Am Di, 13. Okt 2020, um 00:15, schrieb Lawrence Crowell: > On Monday, October 12, 2020 at 5:46:45 PM UTC-5 Brent wrote: >> >> >> On 10/12/2020 2:12 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote: >>> Human minds can ask questions, computers outside of pre-programmed prompts >>> do not. >> >> Untrue. It's quite easy to program a computer to ask questions based on >> inputs from the environment. You cel phone will ask you, "Do you want to >> answer this call? It looks like spam." and it makes that judgement "It >> looks like spam." based on the source, content, and past experience. >> > > You did not understand what I said. Sure a computer can "ask a question," but > it is just an audio-file executed when some "oracle condition" occurs. It is > not as if the machine actually is thinking a question.
Clark and Brent already posed all the main objections that I would pose myself, so I guess there is no point in piling on... Instead I will ask you for a clarification, to make sure what your position is: do you feel that computers could one day develop what you refer to as "actual thinking", or do you think that there is some intrinsic limit to computation, and that our mind does something beyond than computation? To be clear, my position is this: I bet that my mind can be emulated through computation (and I would not tell the difference, in other words I would say yes to the doctor), but I realize this cannot be proved. I am very suspicious of the idea that there is something "special" about us. I think that our species has a certain tendency to wanting to believe that. > >> >>> A computer can compute tens of thousands of zeros to the Riemann zeta >>> function, a human mind seeks a proof of the conjecture. >> >> There a automatic proof programs too. >> >> Brent >> > > But, we wrote the program, not the computer > > LC >>> >>> >>> LC >>> >>> >>> On Monday, October 12, 2020 at 7:03:48 AM UTC-5 [email protected] wrote: >>>> On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 6:15 AM Lawrence Crowell >>>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> *> I would say in general with a machine you can see the seems, bolts and >>>>> rivets while a biological system you don't.* >>>> >>>> A trivial difference, one has cartilage the other has bolts and rivets. >>>> >>>>> *> You can turn off a machine, but a biological system does not turn back >>>>> on.* >>>> >>>> So an artificial machine can do something that a natural biological >>>> machine can not, and that will be far from the only advantage they have. >>>> >>>>> *> Biological systems are spontaneous and will act accordingly.* >>>> >>>> I don't know what you mean by that. All machines, both natural and >>>> artificial, either do things for a reason and thus are deterministic or >>>> they do things for no reason and thus are random. Natural or artificial it >>>> makes no difference, they're either cuckoo clocks or roulette wheels. >>>> >>>> >>>>> > *A computer with no input just sits there.* >>>> >>>> A computer with no inputs can still calculate the digits of PI, and so can >>>> a human who can't see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. Although the human >>>> would perform the calculation much much slower and be more error-prone. >>>> >>>>> *> While there are clearly Turning machine or Church-Turing aspects of >>>>> how brains or neural systems work, there are also huge departures.* >>>> >>>> Huge departures? I can't even think of any tiny departures and neither can >>>> anybody else, nobody has ever found a problem that a human can solve that >>>> a Turing Machine couldn't. >>>> >>>> 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 view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2f15a4a6-b2d4-49d6-be45-75636925db8an%40googlegroups.com >>> >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2f15a4a6-b2d4-49d6-be45-75636925db8an%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. >> > > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/93c5c5ce-6b8f-4b41-9096-91b1cb3002a5n%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/93c5c5ce-6b8f-4b41-9096-91b1cb3002a5n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/02de25b9-6efc-466d-ab92-6778b54b7fec%40www.fastmail.com.
