Krimel reported: Another dude talked about the metaphysical reasons that you will not be able to upload your consciousness into a computer. I found this depressing but think I know how to get around the problem. ... Despite what you may have heard from dmb narrow AI is already passé. There are a couple of different approaches being taken in AGI but they would ultimately lead to an AI capable of passing the Turing test.
dmb says: The dude with metaphysical reasons depressed you? Did he and I dash your dreams of someday uploading yourself? Of having a robot girlfriend? I think you have a fetish for technology. Gadgets are fun but let's not worship our own tools, eh? [Krimel] Yeah, actually I would gladly upload and in fact am working on it to the extent that I can. What depressed me is that I agreed with his argument. It's not so much that I have a technology fetish. I mean with lots and lots of technology I have been a late adopter. For example, I have only have a cell phone for about four years. I didn't get a CD player until about the time MP3s first appeared. But I do think that technology is the driving force behind a great many cultural trends in every area of modern life including philosophy and I don't think being ignorant about how it works is "cool". Krimel said: The MoQ if it is relevant at all ought to have something to say or some way to deal with cyborgs and chimera, nanotech and 3D printing. dmb says: ZAMM is all about our relationship to technology and science but it's fairly ridiculous to expect Pirsig to operate on that level of detail. [Krimel] I don't. But I do expect metaphysical ideas to be scalable without being excessively lossy. (See what I mean about keeping up with techtalk? Lots of useful ideas there. Look them up.) His thoughts on technology in Lila seem to be on track for the most part, he just doesn't take them far enough. [dmb] And sadly, most people are only dazzled by the kinds of technology that serve the interests of advertisers. [Krimel] Sadly, some people only know about the technology they hear about from advertisers. Has the invention of DVDs finally stopped your VCR from blinking the time at you, Dave? [dmb] If nano-technology has the potential for medical miracles that it seems to, it would be crime not to pursue it. But that's the kind of question we should think about. What good is it? What purpose does it serve? What risk does it pose? Ask these questions about your robot girlfriend. [Krimel] Those are questions I asked my daughter who is actually doing genetic research. Her thought was, we already have biological means to do most of what this particular group of nano-tech evangelists were promoting. She seemed to think that as engineers they were more concerned with playing with their toys than saving lives and that they had no moral commitment to a better world at all. But what does she know? [dmb] "Can we?" and "should we?" are two different questions. [Krimel] Surely by now you ought to know that if we can, we will, to hell with what we ought. [dmb] I guess I'd be more interested in developing natural intelligence more than artificial intelligence. I even suspect that we NEED to learn more about the former before we can even think about doing the latter. [Krimel] Since we are learning so much more about the former and at a log rhythmic pace, one would think you would try to keep up instead of whining about SOM every time someone says something you don't understand. It has been really interesting reading these recent thoughts of yours Dave. It is almost like having a time machine and going backwards several years and hearing myself. You should have heard yourself then. [dmb] That's probably what the depressing dude said, eh? [Krimel] Not at all, what he said was that it is wrong to claim that there is no different between a copy and an original. They are two different things. That is a bit like what so many people have tried to tell Bo about reality and "reality". Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
