Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 17 Oct 2013, at 03:19, LizR wrote: On 17 October 2013 14:08, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of relation or sentience, according to you? Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines, then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be placed in a position to exert much more control on the world. I don't remember Bruno saying that. (Unless one considers arithmetic to be a machine?) Just to be clear, I use often the term elementary arithmetic to denote some (Robinsonian or not) theories or machine. Those are finite entities (with an infinite set of beliefs/theorems). I use Arithmetic or Arithmetical truth for the set of true arithmetical proposition. The first is a machine, the second is not. Arithmetical truth is not Turing emulable. It is very big, even from outside. Then it is non- conceivably big when seen from inside. Bruno -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 17 October 2013 16:58, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I would have agreed with Bruno completely a few years ago, but since then I think that it makes more sense that arithmetic is a kind of sense than that sense could be a kind of arithmetic. I think that mechanism is a kind of arithmetic and arithmetic is a kind of sense, as is private awareness a kind of sense. I'm sure that makes sense! (Even multisense, perhaps.) But I may need a bit more explanation...which I hope I will get once I have read what's at those links you posted. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 17 October 2013 21:36, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Arithmetical truth is not Turing emulable. Is that anything to do with the halting problem ? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 17 Oct 2013, at 11:08, LizR wrote: On 17 October 2013 21:36, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Arithmetical truth is not Turing emulable. Is that anything to do with the halting problem ? The halting problem gives an example of a simple problem, which is not mechanically solvable. For all theories, there will be machines x such that those theories cannot prove proposition like machine 567 does not halt, which will, when translated into arithmetic, defined an arithmetical truth escaping the power of that machine. But there is the more complex problem x is the code of a total computable function. As being more complex, it is simpler to show it being non soluble, (as we did if you see what I am thinking about) and so from it, you get that there is no general theory for deciding between totality and strict partiallity of machines, which for any machines will generates deeper and more complex functions to compute, or arithmetical set to decide, and that will define more complex arithmetical propositions. When you look at computability in term of arithmetical provability, Turing universality correspond to the sigma_1 complete set. A proposition sigma_1 as the shape EnP(n), with P(n) being completely decidable (can even be a diophantine equation). A machine, an entity, a set, a number... is said sigma_1 complete if, each time a proposition EnP(n) is true, it can prove it. It is complete in the sense of proving all true sigma_1 sentences. You, Liz, are sigma_1 complete, (assuming you are immortal, we are working in Plato heaven, OK?). Indeed if there is a number n such that P(n), that is if EnP(n) is true, you can, given that P is easy to verify, verify P for 0, and if O does not very P, look at s(0), etc. If EnP(n) is true, that method guaranty that you will find it. Sigma_1 completeness is one of the many characterization of Turing universality. The price of universality? The existence, for all universal machines, to be in front of proposition like ~EnP(n), which are true but cannot be proved by them. Note that those propositions ~EnP(n) are equivalent with An~P(n) (to say that there is no ferocious number is the same as saying that all numbers are not-ferocious). And if P(n) is completely verifiable, decidable, ~P(n) is too. So the type of formula An~P(n) is really the same as the type AnP(n). Those are the pi_1 sentences, typically negation of sigma_1 sentences. Then you have the sigma_2 sentences, with the shape EnAmP(n, m), with P(n, m) easily decidable. And their negations, the pi_2 sentences, AnEmP(n, m), and so one. The computable = the sigma_1 But arithmetical truth contains the true sigma_1, and the true pi_1 (which might, or not, contains Riemann hypothesis), the true sigma_2, etc. It is the union of all *true* sigma_i and pi_i formula. That set is not just non computable, but it is not definable in the arithmetic language (like the first person will be to). The computable is only a very tiny part of arithmetical truth, but (with comp) the sigma_1 complete is already clever enough to get an idea how hard it is for itself to solve pi_problems, and above. It can also understand why it is concerned by those truth. Machines can climbs those degrees of non solvability by the use of oracles, which are nothing more that the answer to some non solvable problems. This is useful to classify the degrees of insolubility. Imagine an oracle for the halting problem, well, that would help to solve pi_1 problems, but that would not provide a solution to the sigma_2 problems. Hope I was not too much technical, we an come back on this, soon or later. Bruno -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that was true, that would prove nothing. It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply. A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows that the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can be applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is indeed very fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent arithmetical interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak of the rationalist approach in that field, and you say that this instill any confidence in mechanism? and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments? Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would appears that there has not been any promise for it in quite some time. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, G* proves []f Even Peano Arithmetic can lie. Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie. Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such. Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves []f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor. Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non- monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like I dream, I die, I get mad, I am in a cul-de-sac I get wrong etc. It will depend on the intensional nuances in play. Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or colored pixels instead? Why not. Humans can do that too. If I asked a person to turn some data into music or art, no two people would agree on what that output would be and no person's output would be decipherable as input to another person. Computers, on the other hand, would automatically be able to reverse any kind of i/o in the same way. I don't see how. One computer could play a file as a song, and another could make a graphic file out of the audio line out data which would be fully reversible to the original binary file. If the computer can do it, me too. it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct sufficiently rich machines. Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either? No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if they are correct they can't express it, and if they are consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma. Universal machines can lie, and can crash. That sounds like they can lie only when they calculate that they must, not that they can lie intentionally because they enjoy it or out of sadism. That sounds like an opportunistic inference. I think that computationalism maintains the illusion of legitimacy on basis of seducing us to play only by its rules. The technical points is that low level rules leads to no rules at the higher levels. You continue to criticized 19th century reductionist conception of machines. We know today that such a reductionist view of machines is plain wrong. It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of our love as a newborn baby. You cannot do that comparison. Is an newborn alien worthy of human love? Other parameters than thinking and
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that was true, that would prove nothing. It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply. A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows that the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can be applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is indeed very fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent arithmetical interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak of the rationalist approach in that field, and you say that this instill any confidence in mechanism? It doesn't instill confidence of your interpretation of incompleteness. For myself, and I am guessing for others, incompleteness is about the lack-of-completeness of mathematical systems rather than a hyper-completeness of arithmetic metaphysics. Do you say that Gödel was a supporter of the Plotinus view, or are saying that even he didn't realize the implications. and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments? Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would appears that there has not been any promise for it in quite some time. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, G* proves []f Even Peano Arithmetic can lie. Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie. Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such. Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves []f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor. Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non-monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like I dream, I die, I get mad, I am in a cul-de-sac I get wrong etc. It will depend on the intensional nuances in play. Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or colored pixels instead? Why not. Humans can do that too. If I asked a person to turn some data into music or art, no two people would agree on what that output would be and no person's output would be decipherable as input to another person. Computers, on the other hand, would automatically be able to reverse any kind of i/o in the same way. I don't see how. By scanning the image or recording the sound in the same way that it was encoded to be played in the first place. One computer could play a file as a song, and another could make a graphic file out of the audio line out data which would be fully reversible to the original binary file. If the computer can do it, me too. You can't make a graphic file out of a song that 'is' the data of a song. Your artistic interpretation will not match anyone else's. it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct sufficiently rich machines. Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either? No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if they are correct they can't express it, and if they are consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma. Universal machines can lie, and can crash. That sounds like they can lie only when they calculate that they must, not that they can lie intentionally
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 Oct 2013, at 14:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that was true, that would prove nothing. It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply. A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows that the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can be applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is indeed very fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent arithmetical interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak of the rationalist approach in that field, and you say that this instill any confidence in mechanism? It doesn't instill confidence of your interpretation of incompleteness. For myself, and I am guessing for others, incompleteness is about the lack-of-completeness of mathematical systems rather than a hyper-completeness of arithmetic metaphysics. The whole point here is that the machines prove their own theorem about themselves. The meta-arithmetic belongs to arithmetic. I don't say much more than what the machines already say. I just need the classical theory of knowledge (the modal logic S4), just to compare with the machine's theory (S4Grz), like I need QM to compare with the machines's statistics on computation seen from inside. Do you say that Gödel was a supporter of the Plotinus view, or are saying that even he didn't realize the implications. Gödel was indeed a defender of platonism, at the start. But he has been quite slow on Church thesis, and not so quick on mechanism either. That is suggested notably by his leaning toward Anselm notion of God. The reductionist view of machines may be wrong, but that doesn't mean that its absence of rules at higher level translates into proprietary feelings, sounds, flavors, etc. Why would it? Why not? Evidences are that a brain does that. You need to find something non-Turing emulable in the brain to provide evidences that it does not. In theory it could, sure, but the universe that we live in seems to suggest exactly the opposite. But we can understand what is that universe, and why it suggests this, for the machine embedded in that apparent universe. It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of our love as a newborn baby. You cannot do that comparison. Is an newborn alien worthy of human love? Other parameters than thinking and consciousness are at play. What are those parameters, and how do they fit in with mechanism? The parameters are that love asks for some close familiarity. It fits with mechanism through long computational histories. Anyway, it is up to you to find something non mechanical. I don't defend comp, I just try to show why your methodology to criticize comp is not valid. To fight this seduction, You beg the question. You are the one creating an enemy here. Just from your prejudice and lack of reflexion on machines. Sometimes an enemy creates themselves. That is weird for an enemy about which you reject the autonomy. we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever we want, because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic. We are alive, so we get to do whatever we want to that which is not alive. Here you are more than invalid. You are frightening. We have compared you to racist, and what you say now reminds me of the strategy used by Nazy to prove that the white caucasian were superior. Lies, lies and lies. We can lie, machines can lie, but I am not sure it is the best science, or the best politics. With comp, God = Truth, and lies are Devil's play. If there is a chance that a machine will be born that is like me, only billions of times more capable and more racist than I am against all forms of life, wouldn't you say that it would be worth trying to stop at all costs? Should we prevent human birth because it might lead to people like Hitler? You are
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote: we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever we want, because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic. We are alive, so we get to do whatever we want to that which is not alive. Craig, these are murky waters you're fishing in this time. I forgot who said the following: X is giving reasons for why reasoning is bad. His reasoning was bad. Here you are more than invalid. You are frightening. We have compared you to racist, and what you say now reminds me of the strategy used by Nazy to prove that the white caucasian were superior. Lies, lies and lies. We can lie, machines can lie, but I am not sure it is the best science, or the best politics. With comp, God = Truth, and lies are Devil's play. If there is a chance that a machine will be born that is like me, only billions of times more capable and more racist than I am against all forms of life, wouldn't you say that it would be worth trying to stop at all costs? How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of relation or sentience, according to you? But thanks for warning us about the way you proceed. This does not help for your case, I am just the beginning. Your sun in law will make me seem like Snoopy. If the above holds and you're not just playing, then these ideas make you totally mainstream: hunger for opportunistic dominance and perverted sense of liberty so expansive that we poison the very air we breathe and the soil that grounds our homes. You'd be saying nothing new at all, just the opposite in fact. The opportunism program is so old, cockroaches run it successfully and will continue to do so. They also eat their young. Makes sense, consistent with opportunism, but not the apex of aesthetics to put it mildly. To anybody with the luxury of cultivating an aesthetic sense, even when inevitable, that is merely ugly and to be avoided. PGC Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 5:34:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2013, at 14:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that was true, that would prove nothing. It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply. A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows that the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can be applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is indeed very fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent arithmetical interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak of the rationalist approach in that field, and you say that this instill any confidence in mechanism? It doesn't instill confidence of your interpretation of incompleteness. For myself, and I am guessing for others, incompleteness is about the lack-of-completeness of mathematical systems rather than a hyper-completeness of arithmetic metaphysics. The whole point here is that the machines prove their own theorem about themselves. Which is why their proofs are not reliable as general principles. If you ask people who cannot hear about music, they might confirm each others view that music consists only of vibrations that you can feel through your body. The meta-arithmetic belongs to arithmetic. I don't say much more than what the machines already say. I just need the classical theory of knowledge (the modal logic S4), just to compare with the machine's theory (S4Grz), like I need QM to compare with the machines's statistics on computation seen from inside. I think that all theories of logic are incestuous and ungrounded. Do you say that Gödel was a supporter of the Plotinus view, or are saying that even he didn't realize the implications. Gödel was indeed a defender of platonism, at the start. But he has been quite slow on Church thesis, and not so quick on mechanism either. That is suggested notably by his leaning toward Anselm notion of God. Platonism is alright, but it just doesn't go far enough. It takes the ability to sense forms for granted. The reductionist view of machines may be wrong, but that doesn't mean that its absence of rules at higher level translates into proprietary feelings, sounds, flavors, etc. Why would it? Why not? Evidences are that a brain does that. You need to find something non-Turing emulable in the brain to provide evidences that it does not. No, I don't need to find something non-Turing emulable in the brain, any more than I need to find something non-pixel descriptive in a TV set to provide evidence that a TV show can have characters and dialogue. In theory it could, sure, but the universe that we live in seems to suggest exactly the opposite. But we can understand what is that universe, and why it suggests this, for the machine embedded in that apparent universe. I have no problem with using mathematics to describe a theoretical universe. I don't even say that such a universe could not be real, I only say that the universe which hosts our experience does not quite make sense as a mathematical universe. It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of our love as a newborn baby. You cannot do that comparison. Is an newborn alien worthy of human love? Other parameters than thinking and consciousness are at play. What are those parameters, and how do they fit in with mechanism? The parameters are that love asks for some close familiarity. It fits with mechanism through long computational histories. You can have long computational histories without inventing love, surely? Anyway, it is up to you to find something non mechanical. I don't defend comp, I just try to show why your methodology to criticize comp is not valid. I already am something non mechanical, and all of the qualia that has ever been experienced. To fight this seduction, You beg the question. You are the one creating an enemy
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:18:28 PM UTC-4, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote: we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever we want, because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic. We are alive, so we get to do whatever we want to that which is not alive. Craig, these are murky waters you're fishing in this time. I forgot who said the following: X is giving reasons for why reasoning is bad. His reasoning was bad. Murky, yes. I think that consciousness and life are trans-rational, trans-measurable, and trans-ontological. Here you are more than invalid. You are frightening. We have compared you to racist, and what you say now reminds me of the strategy used by Nazy to prove that the white caucasian were superior. Lies, lies and lies. We can lie, machines can lie, but I am not sure it is the best science, or the best politics. With comp, God = Truth, and lies are Devil's play. If there is a chance that a machine will be born that is like me, only billions of times more capable and more racist than I am against all forms of life, wouldn't you say that it would be worth trying to stop at all costs? How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of relation or sentience, according to you? Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines, then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be placed in a position to exert much more control on the world. But thanks for warning us about the way you proceed. This does not help for your case, I am just the beginning. Your sun in law will make me seem like Snoopy. If the above holds and you're not just playing, then these ideas make you totally mainstream: hunger for opportunistic dominance and perverted sense of liberty so expansive that we poison the very air we breathe and the soil that grounds our homes. You'd be saying nothing new at all, just the opposite in fact. Even if that's not what I think that I advocate personally, my point is that there is no reason to assume that an AI would be any different, given that we are machines. The opportunism program is so old, cockroaches run it successfully and will continue to do so. They also eat their young. Makes sense, consistent with opportunism, but not the apex of aesthetics to put it mildly. To anybody with the luxury of cultivating an aesthetic sense, even when inevitable, that is merely ugly and to be avoided. I agree, but that's because I'm not a machine. The part of me that is a machine is no better or worse than a cockroach. Craig PGC Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 17 October 2013 14:08, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of relation or sentience, according to you? Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines, then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be placed in a position to exert much more control on the world. I don't remember Bruno saying that. (Unless one considers arithmetic to be a machine?) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:19:13 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 17 October 2013 14:08, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of relation or sentience, according to you? Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines, then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be placed in a position to exert much more control on the world. I don't remember Bruno saying that. (Unless one considers arithmetic to be a machine?) Yes, if I understand his view correctly, Bruno considers arithmetic to be behind mechanism, mechanism to be behind awareness, and awareness to be behind physics. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:11:02 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-**containing) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) A human being is the collective self experience received during the phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its own perception. That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then either those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something else. If they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the above-quoted statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a machine doesn't grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then - depending on the nature of that something else - it's possible that other things have it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to know what that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For example, I believe Bruno thinks the something else is an infinite sheaf of computations.) Have you considered that it might be the body which is part of a sheaf of experiences? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 17 October 2013 16:12, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:11:02 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-**containing**) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) A human being is the collective self experience received during the phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its own perception. That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then either those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something else. If they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the above-quoted statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a machine doesn't grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then - depending on the nature of that something else - it's possible that other things have it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to know what that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For example, I believe Bruno thinks the something else is an infinite sheaf of computations.) Have you considered that it might be the body which is part of a sheaf of experiences? Since Bruno started trying to explain comp to me, I have indeed considered that. It could be, for example, via the mechanism you mentioned in your previous post: Bruno considers arithmetic to be behind mechanism, mechanism to be behind awareness, and awareness to be behind physics. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:18:39 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 17 October 2013 16:12, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:11:02 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-**containing**) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) A human being is the collective self experience received during the phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its own perception. That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then either those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something else. If they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the above-quoted statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a machine doesn't grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then - depending on the nature of that something else - it's possible that other things have it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to know what that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For example, I believe Bruno thinks the something else is an infinite sheaf of computations.) Have you considered that it might be the body which is part of a sheaf of experiences? Since Bruno started trying to explain comp to me, I have indeed considered that. It could be, for example, via the mechanism you mentioned in your previous post: Bruno considers arithmetic to be behind mechanism, mechanism to be behind awareness, and awareness to be behind physics. I would have agreed with Bruno completely a few years ago, but since then I think that it makes more sense that arithmetic is a kind of sense than that sense could be a kind of arithmetic. I think that mechanism is a kind of arithmetic and arithmetic is a kind of sense, as is private awareness a kind of sense. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 14 Oct 2013, at 22:04, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 3:17:06 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Oct 2013, at 20:13, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:03:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: All object are conscious? No objects are conscious. We agree on this. Not at all. It is here and now. I have already interview such machines. Are there any such machines available to interview online? I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that was true, that would prove nothing. and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments? Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would appears that there has not been any promise for it in quite some time. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, G* proves []f Even Peano Arithmetic can lie. Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie. Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such. Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves []f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor. Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non- monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like I dream, I die, I get mad, I am in a cul-de-sac I get wrong etc. It will depend on the intensional nuances in play. Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or colored pixels instead? Why not. Humans can do that too. it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct sufficiently rich machines. Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either? No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if they are correct they can't express it, and if they are consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma. Universal machines can lie, and can crash. That sounds like they can lie only when they calculate that they must, not that they can lie intentionally because they enjoy it or out of sadism. That sounds like an opportunistic inference. Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 4:37:35 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:08:01 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, You're half right. I would say: 1. All experiences correspond to some natural thing. 2. Not all things are natural things. Bugs Bunny has no independent experience, and neither does Pinocchio. 3. Computers are made of natural things but, like all machines, are ultimately assembled unnaturally. 4. The natural things that machines are made of would have to be very low level, i.e., not gears but the molecules that make up the gears. Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. It's not really important - the main thing is to see how there is no substitute for experience and a machine which is assembled from unrelated parts has no experience and cannot gain new experience in an alien context. I think that a machine (or any inanimate object or symbol) can also serve as a vehicle for synchronicity. That's a completely different thing because it is the super-personal, holistic end of the sensible spectrum, not the sub-personal, granular end. The creepiness of a ventriloquist dummy is in our imagination, but that too is 'real' in an absolute sense. If your life takes you on a path which tempts you to believe that machines are conscious, then the super-personal lensing of your life will stack the deck just enough to let you jump to those conclusions. It's what we would call supernatural or coincidental, depending on which lens we use to define it.. http://s33light.org/post/**62173912616http://s33light.org/post/62173912616 (Don't you want to have a body?) After reading this ( http://marshallbrain.com/**discard1.htmhttp://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm ) I am not so sure... just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Right, although not necessarily just biological history, it could be chemical too. We may have branched off from anything that could be made into a useful machine (servant to alien agendas) long before life on Earth. What if humanity left behind a nano-technology that eventually evolved into mechanical organisms like dogs and fish, would they have animal like experiences despite that they descended from unnatural things? The thing that makes sense to me is that the richness of sensation and intention are inversely proportionate to the degree to which a phenomenon can be controlled from the outside. If we put nano-tech extensions on some living organism, then sure, the organism could learn how to use those extensions and evolve a symbiotic post-biology. I don't think that project would be controllable though. They would not be machines in the sense that they would not necessarily be of service to those who created them. Craig, Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into multi-cellular organisms like animals we are familiar with today. Could they have experiences like other biological creatures that have a biological lineage?
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Oct 15, 2013, at 7:26 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 4:37:35 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:08:01 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, You're half right. I would say: 1. All experiences correspond to some natural thing. 2. Not all things are natural things. Bugs Bunny has no independent experience, and neither does Pinocchio. 3. Computers are made of natural things but, like all machines, are ultimately assembled unnaturally. 4. The natural things that machines are made of would have to be very low level, i.e., not gears but the molecules that make up the gears. Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. It's not really important - the main thing is to see how there is no substitute for experience and a machine which is assembled from unrelated parts has no experience and cannot gain new experience in an alien context. I think that a machine (or any inanimate object or symbol) can also serve as a vehicle for synchronicity. That's a completely different thing because it is the super-personal, holistic end of the sensible spectrum, not the sub-personal, granular end. The creepiness of a ventriloquist dummy is in our imagination, but that too is 'real' in an absolute sense. If your life takes you on a path which tempts you to believe that machines are conscious, then the super-personal lensing of your life will stack the deck just enough to let you jump to those conclusions. It's what we would call supernatural or coincidental, depending on which lens we use to define it.. http://s33light.org/post/62173912616 (Don't you want to have a body?) After reading this ( http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm ) I am not so sure... just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Right, although not necessarily just biological history, it could be chemical too. We may have branched off from anything that could be made into a useful machine (servant to alien agendas) long before life on Earth. What if humanity left behind a nano-technology that eventually evolved into mechanical organisms like dogs and fish, would they have animal like experiences despite that they descended from unnatural things? The thing that makes sense to me is that the richness of sensation and intention are inversely proportionate to the degree to which a phenomenon can be controlled from the outside. If we put nano-tech extensions on some living organism, then sure, the organism could learn how to use those extensions and evolve a symbiotic post- biology. I don't think that project would be controllable though. They would not be machines in the sense that they would not necessarily be of service to those who created them. Craig, Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into multi-cellular organisms like animals we are familiar with today. Could they have experiences like other biological creatures that have a biological lineage? If not, why not? No, I don't think that
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10/15/2013 12:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote: 8. an organism which emerges spontaneously from Boltzmann conditions in the environment rather than seeded inheritance Like the first RNA replicators on Earth. Brent -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 October 2013 01:26, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into multi-cellular organisms like animals we are familiar with today. Could they have experiences like other biological creatures that have a biological lineage? If not, why not? No, I don't think that they could have experiences like biological creatures. If they could, then we *should *probably see at least one example of Excuse me for butting in, but I'm not sure what should means here. Are you saying these things should *already* exist? But the original suggestion was about future technology... Though I can't see what else you could mean, though. 1. a natural occurrence of inorganic biology Why would it occur naturally, when organic biology has done so, and presumably used up all the food sources that might be available? 2. an organism which can survive only on inorganic nutrients ??? 3. a successful experiment to create life from basic molecules Arguably the biosphere counts as this, presumably not an intentional experiment. 4. a machine which seems to feel, care, and have a unique and unrepeatable personal presence Arguably a human being is one of these 5. a mechanized process which produces artifacts that seem handmade and unique 6. two separate bodies who are the same person 7. an organism which reproduces by transforming its environment rather than reproducing by cell division This seems to me to have gone completely off the point. 8. an organism which emerges spontaneously from Boltzmann conditions in the environment rather than seeded inheritance What?!? (He said billions of years, not googolplexes...!) 9. an event or observation which leads us to conclude that gathering energy and reproduction are sufficient to constitute bio-quality awareness. I don't understand that sentence. I may be missing something here but I believe the question is whether machines can have experiences. Isn't a human being a machine that has experiences? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 October 2013 08:59, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: 7. an organism which reproduces by transforming its environment rather than reproducing by cell division Bruno said cigarettes might qualify as such life forms. Viruses, surely? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Oct 15, 2013, at 5:52 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 October 2013 08:59, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: 7. an organism which reproduces by transforming its environment rather than reproducing by cell division Bruno said cigarettes might qualify as such life forms. Viruses, surely? Yes that's a much better example. Jason -- 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. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:59:33 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Oct 15, 2013, at 7:26 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 4:37:35 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:08:01 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, You're half right. I would say: 1. All experiences correspond to some natural thing. 2. Not all things are natural things. Bugs Bunny has no independent experience, and neither does Pinocchio. 3. Computers are made of natural things but, like all machines, are ultimately assembled unnaturally. 4. The natural things that machines are made of would have to be very low level, i.e., not gears but the molecules that make up the gears. Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. It's not really important - the main thing is to see how there is no substitute for experience and a machine which is assembled from unrelated parts has no experience and cannot gain new experience in an alien context. I think that a machine (or any inanimate object or symbol) can also serve as a vehicle for synchronicity. That's a completely different thing because it is the super-personal, holistic end of the sensible spectrum, not the sub-personal, granular end. The creepiness of a ventriloquist dummy is in our imagination, but that too is 'real' in an absolute sense. If your life takes you on a path which tempts you to believe that machines are conscious, then the super-personal lensing of your life will stack the deck just enough to let you jump to those conclusions. It's what we would call supernatural or coincidental, depending on which lens we use to define it.. http://s33light.org/post/62173912616http://s33light.org/post/* *62173912616 (Don't you want to have a body?) After reading this ( http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/**discard1.htm ) I am not so sure... just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Right, although not necessarily just biological history, it could be chemical too. We may have branched off from anything that could be made into a useful machine (servant to alien agendas) long before life on Earth. What if humanity left behind a nano-technology that eventually evolved into mechanical organisms like dogs and fish, would they have animal like experiences despite that they descended from unnatural things? The thing that makes sense to me is that the richness of sensation and intention are inversely proportionate to the degree to which a phenomenon can be controlled from the outside. If we put nano-tech extensions on some living organism, then sure, the organism could learn how to use those extensions and evolve a symbiotic post-biology. I don't think that project would be controllable though. They would not be machines in the sense that they would not necessarily be of service to those who created them. Craig, Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into multi-cellular organisms
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 October 2013 13:30, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: All that we know for sure is that there does not seem to be a single example of an inorganic species now, nor does there seem to be a single example from the fossil record. It doesn't mean that conscious machines cannot evolve, but since it appears that they have not so far, we should not, scientifically speaking, give it the benefit of the doubt. I thought the default stance of science was that they did evolve, and here we are. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 6:50:53 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 01:26, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into multi-cellular organisms like animals we are familiar with today. Could they have experiences like other biological creatures that have a biological lineage? If not, why not? No, I don't think that they could have experiences like biological creatures. If they could, then we *should *probably see at least one example of Excuse me for butting in, but I'm not sure what should means here. Are you saying these things should *already* exist? But the original suggestion was about future technology... Though I can't see what else you could mean, though. 1. a natural occurrence of inorganic biology Why would it occur naturally, when organic biology has done so, and presumably used up all the food sources that might be available? If inorganic biology were possible, shouldn't it use inorganic food sources? 2. an organism which can survive only on inorganic nutrients ??? A bird that can live on rocks, etc. 3. a successful experiment to create life from basic molecules Arguably the biosphere counts as this, presumably not an intentional experiment. That's begging the question. We don't know that abiogenesis is a fact, or if it was, we don't know that it is possible to reoccur. Our experiments thus far have not supported the idea that biological life can be be created again. 4. a machine which seems to feel, care, and have a unique and unrepeatable personal presence Arguably a human being is one of these It's begging the question. I'm saying people are not like machines, because people are all unique but machines are not. You can't use that fact to claim that people are representative of machines, and then therefore that machines can be like people. If I said oil and water don't mix, you can't say 'arguably oil is a type of water'. 5. a mechanized process which produces artifacts that seem handmade and unique 6. two separate bodies who are the same person 7. an organism which reproduces by transforming its environment rather than reproducing by cell division This seems to me to have gone completely off the point. I would need you to explain more of what you mean. 8. an organism which emerges spontaneously from Boltzmann conditions in the environment rather than seeded inheritance What?!? (He said billions of years, not googolplexes...!) I didn't say Boltzmann brain, just a Boltzmann organism. 9. an event or observation which leads us to conclude that gathering energy and reproduction are sufficient to constitute bio-quality awareness. I don't understand that sentence. The whole basis of computationalism hinges on the assumption that acting like you are alive is the same as being alive, which I think is demonstrably false. We know for a fact that something that is not alive can seem like it is. We know that a machine can produce strings of language that carry no meaning for it. So what is it, other than pure blue-sky wishful thinking, that leads us to conclude that moving a puppet around in the right way is going to bring Pinocchio to life? I may be missing something here but I believe the question is whether machines can have experiences. Isn't a human being a machine that has experiences? No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. Thanks, Craig -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-containing) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
Sorry I should have added... your statement A human body may be a machine contradicts a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired - unless a human being is not the same thing as a human body, of course. Is that the point? On 16 October 2013 13:51, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-containing) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Oct 2013, at 22:04, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 3:17:06 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Oct 2013, at 20:13, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:03:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: All object are conscious? No objects are conscious. We agree on this. Not at all. It is here and now. I have already interview such machines. Are there any such machines available to interview online? I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that was true, that would prove nothing. It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply. and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments? Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would appears that there has not been any promise for it in quite some time. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, G* proves []f Even Peano Arithmetic can lie. Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie. Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such. Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves []f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor. Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non-monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like I dream, I die, I get mad, I am in a cul-de-sac I get wrong etc. It will depend on the intensional nuances in play. Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or colored pixels instead? Why not. Humans can do that too. If I asked a person to turn some data into music or art, no two people would agree on what that output would be and no person's output would be decipherable as input to another person. Computers, on the other hand, would automatically be able to reverse any kind of i/o in the same way. One computer could play a file as a song, and another could make a graphic file out of the audio line out data which would be fully reversible to the original binary file. it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct sufficiently rich machines. Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either? No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if they are correct they can't express it, and if they are consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma. Universal machines can lie, and can crash. That sounds like they can lie only when they calculate that they must, not that they can lie intentionally because they enjoy it or out of sadism. That sounds like an opportunistic inference. I think that computationalism maintains the illusion of legitimacy on basis of seducing us to play only by its rules. It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of our love as a newborn baby. To fight this seduction, we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever we want, because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic. We are alive, so we get to do whatever we want to that which is not alive. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-containing) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) A human being is the collective self experience received during the phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its own perception. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:52:48 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: Sorry I should have added... your statement A human body may be a machine contradicts a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired - unless a human being is not the same thing as a human body, of course. Is that the point? Right, a human body is not the same thing as a human being. A human body is still a body after the human ceases being. Not because there is an immaterial spirit, but because the entire universe is a nested experience and the body is more about experiences on the cellular and molecular level than it is about individual lifetimes. Craig On 16 October 2013 13:51, LizR liz...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-containing) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, molecular-component-**containing) machine? (Or is machine being defined in a specialised sense here?) A human being is the collective self experience received during the phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its own perception. That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then either those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something else. If they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the above-quoted statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a machine doesn't grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then - depending on the nature of that something else - it's possible that other things have it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to know what that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For example, I believe Bruno thinks the something else is an infinite sheaf of computations.) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 16 October 2013 14:09, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:52:48 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: Sorry I should have added... your statement A human body may be a machine contradicts a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired - unless a human being is not the same thing as a human body, of course. Is that the point? Right, a human body is not the same thing as a human being. A human body is still a body after the human ceases being. Not because there is an immaterial spirit, but because the entire universe is a nested experience and the body is more about experiences on the cellular and molecular level than it is about individual lifetimes. Now you've lost me. Is a nested experience anything like Max Tegmark's self-aware subsystems ? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 7:30 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:59:33 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Oct 15, 2013, at 7:26 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 4:37:35 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:08:01 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, You're half right. I would say: 1. All experiences correspond to some natural thing. 2. Not all things are natural things. Bugs Bunny has no independent experience, and neither does Pinocchio. 3. Computers are made of natural things but, like all machines, are ultimately assembled unnaturally. 4. The natural things that machines are made of would have to be very low level, i.e., not gears but the molecules that make up the gears. Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. It's not really important - the main thing is to see how there is no substitute for experience and a machine which is assembled from unrelated parts has no experience and cannot gain new experience in an alien context. I think that a machine (or any inanimate object or symbol) can also serve as a vehicle for synchronicity. That's a completely different thing because it is the super-personal, holistic end of the sensible spectrum, not the sub-personal, granular end. The creepiness of a ventriloquist dummy is in our imagination, but that too is 'real' in an absolute sense. If your life takes you on a path which tempts you to believe that machines are conscious, then the super-personal lensing of your life will stack the deck just enough to let you jump to those conclusions. It's what we would call supernatural or coincidental, depending on which lens we use to define it.. http://s33light.org/post/62173912616http://s33light.org/post/ **62173**912616 (Don't you want to have a body?) After reading this ( http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/**dis**card1.htm ) I am not so sure... just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Right, although not necessarily just biological history, it could be chemical too. We may have branched off from anything that could be made into a useful machine (servant to alien agendas) long before life on Earth. What if humanity left behind a nano-technology that eventually evolved into mechanical organisms like dogs and fish, would they have animal like experiences despite that they descended from unnatural things? The thing that makes sense to me is that the richness of sensation and intention are inversely proportionate to the degree to which a phenomenon can be controlled from the outside. If we put nano-tech extensions on some living organism, then sure, the organism could learn how to use those extensions and evolve a symbiotic post-biology. I don't think that project would be controllable though. They would not be machines in the sense that they would not necessarily be of service to those who created them. Craig, Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:14:00 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 13 October 2013 15:29, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: Perform to whose satisfaction? A cadaver can be made to twitch, or propped up to stand. Perform to the satisfaction of anyone you care to nominate. A committee of humans examine two people who have had a haircut, one from a human and the other from a computer, and try to decide which is which. This is repeated several times. If they can't tell the difference then we say the computer has succeeded in cutting hair as well as a human. Is there any task you think a computer will never be able manage as well as a human in this sort of test? What does performing tasks have to do with anything? We are talking about the capacity to feel, experience, and care. If you could replace your hands with machines that would do everything your hands could do and quite a bit more, but would have no feeling in them at all, would you say that the robot hands were just as good to you as human hands? If your tongue could detect any chemical in the universe accurately and provide you with precise knowledge of it, but never allow you to taste any flavor or feel anything with your tongue again, would that be equivalent? I understand that you don't think computers can have feelings, but I was asking if if computers can perform all tasks that a human can perform, or if there are some tasks they just won't be able to do. If there are, then this suggests a test for consciousness. I don't know that there is a such thing as 'all tasks that a human can perform'. Before Mozart, humans could not perform Mozart concertos. Anything that a computer does is actually being done by the inventors and programmers of the computer, plus the physics of the medium being used to do the computing. By themselves, computers can't do much of anything. If someone could invent a computer which was smart enough even to be able turn themselves off when they are stuck they could make a fortune. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:03:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 Oct 2013, at 06:40, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013 12:27:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230349250457911** **5310362925246.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and aesthetic to them. This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). All object are conscious? No objects are conscious. A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, ? which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). I think that I also debunk the 21st century reality of machines. The promissory mechanism offered by comp is purely a theoretical futurism - Not at all. It is here and now. I have already interview such machines. Are there any such machines available to interview online?
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 14 Oct 2013, at 20:13, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:03:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: All object are conscious? No objects are conscious. We agree on this. Not at all. It is here and now. I have already interview such machines. Are there any such machines available to interview online? I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, G* proves []f Even Peano Arithmetic can lie. Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie. Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such. Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves []f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor. Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non-monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like I dream, I die, I get mad, I am in a cul-de-sac I get wrong etc. It will depend on the intensional nuances in play. it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct sufficiently rich machines. Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either? No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if they are correct they can't express it, and if they are consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma. Universal machines can lie, and can crash. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Monday, October 14, 2013 3:17:06 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Oct 2013, at 20:13, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:03:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: All object are conscious? No objects are conscious. We agree on this. Not at all. It is here and now. I have already interview such machines. Are there any such machines available to interview online? I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers. You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic too. Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 years old, and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments? Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would appears that there has not been any promise for it in quite some time. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, G* proves []f Even Peano Arithmetic can lie. Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie. Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such. Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves []f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor. Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non-monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like I dream, I die, I get mad, I am in a cul-de-sac I get wrong etc. It will depend on the intensional nuances in play. Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or colored pixels instead? it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct sufficiently rich machines. Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either? No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if they are correct they can't express it, and if they are consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma. Universal machines can lie, and can crash. That sounds like they can lie only when they calculate that they must, not that they can lie intentionally because they enjoy it or out of sadism. Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 15 October 2013 05:05, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I understand that you don't think computers can have feelings, but I was asking if if computers can perform all tasks that a human can perform, or if there are some tasks they just won't be able to do. If there are, then this suggests a test for consciousness. I don't know that there is a such thing as 'all tasks that a human can perform'. Before Mozart, humans could not perform Mozart concertos. Anything that a computer does is actually being done by the inventors and programmers of the computer, plus the physics of the medium being used to do the computing. By themselves, computers can't do much of anything. If someone could invent a computer which was smart enough even to be able turn themselves off when they are stuck they could make a fortune. I think you are avoiding the question. Do you think there is any task or job that a human can do but a computer is incapable of doing? For example, being a hairdresser is certainly beyond any computer at present. Is that because it requires consciousness, hence beyond computers forever? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Monday, October 14, 2013 4:37:35 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:08:01 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, You're half right. I would say: 1. All experiences correspond to some natural thing. 2. Not all things are natural things. Bugs Bunny has no independent experience, and neither does Pinocchio. 3. Computers are made of natural things but, like all machines, are ultimately assembled unnaturally. 4. The natural things that machines are made of would have to be very low level, i.e., not gears but the molecules that make up the gears. Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. It's not really important - the main thing is to see how there is no substitute for experience and a machine which is assembled from unrelated parts has no experience and cannot gain new experience in an alien context. I think that a machine (or any inanimate object or symbol) can also serve as a vehicle for synchronicity. That's a completely different thing because it is the super-personal, holistic end of the sensible spectrum, not the sub-personal, granular end. The creepiness of a ventriloquist dummy is in our imagination, but that too is 'real' in an absolute sense. If your life takes you on a path which tempts you to believe that machines are conscious, then the super-personal lensing of your life will stack the deck just enough to let you jump to those conclusions. It's what we would call supernatural or coincidental, depending on which lens we use to define it.. http://s33light.org/post/62173912616 (Don't you want to have a body?) After reading this ( http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm ) I am not so sure... just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Right, although not necessarily just biological history, it could be chemical too. We may have branched off from anything that could be made into a useful machine (servant to alien agendas) long before life on Earth. What if humanity left behind a nano-technology that eventually evolved into mechanical organisms like dogs and fish, would they have animal like experiences despite that they descended from unnatural things? The thing that makes sense to me is that the richness of sensation and intention are inversely proportionate to the degree to which a phenomenon can be controlled from the outside. If we put nano-tech extensions on some living organism, then sure, the organism could learn how to use those extensions and evolve a symbiotic post-biology. I don't think that project would be controllable though. They would not be machines in the sense that they would not necessarily be of service to those who created them. Craig Jason Craig Jason -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Monday, October 14, 2013 4:37:35 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:08:01 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, You're half right. I would say: 1. All experiences correspond to some natural thing. 2. Not all things are natural things. Bugs Bunny has no independent experience, and neither does Pinocchio. 3. Computers are made of natural things but, like all machines, are ultimately assembled unnaturally. 4. The natural things that machines are made of would have to be very low level, i.e., not gears but the molecules that make up the gears. Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. It's not really important - the main thing is to see how there is no substitute for experience and a machine which is assembled from unrelated parts has no experience and cannot gain new experience in an alien context. I think that a machine (or any inanimate object or symbol) can also serve as a vehicle for synchronicity. That's a completely different thing because it is the super-personal, holistic end of the sensible spectrum, not the sub-personal, granular end. The creepiness of a ventriloquist dummy is in our imagination, but that too is 'real' in an absolute sense. If your life takes you on a path which tempts you to believe that machines are conscious, then the super-personal lensing of your life will stack the deck just enough to let you jump to those conclusions. It's what we would call supernatural or coincidental, depending on which lens we use to define it.. http://s33light.org/post/**62173912616http://s33light.org/post/62173912616 (Don't you want to have a body?) After reading this ( http://marshallbrain.com/**discard1.htmhttp://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm ) I am not so sure... just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Right, although not necessarily just biological history, it could be chemical too. We may have branched off from anything that could be made into a useful machine (servant to alien agendas) long before life on Earth. What if humanity left behind a nano-technology that eventually evolved into mechanical organisms like dogs and fish, would they have animal like experiences despite that they descended from unnatural things? The thing that makes sense to me is that the richness of sensation and intention are inversely proportionate to the degree to which a phenomenon can be controlled from the outside. If we put nano-tech extensions on some living organism, then sure, the organism could learn how to use those extensions and evolve a symbiotic post-biology. I don't think that project would be controllable though. They would not be machines in the sense that they would not necessarily be of service to those who created them. Craig, Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these self-replicating nanobots evolved into multi-cellular organisms like animals we are familiar with today. Could they have experiences like other biological creatures that have a biological lineage? If not, why not? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Sunday, October 13, 2013 12:56:58 AM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 13 October 2013 17:40, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. Puppet implies a puppeteer. In a sense our bodies are puppets controlled by our brains. So there is a conscious presence. But the brain cannot be separated from the body. It's made of the same stem cell. It is not the prosthetic appendage of itself, it is a whole organism on a zoological level, a community of organisms on a biological level, and an ocean of chemical reactions on a chemical level. That the brain can influence the behavior of the other organs and tissues of the body and vice versa is not a puppet-ventriloquist relation, it is a multivalent fugue of interdependence (in which we participate directly, and through which we participate in social and super-personal dramas). I wonder if there are psychological conditions that are similar to philosophical zombiehood? I.e. doing things as though conscious when you aren't. (Maybe sleep walking?) Sure, sleepwalking, blindsight (patients can guess what they are seeing correctly but have no ability to see), psychopathy (emotions are simulated but not felt). Synesthesia and plain old acting show that specific qualia and behaviors need not be linked automatically to what we expect them to represent. Craig -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 12 Oct 2013, at 22:47, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sunday, 13 October 2013, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and aesthetic to them. This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). Craig is neither clear I can accept that. nor coherent. I was just saying that he was coherent in his belief in some primary nature, and his disbelief in computationalism. For example, he suggests above that the inadequacies of supermarket computers are due to their unconsciousness, which implies that there are some things an unconscious entity cannot do, and therefore there cannot be philosophical zombies. However, he says (I think - he is not clear) there is no test to tell the computers apart from the humans. This is inconsistent. OK. I think he is incoherent by opportunism. he want to use result in the literature, but those result concerns behavior. There he is indeed often incoherent, as you illustrate well. You are confronted with the task of explaining to someone incoherent that he is incoherent: a very difficult if not impossible task. Incoherent people can answer all questions very easily. Eventually he will (and already has) just refer to its own understanding. Like I know that ..., etc. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 13 Oct 2013, at 06:40, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013 12:27:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and aesthetic to them. This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). All object are conscious? A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, ? which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). I think that I also debunk the 21st century reality of machines. The promissory mechanism offered by comp is purely a theoretical futurism - Not at all. It is here and now. I have already interview such machines. which I would not object to at all, but in this case, it so happens that it is not applicable to the universe that we actually live in. Let me say it simply: I don't believe in universe(s). I have few doubt that there is a physical reality, but I have no evidence it comes from something like an
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 13 October 2013 15:29, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Perform to whose satisfaction? A cadaver can be made to twitch, or propped up to stand. Perform to the satisfaction of anyone you care to nominate. A committee of humans examine two people who have had a haircut, one from a human and the other from a computer, and try to decide which is which. This is repeated several times. If they can't tell the difference then we say the computer has succeeded in cutting hair as well as a human. Is there any task you think a computer will never be able manage as well as a human in this sort of test? What does performing tasks have to do with anything? We are talking about the capacity to feel, experience, and care. If you could replace your hands with machines that would do everything your hands could do and quite a bit more, but would have no feeling in them at all, would you say that the robot hands were just as good to you as human hands? If your tongue could detect any chemical in the universe accurately and provide you with precise knowledge of it, but never allow you to taste any flavor or feel anything with your tongue again, would that be equivalent? I understand that you don't think computers can have feelings, but I was asking if if computers can perform all tasks that a human can perform, or if there are some tasks they just won't be able to do. If there are, then this suggests a test for consciousness. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Saturday, October 12, 2013 3:49:22 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230349250457911*** *5310362925246.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? Perform to whose satisfaction? A cadaver can be made to twitch, or propped up to stand. Being human is nothing to do with performing tasks. Our immune system probably does more complex tasks every minute than the whole history of human beings has ever done (when we build a machine that looks like an insulin molecule, we're still just beginning). Being human is about experiencing with a particular depth of sensitivity. A computer is not even a whole thing except in our mind. It is a collection of switches, which are collections of molecules. Those molecules, I think, do share sensitivity, or rather, there is a sensitivity which appears to our extended senses as molecules, but they are sensitive to very different ranges of presence. By compulsively reducing everything to an expectation of repeatable tasks and behaviors, there is no chance to locate what awareness is, since it is the opposite of all repetition and all that is repeatable. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Saturday, October 12, 2013 5:01:40 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Oct 2013, at 06:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/**SB1000142405270230349250457911** 5310362925246.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. That's an authoritative argument. Whatever machines can do, they can't think, because I think so. It's not because I think so, it's because I understand why the experience of thinking is not necessary to do anything that a machine can do. I understand why paint by numbers of the Mona Lisa is not the same thing as Leonardo Da Vinci. Craig Hmm Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If
not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could
never perform?
Perform to whose satisfaction? A cadaver can be made to twitch, or propped
up to stand.
Perform to the satisfaction of anyone you care to nominate. A committee of
humans examine two people who have had a haircut, one from a human and the
other from a computer, and try to decide which is which. This is repeated
several times. If they can't tell the difference then we say the computer
has succeeded in cutting hair as well as a human. Is there any task you
think a computer will never be able manage as well as a human in this sort
of test?
Being human is nothing to do with performing tasks. Our immune system
probably does more complex tasks every minute than the whole history of
human beings has ever done (when we build a machine that looks like an
insulin molecule, we're still just beginning). Being human is about
experiencing with a particular depth of sensitivity. A computer is not even
a whole thing except in our mind. It is a collection of switches, which are
collections of molecules. Those molecules, I think, do share sensitivity,
or rather, there is a sensitivity which appears to our extended senses as
molecules, but they are sensitive to very different ranges of presence.
By compulsively reducing everything to an expectation of repeatable tasks
and behaviors, there is no chance to locate what awareness is, since it is
the opposite of all repetition and all that is repeatable.
Craig
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Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and aesthetic to them. This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Sunday, 13 October 2013, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and aesthetic to them. This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). Craig is neither clear nor coherent. For example, he suggests above that the inadequacies of supermarket computers are due to their unconsciousness, which implies that there are some things an unconscious entity cannot do, and therefore there cannot be philosophical zombies. However, he says (I think - he is not clear) there is no test to tell the computers apart from the humans. This is inconsistent. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Saturday, October 12, 2013 10:11:20 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? Perform to whose satisfaction? A cadaver can be made to twitch, or propped up to stand. Perform to the satisfaction of anyone you care to nominate. A committee of humans examine two people who have had a haircut, one from a human and the other from a computer, and try to decide which is which. This is repeated several times. If they can't tell the difference then we say the computer has succeeded in cutting hair as well as a human. Is there any task you think a computer will never be able manage as well as a human in this sort of test? What does performing tasks have to do with anything? We are talking about the capacity to feel, experience, and care. If you could replace your hands with machines that would do everything your hands could do and quite a bit more, but would have no feeling in them at all, would you say that the robot hands were just as good to you as human hands? If your tongue could detect any chemical in the universe accurately and provide you with precise knowledge of it, but never allow you to taste any flavor or feel anything with your tongue again, would that be equivalent? Craig Being human is nothing to do with performing tasks. Our immune system probably does more complex tasks every minute than the whole history of human beings has ever done (when we build a machine that looks like an insulin molecule, we're still just beginning). Being human is about experiencing with a particular depth of sensitivity. A computer is not even a whole thing except in our mind. It is a collection of switches, which are collections of molecules. Those molecules, I think, do share sensitivity, or rather, there is a sensitivity which appears to our extended senses as molecules, but they are sensitive to very different ranges of presence. By compulsively reducing everything to an expectation of repeatable tasks and behaviors, there is no chance to locate what awareness is, since it is the opposite of all repetition and all that is repeatable. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Saturday, October 12, 2013 12:27:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230349250457911*** *5310362925246.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could never perform? I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and aesthetic to them. This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). I think that I also debunk the 21st century reality of machines. The promissory mechanism offered by comp is purely a theoretical futurism - which I would not object to at all, but in this case, it so happens that it is not applicable to the universe that we actually live in. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 13 October 2013 17:40, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. Puppet implies a puppeteer. In a sense our bodies are puppets controlled by our brains. So there is a conscious presence. I wonder if there are psychological conditions that are similar to philosophical zombiehood? I.e. doing things as though conscious when you aren't. (Maybe sleep walking?) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10/12/2013 9:56 PM, LizR wrote: On 13 October 2013 17:40, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. Puppet implies a puppeteer. In a sense our bodies are puppets controlled by our brains. So there is a conscious presence. I wonder if there are psychological conditions that are similar to philosophical zombiehood? I.e. doing things as though conscious when you aren't. (Maybe sleep walking?) Or proving theorems in mathematics, c.f. Poincare effect. http://www.is.wayne.edu/DRBOWEN/CRTVYW99/POINCARE.HTM Brent -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. Craig -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/**SB1000142405270230349250457911** 5310362925246.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never be a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no robot except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The robot is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our thoughts in a clever way. OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that supermarket computers would have would not be related to its unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why isn't the story Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now become upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda yadda? I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and sensitivity, no matter what they did. Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, because I understand it completely. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:30:16 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 10 October 2013 13:03, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:52:46 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do,* it's that they can't experience anything.* Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I don't think that people are machines. A machine is assembled intentionally from unrelated substances to perform a function which is alien to any of the substances. Living organisms are not assembled, they grow from a single cell. They have no unrelated substances and all functions they perform are local to the motives of the organism as a whole. I believe that, at least in discussions such as this one, defining people as machines has nothing to do with how or why they are constructed, and eveything to do with ruling out any supernatural components. Right, but that's what I am saying is the problem. It would be like making generalizations about liquids based on water and saying that alcohol can't burn because it's a liquid. A machine and a person might both be able to say 'hello', but the machine was constructed by people who know what hello means, and the person knows what hello means because they were the ones who constructed the word. The word exists to serve their own agenda, not that of an alien programmer. Anyway, allow me to rephrase the question. I assume from the underlined comment that you think that strong AI is wrong, and that we will never be able to build a conscious computer. How do you come to that conclusion? I guess that I came to that conclusion by first trying to exhaust the other alternatives and then by coming up with a way to make sense of awareness as what I call Primordial Identity Pansensitivity. This means that physics and information are incomplete reflections within sense rather than producers of consciousness. Physics is sense experience that is alienated by entropy (spacetime) and information is sense experience which has been alienated by generalization (abstraction). Information cannot be pieced together to make an experience. No copy can be made into an original. This is not because of some special sentimental feeling about consciousness, it's rooted in an a careful consideration of the number of clues that we have about perceptual relativity, authenticity, uniqueness, polarity, multiplicity, automaticity, representation, impersonality, and significance. This is an even bigger deal if I am right about the universe being fundamentally a subdividing capacity for experience rather than a place or theater of interacting objects or forces. It means that we are not our body, rather a body is what someone else's lifetime looks like from inside of your lifetime. It's a token. The mechanisms of the brain do not produce awareness as a product, any more than these combinations of letter produce the thoughts I am communicating. What we see neurons doing is comparable to looking at a satellite picture of a city at night. We can learn a lot about what a city does, but nothing about who lives in the city. A city, like a human body, is a machine when you look at it from a distance, but what we see of a body or a city would be perfectly fine with no awareness happening at all. Insofar as I understand it, I agree with this. I often wonder how a load of atoms can have experiences so to speak. This is the so-called hard problem of AI. It is (I think) addressed by comp. If I'm right, then comp cannot address the hard problem. If we try to make it seem to address it, I think that it would have no choice but to get it exactly wrong. Comp fails because of the symbol grounding problem and the pathetic fallacy. It should be evident from Incompleteness, that no symbol can literally symbolize anything, and that all mathematical systems can only relate to isolated specifics or universal tautologies. Math cannot live because it can't change. It doesn't care. It doesn't know where it's been or where it's going. Comp is only one footprint of the absolute - the generic vacuum which divides experiences from each other. It misses presentation entirely, and so can only be a representation of representation...as Baudrillard would say, a Stage Four Simulacra: The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 11 October 2013 04:54, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. Wow! Molecular experiences! That seems..far out, man. Could you get me some of whatever you're taking? :) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 11 October 2013 11:37, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 4:32:54 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 11 October 2013 04:54, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. Wow! Molecular experiences! That seems..far out, man. Could you get me some of whatever you're taking? :) You mean can I get you some molecules to interact with the molecules of your brain :)? If we have experiences, and we are made of molecules, then what would be the logic of an arbitrary barrier beyond which non-experience suddenly turns into experience? If molecules don't need experiences to build biology, and stem cells don't need experience to build nervous systems and immune systems, then I find it pretty improbable that a particular species of animal would suddenly be the first entities to ever experience any part of the universe in any way, just because it makes it easier to to do the things that every other organism does - find food, reproduce, avoid threats. This is an interesting reversal of the usual argument of people like Daniel Dennett, which goes something like we are made of molecules, molecules can't have experiences, therefore we don't really have experiences, we just think we do. -- Obviously paraphrased to absurdity, but that's the basic idea as far as I can see. Your argument uses the same logic, inverted - we have experiences, we're made of molecules, therefore molecules have experiences! Nice, although I feel that by stopping at molecules you're denying the fact that quarks and electrons obviously have experiences too, and perhaps even free will (Shall I be spin-up or spin down today?) -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Thursday, October 10, 2013 6:53:18 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 11 October 2013 11:37, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Thursday, October 10, 2013 4:32:54 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 11 October 2013 04:54, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some radically different time scale from ours. Wow! Molecular experiences! That seems..far out, man. Could you get me some of whatever you're taking? :) You mean can I get you some molecules to interact with the molecules of your brain :)? If we have experiences, and we are made of molecules, then what would be the logic of an arbitrary barrier beyond which non-experience suddenly turns into experience? If molecules don't need experiences to build biology, and stem cells don't need experience to build nervous systems and immune systems, then I find it pretty improbable that a particular species of animal would suddenly be the first entities to ever experience any part of the universe in any way, just because it makes it easier to to do the things that every other organism does - find food, reproduce, avoid threats. This is an interesting reversal of the usual argument of people like Daniel Dennett, which goes something like we are made of molecules, molecules can't have experiences, therefore we don't really have experiences, we just think we do. -- Obviously paraphrased to absurdity, but that's the basic idea as far as I can see. Your argument uses the same logic, inverted - we have experiences, we're made of molecules, therefore molecules have experiences! Nice, although I feel that by stopping at molecules you're denying the fact that quarks and electrons obviously have experiences too, and perhaps even free will (Shall I be spin-up or spin down today?) I am more inclined to think that quarks and electrons actually *are* the experiences of atoms. When you use your body to use another collection of bodies to tell you about other bodies, what you get is something like the fairy tale of matter (except it's really an anti-fairy tale). As far as I can tell, there is no reason to assume that it is possible for anything other than experiences to exist. Something that is not experienced, and can never be experienced in any way, either directly or indirectly, is indistinguishable in every way from nothing at all. As far as free will goes, my guess is that as we move further from our own scale of perception (I call pereptual inertial frame, because that is exactly what it seems to be) down to the instant of wavefunction collapse, or out to the open ended frame of 'fate', free will and probability are fused together. The dualistic sense that we have that makes our free will seem so personal and the world's causes so impersonal (either mechanistically determined or probabilistic - either way unintentional) is that every inertial frame acts like a lens (metaphorically) to bend the image of experience into this dipole of participation. The only question to me is whether we just happen to be right smack in the middle of this continuum, in the most fertile band where the dipole has grown the most polaraized, or whether that too is a function of perceptual relativity (I call it eigenmorphism http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/6-panpsychism/eigenmorphism/) As far as the Dennett comparison, I think that's reasonable, although I think that it actually makes sense my way, and is absurd Dennet's way, where we just think that there is a such thing as thinking?? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic sensibility, it must have aesthetic sensibility. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:25 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html Humans 1, Robots 0 Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans—and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch—when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks—along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines—share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout—a low-wage job that doesn't require much training—sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year-old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr. Levy said. But it's nowhere near anything like that. You have certain
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
The point is not that they are stupid, its that they are much stupider about aesthetic realities than quantitative measurements, which should be or *at least could be* be a clue that there is much more of a difference between mathematical theory and experienced presence than Comp can possibly consider. This is not generalized from a particular case, it is a pattern which I have seen to be common to all cases, and I think that it is possible to understand that pattern without it being the product of any phobia or bias. I would love computers to be smarter than living organisms, and in some way, they are, but in other ways, it appears that they will never be, and for very good reasons. Craig On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:37:15 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl javascript: wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? Because it's a very straightforward way to use the human brain as a test for how well a machine performs a human task. It's a fair test. Once convenience is at stake, humans lie less. Pinocchio is an excellent example. Suppose there's some TV show that needs a boy to play a role. They would not be happy with Pinocchio, but one day they might be happy with a robot. Then we will know that some progress has been made. So I'm basically challenging the Humans - 1, Machines - 0 assertion. One day the automatic cashier will be able to recognise vegetables better than any human. When this day comes, you will complain that the automatic cashier doesn't really mean it when it wishes you a nice day. More importantly: you set a standard that can never be achieved and then you point out that it wasn't achieved by any artificial entity we throw at you. Then you conclude that this is meaningful evidence for your theory, but it's circular. On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
Citeren Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 09 Oct 2013, at 14:19, Craig Weinberg wrote: The point is not that they are stupid, its that they are much stupider about aesthetic realities than quantitative measurements, which should be or *at least could be* be a clue If that were true ... But you don't really address the critic made against that idea. You seem just to have a prejudice against the possible relation between machines and aesthetic realities. Your argument takes too much into account the actual shape of current machines. that there is much more of a difference between mathematical theory and experienced presence than Comp can possibly consider. ? I keep trying to point to you that there is a mathematical theory of the experienced presence. Of course the mathematical theory itself is not asked to be an experienced presence, but it is a theory about such presence. You confuse the menu and the food. This is not generalized from a particular case, it is a pattern which I have seen to be common to all cases, We cannot see infinitely many examples. I guess you mean that there is a general argument, but you don't provide it. and I think that it is possible to understand that pattern without it being the product of any phobia or bias. I would love computers to be smarter than living organisms, and in some way, they are, but in other ways, it appears that they will never be, and for very good reasons. That we still ignore. As I said, the phenomenology that you describe fits well in the machine's machine qualia theory. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 10:18:12 AM UTC-4, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be javascript:: On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl javascript: wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
This thread reminds me of the following cartoon from: http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/only-humans-cartoon.jpg Jason On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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-li...@**googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-listhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 2:17:34 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: This thread reminds me of the following cartoon from: http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/only-humans-cartoon.jpg Jason On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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-li...@**googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-listhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:52:46 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I don't think that people are machines. A machine is assembled intentionally from unrelated substances to perform a function which is alien to any of the substances. Living organisms are not assembled, they grow from a single cell. They have no unrelated substances and all functions they perform are local to the motives of the organism as a whole. This is an even bigger deal if I am right about the universe being fundamentally a subdividing capacity for experience rather than a place or theater of interacting objects or forces. It means that we are not our body, rather a body is what someone else's lifetime looks like from inside of your lifetime. It's a token. The mechanisms of the brain do not produce awareness as a product, any more than these combinations of letter produce the thoughts I am communicating. What we see neurons doing is comparable to looking at a satellite picture of a city at night. We can learn a lot about what a city does, but nothing about who lives in the city. A city, like a human body, is a machine when you look at it from a distance, but what we see of a body or a city would be perfectly fine with no awareness happening at all. Thanks, Craig -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). Jason -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10 October 2013 13:03, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:52:46 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do,* it's that they can't experience anything.* Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I don't think that people are machines. A machine is assembled intentionally from unrelated substances to perform a function which is alien to any of the substances. Living organisms are not assembled, they grow from a single cell. They have no unrelated substances and all functions they perform are local to the motives of the organism as a whole. I believe that, at least in discussions such as this one, defining people as machines has nothing to do with how or why they are constructed, and eveything to do with ruling out any supernatural components. Anyway, allow me to rephrase the question. I assume from the underlined comment that you think that strong AI is wrong, and that we will never be able to build a conscious computer. How do you come to that conclusion? This is an even bigger deal if I am right about the universe being fundamentally a subdividing capacity for experience rather than a place or theater of interacting objects or forces. It means that we are not our body, rather a body is what someone else's lifetime looks like from inside of your lifetime. It's a token. The mechanisms of the brain do not produce awareness as a product, any more than these combinations of letter produce the thoughts I am communicating. What we see neurons doing is comparable to looking at a satellite picture of a city at night. We can learn a lot about what a city does, but nothing about who lives in the city. A city, like a human body, is a machine when you look at it from a distance, but what we see of a body or a city would be perfectly fine with no awareness happening at all. Insofar as I understand it, I agree with this. I often wonder how a load of atoms can have experiences so to speak. This is the so-called hard problem of AI. It is (I think) addressed by comp. -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
Citeren Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans--and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year-old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr. Levy said. But it's nowhere near anything like that. You have certain computerized enhancements for simple images, but nothing like a real CT scan can be read by a
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10/8/2013 1:22 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. So when the check-out robot can recognize okra - which the cashiers always have to look up - you'll agree that robots have aesthetic sensibilty. Craig You can't expect a machine with the computational capabilities of less than an insect brain to the job most people do. And they don't even give the machine two weeks to learn. It's actually amazing that such machines can do quite a lot, but some tasks we perform are the result of a significant part of our brain power. Most of the problem is in recognizing 3D objects. It may prove easier to create sniffers and chemical detectors. I'll bet my dog could tell papaya from mango blindfolded. Brent -- 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.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 4:33:32 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 10/8/2013 1:22 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl javascript: wrote: A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers don't understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A mechanical description of a function is not the same thing as participating in an experience. So when the check-out robot can recognize okra - which the cashiers always have to look up - you'll agree that robots have aesthetic sensibilty. Aesthetic sensibility is not something that we can agree that something has except for ourselves. I mention aesthetic sensibility because the things that computers fail at in the article are related to sensation and the fact that it is different from states of computation. Similarly, a traffic signal is not the same thing as a traffic cop, even if they perform the same function relative to the flow of traffic. We get a robot to identify something which matches a description as 'okra' in the most primitive sense of matching, but that doesn't mean that it has any sense of what it is. A weighted picture of okra, or some plastic okra would probably do just as well. Craig You can't expect a machine with the computational capabilities of less than an insect brain to the job most people do. And they don't even give the machine two weeks to learn. It's actually amazing that such machines can do quite a lot, but some tasks we perform are the result of a significant part of our brain power. Most of the problem is in recognizing 3D objects. It may prove easier to create sniffers and chemical detectors. I'll bet my dog could tell papaya from mango blindfolded. Brent -- 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.
