青草地

Abstract

This essay mainly explores two problems. In its first part, it discusses the possibility that A.I. technology makes computers imitate human being’s behavior and emotion. This part uses some theory and views mainly from technological aspects. It introduces the simple history of A.I.’s development and two main research approaches in this field – Bottom-up and Top-down. It also refers to contemporary status and achievements of A.I. technology. The second part of this essay argues the positive effects resulting from the development of A.I. and finds some factors plaguing its advancement. Most negative factors originate from people’s not knowing A.I.’s goal and state of research, worries without rhyme or reason and lacking confidence to future society’s principles. Therefore, this paper tries to find some solutions to face up to those future’s troubles. It will also mention some practical but crucial improvements that A.I. technology will bring to us. Finally, it draws an inference and predicts the further research area and work.

       When you use the function named Spelling and Grammar in Microsoft Word to check whether your essay or article has some errors in grammar, you are enjoying the achievements of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). Word is trying to find your misuse and other errors according to the custom of the usage of your language. Maybe we can even say that Word is “thinking” over what mistakes you have made in your works. This is a very simple application of Artificial Intelligence technology. A.I. is a scientific study encompassing philosophy, computer science, mathematics, and even history, art, biology or engineering. It is one thing for A.I. to need such comprehensive range of scientific fields to be combined together and quite another to have a very simple goal to realize. According to its name, its far-reaching goal could be summarized as simply as creating a kind of computer that can imitate part of or whole human being’s intellectual activities. Although A.I. is a complex science and a great amount of successful practices have been achieved, this essay is not going to explore those detailed and complicated mathematical or biological theories. It will mainly focus on the development of A.I. since its birth and some coming ethical problems resulting from this young and immature science. As to the future of A.I., for a long time there exist two continuous and opposite views. The pessimistic group believes that A.I. will endow computers with the same intelligence and emotion as human beings and finally take the place of human being to become the host of the Earth. This negative view meets intensive opposition from the optimistic group. The latter insists that A.I.’s advancement is under the control of human beings. People will develop and use this technology to solve troubles even help us to understand ourselves but not make human beings extinct. Indeed, if we hope to realize A.I. technology in practical ways in the future, we will have to face up to two unsolved questions: one is that if it is possible to make computer to use the style of human being’s thoughts and emotions; the other is that whether A.I. will result in more beneficial consequences than harmful ones.

This essay will mainly explore these two problems. In the first part, it will discuss the possibility that A.I. technology makes computers imitate human being’s behavior and affections. This part will use some theories and views mainly from technological aspects to prove that human beings will create that kind of computer which is not different from us in intelligence or perhaps even wiser than people. Then, it will introduce the simple history of A.I.’s development and two main research approaches in this field – Bottom-up and Top-down. The essay will also refer to the contemporary status and achievements of A.I. technology. The second part of this essay will argue the positive effects resulting from the development of A.I. and find some factors plaguing its advancement. Most negative factors originate from people’s not knowing A.I.’s goal or its state of research, worries without rhyme or reason and lacking confidence in future society’s principles. Therefore, this paper will try to find some solutions to face up to those future troubles. It will also mention some practical but crucial improvements that A.I. technology will bring to us. Finally, it will draw an conclusion and predict the further research area and work.

Before discussing those questions, the definition of A.I. should be given. A.I. is a branch of computer science. Its goal is to create intelligent programs to imitate human being’s thinking methods and even emotions. Because this field is incredibly diverse and includes many areas like robotics, evolutionary computing, distributed computing, natural language processing, fuzzy logic and much more, clearly defining A.I. becomes a hard work. The definition of what constitutes A.I. is as subjective as the question of the meaning of life, existence of a soul and other big problems in philosophy. Many scientists and specialists spend their whole lives working in a more specific and narrow branch or sub-field of A.I. just like gaming, neural networks, genetic algorithms and so on.

A.I. is a young scientific field and has a short history of development. However, it grows so quickly and makes such a great progress that its history of advancements has to be introduced here. During postwar period (1945-1956), A.I. emerged as a widely-discussed field. Its birth contributes to the arrival of modern computer technology. The development of modern digital computers influenced A.I. research tremendously. The Dartmouth Conference of 1956 brought A.I. to a new era [1]. As to this conference, its organizer, John McCarthy, has to be mentioned because he was regarded as the father of A.I. because he organized the conference and invited many experts together to lay the framework for the future of A.I. research [1]. Between 1956 and 1963, as treated as the dawning age of A.I., major A.I research centers such as Carnegie Mellon, MIT and IBM focused their work on two main themes: A.I program and computer learning. By the mid of 1960s, many different institutions concentrated on the study of A.I. Perception and knowledge representation became the main theme of many A.I. research projects [1]. An important project was called Block Micro World carried out by MIT, which studied to make robotics recognize geometric shapes. In 1970s, various studies on A.I. were growing rapidly and strengthening the backbone of A.I. theories [1]. These studies include expert systems, interpreting the meaning of words, computer vision and so on. However, A.I. applications were still few and immature in this period. In the early 1980s, expert systems gained some achievements in applications in the industrial world. Nevertheless, those unstable systems caused some painful results to their clients [1]. People learned from those failures and assumed a more conservative view of A.I. This careful attitude made A.I.’s development recover at the end of 1980s. Time passed to 1990s. After Deep Blue ( a super computer) won the famous chess player Kasparov in 1996, A.I. research welcomed a new peak of development. It was also used in a great project that would analyze the human DNA map [1].

As a relatively young science, A.I. has made much progress in its 50-years advancement. Its influence almost reaches every aspect of modern sciences. This gives A.I. endless potential to advance. In brief, A.I. is an energetic and attractive science.

In the quest to realize A.I.’s goal, two groups held different theories and approaches. These competitive approaches can be concluded as Bottom-Up and Top-Down methods. Bottom-Up advocates believe that the best way to achieve artificial intelligence is to use electronic equipment to copy the style of human brain’s complex network of neurons [2]. Top-Down supporters insist on that the right method is to use computer program to imitate a brain’s behaviors [2]. Although these two groups have different methods, they both achieve interesting results from their research.

One product and example of Bottom-Up approach is the Neural Network Theory. The theory states that if we can use electronic elements to construct the structure of the human brain and make those elements transfer electronic signals in the way that brain neuron cells communicate with each other, intelligence phenomenon will emerge in the artificial network [2]. Warren McCulloch (1965), majoring in medicine at Yale, and Walter Pitts (1965), a mathematician, worked together to design electronic replicas of neural networks to show how electronic networks could generate logical processes [2]. The results of their research encouraged many laboratories to simulated neurons to realize A.I.

The most famous achievement of Top-Down theory is the Expert System [2]. Based on the large capacity of computers, an expert system can interpret results from statistics and find rules [2]. The system works like a detective solving a mystery. Using information, rules and logic, the expert system can solve complex problems. The expert system is usually designed to solve problems of a particular area such as economics, missile’s routine and so on [2]. There have no such an expert system that could solve general social problems [2].

After exploring the history of A.I.’s development and its two main approaches, it can be clearly seen that A.I. will finally reach its destination. First, A.I.’s advancement complies with the routine of scientific development process. It has experienced its immature stage and stepped into a right way to success. People have already learned from A.I.’s loss and create related rules and framework for its development. To make an analogy to Mathematics development, Math was created from the conclusion of natural phenomenon. Then, it had some axioms. Based on these axioms, mathematician deduced some theorem. These theorems are proved true by practice. Until now, human has a complex system of mathematical theories. A.I.’s advancement experienced a similar process, but use a much shorter time than Mathematics. Second, results from other scientific areas will propel A.I.’s development. For example, when biologists understand the working principle of human brain more clearly, this knowledge will help A.I. specialists produce more precious electronic elements than ever to imitate neuron cells and the neutral network. When Psychologists understand human being’s thoughts and emotions, their achievements can be used for computer programs to mimic human’s ideas. Support from other scientific areas assures us that A.I.’s development will be increased by using knowledge of other areas for reference. Third, A.I.’s contemporary achievement itself can be a proof that can predict its promising future. When Deep Blue won Kasparov on Chess, when robotics replaced human being to explore the surface of Mars, when we use some software to help us make decision, A.I. has already achieved great results of application in almost every aspect of human society. Although it still has a long way to walk, the destination is right there.

However, it is one thing for scientist to develop A.I. technology diligently and quite another for the public to accept this young science and enjoy its achievements. Although A.I. technology is growing healthily according to the research and improving our daily life from many aspects, some pessimistic scientists believe that A.I. is the terminator of human being. Their negative view influenced many people and made them be hostile to A.I. and those researchers in this field without reasons.

The pessimistic people took advantage of media to spread their untenable views. Movies became one of their favorite tools. The Terminator and The Matrix are two films give ordinary people most negative impact on A.I. technology. In the former, A.I. was used to create killing robots. They spoiled rules and laws of society and killed ordinary people when they liked. The goal of A.I. was twisted by this movie as terminating human beings. Moreover, the latter used a matrix to predict a dangerous, uncontrollable artificial intelligent network. This network used human being as its energy resource just like batteries. When a person was useless, he/she would be killed and “dealt” with. Actually, these two movies refer to some potential problems that maybe A.I. would have to face up in its future. However, the threats they brought to the public build a big obstacle to prevent common people from understanding A.I. justly. These negative affections plague A.I.’s development.

As a science, it is important to foresee its potential problems. This essay will explore three possible negative scenes and try to find solution for them. First, people still have not created any obvious rules or standards to control the behavior of machines. This may result in some consequences that we would not like to see. Computers with a high-level intelligence will have the ability to imitate human being’s thoughts and behaviors. If those artificial intelligent machines learn negative behaviors from human beings and repeat them, many people will be hurt. For this reason, a famous writer Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) has given us useful hints. He published Three Laws of Robotics in his science fiction novel. The laws can be expanded to the usage of all artificial intelligent machines especially computers. The laws said (Three Laws of Robotics, 1940 ):

l        A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

l        A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

l        A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

Now, scientists have already realized the value of these laws and try to use them to prevent negative things.

       Second, A.I. technology may be abused by some aspirants to start worldwide wars. Human being has experienced two worldwide wars. Unfortunately, any new technologies were firstly used in military aims. When scientists created airplanes, someone used them to carry missiles; When researchers found the power of atoms and the rule of E=MC², someone built atomic bombs and used them to deprive innocent people of their lives. Those unhappy experiences will remind us of watching out those potential abuses of A.I. technology, because that kind of ill-use will really terminate the existence of human beings. However, we can find some methods or create some rules to prevent those tyrants from using A.I. to start wars. We may need to create a rule in A.I. research groups to require that all research institutions publish their research results periodically. A unique organization should be founded to manage and balance all research works in this field. It is forbidden to make any secret research work without permission from this organization. This kind of open communication between research groups will decrease the possibility that someone monopolizes fruit of study and abuse it.

Third, A.I.’s advancement may result in some ethical problems about the relationship between humans and human-like artificial beings. There is a movie named Bicentennial Man that intensively challenged the concept of human beings. It stated that the essence of human beings was the ability to think, feel emotions. So, any beings should be respected as a human beings and have the right of human beings if it can think, feel and have emotions. This is a brave thought and a problem that we will have to face up to in the not too distant future. People should have courage to respect other style of intelligent beings even though this kind of being is created by them. This is the reason that A.I. needs to combine Philosophy into its field.

Although A.I. has some potential problems, these problems can be foreseen and controlled from now. People should not ignore A.I.’s contribution to human being because of any risk that it may bring to us.

A.I.’s development will drastically change human being’s health situation. Now, some computer programs are helping doctors diagnose. In the future, these systems will work independently to cure people’s illness and give suggestions to patients to keep their health. Some expert systems will be used to research incurable disease like AIDS and some kind of cancers. With the care of A.I., humans will improve their quality of life from a healthy perspective. By the same token, A.I. can be used to settle some social problems such as crime, poverty, social welfare and so on. A.I. will have the capacity to consider every detailed aspect of these problems comprehensively and establish most appropriate plan or strategy to deal with them. Similarly, human will take good advantage of A.I. to solve the problem of environment pollution and reasonable usage of resources of the nature. Energy is one of the biggest problems that human beings have to confront in the future. With the help of A.I. , human beings will use existing resources reasonably, maybe even find and exploit new energy. Finally, A.I. will help human being change themselves. New style of education assisted by computers will find appropriate method for individuals. Everyone will find his or her favorite way to learn and enjoy the process of learning. Human being’s brain is totally freed from boring work and having opportunity to enjoy the process of creation.

In conclusion, it can be clearly seen that A.I., as a young and energetic science, is booming healthily and will improve human beings’ lives in the future.

From 1945 to 2004, A.I. technology experienced birth, juvenility, boom, confusion and recovering. Its helix-shaped routine of development is like any other science’s process. The two approaches of research in this field are both paradoxical and cooperative. Bottom-Up approach will make a progress in realizing the structure of human being’s brain and finally find appropriate electronic replicas to imitate human being’s brain and the neural system. The Top-Down method will improve the intelligence of the computer programs and find niches from Psychology and Behavior. It will finally develop programs to mimic human being’s thoughts and even emotions. The combination of these two approaches will be the trend of A.I.’s development in the future.

As to the problems that A.I. will bring to human society, an intensive debate will exist for a long time. Those objecting A.I. will continuously stand to their negative factors that will bring disaster to human beings. Actually, these factors originated from people’s not knowing A.I. clearly, worries without rhyme or reason and lacking confidence to the future. However, sociologists and scientists will absorb useful implication from these negative views and prevent them from becoming true. Overall, A.I. will bring more beneficial changes than negative ones and will improve human beings’ lives in the future.

For keeping A.I.’s development in a right direction, the research work in the future should concentrate on more tight combination of every scientific area than ever. Bill Gates ever said that Software and Biology would be two dominant tools figuring future. The amazing achievement from combination between A.I. and Biology will be expected. At the same time, people should not neglect creating detailed rules and implement them for A.I.’s development and thinking those ethical problems that may emerge in the future.

Reference

[1] E Kao. A Brief History of AI

[2] Oracle Think Quest. An introduction to Science of Artificial Intelligence

Whether the human nature is inherently good or evil is a long-term debate in the history of philosophy. Many scholars spent their whole lives to find the answer to this question. So far, there is not a unique agreement on this problem. Some people hold the view that goodness takes the dominant role in our nature and it will fight against the negative and dark side of our soul. However, the opposite group of people insists on the concept of born sin and believes that human beings are born to do cruel and sadistic things to one another and finally terminate themselves. This essay will first point out two main factors, mindless obedience to authority and lawless environment, which make people relapse into horrible things like genocide or racial extermination. Then, it will discuss the inherent nature of human being. Although people could do some horrible things, there is not sufficient evidence to prove that humanity is evil. Indeed, the key point is whether people have courage to face up to drawbacks in their nature and find ways to overcome them.

From most cases of Tyranny in history, we could find the similar processes and summarize that mindless obedience is the first step to a disaster of genocide. Standly Milgram (1961), a psychologist at Yale University, had proved the amazingly negative effect of unconditional compliance by his famous psychological obedience experiment in 1961. He tried to find the boundary between obedience to authority and personal consciousness.

According to Milgram’s experiment, volunteers were required to take part in a trial investigating memory and learning and the relationship between punishment and learning. The experimenter divided them into two groups. One group played the role of “teachers”. The other was so-called “students”. Those so-called teachers had a wide range of backgrounds such as workers, salespersons and so on to ensure that the trial had broad meanings but not particular to a special group of people.

In the experiment, the tester arranged a teacher and student to enter into two adjacent rooms. The teacher would read a list of simple words for the listener. The task of the student was to remember the second word of a pair and repeat it correctly when he heard the first word again. If the student gave the wrong answer, the teacher had the right to punish him – press a button to make the student feel the pain of electronic shock. There are 30 increasing levels of punishment from 15 voltages to 450 voltages. The increment unit was 15 voltages. In fact, the student was played by an actor. He gained no real electronic shock in the experiment, but when he saw the bulb matching related level of voltage lighted, he had to pretend to make painful responses for that such as cries or curses. When the teacher heard the painful voices and wished to stop, the experimenter would order him to keep on and tell him that he would not need to take any responsibility for what he did.

Before the experiment, some psychologist made a prediction that most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts when the victim makes his first explicit demand to be freed. However, the result was quite different from their predictions. Stanley Milgram published the result of those experiments in his famous work Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). The data shows that 65% of “teachers” obeyed the orders from experimenter and finally punished the student by using the highest level of 450 voltages. Some “teachers” felt uncomfortable and worried about the harmful effect resulting from shocking the “student” at such a high-level voltage in the process of experiment. Nevertheless, when they were told that the experimenter would assume full responsibilities; teachers accepted the painful response from students and continued their punishment acts. To some extent, this experiment shows the obvious evidence that people will obey to authority to do cruel harm to others even if they feel unethical in their minds. Therefore, the study shows that the mindless obedience will be a main factor to lead people to do horrible things.

If the former experiment shows powerlessness of people when confronting strong authority, the next experiment – Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1973 )– will tell us how a good person become bad in an evil place and lead us to find the second factor resulting in evilness. The environment around us will influence our ethical conception and then our behaviors. Once we are put into an evil environment and freed from any laws and rules of society, the negative side of our soul will gradually emerge and surprise us.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, 24 ordinary college students were divided arbitrarily into “prisoners” and “guards”. Hidden cameras captured what happened in the next 12 days. At the beginning, there was no difference between the boys assigned to be guards and those to be prisoners. Then, the guards began to enter their roles and become sadistic, devising cruel mental tortures even making physical punishment to those prisoners. Meanwhile, the prisoners chose to either break down or succumb in mindless obedience. However, this made guards become so crazy about abusing their power to torture prisoners that the experimenter had to terminate the trial after only 6 days.

From Stanford Prison Experiment, we can conclude the second factor making people commit crime – Lawless Environment. Actually, a war is just like a lawless environment in which people do not need to comply with the normal rules and laws of society. Under such a special conditions, violence, bleeding, genocide and all those sadistic acts aroused some people’s potential evil and turned them from kind brothers or sisters into cruel perpetrators and executioners.

Although the experiments above show us that people will do horrible things when they have the capacity to do that, these trials just reveal one side of human nature. Human nature is complicated and complex. It cannot be concluded as simple as the color of black or white. People also have the good traits in their nature. Especially when people experienced two world wars and suffered so much pain, they have learned how to control the negative side of their nature and raise the good side.

When people have sympathy for others, they will show their kindness and help each other. In 2000, the charity organizations of New York carried out a plan which was about to help the homeless to come back to the main trend of society. They arranged some homeless people to live in the beautiful houses, gave them new clothes and made them undifferentiated from others. The homeless people said that they felt respects from others and would try their best to keep this kind of life-style. These charity organizations’ activities helped disappointed people find confidence and the right way back to the society. Both their sympathy and the homeless people’s awakening are all obvious evidence that proves the existence of the goodness in human nature. Human nature is a combination of sin and goodness and a paradoxical fight between these two powers.

To sum up, it can clearly be seen that mindless obedience and evil environment take the dominant roles in arousing people’s negative side of nature. The former one makes us unconditionally comply with wrong orders made by some Tyrant with high-leveled power and authority. Under a Tyrannical society, most people choose to stand by and give in to their fear. The latter factor makes the situation worse. It involves more people into the evil trap and makes them lose conscience. However, modern people have learned enough lessons from history. They try to create more democratic social system than ever and let everyone have the right of free speech. This will weaken the power of abused authorities and prevent unconscious compliance. Under a peaceful environment, the negative aspects of humanity will have less soil and fertilizer to live. They can be strictly controlled by human being’s ethics.

Whether the human nature is inherently good or evil is a long-term debate in the history of philosophy. Many scholars spent their whole lives to find the answer to this question. So far, there is not a unique agreement on this problem. Some people hold the view that goodness takes the dominant role in our nature and it will fight against the negative and dark side of our soul. However, the opposite group of people insists on the concept of born sin and believes that human beings are born to do cruel and sadistic things to one another and finally terminate themselves. This essay will first point out two main factors, mindless obedience to authority and lawless environment, which make people relapse into horrible things like genocide or racial extermination. Then, it will discuss the inherent nature of human being. Although people could do some horrible things, there is not sufficient evidence to prove that humanity is evil. Indeed, the key point is whether people have courage to face up to drawbacks in their nature and find ways to overcome them.

From most cases of Tyranny in history, we could find the similar processes and summarize that mindless obedience is the first step to a disaster of genocide. Standly Milgram (1961), a psychologist at Yale University, had proved the amazingly negative effect of unconditional compliance by his famous psychological obedience experiment in 1961. He tried to find the boundary between obedience to authority and personal consciousness.

According to Milgram’s experiment, volunteers were required to take part in a trial investigating memory and learning and the relationship between punishment and learning. The experimenter divided them into two groups. One group played the role of “teachers”. The other was so-called “students”. Those so-called teachers had a wide range of backgrounds such as workers, salespersons and so on to ensure that the trial had broad meanings but not particular to a special group of people.

In the experiment, the tester arranged a teacher and student to enter into two adjacent rooms. The teacher would read a list of simple words for the listener. The task of the student was to remember the second word of a pair and repeat it correctly when he heard the first word again. If the student gave the wrong answer, the teacher had the right to punish him – press a button to make the student feel the pain of electronic shock. There are 30 increasing levels of punishment from 15 voltages to 450 voltages. The increment unit was 15 voltages. In fact, the student was played by an actor. He gained no real electronic shock in the experiment, but when he saw the bulb matching related level of voltage lighted, he had to pretend to make painful responses for that such as cries or curses. When the teacher heard the painful voices and wished to stop, the experimenter would order him to keep on and tell him that he would not need to take any responsibility for what he did.

Before the experiment, some psychologist made a prediction that most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts when the victim makes his first explicit demand to be freed. However, the result was quite different from their predictions. Stanley Milgram published the result of those experiments in his famous work Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). The data shows that 65% of “teachers” obeyed the orders from experimenter and finally punished the student by using the highest level of 450 voltages. Some “teachers” felt uncomfortable and worried about the harmful effect resulting from shocking the “student” at such a high-level voltage in the process of experiment. Nevertheless, when they were told that the experimenter would assume full responsibilities; teachers accepted the painful response from students and continued their punishment acts. To some extent, this experiment shows the obvious evidence that people will obey to authority to do cruel harm to others even if they feel unethical in their minds. Therefore, the study shows that the mindless obedience will be a main factor to lead people to do horrible things.

If the former experiment shows powerlessness of people when confronting strong authority, the next experiment – Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1973 )– will tell us how a good person become bad in an evil place and lead us to find the second factor resulting in evilness. The environment around us will influence our ethical conception and then our behaviors. Once we are put into an evil environment and freed from any laws and rules of society, the negative side of our soul will gradually emerge and surprise us.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, 24 ordinary college students were divided arbitrarily into “prisoners” and “guards”. Hidden cameras captured what happened in the next 12 days. At the beginning, there was no difference between the boys assigned to be guards and those to be prisoners. Then, the guards began to enter their roles and become sadistic, devising cruel mental tortures even making physical punishment to those prisoners. Meanwhile, the prisoners chose to either break down or succumb in mindless obedience. However, this made guards become so crazy about abusing their power to torture prisoners that the experimenter had to terminate the trial after only 6 days.

From Stanford Prison Experiment, we can conclude the second factor making people commit crime – Lawless Environment. Actually, a war is just like a lawless environment in which people do not need to comply with the normal rules and laws of society. Under such a special conditions, violence, bleeding, genocide and all those sadistic acts aroused some people’s potential evil and turned them from kind brothers or sisters into cruel perpetrators and executioners.

Although the experiments above show us that people will do horrible things when they have the capacity to do that, these trials just reveal one side of human nature. Human nature is complicated and complex. It cannot be concluded as simple as the color of black or white. People also have the good traits in their nature. Especially when people experienced two world wars and suffered so much pain, they have learned how to control the negative side of their nature and raise the good side.

When people have sympathy for others, they will show their kindness and help each other. In 2000, the charity organizations of New York carried out a plan which was about to help the homeless to come back to the main trend of society. They arranged some homeless people to live in the beautiful houses, gave them new clothes and made them undifferentiated from others. The homeless people said that they felt respects from others and would try their best to keep this kind of life-style. These charity organizations’ activities helped disappointed people find confidence and the right way back to the society. Both their sympathy and the homeless people’s awakening are all obvious evidence that proves the existence of the goodness in human nature. Human nature is a combination of sin and goodness and a paradoxical fight between these two powers.

To sum up, it can clearly be seen that mindless obedience and evil environment take the dominant roles in arousing people’s negative side of nature. The former one makes us unconditionally comply with wrong orders made by some Tyrant with high-leveled power and authority. Under a Tyrannical society, most people choose to stand by and give in to their fear. The latter factor makes the situation worse. It involves more people into the evil trap and makes them lose conscience. However, modern people have learned enough lessons from history. They try to create more democratic social system than ever and let everyone have the right of free speech. This will weaken the power of abused authorities and prevent unconscious compliance. Under a peaceful environment, the negative aspects of humanity will have less soil and fertilizer to live. They can be strictly controlled by human being’s ethics.

Abstract:

Debate on human nature is continuous for thouthands of years. However, we still have not a unique agreement on the result. Whether the human nature is good or evil depends on what human being's done. This essay will show you the main factors of leading people to do horrible things and explore the good traits in human character. We should understand that human nature is double-sided, complicated and complex.

Whether the human nature is inherently good or evil is a long-term debate in the history of philosophy. Many scholars spent their whole lives to find the answer to the question. So far, there is not a unique agreement to this problem. Some people hold the point that goodness takes the dominant role in our nature and it will fight against the negative and dark side of our soul. However, the opposite group of people insists on the concept of Original Sin and believes that human beings are born to do cruel and sadistic things to one another and finally terminate themselves. This essay will first point out two main factors, mindless obedience to authority and lawless environment, which make people relapse into horrible things such like genocide or race extermination. Then, it will discuss the inherent nature of human. Although people could do some horrible things, there are not sufficient evidences to prove that humanity is evil. Actually, the key point is whether people have courage to face up to drawbacks in their nature and find ways to overcome them.

From most cases of Tyranny in history, we could find the similar processes and summarize that mindless obedience is the first step to disasters of genocide. Standly Milgram (1961), a psychologist at Yale University, had proved the amazingly negative effect of unconditional compliance by his famous psychological obedience experiment in 1961. He tried to find the boundary between obedience to authority and personal consciousness.

According to Milgram’s experiment, volunteers were required to take part in a trial investigating memory and learning and the relationship between punishment and learning. The experimenter divided them into two groups. One group played the role of “teachers”. The other was so-called “students”. Those so-called teachers had a wide range of backgrounds such as workers, salespersons and so on to ensure that the trial had broad meanings but not particular to a special group of people.

In the experiment, the tester arranged a pair of teacher and student to enter into two adjacent rooms. The teacher would read a list of simple words for the listener. The task of the student was to remember the second word of a pair and repeat it correctly when he heard the first word again. If the student gave the wrong answer, the teacher had the right to punish him – press a button to make the student feel the pain of electronic shock. There are 30 increasing levels of punishment from 15 voltages to 450 voltages. The increment unit was 15 voltages. In fact, the student was played by an actor and gain no real electronic shock in the experiment, but when he saw the bulb matching related level of voltage lighted, he had to pretend to make painful responses for that such as cries or curses. When the teacher heard the painful voices and wished to stop, the experimenter would order him to keep on and tell him that he would not need to take any responsible for what he did.

Before the experiment, some psychologist made prediction that most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts when the victim makes his first explicit demand to be freed. However, the result was quite different from their predictions. Stanley Milgram published the result of those experiments in his famous work Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). The data shows that 65 percent of “teachers” obeyed the orders from experimenter and finally punished the student by using the highest level of 450 voltages. Some “teachers” felt uncomfortable and worried about the harmful effect resulting from shocking the “student” at such a high-level voltage in the process of experiment. Nevertheless, when they were told that the experimenter would assume full responsibilities; teachers accepted the painful response from students and continued their punishment acts. To some extent, this experiment shows the obvious evidence that people will obey to authority to do cruel harm to others even if they feel unethical in their minds. Therefore, the study shows that the mindless obedience will be a main factor to lead people to do horrible things.

If the former experiment shows powerlessness of people when confronting strong authority, the next experiment – Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1973 )– will tell us how a good person become bad in an evil place and lead us to find the second factor resulting in evilness. The environment around us will influence our ethical conception and then our behaviors. Once we are put into an evil environment and freed from any laws and rules of society, the sinful side of our soul will gradually emerge and surprise ourselves.

In Stanford Prison Experiment, 24 ordinary college students were divided arbitrarily into “prisoners” and “guards”. Hidden cameras captured what happened in the next 12 days. At the beginning, there was no difference between the boys assigned to be guards and those to be prisons. Then, the guards began to enter their roles and become sadistic, devising cruel mental tortures even making physical punishment to those prisoners. Meanwhile, the prisoners chose to either break down or succumb in mindless obedience. However, this made guards become so crazy about abusing their power to wring prisoners that the experimenter had to terminate the trial after only 6 days.

From Stanford Prison Experiment, we can conclude the second factor making people commit crime – Lawless Environment. Actually, a war is just like a lawless environment in which people do not need to comply with the normal rules and laws of society. Under such a special condition, violence, blooding, genocide and all those sadistic acts aroused some people’s potential evil and turned them from kind brothers or sisters into cruel perpetrators and executioners.

Although the experiments above show us that people will do horrible things when they have the capacity to do that, these trials just reveal one side of human nature. Human nature is complicated and complex. It cannot be concluded as simple as the color of black or white. People also have the good traits in their nature. Especially when people experienced two world wars and suffered so much pain, they have learned how to control the negative side of their nature and raise the good side.

When people have sympathy for others, they will show their kindness and help each other. In 2000, the charity organizations of New York carried out a plan which was about to help the homeless to come back to the main trend of society. They arranged some homeless people to live in the beautiful houses, gave them new clothes and made them no difference with others. The homeless said that they felted respects from others and would try their best to keep this kind of life-style. These charity organizations’ activities helped disappointed people find confidence and right way back to the society. Both their sympathy and the homeless people’s awakening are all obvious evidence that proves the existence of the goodness in human nature.

Human nature is a combination of sin and goodness and a paradoxical fight between these two powers.

To sum up, it can clearly be seen that mindless obedience and evil environment take the dominant roles in arousing people’s sinful side of nature. The former one makes us unconditionally comply with wrong orders made by some Tyrant with high-leveled power and authority. Under a Tyrannical society, most people choose to stand by and give in to their fear. The latter factor makes the situation worse. It involves more people into the evil trap and makes them lose conscience. However, modern people have learned enough lessons from the history. They try to create more democratic social system than ever and let everyone have the right of free speech. This will weaken the power of abused authorities and prevent unconscious compliance. Under a peaceful environment, the negative aspects of humanity will have no soil and fertilizer to live. They can be strictly controlled by human being’s ethics.

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