On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 3:00 AM 'Cosmin Visan' < [email protected]> wrote:
> *it happens all the time. How do you think you move your body if not by > top-down influence in levels from consciousness ?* The existence of a top-down explanation does not preclude the existence of a bottom-up explanation, it's just two different ways of talking about the same thing. It would be perfectly true to say that a balloon expanded because there where more collisions of oxygen and nitrogen molecules on the inner surface of the balloon than on the outer surface, but it would be every bit as true to say that the balloon expanded because the pressure inside was greater than the pressure outside. And it would be perfectly correct to say I scratched my nose because I wanted to, but it would be equally correct to say the nerves in my nose triggered the nerves in my hand to move. >> Free Will?! In the entire history of philosophy or law nothing has >> generated more fuzzy thinking than "free will", it's so bad it's not even >> wrong. To be wrong an idea must first convey a thought, an erroneous >> thought but a thought nevertheless, but like a burp "free will" conveys >> nothing, it's just a sound made with the mouth. >> > > *> I don't know. I feel free. Don't you ? * > Sometimes I feel free but not always, sometimes I want to do something but can't. And very often I don't know what I'm going to do until I do it, just as a computer doesn't know what the answer to a calculation will be until it's finished making the calculation. *> To think that an AI has "brain" is to have no understanding whatsoever > of computer science and to believe that magic happens there.* > How can you prove to me your wet squishy brain has some sort of magic that a computer's dry hard brain does not? And I don't want to hear about qualia unless you can prove to me you even have qualia. > *You don't even need to talk about the intelligence of other people. Is > enough to look at how intelligence works in your case.* > NO!! The fact is you DO have a method of judging the intelligence in other people and you have made use of it every hour of your waking life from the moment you were born. And that method certainly can't have anything to do with the qualia that other people experience because you have no way of determining that. > > *And in your case, it works by bringing new qualia into existence. When > you first saw a dog, you were able to see it because your consciousness > brought into existence the quale of "dog" out of nothing. An AI cannot do > that.* > So are you saying a computer could never pick out pictures of dogs from pictures of other animals better than a human could, and if it could that would prove your ideas are wrong? Are you brave enough to come right out and say that? > I*f you don't specifically put in its database the information "dog", it > will never identify dogs.* > Can you do better? If you had never seen a dog and had no information about dogs how on earth could you identify a dog? *> This is because AI are deterministic systems, * > A computer is not a deterministic system, that is to say if you want to know what it's going to do all you can do is watch it and see. It would only take me a few minutes to write a computer program to find the smallest even number that is not the sum of 2 prime numbers and then stop. Will my computer ever stop? Nobody knows, nobody can determine that. Maybe it will stop in the next second, maybe it will stop next year, maybe it will stop in a billion years, maybe it will never stop and you will be waiting forever. > > > *consciousnesses are creative entities. * > 20 years ago Chess required creativity but no longer, 5 years ago GO required creativity but suddenly that stopped being true too. I would maintain if a computer can outsmart you at everything it doesn't matter if it's "creative" (whatever that means) because regardless of how you try to spin it the fact remains you've been outsmarted. > >> if conscious AI's are a fantasy then all minds other than my own are a >> fantasy including yours. >> > > *> This is just twisted logic. I will let you figure it out where you are > wrong * > Translation from the original weaselspeak: "*You got me, I have no way to counter that argument *" >> can you tell me how things would be different if matter DID exist? If >> you can't then the existence or nonexistence of something is a question of >> no importance whatsoever. And that road leads to madness. I can tell you >> that if the atoms in your were to cease to exist and no record was kept >> about how the atoms were arranged it would have a rather important effect >> on your consciousness. And I can also tell you that when atoms of silicon >> are arranged in certain ways it can beat you at Chess and GO and can solve >> partial differential equations that you can not. At one time that was >> considered intelligent but some keep moving the goalpost so that now >> intelligence is defined as anything that computers aren't good at, *YET* >> . > > > *I will tell you how things would be different if matter did exist if you > tell me how things would be different is Santa Claus existed.* > I will be glad to. If Santa Claus existed all the toy companies would go bankrupt because they wouldn't be able to compete with his magical workshop at the north pole which would show up on satellite photos. None of those things has happened therefore I conclude Santa Claus does not exist. Now it's your turn, tell me how things would be different if matter *DID* exist > *The "brain" does not exist [ ...] matter doesn't exist* If we are going to have an interesting conversation you're going to have to do better than "X does not exist". > *> Yes, the disappearance of "atoms" will have an impact upon my > consciousness in the same way that the disappearance of facebook will have > an impact upon my consciousness. This doesn't mean facebook generates my > consciousness.* > Actually it sorta does, if reading facebook didn't change a person's consciousness nobody would have a reason to read it, and if you didn't think you could change other people's consciousness you'd have no reason to write on Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't be a multi billionaire. > *> airplanes can fly better than birds. Does that mean that airplanes are > alive ?* > No, and I'm not claiming a computer is a human, but because they can easily beat any human at Chess and GO I am claiming that a computer can think. To complete the above analogy you are in effect claiming that airplanes can't fly even though they can move through the air at high speed at very large altitudes and are unsupported from the ground. *> Nobody moves the goalpost of intelligence anywhere. * > Bullshit. Fifty years ago people were saying the ability to play a good game of Chess was a excellent sign of intelligence, but then 20 years ago a computer beat the best human player and overnight Chess suddenly had nothing to do with intelligence. So they then pinned their hopes on a vastly more complex game, GO. As late as 2008 Milton N. Bradley said: " In sharp contrast [to chess] the best computer Go programs are still mired at just beyond an advanced beginner's level and to play GO the immense scale makes the application of standard techniques infeasible even on supercomputers. [Go] Requires a real breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence which has not yet been achieved. " http://users.eniinternet.com/bradleym/Compare.html And then just a few years later a computer beat the best human player. And then just last year a computer learned how to play GO all on its own at a superhuman level without humans teaching it. It started out knowing nothing about the game and then it was just given the few simple rules so small they could be placed on a postcard, and it just a few hours could beat anything on the planet at GO. If that's not "intelligence" then the word has no meaning. > > > * AI was never about intelligence to start with.* > What the hell?! What do you think the "I" in "AI" stands for? > If you use reason, reason will show you that intelligence means bringing > new qualia into existence out of nothing, > That is a 100% utterly useless definition! You have absolutely no way of detecting qualia in anyone or anything except in yourself, therefore you'd have no way of detecting intelligence in a AI or in any of your fellow human beings and yet it is a fact that you do exactly that every minute of your waking life so obviously that is not the method you use. I issue you the following challenge, give me one reason to think a computer could not be conscious that could not, with trivial modification, also be used to support the proposition that none of your fellow human beings are conscious. I don't believe you have a snowball's chance in hell of meeting my challenge. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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