LOL!! I'll take that one too... :DI’ll take that :)
Or, as I like to put it... No model of reality is any dafter than the one you currently favour.
LOL!! I'll take that one too... :DI’ll take that :)
Or, as I like to put it... No model of reality is any dafter than the one you currently favour.
Well if quantum computers ever became a reality, I suppose a robot could have one on board! I think this argument is essentially just semantics.I get your point, but in common parlance, a robot is not biological (certainly not natural) at all. Since Physics is also an artifact, and is always evolving, physics all the way down doesn't rule much out. Standard physics ceased to be deterministic a century ago, and whether or not an account of consciousness requires post-classical physics (or quantum computation), it need not be "mechanical" (or deterministic).
The trouble is, in the early days of computers people thought that accurately adding up columns of numbers in seconds (remember they were orders of magnitude slower than modern computers) showed these machines were intelligent. Just because a gadget, designed by a human, seems to do something intelligent, doesn't mean it is the source of the intelligence. As a software developer I feel that statement very directly.A computer playing chess is "intelligent" in my lexicon, and I don't suppose it plays the game consciously, but I have no way of knowing really.
There was a time when many scientists only attributed humans with consciousness - as if that in any way reduced the mystery of consciousness. I tend to think consciousness goes all the way down:I suppose you write both consciously and intelligently. A spider hunts prey intelligently and may hunt consciously. A computer plays chess intelligently and unconsciously. I suppose so anyway. I can only suppose so. I can't observe another being's consciousness, as far as I know.
To the best of my knowledge, the term CELL INTELLIGENCE was coined by Nels Quevli in the year 1916 in his book entitled "Cell intelligence: The cause of growth, heredity and instinctive actions, illustrating that the cell is a conscious, intelligent being, and, by reason thereof, plans and builds all plants and animals in the same manner that man constructs houses, railroads and other structures."
Well this is possibly the heart of the matter - QM tells us that endless interactions start out as a wave function that contains several possible outcomes, and at some (poorly specified!) point this resolves into one of those possibilities. On the face of it, that would combine with chaos, which amplifies small changes to macroscopic levels, to produce useless random behaviour. Indeed if some alien intelligence were examining our makeup, it might use this to prove that we could not be intelligent!I doubt that you could. With or without QM, complex dynamic systems are chaotic. We carefully, laboriously, tediously construct artificial systems to be predictable. I do it for a living and spend most of my time debugging (making unpredictable machinery predictable).
Yes, but doesn't that argument make you doubt that the brain can do any better? Since they obviously do, doesn't that suggest to you that it doesn't work as you think it does?If you could really build the machine you imagine, maybe it would, but we're discussing science fiction here. In reality, you can't even predict the trajectory of three bodies interacting gravitationally (classical gravity) indefinitely, and I suppose the three body system is unconscious, so the question of consciousness has little to do with predictability.
Well this is what the philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the 'Hard Problem', I expect you know the argument, and it seems to me to point in the direction I prefer - that reality is composed of a combination of matter and 'mental stuff', and that it is irreducible to a purely physical description.How any system feels is not something I can know. I can't even know how you feel. I can read a symbolic description of your feelings and interpret it in terms of my feelings, but I seem limited to this experience of your feelings.
Well yes, and I suppose at heart this is what Skeptiko (or at least the non-political part!) is all about. The thing is, that once you even suspect there is a non-material aspect to life, you don't find it hard to find the evidence - normally that evidence is just dismissed because it is inconsistent with the purely mechanistic view of life - a circular argument if ever the was one!. The main evidence for a non-material mind can be found in:An equation (or algorithm) is an abstraction. An actual machine somehow simulating my brain's information processing is necessarily concrete. It is material and occupies space and time. It is "algorithmic" only in the sense that an isomorphism exists between the symbols of an abstract system and concrete, material objects interacting in space and time. How can consciousness arise from such a thing? I don't know. That's what I'm here to discuss.
I try to avoid the word 'soul' it carries too much baggage. I think the problem is that science grew up investigating matter and not mind, for the simple reason that studying the mind was liable to get a researcher burned at the stake.If you're suggesting that consciousness cannot arise from matter occupying space and time, I'm curious to know your alternative, but simply naming an otherwise mysterious "stuff of souls" distinct from material stuff (as in Cartesian dualism) doesn't add much to my understanding. I already have the word "consciousness", and I don't object to "soul", but the word doesn't get me one step closer to a disembodied or immortal consciousness or an explanation of near death experiences.
I have no problem using the word "intelligent" this way, but again, I distinguish intelligence from consciousness, and people using "intelligence" in the context of "artificial intelligence" typically make this distinction. Words mean only what people commonly mean by them.The trouble is, in the early days of computers people thought that accurately adding up columns of numbers in seconds (remember they were orders of magnitude slower than modern computers) showed these machines were intelligent.
If you're saying that describing complex information processing with the word "intelligence" is "wrong", you're the one arguing semantics. I'm only using the word "intelligent" as a large class of people commonly use it. I'm not asserting anything fundamental about how brains operate or consciousness emerges.Just because a gadget, designed by a human, seems to do something intelligent, doesn't mean it is the source of the intelligence.
A portia (spider) could be conscious. I don't pretend to know. I do pretend to know that dogs are conscious.There was a time when many scientists only attributed humans with consciousness - as if that in any way reduced the mystery of consciousness.
He seems to think so, but equating the two is not common in the "artificial intelligence" context. I suppose a cell could be conscious in some sense, but I don't pretend to know. I do pretend to know that a cell is "intelligent", because I define "intelligence" as complex information processing isomorphic to a Turing Machine, and Turing himself recognized that biological organisms process information this way.I tend to think that the author thinks intelligence and consciousness are the same thing because it contains this quote:
Chaos and non-determinism do not imply useless behavior, only unpredictable behavior. Human behavior is notoriously unpredictable, but we are useful to one another.On the face of it, that would combine with chaos, which amplifies small changes to macroscopic levels, to produce useless random behaviour.
Proving anything "not intelligent" requires a rigorous definition of "intelligence". I have a rigorous definition of "intelligence", but I have no rigorous definition of "consciousness". I only know it when I experience it.Indeed if some alien intelligence were examining our makeup, it might use this to prove that we could not be intelligent!
Architects of QM wanted to incorporate observation (in the conventional sense of an experimenter observing the outcome of an experiment) directly into the theory, but I doubt that they ever intended to explain consciousness. Certainly, Schrodinger did not.However, I have come to suspect that, the early quantum pioneers were right to formulate (one interpretation of) QM in terms of 'observers'.
My vision seems dependent on a lens focusing photons on an optic nerve, but I'm not conscious of the photons. I'm conscious of objects outside of my head (presumably of a model of the outside of my head constructed within my head). Quantum mechanical interactions are certainly involved, but I don't know how they're involved in consciousness. I do know how classical information processing systems can model objects outside of my head.If indeed our consciousness is independent of our brains, one way it could interact with the brain would be by those observations.
You don't use the word "intelligence" as I do. When I solve a differential equation, do I only exhibit intelligence in the person of my calculus instructor?My feeling is that machines or computer programs only exhibit the intelligence that was in the people who designed them.
I don't know how a brain works. I have a very crude idea of how a brain processes information in very limited applications.Yes, but doesn't that argument make you doubt that the brain can do any better? Since they obviously do, doesn't that suggest to you that it doesn't work as you think it does?
I don't accept Cartesian dualism, but I don't reject it either. If "mental stuff" distinguishable from matter exists, it need not be separable from matter, and the organization of mental stuff and matter constituting my singular consciousness need not survive disintegration of the organization. The hypothetical "mental stuff" doesn't increase my understanding much. Like "dark matter", it's more of a label for something I don't understand.Well this is what the philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the 'Hard Problem', I expect you know the argument, and it seems to me to point in the direction I prefer - that reality is composed of a combination of matter and 'mental stuff', and that it is irreducible to a purely physical description.
But once you suspect there is a soul, you find voluminous evidence for one, and testimony to this evidence is the baggage. NDEs, OBEs and the rest are evidence of something. I've had vivid dreams and lucid dreams as well as waking consciousness, and I "hear voices" and experience something like "multiple personalities", but the only evidence I've seen for telepathy and reincarnation is very sketchy. Why is it so sketchy? If telepathy exists, why are controlled experiments so difficult? Radio communication was once as inconceivable, but hardly anyone doubts it now, because we all experience it routinely. Why is telepathy different?I try to avoid the word 'soul' it carries too much baggage.
Science didn't grow up investigating quantum mechanical waves, and the waves are not "material". Descriptions of the phenomenon emerged from science.I think the problem is that science grew up investigating matter and not mind, for the simple reason that studying the mind was liable to get a researcher burned at the stake.
Minds and brains are complex. Treating plant disease can also be difficult.Our understanding of mind is pretty damn limited - which is reflected in the difficulty doctors have in effectively treating people with mental problems.
I don't claim that computers are or ever will be conscious, but since I don't understand consciousness, I don't know what does or does not make sense about it. I don't understand "timeless theorems", but computers were mechanical theorem provers from the outset, i.e. Turing developed his "machine" to address Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem. I don't know either why a computer (inorganic or otherwise) can't be conscious or how it could be.BTW did you take on board my argument that a computer - or anything isomorphic with a computer - can be said to simply check timeless theorems - so computer consciousness doesn't make sense?
I too distinguish the concepts of intelligence and consciousness, all I am saying is that I doubt intelligence exists without consciousness.I have no problem using the word "intelligent" this way, but again, I distinguish intelligence from consciousness, and people using "intelligence" in the context of "artificial intelligence" typically make this distinction. Words mean only what people commonly mean by them.
Agreed, and I know cats are conscious too!A portia (spider) could be conscious. I don't pretend to know. I do pretend to know that dogs are conscious.
To see some of the problems with Darwinian selection in the context of DNA (remember that Darwin knew nothing about what genes were made of) read Behe's book. Evolution by RM+NS isn't tennable. Most of the books from the Discovery Institute are technical books for intelligent laymen, and they also publish scientific papers. I like the Discovery Institute because I think they are getting at a basic truth - we did not evolve by RM+NS - but I want to emphasise, I am not a Christian, nor do I belong to any other faith.I also have no problem saying that cells exhibit "intelligence", but I'm not saying anything about consciousness. I'll say that life is "intelligently designed", but I'm not saying anything about an anthropomorphic Creator, conscious or otherwise. I'm using "intelligence" in the way that AI proponents use the word (and being Darwinian), because Evolution by Natural Selection is a model of computation in the way that the Non-deterministic Turing Machine is one.
I'd rather keep the two terms distinct but propose that intelligence implies consciousness (to repeat my self). That means I would argue that the artefacts that are currently called 'Intelligent' merely expose the cleverness of their creators. I mean on that basis, you might as well call a mechanical wrist watch intelligent!He seems to think so, but equating the two is not common in the "artificial intelligence" context.
Yes, but we want our bodies to do something for a specific purpose - anything else is useless in that context. You might be able tu use chaotic behaviour for some purpose, but that would be because you had analysed it in depth before hand.Chaos and non-determinism do not imply useless behavior, only unpredictable behavior. Human behavior is notoriously unpredictable, but we are useful to one another.
Unlike the average religious site, we aren't really interested in certaintity. Consciousness is certainly hard to define, and any definition seems to detract from the real meaning of the word. My feeling is that intelligence is equally hard to define if you want to apply it to specific objects:Proving anything "not intelligent" requires a rigorous definition of "intelligence". I have a rigorous definition of "intelligence", but I have no rigorous definition of "consciousness". I only know it when I experience it.
This gives you some idea of the range of their views. The important thing to realise is that since that time QM has become, if anything even stranger with entanglement (that Einstein thought would prove QM wrong and wave functions that are collapsed after the particle they describe has reached the detector!Architects of QM wanted to incorporate observation (in the conventional sense of an experimenter observing the outcome of an experiment) directly into the theory, but I doubt that they ever intended to explain consciousness. Certainly, Schrodinger did not.
Hang on, it is far from clear when the wave function collapses. There is even an interpretation of QM, the Many Worlds interpretation which denies that the wave function ever collapses - at the expense of an ever multiplying set of copies reality!A quantum's wave function collapses upon interaction with another quantum, and this sort of interaction is necessary for an experimental observation. We can say that one quantum "observes" the other without an experimenter present, but this "observation" has no obvious relationship with consciousness.
Well if your instructor just gave you a formula for a number of differential equations, and you did a lookup, then he would be intelligent. However, if you learn the theory of differential equations and apply it to a particular problem, then I would say the intelligence is shared. By contrast, computers can follow a fixed algorithm to differentiate an expression, so that does not require intelligence. Most of an engineer's intelligence is used choosing the equations plus any approximations and boundary conditions.You don't use the word "intelligence" as I do. When I solve a differential equation, do I only exhibit intelligence in the person of my calculus instructor?
Well doesn't your crude conception admit of the possibility that the process could be implemented on a computer?I don't know how a brain works. I have a very crude idea of how a brain processes information in very limited applications.
Well I hope you can keep the voices and personalities under control. There are websites and support groups for people who manage those symptoms without drugs.But once you suspect there is a soul, you find voluminous evidence for one, and testimony to this evidence is the baggage. NDEs, OBEs and the rest are evidence of something. I've had vivid dreams and lucid dreams as well as waking consciousness, and I "hear voices" and experience something like "multiple personalities", but the only evidence I've seen for telepathy and reincarnation is very sketchy. Why is it so sketchy? If telepathy exists, why are controlled experiments so difficult? Radio communication was once as inconceivable, but hardly anyone doubts it now, because we all experience it routinely. Why is telepathy different?
I don't claim that computers are or ever will be conscious, but since I don't understand consciousness, I don't know what does or does not make sense about it. Computers were mechanical theorem provers from the outset, but I don't know either why they can't be conscious or how they could be.
My love for my children goes what's beyond biologically necessary... most parents experience the same.How do I know how much is biologically necessary?
Suppose a robot on wheels is programmed to roll around on the floor of an empty room, stopping at walls and turning to explore in a new direction until a green circle appears in the image captured by its camera/eye or until it has fully explored the room. I call this robot "intelligent" and "intentional". It intends to find a green circle.One reason for saying that, is that for something to show intelligence, it has to have intention (sometimes referred to as agency).
Saying so only defines "intent" without implying consciousness.I piece of machinery only grinds its way through a sequence of tasks - it does not intend to do anything. To say otherwise anthropomorphises a bit of electronics!
I haven't read the book, but I'm not convinced that Behe establishes irreducible complexity or the necessity of an anthropomorphically (or conscious) intelligent designer of living forms. Gaia (or the Earth's biosphere understood as a single organism) is certainly intelligent in the sense of "intelligence" I'm discussing here, and I can believe that She is conscious in some sense, but I have no way of knowing. I'm reasonably sure that She doesn't experience a stream of consciousness in Hebrew or literally speak to men through burning bushes, and I'm keenly aware that referring to Her as "She" is anthropomorphic. I have no problem with allegory (or traditional theology) as long as we understand what we're doing.Evolution by RM+NS isn't tenable.
Google "smart watch". Words mean what people commonly mean by them.I mean on that basis, you might as well call a mechanical wrist watch intelligent!
When a bird plucks a worm from the ground and drops it into her chick's mouth, she is useful to to the chick whether or not she consciously intends to be.Yes, but we want our bodies to do something for a specific purpose - anything else is useless in that context.
I'm interested in logical rigor. I can be certain (or close enough) that the Pythagorean theorem follows logically from Euclid's postulates, even if it doesn't follow without the Fifth and even if a coherent and useful geometry is possible without the Fifth. I can't be certain of very much, but I can be a careful thinker.Unlike the average religious site, we aren't really interested in certainty.
I define "intelligence" simply (though an intelligence can be highly complex) and leave all of the difficulty in the definition of "consciousness". Both the watch and the watchmaker may be intelligent, even if the watchmaker is blind. I withhold judgement on the consciousness of either ... unless I'm the watchmaker myself.My feeling is that intelligence is equally hard to define if you want to apply it to specific objects:
This gives you some idea of the range of their views.
Entanglement only implies non-locality, not the necessity of a conscious observer for wave function collapse. Einstein's problem was "spooky action at a distance" not conscious spooks in the machinery. Non-locality also seems spooky to me, but it has nothing obviously to do with consciousness, and entangled states are extremely fragile (thus the difficulty of quantum computing), so entanglement doesn't seem a likely mechanism for telepathy.The important thing to realize is that since that time QM has become, if anything even stranger with entanglement (that Einstein thought would prove QM wrong and wave functions that are collapsed after the particle they describe has reached the detector!
If speculating on the state of the cat is unscientific, Many Worlds is not even wrong.Hang on, it is far from clear when the wave function collapses. There is even an interpretation of QM, the Many Worlds interpretation which denies that the wave function ever collapses - at the expense of an ever multiplying set of copies reality!
Intelligence is algorithmic in my way of thinking, but again, we're arguing over the meaning of a word here. Human intelligence far surpasses artificial intelligence in many respects, and it may differ in kind from artificial intelligence, but artificial intelligence is still evolving rapidly, and I don't know its limits.By contrast, computers can follow a fixed algorithm to differentiate an expression, so that does not require intelligence.
Everything a brain does on any existing computer? No. If "computer" describes any artifact yet to exist, I don't know. Maybe quantum computers will factor primes that no classical computer can factor. I'm skeptical of this outcome, but experts believe the theory worth exploring. If quantum supremacy is achieved, would you also say that a quantum computer cannot be conscious or even intelligent?Well doesn't your crude conception admit of the possibility that the process could be implemented on a computer?
I've managed well enough for 57 years.Well I hope you can keep the voices and personalities under control. There are websites and support groups for people who manage those symptoms without drugs.
I'm open to the data, but any data set has many possible interpretations.It is estimated that about 10% of people who are revived from cardiac arrest have some sort of NDE! That is an incredible amount of data.
People defecate while dying even more frequently. Natural selection need not account for it. RM+NS is not a theory of everything.There is absolutely no sensible theory as to how such a brain mechanism could evolve via RM+NS - I mean in the wild any animal that was that far gone is incredibly unlikely to revive and pass on its genes!
Skeptics also demand more and more rigorous tests of spooky action at a distance, and physicists happily comply.Telepathy experiments are mainly difficult because sceptics keep demanding more and more rigorous controls.
If two brains naturally communicate electromagnetically, I'd still call it telepathy, and this mechanism seems more likely than anything involving entanglement. If we don't discover natural, electromagnetic telepathy, we'll create it artificially soon enough. I'll add Radin's book to a long list, but I know too much about Quantum Mechanics to be encouraged by the title.For example in the best experiments either the sender or receiver is placed in a Faraday cage just in case their brains communicate by electromagnetic means.
I define "intelligence" very narrowly but define "religion" very broadly. Everyone belongs to a religion.As I said, the word 'soul' comes with loads of baggage. It is a daft word to use if you don't belong to a religion.
I'll take your word for it, but I still don't know how much is biologically necessary.My love for my children goes what's beyond biologically necessary... most parents experience the same.
That's not in the article you quote.
I am equating intelligence with computation, but I don't seem to be extending Wolfram. I haven't read the book, but "computational equivalence" sounds like the Church-Turing thesis, and Wikipedia summarizes Wolfram's conclusions as follows.What you are defining as 'intelligence' - both Deutsche and Wolfram define as 'computation'.
Wikipedia said:At the deepest level, Wolfram argues that—like many of the most important scientific ideas—the principle of computational equivalence allows science to be more general by pointing out new ways in which humans are not "special"; that is, it has been claimed that the complexity of human intelligence makes us special, but the Principle asserts otherwise. In a sense, many of Wolfram's ideas are based on understanding the scientific process—including the human mind—as operating within the same universe it studies, rather than being outside it.
I am equating intelligence with computation, but I don't seem to be extending Wolfram. I haven't read the book, but "computational equivalence" sounds like the Church-Turing thesis, and Wikipedia summarizes Wolfram's conclusions as follows.
Even quantum computation doesn't violate this equivalence principle, i.e. a quantum computer can't in principle compute any function that a Turing machine cannot compute though quantum computers might in principle compute functions that are intractable for classical computers. The classical computer may require more time, by orders of magnitude, than a quantum computer to solve some problems, but the models of computation are nonetheless equivalent in the sense of the Church-Turing thesis, and Wolfram apparently assumes that human mental processes are also equivalent.
I don't assume that the human mind is equivalent to a Turing machine (in the sense of the Church-Turing thesis), because minds are conscious, and computers may not be. I don't know that they cannot be conscious, but I don't know how they can be either. If a Turing machine or its equivalent (realized in silicon or whatever) cannot, even in principle, be conscious, then human minds are more than intelligent (in the sense of "intelligence" I'm using), but I don't assume this principle. I'm an agnostic on this point.
The whole point of distinguishing intelligence from consciousness, as I do here, is to avoid equating conscious minds with machines that may not have subjective experiences, even in principle, but may nonetheless effectively compute what brains compute. "Artificial intelligence" is already firmly entrenched in the lexicon, and common usage of a word is what the word means definitively; however, recognizing "intelligence" in feats that machines now perform, like playing chess, does not imply much about consciousness, even if unconscious machines play better chess than any conscious mind. Even an apparently "creative" machine need not be conscious.
Irreducible complexity is one argument, but Behe introduces a second one. I had a go at explaining the essence of Behe's argument (try to read the whole thread), but Behe's book is the place to go.Suppose a robot on wheels is programmed to roll around on the floor of an empty room, stopping at walls and turning to explore in a new direction until a green circle appears in the image captured by its camera/eye or until it has fully explored the room. I call this robot "intelligent" and "intentional". It intends to find a green circle.
Suppose a green circle appears on the robot itself below the camera, and suppose a mirror hangs on a wall of the room. While exploring the room, the robot approaches the mirror, and the reflection of the green circle appears in its camera. The robot stops in front of the mirror gazing at its own reflection. I call the robot "self-aware", but this "awareness" has nothing to do with consciousness. On the other hand, if a spider is conscious in some primitive sense, I don't know why this robot cannot be. I don't know how it can be either.
Saying so only defines "intent" without implying consciousness.
I'm not denying consciousness here. I'm as certain of my own consciousness as of anything, but it is a mystery, so I don't have much language to describe it.
I haven't read the book, but I'm not convinced that Behe establishes irreducible complexity or the necessity of an anthropomorphically (or conscious) intelligent designer of living forms.
So does a wrist watch intend to keep time, does the water in a stream intend to flow down hill, does a photon intend to travel at the speed c - at least in a vacuum.Gaia (or the Earth's biosphere understood as a single organism) is certainly intelligent in the sense of "intelligence" I'm discussing here, and I can believe that She is conscious in some sense, but I have no way of knowing. I'm reasonably sure that She doesn't experience a stream of consciousness in Hebrew or literally speak to men through burning bushes, and I'm keenly aware that referring to Her as "She" is anthropomorphic. I have no problem with allegory (or traditional theology) as long as we understand what we're doing.
Right, but sometimes when confronted with real mysteries it is better to explore rather than try to deduce stuff logically.I'm interested in logical rigor. I can be certain (or close enough) that the Pythagorean theorem follows logically from Euclid's postulates, even if it doesn't follow without the Fifth and even if a coherent and useful geometry is possible without the Fifth. I can't be certain of very much, but I can be a careful thinker.
Good - I have read that many people cope with their voices by themselves without invoking medical help and possibly being fed strong drugs. I hope things continue to go well for you.I've managed well enough for 57 years.
Yes, but that is merely a continuation of an existing process. The NDE is a hugely elaborate phenomenon, and even if you call it an hallucination it must involve the coordinated effort of a lot of neurones. When people become delirious, they rarely remember anything afterwards. People have been tested and shown to remember their NDE's unchanged many years after the incident.I'm open to the data, but any data set has many possible interpretations.
People defecate while dying even more frequently. Natural selection need not account for it. RM+NS is not a theory of everything.
Er, not exactly, psi research is poorly funded, and electromagnetically shielded rooms and the like don't come cheap.Skeptics also demand more and more rigorous tests of spooky action at a distance, and physicists happily comply.
Again lets not get wrapped up in semantics - the usual aim in telepathy experiments is to rule out communication by any known means. Ruling out entanglement is probably a bit difficult, but actually, standard QM rules prevent information passing in entanglement experiments - the entanglement is only detected statistically when both sets of results are compared.If two brains naturally communicate electromagnetically, I'd still call it telepathy, and this mechanism seems more likely than anything involving entanglement. If we don't discover natural, electromagnetic telepathy, we'll create it artificially soon enough.
Well I used QM as part of my Chemistry PhD, so I knew non-relativistic QM reasonably well - but the details of the calculations are a bit rusty by now (age 69). I know people use the term 'quantum' loosely nowadays, but that fact remains that the strange structure of QM with a wave function whose point of collapse is extremely hard to settle, may well lie at the heart of the consciousness puzzle. One thing that struck me, was that without something with a wave structure disrupting classical physics, there didn't seem any good reason why molecules or atoms should have particular properties - no eigenvalues - they would be like solar systems - every one is presumably different in detail. I know there were other problems that QM cleared up as well, but that, to me, is the most striking. A chemist tends to think of electrons as waves first, and particles second!I'll add Radin's book to a long list, but I know too much about Quantum Mechanics to be encouraged by the title.
Even an apparently creative machine need not be conscious. Being conscious of one's own creativity does not imply that consciousness is necessary for creativity any more than being conscious of playing chess implies the necessity of consciousness to play chess. I'm old enough to remember claims that unconscious machinery could never defeat consciously creative, human players at chess. These claims are now empirically false. It's now harder to say what a conscious mind can do that a presumably unconscious machine cannot do, aside from being conscious, but consciousness is not less remarkable for this reason.
But even if a classical computer cannot be conscious, and even if a quantum computer can't be conscious either, this conclusion doesn't imply much about OBEs or NDEs or distinguish these experiences from vivid dreams, even if scant evidence suggests that telepathic communication or other paranormal signals somehow inform the experiences. Whatever can be conscious seems nonetheless mortal and confined to a material body, at least in my subjective experience. I'd be happier believing otherwise, but I'm most skeptical of the happiest assumptions. It's a sad way of thinking, and I'm not recommending it here, only describing it, but I don't think I can escape it at this point.
Right, and this is what makes it so hard to define what is or is not AI - I mean, although it would be pointless, you could devise an algorithm that would spot when Gauss' algorithm was applicable and print out, "Aha - this is a quick way to do that problem!"The sign of true intelligence is being able to solve problems without having to use an algorithm. I'll give an example, attributed to Gauss, who was asked at school to add all the numbers from 1 to 100, and did so in so short a time that he shocked the teacher. Everyone else followed the usual algorithmic route, adding the numbers one at a time. But Gauss had the insight that adding 100 to 1, 99 to 2, 98 to 3 and so on until he got to adding 1 to 100 would give him twice the sum he wanted. IOW, (100 x101)/2 would give him the answer. That's easy enough to do in your head: 10,100/2 = 5050.
Seriously? Do you actually believe what you have written here?Suppose a robot on wheels is programmed to roll around on the floor of an empty room, stopping at walls and turning to explore in a new direction until a green circle appears in the image captured by its camera/eye or until it has fully explored the room. I call this robot "intelligent" and "intentional". It intends to find a green circle.
"The robot stops in front of the mirror gazing at its own reflection. " - I think you're veering into the poetic here. What it is actually doing is receiving reflected photons and processing them according to the capabilities of the receiving sensor(s) and whatever algorithm has been programmed into it. Most likely it will merely calculate some value which symbolises that this is not a green circle.Suppose a green circle appears on the robot itself below the camera, and suppose a mirror hangs on a wall of the room. While exploring the room, the robot approaches the mirror, and the reflection of the green circle appears in its camera. The robot stops in front of the mirror gazing at its own reflection. I call the robot "self-aware", but this "awareness" has nothing to do with consciousness. On the other hand, if a spider is conscious in some primitive sense, I don't know why this robot cannot be. I don't know how it can be either.
Yes.Seriously? Do you actually believe what you have written here?
The designers' parents (and others) intended to conceive, gestate, bear, feed, clothe, house and train the designers.The designers intended to build a robot, and to have it programmed to carry out a sequence of operations.
"No more intelligent or intentional than an alarm clock" does not imply "not intelligent or intentional", and your statement is clearly false. Alarm clocks don't navigate rooms or recognize green circles, so the robot is more intelligent than an alarm clock in this sense. You want to conflate intelligence with conscious perception, but my whole point here is not to do so.The robot is no more intelligent or intentional than an alarm clock which is programmed to sound an alarm at a specified time.
I'm not asserting anything profound or absurd. I'm only explaining a use of the word "intent". You're insisting that the word implies more than I intend, but it's only a word, a sequence of symbols representing something else.To claim that the clock intends to wake you up is absurdity, a nonsensical attribution of human-like capabilities to a machine.
If one uses the word as I do, a steam locomotive "intends" to haul its load. Using the word this way implies no belief about a train's conscious state. This belief is yours, not mine.If one follows this line of belief, then a steam locomotive intends to haul its load.
Everything moves according to laws of mechanics.It doesn't have intention, it simply moves according to the laws of mechanics.
Poetry aside, I don't intend any conscious perception by "gaze". I'm not trying to convince you that any robot consciously perceives anything. The robot presumably does not consciously perceive anything. That's my point."The robot stops in front of the mirror gazing at its own reflection. " - I think you're veering into the poetic here.
Sure. My brain does these things. I'm not suggesting that it does only these things, but it does these things.What it is actually doing is receiving reflected photons and processing them according to the capabilities of the receiving sensor(s) and whatever algorithm has been programmed into it.
Merely? Savannah man might have called this robot "miraculous", but I'm not calling anything miraculous.Most likely it will merely calculate some value which symbolises that this is not a green circle.
You're already telling me what I'll tell you next rather than accepting my own description of my intent.Next you'll be telling us that it smiles with approval at how good-looking it is.
Nothing I've said about the robot is fantastic. The fantastic leaps are yours, not mine.I don't know where you normally engage in such fantasies, but a serious discussion forum is not the place for them.
Specifying such a game would impress a lot of people.Possibly, not all games could be modelled algorithmically, and those that couldn't would probably be playable only by human beings with human minds.
Algorithms are abstractions. Consciousness only exists in concrete, material beings as far as I know.There's no consciousness whatsoever in a programmed algorithm, except insofar as the algorithm models the ingenuity of the programmer.
It's a very common name regardless. You're free to reject any term you don't like.This is why I reject the term "artificial intelligence" -- It's a complete misnomer.
Comparing a computer to a brick seems even more of a stretch than comparing a computer to a brain, but either comparison is a stretch.Computers are thick as bricks, ...
"Hasn't the faintest idea" seems to imply something about the computer's conscious state. A computer playing chess could explain a move in natural language. The algorithm constructing this explanation presumably is even more complex than the algorithm constructing the move, but enacting either algorithm implies no consciousness.You can't ask a computer what it is doing when playing chess or why it is playing chess -- it hasn't the faintest idea.
Computers are not fundamentally serial, but operating on many instructions in parallel doesn't seem to explain consciousness either.It only operates on one instruction at a time: if you like, its "intelligence" is limited to the breadth of the one instruction it's currently dealing with.
"True memory" supposes some ultimate authority over use of the word "memory".Likewise, its "memory" isn't truly memory, so much as a number of locations, in one of which it can place any intermediate value it may be currently generating.
This statement makes no sense to me. Computers operate long after their programmers are dead.The overall program never exists in the computer, only in the mind of the programmer.
This is basically Searle's argument, but I don't know how the animal's conscious awareness of the pattern it follows is relevant to anything. Animals routinely follow trails of food, whether or not an experimenter lays out the trail. Is an animal less intelligent because an experimenter lays out the trail of food it follows? Distinguishing the experimenter's intelligence from the animal's intelligence makes sense, but following a trail of food is not therefore "unintelligent".I have the analogy of an animal following a line of small objects placed by an experimenter on the ground. Some of the objects are edible and others aren't. The animal eats the ones that are, and ignores those that aren't; it has no idea that when it eats the edible objects, it will end up creating a pattern predetermined by the experimenter.
It's a fair description, but "computer" in this context seems to mean a general purpose computer (equivalent to a Universal Turing Machine) rather than a computer running a debugged program playing chess for example. A computer "obeys" its program, but most people would not say that a grandmaster chess player is "moronic". Human grandmasters aren't born playing chess. They learn to play and also obey rules.As one of the guys who taught me programming said on the first day of class, his nickname for a computer was a "TOM" -- or "Totally Obedient Moron".
That's a big advantage, but brains also do things (like contrive algorithms) orders of magnitude faster than any (existing) computer can do them. Maybe this limitation of computers is fundamental and linked somehow to conscious states that computers can never experience. I don't pretend to know.Its only advantage is that it can do what it does orders of magnitude faster than we can.
No one is disputing the genius of human beings here. I don't know to what extent artifacts will ultimately exceed the abilities of their creators.The genius is in the programmer, who can use his intelligence and ingenuity to design his algorithm in a way that will solve a problem he wants to solve, one small step at a time.
How do you know that Gauss used no algorithm to contrive his solution (which is itself an algorithm)?The sign of true intelligence is being able to solve problems without having to use an algorithm.
I don't pretend to know, because I don't understand human creativity well enough, even if I can perform the feat myself.... the first time it was done required insight and intelligence. This is what human beings can do and computers can't, nor ever will be able to.
That's true tautologically, but since I don't know how Gauss arrived at his solution, I don't know what sort of algorithm might have been involved. "His goddess told him" doesn't explain much. "Consciousness did it" doesn't explain much either.They're forever bound within the restrictions of their programmed algorithms.
I'm less concerned with who (or what) gets the credit.It's possible, I suppose, that very occasionally a programmer might unwittingly or by mistake specify doing something that led to a surprising and useful result, but the computer wouldn't be responsible for that, the programmer would.
"Artificial intelligence" describes what it describes. It's only a pair of words. No one claims that artifacts can do everything that human brains do. Some people imagine artifacts doing so in the future, but that's science fiction, like time travel and similar magic.It surprises me that anyone could ever think so, or that anyone would coin the term "artificial intelligence".
I don't know how Gauss came up with his solution, but "intelligence" is a word. Words have common meanings, not true meanings.No one knows how we come up with new ideas, which is true intelligence:
Spiders (as well as human beings) are clearly born with algorithms that no human programmer constructed. According to arachnologists, some spiders (like the portia) exhibit creativity, however primitive, but I doubt that a portia's creativity differs fundamentally from other, more "mechanical" spider behavior.It's an absolute requirement that to algorithmise something, you have to a) completely understand it and b) be able to break it down into computable steps or instructions.
Someone will explain why it isn't truly innovative.If anyone ever comes up with an algorithm that can innovate, ...
Gaia (the biosphere, conscious or not, mechanical or not) does it even better. Human beings create computers that don't impress you. Gaia creates human beings.The only thing I'm aware of that can do it is a human being; ...
I don't know how anything can be conscious. I only know that I am. My ignorance of a mechanism is not evidence against the possibility, but I don't assume a mechanical (or materialistic) explanation. I have no explanation at all.I don't think it's a case of "even if a classical computer cannot be conscious...". IMO, it can't possibly be conscious, full stop.
I suppose I want to persist in the future, rather than die today, because Gaia programmed me this way. Wishing for immortality is like assuming the possibility of six apples upon seeing five apples. We imagine an infinity of "numbers" similarly.I don't quite understand why you think it's sad to think that consciousness is "mortal and confined to a material body" or why you'd like to believe otherwise.
Comparing a computer to a brick seems even more of a stretch than comparing a computer to a brain, but either comparison is a stretch.
I don't know how much you know about computers, so let me enlighten you a little.I don't assume that a human mind is generally equivalent to a Turing machine even if the two are computationally equivalent, because minds are conscious, and computers may not be.