Way too heavy for me to deal with at the end of this fine Wednesday night. Bo Leuf sent me this link, which tries to explain emotions. From what I could gather, this is from the “programming emotions” standpoint–and I don’t mean willfully controlling your emotions. I mean programming a machine to feel.
I would never want to inflict what I feel on anything, even a machine. But I’m not everybody else either. I remember arguing this in a philosophy class. I was in the minority opinion that you couldn’t program a machine to feel. Strangely enough, I was the only one in the class with any CS background. Oh well.
I suspect it makes for an interesting read. I’ll add it to my to-do list.