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This article gives very little evidence to support the claim that AI will never be capable of doing everything a human can do. On the other side Of the argument

This article gives very little evidence to support the claim that AI will never be capable of doing everything a human can do. On the other side Of the argument I’m still very convinced by the fact that our brains are physical things doing some sort of computation, so computers will one day be able to achieve anything that our brain computation can achieve.

denzil_correa 8y ago
> On the other side Of the argument I’m still very convinced by the fact that our brains are physical things doing some sort of computation, so computers will one day be able to achieve anything that our brain computation can achieve. The author seems to suggest that figuring out this brain computation is an upper bound on possibilities.
ankurdhama 8y ago
So if the brain is just doing some sort of computation then do you also agree with the statement that any flow of fluid (river etc) is just solving fluid dynamics differential equations?
- red75prime 8y ago
  Flow of fluid is governed by physical laws, for which Navier–Stokes is an approximation. Brain is governed by physical laws too, of course. But its structure facilitates processes which can be described as information processing. If water fails to solve Navier-Stokes, we change the equations, if a human fails at reasoning, we correct the human.
  - ankurdhama 8y ago
    My point was that we use mathematics to model physical phenomenon and by definition every model is an approximation of the phenomenon which means that you cannot say that the phenomenon is actually doing what the model says. Instead we say that the model is useful only to answer certain set of questions to certain degree of accuracy.
    - red75prime 8y ago
      If a brain isn't doing what formal logic says, then it's doing it wrong. Sometimes models are more important.
stuxnet79 8y ago
The map is not the territory. Just because our models of computation mimic some of what our brains can do, it doesn't necessarily mean that they describe the _essence_ of what our brains are doing.
- red75prime 8y ago
  There's no evidence for a violation of physical Church–Turing thesis in brains.

denzil_correa 8y ago

> On the other side Of the argument I’m still very convinced by the fact that our brains are physical things doing some sort of computation, so computers will one day be able to achieve anything that our brain computation can achieve. The author seems to suggest that figuring out this brain computation is an upper bound on possibilities.

ankurdhama 8y ago

So if the brain is just doing some sort of computation then do you also agree with the statement that any flow of fluid (river etc) is just solving fluid dynamics differential equations?

red75prime 8y ago
Flow of fluid is governed by physical laws, for which Navier–Stokes is an approximation. Brain is governed by physical laws too, of course. But its structure facilitates processes which can be described as information processing. If water fails to solve Navier-Stokes, we change the equations, if a human fails at reasoning, we correct the human.
- ankurdhama 8y ago
  My point was that we use mathematics to model physical phenomenon and by definition every model is an approximation of the phenomenon which means that you cannot say that the phenomenon is actually doing what the model says. Instead we say that the model is useful only to answer certain set of questions to certain degree of accuracy.
  - red75prime 8y ago
    If a brain isn't doing what formal logic says, then it's doing it wrong. Sometimes models are more important.

stuxnet79 8y ago

The map is not the territory. Just because our models of computation mimic some of what our brains can do, it doesn't necessarily mean that they describe the _essence_ of what our brains are doing.

red75prime 8y ago
There's no evidence for a violation of physical Church–Turing thesis in brains.