On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > Huge abacuses are a really good way to look at this, although it's pretty > much the same as the China Brain.
I hope you're not talking about Searle's Chinese room, the stupidest thought experiment in history. > > Your position is [...] The abacus could literally be made to think > Yes. > Do you see why I am incredulous about this? No. > > I am crystal clear in my own understanding that no matter how good the > program seems, Siri 5000 will feel exactly the same thing as Siri. Nothing. I accept that you are absolutely positively 100% certain of the above, but I do NOT accept that you are correct. I'm not a religious man so I don't believe in divine revelation and that's the only way you could know what it feels like to be Siri, hell you don't even know what it feels like to be me and we are of the same species (I presume); all you can do is observe how Siri and I behave and try to make conclusions about our inner life or like of same from that. > As I continue to try to explain, awareness is not a function of objects, > it is the symmetrically anomalous counterpart of objects. Bafflegab. > Experiences accumulate semantic charge Semantic charge? Poetic crapola of that sort may impress some but not me. If you can't express your ideas clearer than that they are not worth expressing at all. > > The beads will never learn anything. They are only beads. > Computers can and do learn things and a Turing Machine can simulate any computer and you can make a Turing Machine from beads. I won't insult your intelligence by spelling out the obvious conclusion from that fact. > Machines are made of unconsciousness. Machines are made of atoms just like you and me. > All machines are unconscious. That is how we can control them. A argument that is already very weak and will become DRAMATICALLY weaker in the future. In the long run there is no way we can control computers, they are our slave right now but that circumstance will not continue. > That would not be necessary if the machine had any capacity to learn. > I don't know what you're talking about, machines have been able to learn for decades. >> at a fundamental level no human being could write a computer program >> like Siri and nobody knows how it works. >> > I wouldn't say we don't know how it works. Binary logic is pretty > straightforward. > One binary logic operation is pretty straightforward but *20,000 trillion of them every second is not, *and that's what today's supercomputers can do, and they are doubling in power every 18 months. > That's the theory. Meanwhile, in reality, we are using the same basic > interface for computers since 1995. > What are you talking about? Siri is a computer interface as is Google and even supercomputers didn't have them or anything close to it in 1995. >>> people in a vegetative state do sometimes have an inner life despite >> their behavior. >> > >> In the course of our conversations you have made declarative statements > like the above dozens if not hundreds of times but you never seriously ask > yourself "HOW DO I KNOW THIS?". > >There is a lot of anecdotal evidence. People come out of comas. > So people come out of comas and you observe that they make certain sounds with their mouth then you make guesses about their inner life based on those sounds. Siri can make sounds too. > Recently a study proved it with MRI scans where the comatose patient was > able to stimulate areas of their brain associated with coordinated physical > activity in response to the scientists request for them to imagine playing > tennis. > And how do you know that stimulated brain areas have anything to do with consciousness? By observing behavior when that happens and making guesses that seem reasonable to you. > Why doesn't it [ a trash can] behave intelligently though? We don't know exactly why people behave intelligently so we can't give a definitive answer why a trash can doesn't, at least not yet, but in general I can say that unlike a computer or a brain a trash can is not organized as a Turing Machine. > >> Just exactly like human beings that are manufactured out of stable, > uniform, inanimate materials like amino acids. > > > I disagree. Organic chemistry is volatile. It reeks. > Oh for God's sake, now consciousness must stink! Well when selenium rectifiers fail they reek to high heaven! > Molecules may be too primitive to be described as part of us. > Primitive or not you are made of molecules and molecules are made of atoms and if you've seen one atom you've seen them all. > I like how you start out grandstanding against prejudice and superficial > assumptions and end with completely blowing off Mr. Joe Blow. Thank you, I thought it was rather good myself. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
