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All these articles make the same basic argument, which is “Non-intelligent processes cannot give rise to intelligence.” Which is about as true as non-hurricane

All these articles make the same basic argument, which is “Non-intelligent processes cannot give rise to intelligence.” Which is about as true as non-hurricane particles cannot give rise to a hurricane. We already know that the human mind is full of non-intelligent atoms, and perhaps non-intelligent neurons, and yet here we are. Any argument that makes the case that computers cannot be intelligent is also making the case that humans can’t, either.

willis936 7y ago
What’s frustrating about this article is how sparse it is. I could only bother to waste five minutes on it before giving up. Where’s the meat? You aren’t going to convince anyone with 150 year old platitudes. I need proof. I’m sure anyone quoting a mathematician would appreciate the value of that.
Joker_vD 7y ago
The assumptions that humans are intelligent and self-aware, and can understand each other are often left unspoken because actually pretty hard to support with anything but the subjective experience of "Well, I certainly am self-aware, and possess of intellect, and can understand and be understood by other people who obviously are also self-aware, intelligent, and can understand me and can be understood by me". Ha, "people understand each other", what a joyous fiction! Any one who ever attended any meeting with customers or high officials, or parents of your S.O. can attest to the opposite.
vidarh 7y ago
Well, speaking as an atheist who would like to think that the brain is purely cause and effect, what this boils down to is whether or not you believe that, or if you believe that somehow there are souls, and "something" interacts with a brain and imbues it with something we can't simulate that causes consciousness. It's tempting to call that bullshit, but we don't know what consciousness is, and it's proving very elusive to find a physical way to explain it. And, hey, maybe we're all in a simulation and our minds are simulated outside the main simulation and so the only "conscious" entities are those with an external simulation feeding data into our universe. I'd tend to to think that rather than "ancestor simulations" like in the simulation argument, it's more likely we're in some game in that case. Even a purely physical explanation does not preclude some physical process we're unaware of that involves some interaction with something physical that is in effect a black box from our point of view, and something we may not be able to replicate from "inside" the observable universe. E.g. imagine we're constrained to however many dimensions, but consciousness involves a process partially outside "our" dimensions. Ultimately I'd like to think we find a purely physical/mechanistic model of consciousness that allows us to replicate it in software; the slightly less optimistic view is that we'll need some specialized hardware. The pessimistic view is that there's something involved that means it takes something very similar to a squishy biological brain to tap into whatever gives rise to consciousness. But we could also hit a wall.
- gwd 7y ago
  > Well, speaking as an atheist who would like to think that the brain is purely cause and effect, Even if you believe there are souls created by God, you also believe that you can reliably cause (provoke? induce?) God to create a soul and attach it to a specific bit of matter, by merely engaging in a certain pleasurable activity. Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same?
  - vidarh 7y ago
    > Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? I'd say we have no way of telling. "God" or a game engine or whatever is creating those "souls" might be someone looking on with bemusement and enjoying adding souls to anything we want to see what we come up with, or might be someone who takes great offense we're meddling in their business, or might be a dumb rules engine that insists on a specific biological interaction to happen just so before it instantiates another object. Or there might be some weird quantum mechanical interaction we don't understand that gets triggered that happens to interact with another dimension. Or a bored teenager needs to go out and get another USB dongle to upgrade the number of "soul simulators" their game allows. Or an endless number of other possibilities. > And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same? Currently we don't. I don't even know if you're conscious. We don't understand intelligence well enough to reliably test for intelligence, and we don't understand well enough how intelligence relates to consciousness or whether there is a meaningful distinction.
- 7y ago
throwaway468883 7y ago
The main issue is that intelligence isn't well-defined. Laymen can't agree on a definition. Specialists from different fields (say, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, developmental biologists and animal behavioral biologists) can't agree either. More egregiously, specialists within a single field can't agree either. For all the 1994 manifestos people like to throw at people in internet arguments, it doesn't mean everyone in the field (which was mostly psychologists and little else) agreed with it and it doesn't mean the people who did sign it could pin down what they said onto a single definition that made sense from both a scientifical and general understanding.

willis936 7y ago

What’s frustrating about this article is how sparse it is. I could only bother to waste five minutes on it before giving up. Where’s the meat? You aren’t going to convince anyone with 150 year old platitudes. I need proof. I’m sure anyone quoting a mathematician would appreciate the value of that.

Joker_vD 7y ago

The assumptions that humans are intelligent and self-aware, and can understand each other are often left unspoken because actually pretty hard to support with anything but the subjective experience of "Well, I certainly am self-aware, and possess of intellect, and can understand and be understood by other people who obviously are also self-aware, intelligent, and can understand me and can be understood by me". Ha, "people understand each other", what a joyous fiction! Any one who ever attended any meeting with customers or high officials, or parents of your S.O. can attest to the opposite.

vidarh 7y ago

Well, speaking as an atheist who would like to think that the brain is purely cause and effect, what this boils down to is whether or not you believe that, or if you believe that somehow there are souls, and "something" interacts with a brain and imbues it with something we can't simulate that causes consciousness. It's tempting to call that bullshit, but we don't know what consciousness is, and it's proving very elusive to find a physical way to explain it. And, hey, maybe we're all in a simulation and our minds are simulated outside the main simulation and so the only "conscious" entities are those with an external simulation feeding data into our universe. I'd tend to to think that rather than "ancestor simulations" like in the simulation argument, it's more likely we're in some game in that case. Even a purely physical explanation does not preclude some physical process we're unaware of that involves some interaction with something physical that is in effect a black box from our point of view, and something we may not be able to replicate from "inside" the observable universe. E.g. imagine we're constrained to however many dimensions, but consciousness involves a process partially outside "our" dimensions. Ultimately I'd like to think we find a purely physical/mechanistic model of consciousness that allows us to replicate it in software; the slightly less optimistic view is that we'll need some specialized hardware. The pessimistic view is that there's something involved that means it takes something very similar to a squishy biological brain to tap into whatever gives rise to consciousness. But we could also hit a wall.

gwd 7y ago
> Well, speaking as an atheist who would like to think that the brain is purely cause and effect, Even if you believe there are souls created by God, you also believe that you can reliably cause (provoke? induce?) God to create a soul and attach it to a specific bit of matter, by merely engaging in a certain pleasurable activity. Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same?
- vidarh 7y ago
  > Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? I'd say we have no way of telling. "God" or a game engine or whatever is creating those "souls" might be someone looking on with bemusement and enjoying adding souls to anything we want to see what we come up with, or might be someone who takes great offense we're meddling in their business, or might be a dumb rules engine that insists on a specific biological interaction to happen just so before it instantiates another object. Or there might be some weird quantum mechanical interaction we don't understand that gets triggered that happens to interact with another dimension. Or a bored teenager needs to go out and get another USB dongle to upgrade the number of "soul simulators" their game allows. Or an endless number of other possibilities. > And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same? Currently we don't. I don't even know if you're conscious. We don't understand intelligence well enough to reliably test for intelligence, and we don't understand well enough how intelligence relates to consciousness or whether there is a meaningful distinction.
7y ago

throwaway468883 7y ago

The main issue is that intelligence isn't well-defined. Laymen can't agree on a definition. Specialists from different fields (say, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, developmental biologists and animal behavioral biologists) can't agree either. More egregiously, specialists within a single field can't agree either. For all the 1994 manifestos people like to throw at people in internet arguments, it doesn't mean everyone in the field (which was mostly psychologists and little else) agreed with it and it doesn't mean the people who did sign it could pin down what they said onto a single definition that made sense from both a scientifical and general understanding.