Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

At this point you have passed beyond Dominions 3 geekiness level and there is no more I can do for you.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

and counting.... ;)

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

Cor.. that one begs to be prodded by a discussion on the origins of causality. Indeed, perhaps our own learning is dependent on the actions of a greater force external to ourselves – plenty of ideas to suggest that man is not the sovereign agent he believes himself to be. Man certainly has the monopoly on efficiency but his intelligence is not alone in its capacity to respond to stimuli.

Anyway, no rush. I haven’t seen a movie or heard a theory yet that doesn’t portend bad news for humanity if AI gets its 1’s in front of its 0’s by itself!

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

Perhaps you're all a hallucination of mine.

You cannot debate what is possible, but unprovable. You can only debate what can be shown to be true, at least to our perception. Since we can perceive anything that we put our minds to - we are intelligent. The machine only perceives what we tell it to - it is not intelligent.

Since people's perspectives can change over their lifetime, and indeed, instantly - and we cannot detect any "greater force" influencing that activity - the only sane assumption that can be made, is that we are self determinate.

To put it another way, the machine is not responsible for what it does. The programmer, or operator is responsible for the machine. Humans are responsible for their own actions, and to claim otherwise is recklessly irrational.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

Perspective is a tricky word and one difficult to apply to others. If, as you say, "You can only debate what can be shown to be true", I would not be able to speak to the perspective of others, only to their actions.

Their actions do change over time, depending perhaps on their experiences. But the actions of a sufficiently complicated program can change over time depending on it's inputs (which would correspond to experiences).

It may be that the perceived difference lies only in that we are more complicated and that we can not see our own programming.

I don't actually believe this, but it's not easy to disprove. Not that we are just like computers. At the least our "programming" can be rewritten on the fly (which is not impossible for software, by the way), but the hardware can be modified as well.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

His Eminence Carmont objects to your heresy, and would like to invite you to come sit in the comfortable chair for a while.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

No no, anything but the soft cushions! :shock:



The difference being that you are imminently capable of making logical leaps into heretofore unexplored intellectual territory.

The machine (as we know it today, in 100% of all cases, period), however, is still bound to predefined territory within which it draws its conclusions.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

Or we do not know the extent of our own predefined territory and what appears to be a leap into unexplored territory is just a branch into a section of programming we hadn't used before.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

Something that software does not actually ever do - at least, not with any awareness of such. Software does not understand what it is doing - it simply operates.

Everything in reality is subject to perspective, and perspective is constantly subject to collective agreement.

Therefore, we define ourselves as intelligent - and this means that what we understand of our existence, portrays intelligence. Since intelligence is a human concept, this assertion is true.

However, we can observe and define that what a computer seems to be capable of, is currently inferior to what we are capable of, and in this manner lacks what we understand and perceive to be intelligence.

It can be proven that the machine's "thoughts" are bound by its code - it cannot be proven that our "thoughts" are bound by anything originating outside of our self.

Prove that there are intelligent beings who have at least once directly manipulated human thought processes - and you begin to have an argument. Else, you really are just asking "why?" or "what?" over and over again. Maybe one day, we'll have final answers to those questions - but not this day.

Re: Illwinter is ahead of the Computer Science Field by CENTURIES
 

Ray Fuller invented Prozac, and with the help of Eli Lilly is manipulating millions of human thought processes each day. Ditto with caffeine, E, alcohol, etc. etc. where we use chemicals to achieve very specific effects. More immediately, see the experiments where we use magnetic fields or direct electrical stimulation to trigger different parts of the brain. More scientifically, see the IBM's BlueBrain project to create a full, neuron-level on up map of the human brain. They should be done in a decade or so (though as with the human genome, having the data is still a long way from full understanding).