The Savvy Muslim’s Guide to surviving the Robot Apocalypse

A lightning talk given at Rad Talks on 01-26-2013

This “lightning talk was delivered at Rad Talks in Houston, TX. I was thoroughly impressed with the setup, talks, and discussion. Not sure many of the attendees would say that about my talk 🙂

Knowing that much of the day would be filled with people stating absolutes and concrete concepts, I felt the ambiguity of this talk would bring some balance. How all the sci-fi fits in is another story, but I feel movies are a very powerful tool for messaging. The allegory embedded in this talk is multifaceted and I hope that it sparks numerous discussions beyond merely bewilderment. My vision is to do another about zombies, and then wrap it up with another cross-referencing the themes the undercurrents in both.

Enjoy.

Questions to ponder after viewing “The Savvy Muslim’s Guide to surviving the Robot Apocalypse”:

– What role should tools play in our lives?
– What effect does rule consequentialism have on the use of tools and how we view them?
– What role do our insecurities about technology play in our effort to promote technology?
– What relationship exists between the mind and heart?
– What are emotions? Are our physical reactions representative of our emotion? What effect does this have on morality?
– Are such programmatic responses our own, or are we merely mimicking what we ourselves have been taught?
– Do we ever really have our own dreams and aspirations?
– Do we ingrain our dreams and aspirations in others out of fear for our own morality?
– How does interpreting programmatic and reactionary responses have on our conceptualization of what is good, pure and absolute?
– Is negative the inverse of positive?
– But the question that we have to ask ourselves is the denial of emotion in and of itself.
– Are negatives the inverse of positives?
– Can someone with the inverse of a positive function in the same way as the person that has the positive?
– If intelligence (aql) is the process of our minds filtering the emotions exhibited by our hearts, what happens when a person is unable to form  emotions?
– What extent would such a person be willing to go to to obtain “good”, “purity” and “absolutism”.
– What effect does mimicing the creative process have? Is is always good?
– Can a deficient, imperfect being create the perfect or will that being as well be imperfect in some way?
– What will the outcome be of an imperfect being programmed for perfection? And who is responsible for their “dreams” and the consequences thereof?
– With all these questions, What will our own dreams tell us about how we are programmed and who we program?
– What does how we program others tell us about ourselves? And were we programmed to think that way?