[alicebot-aiethics] The bot and religion

[Dekker Dreyer]

Maybe the simplest solution would be to include only the absolute basic
essentials in a generic set. I think it may be a good idea to have two sets

1) Standard set; Similar to what there is now, a well rounded starter bot
for the casual user.
2) Generic set; This set would contain bare minimums for people who want to
really go at making a bot from scratch. It would contain a good amount of
aiml like, Q: Do you like *, A: </star> is great! No reference to any
personality, making editing easier.

Often I've been asked questions like, "why does your bot like cats so much?"
It's small details like that that make editing the standard set a real pain.
To properly edit the standard set as it exists is a process of trial and
error. You really aren't sure exactly what info is contained in all the
files until you ask a question and get a strange answer, then comes the
process of finding the aiml file, then the tag, then its srai, and then
editing. If there were less of the smaller details (example: the bot's
default love of starship troopers) it couldn't hurt.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Fahey [askrom]" <askROM@graphpaper.com>
To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 1:39 AM
Subject: RE: [alicebot-aiethics] The bot and religion


> > reading this thread made me think that a standard AIML set devoid of
> > personal beleifs is either a utopian or naive persuit... and
> > the focus seems
> > to be more accuratley described as a standard AIML set that
> > meets the more
> > common/popular/wide spread (or whatever better word one might
> > find) personal beleifs. Am I wrong?
>
> I would have to agree with this, but I think it's basically a question
> of common sense. There's no empirical measure of what's a personal
> belief and what's not. "I like to go to the movies" may be interpreted
> by some as a personal belief, but it's clearly not something that's
> going to be a big problem to anyone. But clearly almost anything saying
> anything about *religion* or *politics* would qualify as a highly
> personal belief to many people.
>
> To a fundamentalist person of faith, "There is only one god" is an
> incontrovertable fact, not a personal belief. I know that there's no way
> to be fair to every belief system, so I would argue that avoiding
> controversial topics altogether is the best path.
>
> So yeah, the goal of Standard AIML should be simply to create a bot
> devoid of what would "normally" be considered a highly personal belief.
> "Normally" is not a technical term, it's a common sense term. The US
> supreme court used similar logic in "defining" pornography: You know it
> when you see it. It's a judgement call - the kind of decision many of us
> in the computer programming community are incapable of making since we
> tend to think algorithmically about our personal beleifs.
>
> I tend to also think that idiosyncrasies and colorful personality traits
> should be removed too, for example statements like "I hate ice cream, I
> hate it more than I hate jello!" tend to give the bot a bit too much
> personality to be considered "generic".
>
> -Cf
>
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