Civil Rights of the Far Future
posted on September 25, 2012 03:57PM GMT
I understand that civil rights are a pretty big deal in today's world. There is still a lot of prejudice against people of certain races, religions, non-heterosexual orientations, etc, but I'm curious about what the secular community thinks about the far future and civil rights. A time when "human rights" may not suffice anymore.
Examples that I can think of are "individuals" whose rights are not even thought about today due to the fact that their existence is mainly considered science fiction.
I'm curious as to what people think about sentient computers. I personally believe that once we reach a point in time when a computer can feel and have rational thought it should have the same rights as a human, but I'm sure that there will be a relativity large majority of people who will think of these (what I'm going to call) beings as nothing more then complex circuitry. I'm curious as to what people think about the civil rights of a sentient computer.
Another thing I wonder about is the civil rights of an intelligent extraterrestrial being. I don't think this would be as difficult a problem as intelligent computers, but it's still an issue that I can foresee in the far future. I think it would largely have to do with which civilization was more technologically advanced, but if it turned out that it was ours, I could foresee an issue if our civilizations began to merge.
What do people think about these points if they were to happen? What do people foresee as the main issues when it comes to the acceptance of these beings in society? I've never really heard this discussed before and even though it has almost nothing to do with present day issues I would still like to know what people think about it. Personally, the idea of far future civil rights is an exciting topic for me. What does everyone else think?
-Nicholas Staal
Examples that I can think of are "individuals" whose rights are not even thought about today due to the fact that their existence is mainly considered science fiction.
I'm curious as to what people think about sentient computers. I personally believe that once we reach a point in time when a computer can feel and have rational thought it should have the same rights as a human, but I'm sure that there will be a relativity large majority of people who will think of these (what I'm going to call) beings as nothing more then complex circuitry. I'm curious as to what people think about the civil rights of a sentient computer.
Another thing I wonder about is the civil rights of an intelligent extraterrestrial being. I don't think this would be as difficult a problem as intelligent computers, but it's still an issue that I can foresee in the far future. I think it would largely have to do with which civilization was more technologically advanced, but if it turned out that it was ours, I could foresee an issue if our civilizations began to merge.
What do people think about these points if they were to happen? What do people foresee as the main issues when it comes to the acceptance of these beings in society? I've never really heard this discussed before and even though it has almost nothing to do with present day issues I would still like to know what people think about it. Personally, the idea of far future civil rights is an exciting topic for me. What does everyone else think?
-Nicholas Staal
