On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 6:24 PM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>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 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.
