologist, I will pretend that I believe that humans have a single
personality. Janus found that in order to relate to some people in the world, it was necessary to
pretend that he believed that he sun went around the earth. Other people knew that it was the
earth’s revolving that gave the impression that the sun was going around the earth. Human survival,
he decided, requires multiple personalities. To some humans, the sun goes around the earth and to
other humans the earth revolves about its axis. “Ironically some of my personalities must believe in
multiple personalities and some must believe that there is no such thing as multiple personalities or
at least that multiple personalities is a mental disease. Sort of two-faced”, Janus thought to himself.
End of Chapter 1
Chapter 2
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