Informal Learning

                                                         

Self-Diagnostic exercise, part A

 

 

 

          

There were many cases that I’ve learned from others specially since I’ve joined SL

My master project was based on “machine ethics” and how that can help to solve gambling problem in Virtual Worlds specifically Second Life. Machine ethic, is a new field which is concerned how machines should interact with humans and other machines, and how to avoid negative consequences of autonomous machines. But to find a way to define philosophy and ethics for machines, you should first know how human philosophy and ethics works. As this was one of the big challenges in my project, I decided to seek help from other people with different backgrounds, theories and viewpoints. I searched SL events list and I ended up with a long list of places such as SOCRATES CAFÉ. So, I gave it a try and went to see what is going on…

That day, they had a pre-defined discussion which was not related to what I wanted but that didn’t stopped my from discussion my topic. I excused them and tell them how important is for me to get others ideas. They let me explain my topic and then they started giving feedback to me based on their viewpoints.  Sometimes they were just asking questions which I didn’t had an answer for them at the time but I’ve realized that in order to make my project implementable, I need to find out the answers to those questions. Finally, that discussion became one of the most important steps in my project and I learned a lot from others. The importance of that discussion and the outcomes were so significant that I added it to the appendix of my dissertation as a proof of the ideas and where I learned them.

 

I hope that people in that meeting learned something as well… some questions and answers highlighted the “aha” moment of some of them which was really pleasing for me.

The following lines are some the interesting dialogs exchanges regarding “using machine ethics frameworks to solve online gambling problems”

 

Questions and answers:

A: I want to create an ethical online casino

Q1: what is unethical about a casino?

Q2: what do you consider to be an ethical casino?

Q3: you want skill based games?

A: I want to create a place to minimize bad chooses

Q4: but is it someone else’s right to take away choices?

Q5: does that limit a person’s free will to pare down the bad choices they can make?

 

A: do you agree that giving knowledge will be an ethical act?

Q: yes viki, but not limiting choices

Q: so then should you be required to take a class before buying alcohol for the first time?

A: why not?

 

Q: how would you get the gambling site owners to agree to that?

A: it’s not for commercial purposes now

Q: you won’t get any to — it’s a highly competitive field. If any of them do anything that cuts profits, they’re out of business. That is like asking the cigarette mfgrs to not sell to anyone addicted to cigarettes….their profits would plummet

Q: that is like selling beer with no alcohol lol

A: not “no alcohol” but I’ll not sell it to u 10 times a day, if u want something with 14% alcohol

Q: then they will just go somewhere else

A: ok, they can go,

Q: you will only end up with responsible gamblers there. Oooo, ok, now I get the point

 

 

Points and feedbacks:

P: I don’t know if objects themselves are good or bad…it’s how we use them

P: I am against setting up a system to limit the free will of man

P: I don’t think it is ethical to change anything unless that thing would prevent life like cancer etc

P: for some people ethics can’t be divorced from their spirituality or religion

P: Personally, I’m a libertarian, so I don’t care much for ‘protecting people from their own mistakes’, but I also don’t believe in allowing others to take advantage of people’s weaknesses…

P: adults should take responsibility for their actions

P: I agree with viki that people can’t take responsibilities without being fully informed

P: You see in this country people have gotten reliant on government and media and society doing their thinking for them. Thus we get the “I didn’t know that…” culture. Because people don’t want to be accountable to their own mistakes in this country

P: I think for online gambling, you could have a system like exists with state-side porn — you have to click through a series of warnings and acknowledgments to partake in it

                                          

The last new “big thing” for me

                                                              

Self-Diagnostic exercise, part B

After a year living my second life, I’m still amazed by it. The graphical parts are wonderful and the possibilities of interactions are never ending…

I have to admit I was telling the same thing when I first started with 3Dmax… but this time there is a different story. I always have this challenge between art and computers science… between something that looks nice and still has computational parts related to it. When I was using other tools like 3dmax or AutoCAD, is considered “my personal interest” as long as it had nothing to do with Software engineering or information systems. But in SL, I can be a computer professional developing graphically nice things in SL which was great for me. There were many “wow” moments for me in SL such as finding a sheep which sends the data back to web using XMLRPC.

For me second life is one of the best tools for simulation, implementation and testing because sometimes just paper based ideas and theories are not making sense and you don’t have huge amount of money to implement then in real work. Using SL changed my whole project from pages and pages of philosophical theories, ethical viewpoints and computational algorithms to a sensible 3 minute demo in SL.

But what I want to do with it? Good question…

Hhhmmmmm, if I could find people interested in “machine ethics” to supervise my phd, I would love to continue using SL as a place to develop my theories. However, I’m still going to focus on teaching and learning aspects of SL as my “personal and professional interest”.

                                                                

Innovative ?

                                                      

Self-Diagnostic exercise, part C

Do I feel that I’m a pioneer? I feel so now, because I’m that one eyed man in the blind man’s world regarding machine ethics and SL in my organization but i dont beleive it will be the same outside where i am.

 

 

Am I innovative? Yes I am, I love that “butterfly in the stomach” feel when you have a new idea which gives you the super energy. But the negative part of being creative and innovative is the part that you have to try to convince close minded people about the positive aspects of your idea. I’m not talking about full implementation but just agreeing to see it ones.

 

Do you think your organisation is lagging behind? Tell us how you feel about this?

In my organization I’m facing too group of people which are standing in two different ends of a line.

As a student in department of computing, I can say that they are not lagging behind in most of the cases (6^thin UK) but when it came to SLand my project the reaction was horrible. Although I won the best

dissertation award in both “information systems” and “Internet computing” courses, they decided to not fund me for my PhD. I didn’t know the reason first and I was thinking its maybe because I’m overseas student but I went to ask some of the guys responsible to making the decision about it and just guess what they told me????

“Sorry Anna, we are all “techi guys” and we are not interested in “social networking”, come on, get real! This is a department of computing not another facebook.”

I guess its obvious how you feel L

 

However, I’m collaborating with a group of people in university who are interested in using SL. There are people with different backgrounds such as computing (master course supervisor), e-learning unit, medical sciences and politics. We all do different things in SLbut usually get to getter to exchange ideas and future developments of your plans. Working with these people really gives me the feeling that there are some people that can understand me where I can express my ideas and I’m enjoying every minute of being with them (Lee, Nicola, Norman and Tereza thank you J).