On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:29:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: > > On 10/24/2012 10:19 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:10:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: >> >> On 10/24/2012 9:23 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> Or what if we don't care? We don't care about slaughtering cattle, which >>> are pretty smart >>> as computers go. We manage not to think about starving children in >>> Africa, and they *are* >>> humans. And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water >>> pollution, and global >>> warming which will beset humans who are our children. >>> >> >> Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe for >> some people, I am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically >> unlikely prospect that we will someday find it possible to make a person >> out of a program, but won't be able to just make the program itself and no >> person attached. >> >> >> Right. John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) worried and wrote about that >> problem decades ago. He cautioned that we should not make robots conscious >> with emotions like humans because then it would be unethical use them like >> robots. >> > > It's arbitrary to think of robots though. It can be anything that > represents computation to something. An abacus, a card game, anything. > Otherwise it's prejudice based on form. > >> >> Especially given that we have never made a computer program that can do >> anything whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever materials are able to >> execute the program, I find it implausible that there will be a magical >> line of code which cannot be executed without an experience happening to >> someone. >> >> >> So it's a non-problem for you. You think that only man-born-of-woman or >> wetware can be conscious and have qualia. Or are you concerned that we are >> inadvertently offending atoms all the time? >> > > Everything has qualia, but only humans have human qualia. Animals have > animal qualia, organisms have biological qualia, etc. > > > So computers have computer qualia. >
I would say that computer parts have silicon qualia. I don't think the computer parts cohere into a computer except in our minds. > Do their qualia depend on whether they are sold-state or vacuum-tube? > germanium or silicon? PNP or NPN? Do they feel different when they run > LISP or C++? > Nah, its all inorganic low level qualia is my guess. Temperature, density, electronic tension and release. > Do you have Craig qualia? > Sure. All the time. > > >> >> No matter how hard we try, we can never just make a drawing of these >> functions just to check our math without invoking the power of life and >> death. It's really silly. It's not even good Sci-Fi, it's just too lame. >> >> >> I think we can, because although I like Bruno's theory I think the MGA is >> wrong, or at least incomplete. I think the simulated intelligence needs a >> simulated environment, essentially another world, in which to *be* >> intelligent. And that's where your chalk board consciousness fails. It >> needs to be able to interact within a chalkboard world. So it's not just a >> question of going to a low enough level, it's also a question of going to a >> high enough level. >> > > A chalkboard world just involves a larger chalkboard. > > > Right. And it involves great chalkboard sex - but none we need worry > about. > To me, there is no chalkboard world. It's all dusty and flat. Not much sexy going on, except maybe for beaten erasers. Craig > > Brent > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/wUqYaiuhGkwJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
