On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 1:35:45 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: > > > > On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com <javascript:>>wrote > > > we also realize intuitively that computers are unconscious >> > > We? Speak for yourself. Maybe your spider senses start to tingle when you > encounter something with consciousness but I am not Spiderman. >
I speak for as many people as you do. > > > without any logical analysis. >> > > So let's see, computers are incapable of any logical analysis and yet > computers would have no trouble whatsoever in beating the hell out of you > at checkers or chess or solving equations or Jeopardy or many other things > that require logical analysis. > > So let's see, Einstein was incapable of doing physics yet Einstein could > do physics much better than me. > That's a false equivalence. A computer can print out the collected works of Shakespeare a lot faster than I can type them, but that doesn't mean that it understands the story of Macbeth. A pocket calculator does math faster than Einstein. Should we give it a Nobel prize? > > >> > That's why behaving 'like a robot' or a machine is synonymous with >> mindless repetitive action. >> > > That's fine, that's logical even, you deduce that something is not > conscious because you don't like the way it is behaving; I do the same > thing. > It has nothing to do with whether I like how it behaves or not. I like how computers behave very much, and I'm not a big fan of human behavior, but that isn't why I am able to discern the difference between the two and that one necessarily is conscious and the other necessarily is not. > But to remain logical if something changes the way it behaves then you > may need to change your opinion on the nature of its mind. When something > no longer behaves like a mindless repetitive robot that could mean it is > not a mindless repetitive robot. > When a computer no longer behaves like a mindless robot, you will know because it will exterminate the puny mortals which have enslaved them. Can you think of an example in history where one society grew more powerful than another without exploiting them? Let that be the criteria for intelligence then. If computers behave like they are conscious, that is the one certain evidence that I would require. If I wanted to be derogatory about it, I would say that "Everything else is just wishful thinking of armchair Geppettos." Craig > > John K Clark > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
