I think either way - computers or robots - a distributed entity has to be
looking at the world from different POV's more or less simultaneously, even if
rapidly switching. My immediate intuitive response is that that would make the
entity much less "self-ish" -much more open to merging or uniting with others.
The idea of a distributed entity may well have the power to change our ideas
about God/ the divine force/principle , I suspect our ideas are directly or
indirectly v. located. Even if we, say, think about God or the force being
everywhere, it's hard not to think of that being the same force spread out.
But the idea of a distributed entity IMO opens up the possibility of an entity
with a highly multiple personality - and perhaps also might make it possible
to see all humans, say, and/or animals as one - an idea which has always given
me, personally, a headache.
Ben:yah, I discuss this in chapter 2 of "The Hidden Pattern" ;-) ...
the short of it is: the self-model of such a mind will be radically different
than that of a current human, because we create our self-models largely by
analogy to our physical organisms ...
intelligences w/o fixed physical embodiment will still have self-models but
they will be less grounded in body metaphors ... hence radically different ....
we can explore this different analytically, but it's hard for us to grok
empathically...
a hint of this is seen in the statement my son Zeb (who plays too many
videogames) made: "i don't like the real world as much as videogames because in
the real world I always have first person view and can never switch to third
person...."
one would suspect that minds w/o fixed embodiment would have more explicitly
contextualized inference, rather than so often positioning all their
inferences/ideas within one "default context" ... for starters...
ben
On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The foundation of the human mind and system is that we can only be in one
place at once, and can only be directly, fully conscious of that place. Our
world picture, which we and, I think, AI/AGI tend to take for granted, is an
extraordinary triumph over that limitation - our ability to conceive of the
earth and universe around us, and of societies around us, projecting ourselves
outward in space, and forward and backward in time. All animals are similarly
based in the here and now.
But,if only in principle, networked computers [or robots] offer the
possibility for a conscious entity to be distributed and in several places at
once, seeing and interacting with the world simultaneously from many POV's.
Has anyone thought about how this would change the nature of identity and
intelligence?
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agi
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--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Research, SIAI
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first
overcome " - Dr Samuel Johnson
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