On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 6:24 PM, Chris de Morsella <[email protected]>wrote:
> > 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. 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. > I'm sorry Chris, I can't take your word for it because I don't think any rational being would advance a argument in favor of human superiority as incredibly weak as "All measurable processes – including information processing -- happen over and require for their operations some physical substrate"unless they'd already decided what they'd prefer to believe. > How incredibly pompous of you. Do you go popping into other people’s > heads deciding what they believe a lot? > Not as often as I'd like, I wish I had the ability to detect deception all the time but I'm not that good at it, however sometimes its obvious. > >>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. > Let me get this straight you are skeptical that X is Y or X is not Y and demand proof. Have I really got that straight?? > > Care to elucidate what is so darn original and profound about the > tautology you endlessly come back to? > Up to now every tautology has had one great virtue, they are all true; but apparently you think that for the first time in human history you have found a tautology that is false. Have I really got that straight?? > 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. > So you really don't know if that is in fact so. Have I really got that straight?? > >>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 > So you think that if you have free will then you don't do things for a reason and so are not deterministic and you don't do things for no reason and so are not random. Have I really got that straight?? > > 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. > Sure, but computers are gaining on us at the rate of about one order of magnitude every 7 years, and there is no end in sight. > You cannot really state that you understand a system, without actually > understanding the system. > That is a tautology and thus obviously true, but you don't have to understand something to make use of it; we still don't fully understand how aspirin works but it has been curing headaches for well over a century. > > It is false to suggest that one can understand human intelligence or > consciousness, for example, without understanding how it emerges within us > More tautologies, that is to say more true statements, but understanding doesn't enter into it. I don't have to understand Hungarian to copy a Hungarian poem. > it is quite clear that you have no idea what I am talking about. On this > we very much agree. > Yes. John K Clark -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
