From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 9:18 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> All measurable processes – including information processing -- happen over
and require for their operations some physical substrate. My point, which I
believe either you may have missed or you are dodging is that therefore a
universal computer is impossible, because there would always need to be some
underlying and external container for the process that could not therefore
itself be completely contained within the process.
>>I'm not at all clear what you're talking about and have little desire for
clarification because enough is clear to know that even if you are
describing some sort of limitation to computers humans have the exact same
limitation.
Yes it is quite clear that you have no idea what I am talking about. On this
we very much agree.
> I am not interested in nor do I much care whether humans are superior or
inferior to computers
>>That I quite simply do not believe because I do not think anybody would
advance or be convinced by such incredibly weak arguments unless they had
already decided what they would prefer to be true and only then started to
look around for something, anything, to support that view.
Nor, in fact, do I much care whether or not you believe what I state my
position is, is my position. If – for whatever reason – your mind requires
that you be the agent who assigns my beliefs to me and who determines what
my motivations are – that is something that is operating in you… interesting
perhaps as a psychological phenomenon, but of no great import to anyone or
anything besides your own sense of self certainty.
What’s the purpose of having a conversation if when I say quite clearly that
and I repeat -- I am not interested in nor do I much care whether humans are
superior or inferior to computers – you come back and say I must be lying
because you have decided that this is important to me. Who are you to make
that kind of decision for my brain… out, out, you… intruder, it’s my mind,
and I do not appreciate you defining it for me.
Take me at my word when I say I don’t really care one way or the other, that
this horse race is uninteresting to me.
You mistake my fascination for how the brain works and for how conscious
intelligence and self-awareness emerge – in us or in any other entity – for
whatever you have inferred and decided it is I must be motivated by.
How incredibly pompous of you. Do you go popping into other people’s heads
deciding what they believe a lot? It’s a bad habit you know.
>>We are either cuckoo clocks or roulette wheels, take your pick.
> Not sure whether you are attempting to be funny or are pouring the irony
on a little thick. An average human brain has somewhere around 86 billion
neurons
>>And today just one INTEL Xeon chip that you could put on your fingernail
contains over 5 billion transistors each of which can change it's state
several million times faster than any neuron can.
>> Yes… and with that? Does it also sport a 100 trillion connection network
on it?
> Characterizing this fantastically dense crackling network as a cuckoo
clock or a roulette wheel is rather facile.
>>There is one thing that brains and cuckoo clocks and roulette wheels and
the Tianhe-2 Supercomputer all have in common, things inside them happen for
a reason or things inside them do not happen for a reason.
Ahhhh yes back once again to your idée fixe. And how exactly does that help
you understand the brain, the CPU or anything at all? This obsession of
yours – it seems like one to me, for you keep returning over and over again
to re-stating it. You believe things either happen for a reason or they
don’t; though you cannot prove it. Obviously it is important for you; though
what great insight you derive from this idée fixe of yours quite clearly
eludes me.
Care to elucidate what is so darn original and profound about the tautology
you endlessly come back to? Especially in terms of understanding subtle deep
dynamic and vast phenomenon such as conscious intelligence and how it can be
recognized and how it arises within an entity?
> If we are machines then we are surely fantastically complex and highly
dynamic ones.
>>Yes, and so are computers.
Sure, but, even now still orders of magnitude less so than us. Still have
not seen an example of a one hundred trillion connection machine the size of
a grapefruit that runs off of 20 watts. Not saying it won’t happen someday,
maybe even soon, but the Xeon chip ain’t it.
>> I can say with no fear of contradiction that things in the brain happen
for a reason or they do not happen for a reason.
> You have said absolutely nothing that means anything more than reiterating
your belief in reductionism.
No, what I said was that things happen for a reason or they do not happen
for a reason. Are you telling me with a straight face that you disagree with
that?!
What, I am telling you with a straight face is: So what? You have uncovered
nothing new under the sun, by continually re-iterating your tautology. The
switch is either on or it is off… you say. Everything either happens for a
reason or it does not…. Or so you say. I don’t know that this is in fact so.
Prove it. Prove your theorem. Prove that for all events that can occur they
must either happen for a reason or for no reason at all. I don’t even think
you are even all that clear headed by what you even intend for “reason”.
What is this agent you call “a reason”?
Are you arguing that for each and every effect there must be a cause? What
are you in fact trying to say? And why is it of such importance?
> Something either happens or does not happen for a reason… sure.. and so
what? What insight have you uncovered by stating the obvious.
>>The insight that we are either cuckoo clocks or roulette wheels, take your
pick.
So say you, and of course you are free to say whatever you like, but pardon
me, if say your “insight” seems rather pointless to me.
> I can say that things happen, for a reason or they do not happen for a
reason, for any phenomena whatsoever, in the universe, but I have not
therefore, by stating the obvious, uncovered any deeper truths or given any
insight into any process or underlying physical laws. It is meaningless and
it leads nowhere in terms of providing any actual valuable insight or
explanation. It speaks but without saying anything. What is your point?
>>The point that free will is a idea so bad it's not even wrong.
And you of course are free to believe that if you must…. though I find it a
self-imposed impoverishment of the soul… it’s your free will to choose to
straight jacket yourself into the dreary pre-ordained outcomes of
determinism…. As it is mine, to pity you for doing so.
> much of the fine grained details of brain functioning are still not
understood and that therefore it is impossible for us to model
>>That doesn't follow. We still don't understand how high temperature
superconductors work but that doesn't prevent us from using them in
machines.
To some degree, however our ability to fully utilize high temperature
superconductors and to discover the holy grail of room temperature
super-conductors however is very significantly constrained by our lack of
understanding of how the phenomenon works.
>>In the same way we wouldn't need to understand why the logic diagram of a
brain is the way it is to reverse engineer it and duplicate the same thing
in silicon; assuming of course that you wanted to make an AI the same way
that Evolution did, but there are almost certainly better ways to do that
with astronomically less spaghetti code.
You cannot really state that you understand a system, without actually
understanding the system. It is false to suggest that one can understand
human intelligence or consciousness, for example, without understanding how
it emerges within us… without being able to describe and to show the
dynamics and means by which it becomes our experience.
Until we understand how we actually do work, we cannot make positivistic
statements about how we must be working. You are putting the cart before the
horse.
-Chris
>> John K Clark
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