On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:24:34 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 10 Feb 2013, at 23:16, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > What makes computers useful is that they have no capacity to object to > drudgery. That is the capacity which is inseparable from unconsciousness. > > > That is what slaves are useful at. And that does not make slaves > unconscious. It makes them only oppressed. >
Are you saying that slaves have no capacity to object to drudgery? I didn't mean just that we could put computers in shackles and beat them to force their compliance, I mean that they ontologically lack the capacity to object, even emotionally, to anything at all. If there were no threat of slave uprisings, no chains or rage or simmering hostility then of course we would still have slaves all over the world. > And humans have to do an hard work to maintain them in that "mood". It is > called programming. With AI, we let much more the machine explore > possibilities, and look inward. > It is hard to take you position seriously Bruno. I do, and I respect you and your position, but I don't know that there is anything that I can do if you cannot discern between enslavement by violence and coercion and changing a line of code in a program. You talk about 1p but I don't think that you only allow a toy model of it. > > When we talk about computer, it is better to look at the basic > (mathematical) notion, than to their current and contingent incarnations. > That's just a permutation of 'Do as I say, not as I do'. Why would you want to take the empirical evidence off the table? If we are going to talk about computers as they should be in theory, then we should talk about people that way also. Lets just assume that there will always be able to tell the difference between a computer and a person because humans will continue to develop ways of testing them. > If a robotic silicon Craig-like machine could look at the early bacteria > on this planet, he would say, "---those organic creatures are quite dumb > and unconsconscious---I feel it". > You are on the wrong track entirely. You are projecting onto me the image of a Luddite, when in fact what you suggest is old hat to me. This is what I grew up on. Craig in high school agrees with you. It wasn't right though. It turns out that consciousness is far deeper and richer than is imagined by comp. Consciousness is not just an intellectual maze of logics and guesses, it is the ground of being itself. I have no problem with silicon being more alive than carbon - it is not about that at all, it is about facing the reality of the cosmic narrative and not sweeping the odd parts under the carpet. The fact is, that there are no alternate biologies that we are aware of nor that we have created. The fact is that AI has not successfully instilled any degree of feeling into a program. These should not be dismissed by everyone just because some are enthusiastic supporters of their being irrelevant. There is something quite significant about the difference between life and death to us, and our bodies echo that by being violently opposed to an inorganic diet. We can only live on other living things. That doesn't make much sense in a comp universe - it could be justified I'm sure, but we really don't have to bend over backward to make comp seem true. It can simply be almost true, but actually false. Craig > > Bruno > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
