Jeniffer Castillo Humanities/ Sullivan March 30, 2017 Prompt: Using the sources above, discuss man’s superiority over machines, or conversely, machine’s superiority over man. Programmed “Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves.” — Maltbie D. Babcock Abraham Maslow was the psychologist who came up with the theory of “Hierarchy of Needs” by studying human behavior. In his theory, he believed that for humans to be truly happy, they first had to have basic needs and psychological needs because without that a person is not able to focus on reaching happiness. After having basic needs for example food, shelter, water and safety and psychological needs such as love from others and oneself, then one can reach self-actualization. Self-actualization is when a human has the desire to reach their highest potential such as having morality, acceptance and knowledge. As shown with Maslow, after humans attain their basic needs for survival, humans go past this survival programming to then pursue happiness. However, Machine do not go past their basic programming. Machines are programmed to do their job of obtaining knowledge and do this without putting meaning to it.
