CaptainBeowulf wrote:Hormones and the limbic system are one of the more difficult parts... without those, you would potentially be completely emotionless. Things like curiosity and desire to explore are as much emotions as anything... so you would have to find a way to emulate hormones in software if you didn't want to end up being a computer consciousness that just sits there because it doesn't care about anything anymore.
Also, you need emotions to preserve a moral center. I doubt we want highly intelligent consciousnesses with control over advanced computers and robotics running around with no sense of right and wrong...
People without emotions can't make decisions. (or they have inordinately great difficulty)
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Dont forget one of the most driving emotions: sex drive.
I doubt that you would experience much of that once you are stuck in a computer (no balls, no sex drive, gggg). Means you are probably going to lack a lot of motivation.
Or maybe those artificial 'people' will make great automatons; with their 'emotions' reduced to just one, that's permanently switched on overdrive. No distractions then.
My stated condition was "all that makes you "you"". If you are the sum of your emotions and balls, then certainly they need to be simulated/effectuated.
Sex? They can already stimulate that now. If they can stimulate it, they should be able to simulate it!
What I get from the conversation is people worried that altered humans would be less, or in-, humane. But if you get some alteration/transplantation done that leaves you an emotionless drone, why would you care? After the fact it won't matter to you.