**** No doubt many AI'ers will claim spirit is irrelevant. No doubt some will claim that spirit is an emergent property of general intelligence. But I'm inclined (largely for rational reasons and partly for intuition) to disagree. Regarding the first point, I don't believe that spirit is irrelevant. Rather, I believe it is essential to intelligence. You can't have AGI without human-GI's ability to percieve spirit. Regarding the second point, I really doubt that spirit could be an emergent property of AGI. How can the whole emerge from the part unless the part already contains it?
I'd love to see some serious treatment of this issue. *** I'd love to have time to type in a serious treatment of this issue, but maybe later ;-) I still owe Eliezer an answer to a question on morality from 2 weeks ago: time for thoughtful e-mailing is hard to find lately... About spirit, I don't like the word much because it reminds me of tribal superstitions and high school pep rallies, but I'll roll with it ;-) I tend to believe that a) all things in the universe contain it b) all general intelligences contain within themselves MORE OF IT than, say, the average rock... c) some general intelligences weave their spirit through their whole minds more than others. We can see this variation among people, for sure... I don't think spirit is an emergent property of AGI -- but I'd view AGI as a kind of "spirit amplifier" ;-) You may notice that this is the same as my philosophy of consciousness -- because to me the essence of consciousness is the same as the essence of "spirit"... Art and music can help some humans to manifest their spirit more fully, to live in it more vividly, more deeply. It may be similar -- though surely not the same -- for AGI's ... -- Ben G ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
