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What is "religious" is this inclination to treat human intelligence as this magical thing that works outside the laws of nature, as if our neurons and our brain
by doliveira 6y ago
What is "religious" is this inclination to treat human intelligence as this magical thing that works outside the laws of nature, as if our neurons and our brain were something other than just chemistry doing very complex things.
That would be quite an extraordinary claim that requires equally extraordinary evidence.
- jqpabc123 6y agoLife in general and your brain in particular may very well be more than "just chemistry". We really don't know. What we do know at this point is that no amount of "just chemistry" has ever managed to create even the most rudimentary form of "life" from inert chemicals. And the only working models we have for "intelligence" at this point are inextricably bound to life.
- doliveira 6y agoYeah, demons may be pushing chemicals down your neurons or your soul is giving tiny electrical shocks to the axons. Anything is possible. One would think that the synthesis of urea back in 1828 would at least weaken this argument, but hey...
- jqpabc123 6y agoNice straw man.
- dwaltrip 6y agoDon’t beat around the bush. Are you implying life is supernaturally sustained? That would be quite the claim. If not, then the history of science strongly suggests we can eventually learn the mechanisms of life and intelligence and then find a way to imperfectly yet sufficiently reimplement them.
- jqpabc123 6y agoAre you suggesting life is supernaturally sustained? No. I am simply suggesting that creating life (and intelligence) from inert materals may involve more than "just chemistry". In the same way that lead can not be turned into gold by "just chemistry". I welcome knowledge and proof to the contrary but thus far, there is none.
- chess_buster 6y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07289-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07289-x
- c1ccccc1 6y agoWe have lots of evidence of how the processes of life are chemically driven: Photosynthesis captures energy from sunlight, metabolism of sugars produces ATP which is then used in a variety of ways by the cell's proteins, the DNA->RNA->Protein pipeline builds proteins from the sequences of base pairs stored in a cell's DNA, and DNA copying enzymes pass that information from generation to generation. Since you probably already know about that stuff, I guess I must be misunderstanding what kind of proof you are looking for. What sort of discovery would count as "proof" to you?
- jqpabc123 6y agoWhat sort of discovery would count as "proof" to you? The ultimate proof is actually doing it. Start with nothing but inert materials and produce a new, unique form of living organism using "just chemistry". I'm not saying it can't be done, I am saying that thus far, it hasn't been done. And the reason it hasn't been done might be because "just chemistry" is an overly simplistic description of what is needed to actually achieve it. But feel free to prove me wrong.
- dwaltrip 6y agoGold can be made from lead (and other inputs) using knowledge that is generally classified as nuclear physics. It’s not very practical or economical, so no one does it — but it can be done. It’s true that this isn’t “chemistry”. Not sure if you were making a deeper point. Perhaps to truly understand life we need to look deeply at physics, geology, fluid dynamics, and many other specialized fields, in addition to chemistry. And maybe we will need some new discoveries in these areas than have not yet been made. Is that all? I don’t think there is really much contention between that and the idea that life is “just chemistry”. I would bet most people saying that are totally fine with what I wrote above and are likely just trying to be concise with their words. Unless you mean more than you are plainly saying, this seems like splitting hairs about the taxonomy of scientific understanding. Understanding is understanding, regardless of how you categorize it.
- rutherblood 6y agolet's say he believes that. even then his belief would be as understandable & justifiable as yours. Wagging a finger and saying history of science suggest this and that is just that, belief. Just because something happened before you think it'll happen again and again. I do sympathize with your pov and even agree with it, but let's not beat around the bush as you say and let's just call this what our povs are: faith in science yet to come. Ours is no more righteous than the other. EDIT: some grammar
- dwaltrip 6y agoI very strongly disagree that we can't label some beliefs as more compelling and reflective of reality than others. I am happy to admit that doing a good job of differentiating is tricky business indeed, and that we all make many blatant errors and are prone to developing distorted ways of seeing things. Nonetheless, I do believe that humanity has acquired some real understanding of the world and will continue to do so.
- mcguire 6y agoNo amount of "just chemistry" has yet managed to create... Keep in mind that no amount of rocketeering has ever put a man on Mars, but that hardly constitutes a proof, or even serious evidence, that it is impossible. Arguments from ignorance are a terrible thing.
- jqpabc123 6y agoStating that it has yet to be done is a fact --- and facts are not ignorance
- mcguire 6y agoStating that it has not been done has no implications on whether it can be done, which is the claim being made.
- jqpabc123 6y agoStating that it is "just chemistry" has no implications on whether it can be done, which was the claim being made. The fact that it has not been done with "just chemistry" is no proof but it does tend to skew the probabilities toward the view that substantially more may be required.
- rutherblood 6y agoI haven't yet managed to fit inside a toothpaste tube. But you believe in the impossibility of this right? There is no absolute belief or disbelief. It is all a continuous gradation. Some things we can bring ourselves to belief in if there is sufficient cause. Not arguing for or against the original point but just your argument and condescension.
- mcguire 6y agoI believe I cannot not fit into a toothpaste tube for entirely different reasons than "nobody has ever done it." The latter is the assertion here.
- baddox 6y ago> Life in general and your brain in particular may very well be more than "just chemistry". We really don't know. That claim has roughly the same epistemological status as Last Thursdayism ("the world was created last Thursday in a state where we have memories and see evidence of past events but those events aren't actually real."). > What we do know at this point is that no amount of "just chemistry" has ever managed to create even the most rudimentary form of "life" from inert chemicals. How do we know that? Are you just talking about humans practicing chemistry?
- neatze 6y agoEmerging field of quantum biology if fairly new, there numerous processes in neural networks for which current understanding of chemistry and mathematics is not sufficient. For example, how transfer of functions emerges after hemispherectomy (half a brain is removed), to best of my understanding is unknown.
- awakeasleep 6y agoI'm missing a step. Is there a proof that all nature can be simulated with binary logic?
- c1ccccc1 6y agoIf you agree that the universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, that these laws are local, and that any given region of the universe can be described with a finite dimensional Hilbert space (informally speaking, it contains a finite amount of information, which is implied by the Bekenstein bound), then yes. And of course there are some theories where these assumptions don't hold where the answer is still yes. See this paper for more details: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1612.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1612.pdf (There are a few more technicalities which amount to forcing the simulator to solve an uncomputable puzzle before we tell them the laws. Let M be a turning machine that whose halting behaviour is undecidable. Even a spin-1/2 system might be "uncomputable" if all I tell you is that its Hamiltonian is (1 0; 0 1) if M halts and (1 0; 0 2) otherwise. Since a spin-1/2 system is one of the most blatantly computable things out there, this objection doesn't have much force.)
- baddox 6y agoI'm not exactly sure what you mean by "binary logic," but there is the Church-Turing-Deutsch principle which states that a "universal computer" (essentially a working quantum computer) can simulate all physical processes. But I suspect it's not a "proof" that would satisfy skeptics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing%E2%80%93Deutsch_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing%E2%80%93...
- tialaramex 6y agoIt's a Strong Church-Turing so you're correct that sceptics just say they don't believe this. Actually it's not uncommon for AI "sceptics" (the sort of people who write these articles not just people who suspect we'll have another AI Winter) to just not accept Church-Turing at all, or to insist upon squinting at it in a peculiar way that renders it tautological. I'm consistently disappointed that people who feel they're quite sure general AI isn't possible mostly have bad intuitions about Computer Science. Twice so far I've been recommended books by sceptics "which will show you why you're wrong" and been disappointed with the poor quality of argument deployed which sometimes is little more than a show of incredulity or a resort to mysterious dualism. A more robust attempt at this sort of argument was put up by Stevan Harnad, who taught an undergraduate class I sat in on many years ago now (one of the privileges of a post-graduate is that they're entitled to attend relevant undergraduate lectures and so I did). Harnad thinks† you need to build a robot because the intelligence will need some means to experience the universe for itself. But Harnad doesn't disbelieve that general AI is in principle possible, he just thinks our present methods can't get there. † In general with people who've made a career of such thing they are very careful with words, and so I have doubtless mis-characterized (or even misunderstood) the details and you should blame me for that not Stevan.