The Lifecycle Of Software Objects Quotes

Experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we aim high, we’ll get better results.

Sex isn’t what makes a relationship real; the willingness to expend effort maintaining it is.

Women who work with animals hear this all the time: that their love for animals must arise out of a sublimated child-rearing urge. Ana's tired of the stereotype. She likes children just fine, but they're not the standard against which all other accomplishments should be measured. Caring for animals is worthwhile in and of itself, a vocation that need offer no apologies.

For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds.

If you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can't assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Loving someone means making sacrifices for them.

experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher.

She wants to tell them that Blue Gamma was more right than it knew: experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Raising a child puts you in touch, deeply, inescapably, daily, with some pretty heady issues: What is love and how do we get ours? Why does the world contain evil and pain and loss? How can we discover dignity and tolerance? Who is in power and why? What’s the best way to resolve conflict? If we want to give an AI any major responsibilities, then it will need good answers to these questions. That’s not going to happen by loading the works of Kant into a computer’s memory; it’s going to require the equivalent of good parenting.

[S]kill at debate isn't the same as maturity.

Some lovers break up with each other the first time they have a big argument; some parents do as little for their children as they can get away with; some pet owners ignore their pets whenever they become inconvenient. In all of those cases, the people are unwilling to make an effort. Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own.

The economy goes into a recession after the latest flu pandemic,

[...] movies always depict love in terms of grand romantic gestures when, over the long term, love also means working through money problems and picking dirty laundry off the floor.

They're blind to a simple truth: complex minds can't develop on their own. If they could, feral children would be like any other. And minds don't grow the way weeds do, flourishing under indifferent attention; otherwise all children in orphanages would thrive. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds.

It was something I thought of when I was talking with my sister,” he says. Derek’s sister teaches children born with Down syndrome. “She mentioned that some parents don’t want to push their kids too much, because they’re afraid of exposing them to the possibility of failure. The parents mean well, but they’re keeping their kids from reaching their full potential when they coddle them.

Ana has been pretending it wasn’t there, but now Pearson has stated it baldly: the fundamental incompatibility between Exponential’s goals and hers. They want something that responds like a person, but isn’t owed the same obligations as a person, and that’s something she can’t give them. No one can give it to them, because it’s an impossibility. The years she spent raising Jax didn’t just make him fun to talk to, didn’t just provide him with hobbies and a sense of humor. They were what gave him all the attributes Exponential is looking for: fluency at navigating the real world, creativity at solving new problems, judgment you could entrust with an important decision. Every quality that made a person more valuable than a database was a product of experience.

fulfill our mission with the Rational ApproachTM, a comprehensive softwareengineering solution consisting of three elements: • A configurable set of processes and techniques for the development of software, based on iterative development, object modeling, and an architectural approach to software reuse. • An integrated family of application construction tools that automate the Rational Approach throughout the software lifecycle. • Technical consulting services delivered by our worldwide field organization of software engineers and technical sales professionals. Our customers include businesses in the Asia/Pacific region, Europe, and North America that are leaders in leveraging semiconductor, communications, and software technologies to achieve their business objectives. We serve customers in a diverse range of industries, such as telecommunications, banking and financial services, manufacturing, transportation, aerospace, and defense.They construct software applications for a wide range of platforms, from microprocessors embedded in telephone switching systems to enterprisewide information systems running on company-specific intranets. Rational Software Corporation is traded on the NASDAQ system under the symbol RATL.1

s s i o n o f R a t i o n a l S o f t w a r e C o r p o r a t i o n i s t o e n s u r e t h e s u c c e s s o f c u s t o m e r s c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e s o f t w a r e s y s t e m s t h a t t h e y d e p e n d o n . We enable our customers to achieve their business objectives by turning software into a source of competitive advantage, speeding time-to-market, reducing the risk of failure, and improving software quality. We fulfill our mission with the Rational ApproachTM, a comprehensive softwareengineering solution consisting of three elements: • A configurable set of processes and techniques for the development of software, based on iterative development, object modeling, and an architectural approach to software reuse. • An integrated family of application construction tools that automate the Rational Approach throughout the software lifecycle. • Technical consulting services delivered by our worldwide field organization of software engineers and technical sales professionals. Our customers include businesses in the Asia/Pacific region, Europe, and North America that are leaders in leveraging semiconductor, communications, and software technologies to achieve their business objectives. We serve customers in a diverse range of industries, such as telecommunications

o n o f R a t i o n a l S o f t w a r e C o r p o r a t i o n i s t o e n s u r e t h e s u c c e s s o f c u s t o m e r s c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e s o f t w a r e s y s t e m s t h a t t h e y d e p e n d o n . We enable our customers to achieve their business objectives by turning software into a source of competitive advantage, speeding time-to-market, reducing the risk of failure, and improving software quality. We fulfill our mission with the Rational ApproachTM, a comprehensive softwareengineering solution consisting of three elements: • A configurable set of processes and techniques for the development of software, based on iterative development, object modeling, and an architectural approach to software reuse. • An integrated family of application construction tools that automate the Rational Approach throughout the software lifecycle. • Technical consulting services delivered by our worldwide field organization of software engineers and technical sales professionals. Our customers include businesses in the Asia/Pacific region, Europe, and North America that are leaders in leveraging semiconductor, communications, and software technologies to achieve their business objectives. We serve customers in a diverse range of industries, such as telecommunications, banking and financial services, manufacturing, transportation, aerospace, and defense.They construct software applications for a wide range of platforms, from microprocessors embedded in telephone switching systems to enterprisewide information systems running on company-specific intranets. Rational Software Corporation is traded on the NASDAQ system under the symbol RATL.1

The year following Blue Gamma’s closure involves many changes for Derek.

The economy goes into a recession after the latest flu pandemic, prompting changes in the virtual worlds.

Derek’s astonished. “You were trying to get people angry at me?” “This happen because we on your account,” says Marco. “Not happen if we have own accounts, like Voyl.” Now he understands. The digients have been hearing about a Sophonce digient named Voyl. Voyl’s owner—a lawyer named Gerald Hecht—filed papers to create the Voyl Corporation, and Voyl now runs under a separate Data Earth account registered to that corporation. Voyl pays taxes and is able to own property, enter into contracts, file lawsuits, and be sued; in many respects he is a legal person, albeit one for whom Hecht technically serves as director.

Derek’s sister teaches children born with Down syndrome. “She mentioned that some parents don’t want to push their kids too much, because they’re afraid of exposing them to the possibility of failure. The parents mean well, but they’re keeping their kids from reaching their full potential when they coddle them.” It takes her a little time to get used to this idea. Ana’s accustomed to thinking of the digients as supremely gifted apes, and while in the past people have compared apes to children with special needs, it was always more of a metaphor. To view the digients more literally as special-needs children requires a shift in perspective. “How much responsibility do you think the digients can handle?” Derek spreads his hands. “I don’t know. In a way it’s like Down syndrome; it affects every person differently, so whenever my sister works with a new kid, she has to play it by ear. We have even less to go on, because no one’s ever raised digients for this long before. If it turns out that the only thing we’re accomplishing with homework assignments is making them feel bad, then of course we’ll stop. But I don’t want Marco and Polo’s potential to be wasted because I was afraid of pushing them a little.” She sees that Derek has a very different idea of high expectations than she has. More than that, she realizes that his is actually the better one. “You’re right,” she says, after a pause. “We should see if they can do homework.

For the last couple of hours he’s been testing an avatar modification that would change the proportions of the digients’ bodies and faces to make them look more mature. Among those owners who have opted to further their digients’ education, more and more are commenting on the incongruity between the digients’ eternally cute avatars and their increasing competence. This add-on is intended to correct that and make it easier for the owners’ to think of the digients as more capable.

The years she spent raising Jax didn’t just make him fun to talk to, didn’t just provide him with hobbies and a sense of humor. They were what gave him all the attributes Exponential is looking for: fluency at navigating the real world, creativity at solving new problems, judgment you could entrust with an important decision. Every quality that made a person more valuable than a database was a product of experience

but she can’t deny the realities of modern neuropharmacology: if her brain is flooded with oxytocin every time she’s training Sophonce digients, it’s going to have an effect on her feelings toward them whether she wants it to or not.

As a girl she dreamed of following Fossey and Goodall to Africa; by the time she got out of grad school, there were so few apes left that her best option was to work in a zoo; now she’s looking at a job as a trainer of virtual pets.

They figure that affection will produce better results, and the only way trainers will feel affection for Sophonce digients is with pharmaceutical intervention.

Playtime’s over, Jax,” she says. “Time to do your homework.

Obviously you’re going to have your hands full,” says Ana, “but what do you think about adopting Lolly?” It would be fascinating to see Lolly’s reaction to a pregnancy. “No,” says Robyn, shaking her head. “I’m past digients now.” “You’re past them?” “I’m ready for the real thing, you know what I mean?” Carefully, Ana says, “I’m not sure that I do.” “People always say that we’re evolved to want babies, and I used to think that was a bunch of crap, but not anymore.” Robyn’s facial expression is one of transport; she’s no longer speaking to Ana exactly. “Cats, dogs, digients, they’re all just substitutes for what we’re supposed to be caring for. Eventually you start to understand what a baby means, what it really means, and everything changes. And then you realize that all the feelings you had before weren’t—” Robyn stops herself. “I mean, for me, it just put things in perspective.” Women who work with animals hear this all the time: that their love for animals must arise out of a sublimated child-rearing urge. Ana’s tired of the stereotype. She likes children just fine, but they’re not the standard against which all other accomplishments should be measured. Caring for animals is worthwhile in and of itself, a vocation that need offer no apologies. She wouldn’t have said the same about digients when she started at Blue Gamma, but now she realizes it might be true for them, too.

The idea has been around for a while. Artificial-life hobbyists all agree on the impossibility of digients ever getting legal protection as a class, citing dogs as an example: human compassion for dogs is both deep and wide, but the euthanasia of dogs in pet shelters amounts to an ongoing canine holocaust, and if the courts haven’t put a stop to that, they certainly aren’t going to grant protection to entities that lack a heartbeat. Given this, some owners believe the most they can hope for is legal protection on an individual basis: by filing articles of incorporation on a specific digient, an owner can take advantage of a substantial body of case law that establishes rights for nonhuman entities. Hecht is the first one to have actually done it.

There are no shortcuts. If you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task... experience is algorithmically incompressible.

teaching him, as best she can, the business of living.

Is it better for Marco to have his brain chemistry altered than for Ana to alter hers?

Is it more respectful to treat him like a human being, or to accept that he isn’t one?

she has to get on with the job in front of her now: teaching him, as best she can, the business of living.

tras la última pandemia de gripe,

I was also interested in the idea of emotional relationships between humans and AIs, and I don’t mean humans becoming infatuated with sex robots. Sex isn’t what makes a relationship real; the willingness to expend effort maintaining it is. Some lovers break up with each other the first time they have a big argument; some parents do as little for their children as they can get away with; some pet owners ignore their pets whenever they become inconvenient. In all of those cases, the people are unwilling to make an effort. Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own. I’ve

In the playground, Jax and Marco have decided to play a new game. They both get down on all fours and begin crawling around. Jax waves to get her attention, and she walks her avatar over to him. “Ana,” he says, “you know ants talk each other?” They’ve been watching nature videos on the television. “Yes, I’ve heard that,” she says. “You know we know what they saying?” “You do?” “We talk ant language. Like this: Imp fimp deemul weetul.” Marco replies, “Beedul jeedul lomp womp.” “And what does that mean?” “Not tell you. Only we know.” “We and ants,” adds Marco. And then Jax and Marco both laugh, Mo mo mo, and Ana smiles.

Marco and Polo take a reading class with Jax and a few others, and they seem to enjoy it well enough. None of the digients was raised on bedtime stories, so text doesn’t fascinate them the way it does human children, but their general curiosity—along with the praise of their owners—motivates them to explore the uses that text can be put to.

if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Based on our experience with human minds, it takes at least twenty years of steady effort to produce a useful person, and I see no reason that teaching an artificial being would go any faster.

A dog may understand dozens of commands, but it will never do anything but bark.

The original Drayta’s owner trained him using a puzzle generator pirated from the Five Dynasties continent on the Real Space platform and then released copies to the public domain.

She sees that Derek has a very different idea of high expectations than she has. More than that, she realizes that his is actually the better one. “You’re right,” she says, after a pause.

recession after the latest flu pandemic,

No es el sexo lo que hace que una relación sea real, sino la disposición a dedicarle nuestros esfuerzos para mantenerla. Algunos amantes rompen a la primera discusión grave; algunos padres hacen tan poco por sus hijos como pueden; los dueños de algunas mascotas las ignoran cuando ya no les convienen. En todos estos casos, la gente no está dispuesta a hacer un esfuerzo. Mantener una relación real, ya sea con un amante, un niño o una mascota, exige que estemos dispuestos a equilibrar nuestros deseos y necesidades y los de los demás.

I was also interested in the idea of emotional relationships between humans and AIs, and I don’t mean humans becoming infatuated with sex robots. Sex isn’t what makes a relationship real; the willingness to expend effort maintaining it is. Some lovers break up with each other the first time they have a big argument; some parents do as little for their children as they can get away with; some pet owners ignore their pets whenever they become inconvenient. In all of those cases, the people are unwilling to make an effort. Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own. I’ve read stories in which people argue that AIs deserve legal rights, but in focusing on the big philosophical question, there’s a mundane reality that these stories gloss over. It’s similar to the way movies always depict love in terms of grand romantic gestures when, over the long term, love also means working through money problems and picking dirty laundry off the floor. So while achieving legal rights for AIs would be a major step, another milestone that would be just as important is people putting real effort into their individual relationships with

experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

the fundamental incompatibility between Exponential’s goals and hers. They want something that responds like a person, but isn’t owed the same obligations as a person, and that’s something she can’t give them. No one can give it to them, because it’s an impossibility. The years she spent raising Jax didn’t just make him fun to talk to, didn’t just provide him with hobbies and a sense of humor. They were what gave him all the attributes Exponential is looking for: fluency at navigating the real world, creativity at solving new problems, judgment you could entrust with an important decision. Every quality that made a person more valuable than a database was a product of experience. She wants to tell them that Blue Gamma was more right than it knew: experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher.

A company called Edgeplayer markets a digient torture chamber on the Real Space platform; to avoid accusations of unauthorized copying, they use only public-domain digients as victims. The user group has agreed that once they get the Neuroblast engine ported, their conversion procedure will include full ownership verification; no Neuroblast digient will ever enter Real Space without someone committed to taking care of it.

I admit the idea of sex with a digient bothered me initially, but I guess I’m not opposed to the idea in principle. It’s not something I can imagine doing myself, but I don’t have a problem if other people want to, so long as it’s not exploitative. If there’s some degree of give-and-take, then maybe it could be like Derek said: good for the digient as well as the human. But if the human is free to customize the digient’s reward map, or keep rolling him back until he finds a perfectly tweaked instantiation, then where’s the give-and-take? Binary Desire is telling its customers that they don’t have to accommodate their digients’ preferences in any way. It doesn’t matter whether it involves sex or not; that’s not a real relationship.

normally he enjoys his job, but yesterday the product managers asked him for something he considers a bad idea.

The idea of love with no strings attached is as much a fantasy as what Binary Desire is selling. Loving someone means making sacrifices for them.

InstantRapport is one of the smart transdermals, a patch that delivers doses of an oxytocin-opioid cocktail whenever the wearer is in the presence of a specific person. It’s used to strengthen rocky marriages and strained parent-child relationships, and it’s recently become available without a prescription.

he knows he has a reward map but has never thought about what it would mean to edit it. “Might be fun editing my reward map,” says Polo. “You not able edit your reward map when you working for someone else,” says Marco. “You only able do that when you corporation.

Blue Gamma has done what it can to minimize abuses; all the Neuroblast digients are equipped with pain circuit breakers, which render them immune to torture and thus unappealing to sadists. Unfortunately, there’s no way to protect the digients from things like simple neglect.

Temporary becomes indefinite becomes permanent.

Various employees take turns showing mascots the real world; Derek usually takes Marco or Polo. His first idea is to take them outside, around the office park where Blue Gamma is headquartered, and show them the strips of grass and shrubbery that divide the parking lot. He points out the crablike robot that tends to the landscaping, product of an earlier venture in bringing digients into the real world. The robot is equipped with a stiletto-like trowel for pulling weeds, and its toil is purely instinct driven; it’s descended from generations of winners in an evolutionary gardening competition conducted in Data Earth hothouses.

right now your digients, amazing as they are, have no marketable job skills, and you can’t predict when they’ll get any. How else are you going to raise the money you need?” How many women have asked themselves the same question, Ana wonders. “So it’s the oldest profession.

Raising a child, she said, “puts you in touch, deeply, inescapably, daily, with some pretty heady issues: What is love and how do we get ours? Why does the world contain evil and pain and loss? How can we discover dignity and tolerance? Who is in power and why? What’s the best way to resolve conflict?

As they walk through a deserted medieval town square, Jax says, “Sometimes wish I just be suspended, not have to wait more. Restarted when I can enter Real Space, feel like no time passed.” The comment catches Ana off guard. None of the digients has access to the user-group forums, so Jax must have come up with the idea on his own. “Do you really want that?” she asks. “Not really. Want stay awake, know what happening. But sometimes get frustrated.” Then he asks, “You sometimes wish you don’t have take care me?” She makes sure Jax is looking her in the face before she replies. “My life might be simpler if I didn’t have you to take care of, but it wouldn’t be as happy. I love you, Jax.” “Love you too.

Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own.