Magnus -- > That's the first time I've been associated with "New Age", > and hopefully the last. I come from classical side of reasoning. > Pirsig talked about in ZMM, feel free to read my essay "A > classisist's road to the MoQ" in the moq.org forum if > you want to read more. And that's a long way from any new > age mumbo jumbo.
I beg to disagree. Artificial Intelligence is very much a part of the New Age movement, for all its "mumbo jumbo", and Kurzwell is structuring it around pseudo-scientific concepts, such as the premise that intellect equates to recorded knowledge and that there is no significant difference between AI and human cognizance. This fallacious thinking is also evident in your essay, from which I cite the following excerpts: "Part of my answer is that all of these man made societies -- computers, robots, airplanes, spears - are static and only static. They are designed to be static. We don't want them to act dynamically, we want them to act exactly as we designed them to act. Another part of the answer is what Pirsig says in LILA "without Dynamic Quality, things cannot grow, and without Static Quality, things cannot last.". Put these two parts together and you get what I call an evolutionary path. Our evolutionary path starts, at least at a first glance, with the carbon atom with its great capability to form large molecules. The carbon atom is dynamic enough to grow, but it's also static enough to last. This path eventually leads to the cell and later arrives at plants, animals and human beings. "What we do when we create computers, robots and other man made societies, is that we make them so static and so far from this evolutionary path that even if it was allowed dynamic influence, it would never have a chance to evolve into something better. It is almost static enough to last, but it is nowhere near dynamic enough to grow. "What we must do if we want to create true artificial intelligence, is to make it on an evolutionary path and let it evolve on its own. That means that it would be out of our hands and may or may not like us. I say an evolutionary path, not the evolutionary path. Another path starts not with the carbon atom, but with the sulphur atom, deep down in the Atlantic ocean. This path hasn't reached as far as ours, and maybe it won't. Maybe that path is futile and will never reach the intellectual level. "I will even go so far as to define life as something walking an evolutionary path. That would allow life to be carbon based, sulphur based, clouds of methane or whatever. ... "The only really big difference between the "real world" and a virtual world in a computer is that the designers have complete control of the laws of nature in the virtual world. Often, they are designed very similar to what we're used to. That's more or less the point in flight simulators, car racing games, interactive splatter movies etc." This conclusion bears out what I said above. You make the mistake of defining intelligence as the process of interactive growth and development, suggesting that if we can get machines to handle data "dynamically" (quantum computers?)they'll eventually replace, and presumably improve, the biologically-based human mind. It's the same mistake that Kurzwell, and I'm afraid Pirsig also, has made in dismissing the phenomenon of proprietary awareness. > What bothers me most in your paragraph above is you > putting humans on some kind of sole source of philosophical > questions in the universe. I would say that a philosophy that > stops *any* entity from growing into something more than > what it currently is, is useless. Why would the MoQ prohibit > a quantum computer from getting as ingenious as humans, > but at the same time allow humans to evolve from a soup of > goo into what it is today? You misread me. I'm not advocating the prohibition of computer science. I'm all for it. If modern computers can process information more efficiently in any field of human endeavor, by all means let's avail ourselves of this new tool. But the fundamental questions of philosophy -- ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. -- concern man and his role in the cosmos, not machines or mechanical processes. Am I alone in seeing the world as man's domain? Is this ideology too egotistical for the Pirsigian society? Must we reduce the individual to a complex bio-mechanical organism that evolved by accident from a "soup of goo" and needs cybernetic enhancement to function more perfectly? > Ok, what I think is that the human brain (actually all animals' > brains) are quantum computers. *And*, isn't awareness one > of Pirsig's most important subjects in Lila? All patterns are > aware, and that awareness comes from the quantum world. I don't know by what logic you assert that "all patterns are aware", but I don't buy that idea. Nor do I accept the view that intellect is nothing but a series of inert patterns. This is a serious flaw in Pirsig's reasoning. There is probably nothing more significant in existential experience than the individual human mind, and relegating it to a collective aesthetic is not my idea of intellectual progress. > There are lots and lots of nature programs showing animals > with intellectual understanding. They can communicate with > people, they can remember procedures, they can reason, > they have an inner life, thoughts and questions. If you don't > call that intellectual awareness, I'd like to hear your definition of it. Are "nature programs" your source for zoological information? Sure, animals can be trained to make certain sounds on command or mimic human behavior. No, I don't call this intellectual awareness. You can't judge awareness by behavior. I've seen no scientific evidence to support the view that animals "reason" or "have thoughts and questions." They do not individually or collectively resolve to change these behavior patterns, nor do they build upon an intellectual data base. Apart from human "conditioning" or domestication, animals behave according to the biological instincts genetically programmed into their species by nature. As an anthropist, my definition of "intellectual awareness" is the innate capacity to evaluate and acquire knowledge and apply it to the physical, cultural, and intellectual advancement of the individual and his society. What sets Homo-sapiens apart from other species is a sense of value that encompasses moral and esthetic judgment, self-worth, compassion, creativity, social responsibility, spirituality, and the desire to know. Man is not only "the measure(er) of all things"; he is the choicemaker of his world. Sadly, the MoQ neglects this truth. 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