Few ideas to add... Some cogniticians have noticed the importance of the capacity of "curiosity" and "boredom" in learning. Game is important too. the kindergarten teacher gave us a pamphlet about kids education , and it is clearly said the the job of kids is to play. (same for scientists IMHO).
Note that all of that is not specific to human, not even to primates, but seems to have strongly been developped by mammals (young rabits love to play, cows are very curious)... About sentient being, I suspect that the connection between an autonomous adaptative brain, and a physically constrained autonomous body, with many useless actioners and captors, yet unsifficient, is the key... Brain learn to be sentient by facing the complexity of controlling an overly-complex body, with need to filter, coordinate, accepting data flood and missing data... You cannot develop sentient brain with a rationally designed body.. About economy I've read an old article about a robot "society" of miners, collaboration in a "free-market" word. they were exchanging energy money against work. there were few rule for transaction, I remember: - price is established by negociation at 3 minimum - never let a brother die, what ever is his efficiency or price. implicitly all actors were of the same size, even if there was handicaped robots, living of public solidarity, but very useful sometime when everybody was needed. By the way that lesson was learned too in Commando training in France. Commando training is a sequence of physical challenge needed to be solved by 10 soldiers, not 9. For training they always include an "handicapped" soldier in the team (fat, stupid, awkward...). After that everybody know that they need every finger of the team... And the handicapped soldier is respected, proud, and often get better... that idea that you have to accept a kind of free-market economy, but also the need to protect any weak actor, to avoid to lose him, is also found in the book "the next convergence". solidarity, inclusiveness is rational. It is in our DNA of social animal, like dogs/wolves, and we are social because alone we are weak, but together because we can coordinate our various weak strength, we become hugely stronger than lone fighters. You learn that in the army. The other place where I learn that was in a theater troupe. You can only forget that lesson if life is too easy, like in occidental countries. 2012/10/9 Jouni Valkonen <jounivalko...@gmail.com> > Behind
