Do the ends justify the means?

[Camoninja]

Hooray, everything is good, there's nothing to say here. ^^

This to me is an honest mistake. It doesn't include "helping" someone after they said or implied they didn't want help, though.

Hooray, you did something good but you did it in a bad way. The way I see this is that there are infinite ways to do something, and just because a better way has not been found does not mean it does not exist. Unless there is an emergency and there is no time to think of a better solution, you should have waited for a better solution. Suppose there was no time to think of a better solution. Hmm. To this I have no answer at the moment. Imagine an evil scientist making a virus for mass murder purposes, but becomes a vaccine for HIV when used. He is evil for his intentions and you would probably put him in jail so he will not be able to succeed if/when he tries again. If you do something bad for no reason, it's still something bad. It does not matter what the outcome is. Imagine the scientist from the bad intended end is making a virus to test the results on five year old children, just for his pleasure, but turns into a cure for cancer when used. The guy is still going to be remembered in history books as evil, even if he is praised for his good (accidental) accomplishment. That's because he still is evil. If someone builds an exact replica of aperson, in robot form, is it their fault it was modified to do something else? Was it bad that they created the tool/s for someone to make it bad, unintentionally? Suppose you bump someone off a cliff in your rush to save someone else- is it your fault for killing someone else through carelessness or should you have saved the person you did and it was an unfortunate accident the other person died?

You should be punished, everything about what you did was bad, no argument here.

Alright I think this is done now. It's guaranteed to have mistakes somewhere, I did all this on a Kindle in the middle of the night, so take my words with a grain of salt. Also sorry about the maze of spoilers, it was supposed to make things easier to read but I don't know if it worked.

[Kamietsu]

Yes. Reasoning? Anyone can convince themselves they did what they did for a positive, and ultimately better end. It matters to the person, or people, who are going the lengths to meet their end, so their means would be justified to themselves. Nothing is black, and white. Everything is always a shade of grey.

[Belthus]

An intelligent robot could conceivably (1) be aware of social standards of acceptable and expected behavior, and (2) conform to those standards. A human in a coma can't do those things. A rock or a tree can't do those things. Some animals like dogs would be an intermediate case, in that they can have a simple understanding of basic rules.

(1) based on how they are programmed.  (2) see 1

What does free will have to do with it? It's a controversial concept, and I (among others) do not think that humans have it. What humans think and do is part of the chain of cause-and-effect. Otherwise, it would make no sense to try to socialize children.

[Nepycros]

Robotic programming: Rewiring circuits, inputting data, whatnot.
Human programming: parenting.

Seriously, the differences are minimal when you consider we're just another result from chemical reactions in the universe. A robot that has an RNG and a 'character sheet' could supposedly be a perfect mimic of humans. Humans are machines.

[BluePriest]

Robotic programming: Rewiring circuits, inputting data, whatnot.
Human programming: parenting.

Seriously, the differences are minimal when you consider we're just another result from chemical reactions in the universe. A robot that has an RNG and a 'character sheet' could supposedly be a perfect mimic of humans. Humans are machines.

But we are biological machines. We are made up of living breathing pieces, instead of a robot that is just metal and is not any more alive than my computer is.
Robots can be created in masses.

[Nepycros]

Robotic programming: Rewiring circuits, inputting data, whatnot.
Human programming: parenting.

Seriously, the differences are minimal when you consider we're just another result from chemical reactions in the universe. A robot that has an RNG and a 'character sheet' could supposedly be a perfect mimic of humans. Humans are machines.

But we are biological machines. We are made up of living breathing pieces, instead of a robot that is just metal and is not any more alive than my computer is.
Robots can be created in masses.

Biology means nothing. It all boils down to chemistry, and chemical reactions occur in humans and machines alike.
'Alive' is a subjective term, once you realize a machine with an 'experience' feature could create unique decisions based on its 'character' that was formulated from the experiences it had in the past. Such a thing is totally possible, since it's creating its own action, rather than using a template and following a linear chain of commands.

Humans can be created in masses.

[BluePriest]

Humans can be created in masses.

Please allow 9 months for processing, and then an additional minumum of at least 10 years for them to become useful in pretty much anything.

[OldTrees]

Humans can be created in masses.

Please allow 9 months for processing, and then an additional minumum of at least 10 years for them to become useful in pretty much anything.

Some biological machines take merely minutes to mass produce. Some non biological machines take decades to mass produce.

[Elite arbiter]

The problem I see with robots (and rocks for that matter) is that even if it has thoughts and can make intelligent decisions, that does not mean it has a sense of feel, or any type of emotion.

Even putting aside whether humans and robots would truly be different in the 'feel' category, I'll bring the question deeper to the root of this discussion. Why are emotions essential components of having moral privilege in the first place?

[BluePriest]

I'll put it like this.

I Robot. That robot I could foresee having rights. You cant change its programming to make it "feel" something else. Unless a robot is created where the AI is actually learning things and its coding has nothing to do with it, then I would be against robots having rights.