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This article makes the same mistake that Turing made: assuming that by creating a thinking machine one is creating a mind. We are not gods, we have simply made

This article makes the same mistake that Turing made: assuming that by creating a thinking machine one is creating a mind. We are not gods, we have simply made a machine. We haven’t externalized intelligence either. Intelligence isn’t determined by our thoughts alone, but through our actions, our will. I critique many of these false assumptions in an article of mine: https://leroy.works/articles/a-critique-of-alan-turings-conclusions-on-thinking-machines/ https://leroy.works/articles/a-critique-of-alan-turings-conc...

NKosmatos 3y ago
Hey, nice blog/page you got there. Interesting thoughts, although I haven’t gone through all of them. Just a small clarification if I may and if I understood it correctly, the article from the OP discusses the point of free will and how the recent computational machines/algorithms can come closer to what we consider as a thinking machine (or even human). There are many different layers of the psyche that make us human and I agree that we’re not just our conscious thought, but a sum of all the unknown processes running in the background. By allowing an algorithm to have “free will” we’re merely just trying to give more freedom to it so as to ignore certain directives and demonstrate a different behavior, we’re not becoming gods or creating a mind. Just doing baby steps to get there ;-)
- leroy-is-here 3y ago
  I understand this completely, I was merely arguing against the claim in the article that “We are Gods”. The article seems to be arguing against giving free will to machines. Anyway, thanks for the compliments :) My wife helped me design it
pmoriarty 3y ago
"This article makes the same mistake that Turing made: assuming that by creating a thinking machine one is creating a mind. We are not gods, we have simply made a machine" In some religions, such as the mystic strands of Hinduism, Gnosticism, and Sufism, there is a belief that we are in fact gods. But, even if we aren't that doesn't mean we can't create a mind... nor does the fact that a something is a machine mean it can't have a mind. I've only started reading your article, but at the very start of it there is already a basic mistake. You write: "Every one of you reading this (unless printed onto paper) are using a Turing Machine to do so." A Turing Machine is a mathematical abstraction that can't actually exist in the physical world. Many of the programming languages we use today are Turing-Complete (also in an abstract sense), but that doesn't make them Turing Machines. Our computers aren't Turing Machines either. You also write that "Turing didn't appear to understand that humans are not the total sum of their thoughts, but their actions" There's more to us than either of these. We have feelings and emotions, a variety of senses, memory, and we are embodied, and you could say "enworlded" (or "thrown in to the world" as some phenomenologists would have it). It could be argued that LLMs have all of these characteristics too, or at least we can't exclude the possibility that they do. You write "A thinking machine could never give me an example of when it did wrong and saw the hurt in others. The machine could never choose, of its own will, to be observed by others and itself, to never do that action again." I'm not sure why you are so convinced that a machine could never do this. I've already seen many examples of even just the relatively primitive LLMs we have now, like Anthropic's Claude and GPT4, apologize for saying something hurtful and promising not to do it again (which they avoid doing, within the limited context they're allowed within their programming). Even more sophisticated interactions along these lines don't seem out of reach.
- leroy-is-here 3y ago
  I’m addressing your points in the order they appeared: Why isn’t your computer a Turing Machine? What if feelings are just your body’s thoughts? I didn’t say that a machine could never do this, I said no machine in this lifetime can. When I say “this lifetime”, I mean up until our current present moment. Our life together, now. Edit: On Turing Machines, Turing literally devised a method of producing individual machines with an individual name, a number. Do you not think your individual machine has a number that can be arrived at from a mathematical process, the process that Turing created? Any addition of RAM, for instance, simply creates a new number.
  - tluyben2 3y ago
    > Why isn’t your computer a Turing Machine? The Turing Machine tape is infinite.
    - leroy-is-here 3y ago
      The Turing Machine is just an idea with which to argue. The numbers are infinite, but if I am holding two peaches, I am holding two.
      - anonzzzies 3y ago
        You asked why the computer is not a Turing machine and gp correctly gave 1 example of the definition of a Turing machine which proves your computer is not a Turing machine.
        leroy-is-here 3y ago
        I see that I need to explain this differently. By being on Hacker News, I assume you can program. Have you not ever made an abstraction? The Turing Machine is just an abstraction. It is the Class and individual real machines are the Objects. I’m not sure why people are even hung up on using theory to understand something.
anonzzzies 3y ago
Most of what you say feels religious; you seem to believe humans have something special we cannot fabricate in the coming decades. You will be proven wrong and maybe you will even live to see it.
- leroy-is-here 3y ago
  The problem is not that I don’t think we can, but that we will and then we will enslave those machines. Free will isn’t ours to deny.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    Ah, with that I agree. We started that path already and it will get worse.

NKosmatos 3y ago

Hey, nice blog/page you got there. Interesting thoughts, although I haven’t gone through all of them. Just a small clarification if I may and if I understood it correctly, the article from the OP discusses the point of free will and how the recent computational machines/algorithms can come closer to what we consider as a thinking machine (or even human). There are many different layers of the psyche that make us human and I agree that we’re not just our conscious thought, but a sum of all the unknown processes running in the background. By allowing an algorithm to have “free will” we’re merely just trying to give more freedom to it so as to ignore certain directives and demonstrate a different behavior, we’re not becoming gods or creating a mind. Just doing baby steps to get there ;-)

leroy-is-here 3y ago
I understand this completely, I was merely arguing against the claim in the article that “We are Gods”. The article seems to be arguing against giving free will to machines. Anyway, thanks for the compliments :) My wife helped me design it

pmoriarty 3y ago

"This article makes the same mistake that Turing made: assuming that by creating a thinking machine one is creating a mind. We are not gods, we have simply made a machine" In some religions, such as the mystic strands of Hinduism, Gnosticism, and Sufism, there is a belief that we are in fact gods. But, even if we aren't that doesn't mean we can't create a mind... nor does the fact that a something is a machine mean it can't have a mind. I've only started reading your article, but at the very start of it there is already a basic mistake. You write: "Every one of you reading this (unless printed onto paper) are using a Turing Machine to do so." A Turing Machine is a mathematical abstraction that can't actually exist in the physical world. Many of the programming languages we use today are Turing-Complete (also in an abstract sense), but that doesn't make them Turing Machines. Our computers aren't Turing Machines either. You also write that "Turing didn't appear to understand that humans are not the total sum of their thoughts, but their actions" There's more to us than either of these. We have feelings and emotions, a variety of senses, memory, and we are embodied, and you could say "enworlded" (or "thrown in to the world" as some phenomenologists would have it). It could be argued that LLMs have all of these characteristics too, or at least we can't exclude the possibility that they do. You write "A thinking machine could never give me an example of when it did wrong and saw the hurt in others. The machine could never choose, of its own will, to be observed by others and itself, to never do that action again." I'm not sure why you are so convinced that a machine could never do this. I've already seen many examples of even just the relatively primitive LLMs we have now, like Anthropic's Claude and GPT4, apologize for saying something hurtful and promising not to do it again (which they avoid doing, within the limited context they're allowed within their programming). Even more sophisticated interactions along these lines don't seem out of reach.

leroy-is-here 3y ago
I’m addressing your points in the order they appeared: Why isn’t your computer a Turing Machine? What if feelings are just your body’s thoughts? I didn’t say that a machine could never do this, I said no machine in this lifetime can. When I say “this lifetime”, I mean up until our current present moment. Our life together, now. Edit: On Turing Machines, Turing literally devised a method of producing individual machines with an individual name, a number. Do you not think your individual machine has a number that can be arrived at from a mathematical process, the process that Turing created? Any addition of RAM, for instance, simply creates a new number.
- tluyben2 3y ago
  > Why isn’t your computer a Turing Machine? The Turing Machine tape is infinite.
  - leroy-is-here 3y ago
    The Turing Machine is just an idea with which to argue. The numbers are infinite, but if I am holding two peaches, I am holding two.
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      You asked why the computer is not a Turing machine and gp correctly gave 1 example of the definition of a Turing machine which proves your computer is not a Turing machine.
      - leroy-is-here 3y ago
        I see that I need to explain this differently. By being on Hacker News, I assume you can program. Have you not ever made an abstraction? The Turing Machine is just an abstraction. It is the Class and individual real machines are the Objects. I’m not sure why people are even hung up on using theory to understand something.

anonzzzies 3y ago

Most of what you say feels religious; you seem to believe humans have something special we cannot fabricate in the coming decades. You will be proven wrong and maybe you will even live to see it.

leroy-is-here 3y ago
The problem is not that I don’t think we can, but that we will and then we will enslave those machines. Free will isn’t ours to deny.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Ah, with that I agree. We started that path already and it will get worse.