>> I don't see what the sense of self has to do with it... Hi Russell ~ In the sense, that by having a "sense of self" we have inescapably already separated our "self" from any possibility of seeing from the perspective of a universal point of view... the all that is and can be.
Naturally this is a matter of perception and we all exist within the set of all that can be and is, but we perceive ourselves as having identity, and identity is per force a perspective on something larger in which the identified thing operates and belongs to, but from which it considers itself separate and distinct. I use it in the sense -- so many ways to use that word; hope it all does not come out as nonsense :) -- in the sense of how our own perceptual lock-in, to viewing the universe from the perspective of our own beings, is a fundamental limitation we have by nature of being. It is very hard to get beyond ourselves to put every event and how we interpret the streams from our senses out of becoming bound up with this self-referential optic that we superimpose on the world impinging on us. I do not see how a universal being could experience itself as having a self -- at least in the limited way we experience it. I am a believer in the importance of our self-centered beings for what that's worth and clearly at our stage in evolution we require it -- not selfish (hopefully), but centered within a self, a self who perceives and who at least believes they are imbued with free will. But this is way off topic and I am wandering into what could easily lead off into a whole other area that can be an endless discussion. >> I may be missing your point entirely, but humans are universal machines in the sense that they can emulate perfectly any Turing machine, given enough time, patience, paper and pens for external storage. True and perhaps in theory possible, but in practice as soon as we begin to deal with ever increasing volumes of external systems, especially ones that respond to events and pressures to change, from multiple arrays of sources, it grows geometrically harder to synchronize and manage and to keep stuff like reentrancy from happening. So in practice I think this breaks down at some stochastic threshold and the problem mushrooms out of control as the bookkeeping effort required begins to overtake the value of each increment of extra external inclusion into the set of things that need to be kept tracked of and taken account of. Cheers, -Chris -----Original Message----- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Russell Standish Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 4:04 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 08:34:02PM -0700, Chris de Morsella wrote: > > > > > From: everything-list@googlegroups.com > [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark > Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 12:58 PM > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? > > > > >>Every human in existence requires external enabling hardware. > > Yes but humans are not universal computing machines, if indeed we are > machines. Do we know enough about how our brains work and are > structured to ... > > >>If a human requires a substrate which it can manipulate in order to > perform its logical operations then a universal human is impossible > because the substrate would necessarily be outside and foundational to its domain. > > Agreed. Humans are exceedingly far from being universal. Our very > sense of self precludes universality. > I may be missing your point entirely, but humans are universal machines in the sense that they can emulate perfectly any Turing machine, given enough time, patience, paper and pens for external storage. They may well be capable of far more than a universal Turing machine, but they're not less. I don't see what the sense of self has to do with it... -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
