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I disagree, a document is merely a sequence of characters that humans assign meaning to. There is nothing special about them. What makes a document special is t

I disagree, a document is merely a sequence of characters that humans assign meaning to. There is nothing special about them. What makes a document special is the meaning that the reader gives as a consequence of their experiences. Your comment has been found in the library of babel[1] approximately ~10^29 times, here[2] is an instance of it, character for character. [1] https://libraryofbabel.info/search.html https://libraryofbabel.info/search.html [2] https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?mafkjhh,kw_fssarehekqehl194 https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?mafkjhh,kw_fssarehe...

dtagames 4y ago
Well, that's certainly an interesting algorithm I hadn't seen before. But code that can reconstruct a pasted paragraph from an existing table of letters isn't proof that my sentence already existed. Quite the opposite. It's just decomposition of something that humans created into smaller, discrete parts and then indexing those relationships. This is something software is very good at. It is not invention or novelty in the way I'm describing them. It's hard to imagine one could have a philosophical disagreement about whether humans invent things and machines don't... but perhaps that's what we have! :-)
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  If I find a seed such that my algorithm reconstructs your comment, has your comment already existed and you just discovered it? How is your brain anything different to a machine that given some seed (i.e. a state) produces a sequence of characters?
  - dtagames 4y ago
    This is very much a view from Descartes which represents philosophy perhaps more than practicality. It may be anthropocentric to believe that humans are different from a clock (Descartes didn't). But, being human, I'm predisposed to think so. To think of people as nothing more than mechanical aggregates is saddening to me, and loses sight of everything that makes people interesting and special. It would be difficult to argue that there is nothing unique about people, given what we've wrought in the world.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      I don't agree with your conclusion in the second paragraph. I don't think the lack of uniqueness - for lack of a better word - makes people less interesting or special. On the contrary, I think that by accepting that humans are machines shaped by their circumstances and their experiences with their own unique patterns of thought of complexity allows us to better appreciate what they build and construct. It allows us to stop thinking that it's talent that makes a person good at whatever they are doing, but instead to think that what makes them unique and special is the amalgamation of their experiences, their pain, and suffering.

dtagames 4y ago

Well, that's certainly an interesting algorithm I hadn't seen before. But code that can reconstruct a pasted paragraph from an existing table of letters isn't proof that my sentence already existed. Quite the opposite. It's just decomposition of something that humans created into smaller, discrete parts and then indexing those relationships. This is something software is very good at. It is not invention or novelty in the way I'm describing them. It's hard to imagine one could have a philosophical disagreement about whether humans invent things and machines don't... but perhaps that's what we have! :-)

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
If I find a seed such that my algorithm reconstructs your comment, has your comment already existed and you just discovered it? How is your brain anything different to a machine that given some seed (i.e. a state) produces a sequence of characters?
- dtagames 4y ago
  This is very much a view from Descartes which represents philosophy perhaps more than practicality. It may be anthropocentric to believe that humans are different from a clock (Descartes didn't). But, being human, I'm predisposed to think so. To think of people as nothing more than mechanical aggregates is saddening to me, and loses sight of everything that makes people interesting and special. It would be difficult to argue that there is nothing unique about people, given what we've wrought in the world.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    I don't agree with your conclusion in the second paragraph. I don't think the lack of uniqueness - for lack of a better word - makes people less interesting or special. On the contrary, I think that by accepting that humans are machines shaped by their circumstances and their experiences with their own unique patterns of thought of complexity allows us to better appreciate what they build and construct. It allows us to stop thinking that it's talent that makes a person good at whatever they are doing, but instead to think that what makes them unique and special is the amalgamation of their experiences, their pain, and suffering.