Yes, it’s true, zombies [might] exist, and so might highly advanced humanoid robots; it’s a really thought provoking thing to think about… if you think about it. See, someone once said that if people turned into zombies, or were replaced by humanoid robots, we wouldn’t be able recognize it. Why? Because they would do everything a normal person would. They would speak when spoken to, hold a proper conversation, get angry, sad, and happy when necessary and do the everyday common things like eating, sleeping, etc.
But, the difference is that they wouldn’t understand what they are doing. They would just be intelligent enough to give you the proper/desired output when you provided the proper input. They wouldn’t be able to understand why “1 + 1 = 2”, but when asked what 1 + 1 equals, they would tell you 2. When they see a red light they would stop, yellow- slow down, and green- keep on going, but they wouldn’t be able to actually know why they are doing it, they would, as said, just be giving you the proper/desired output.
So, given these circumstances can you tell the difference between a real human, a zombie, and a humanoid robot? Answer, you can’t. You cannot so much as prove it, as say you can read people’s minds. You don’t know what others are thinking, you are just interpreting their outputs.
In fact, this theory was tested once by Kenneth Colby when he made a computer program named PARRY with schizophrenic tendencies. Scientists were asked to interview schizophrenics (without seeing them) and see if one of them stood out from the rest (PARRY was included in the mix). Guess what, none of them could tell PARRY was a computer program. And this was in 1971 (think about how advanced our computers are now compared to those)!
Question is, would you consider these zombies/robots knowledgeable? Would you consider them human? How would you go about disproving that they are human?
While pondering that, as you go about your daily life, I want you to consider one thing. You could be in a room full of zombies :).
photo credit: izik