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I understand all the words you've used but I truly do not understand how they're supposed to be an argument against the GP post. Before this unfolds into a muc
by soiltype 1y ago
I understand all the words you've used but I truly do not understand how they're supposed to be an argument against the GP post.
Before this unfolds into a much larger essay, should we not acknowledge one simple fact: that our best models of the universe indicate that our intelligence evolved in meat and that meat is just a type of matter. This is an assumption I'll stand on, and if you don't disagree, we need to back up.
Far too often, online debates such as this take the position that the most likely answer to a question should be discarded because it isn't fully proven. This is backwards. The most likely answer should be assumed to be probably true, a la Occam. Acknowledging other options is also correct, but assuming the most likely answer is wrong, without evidence, is simply contrarian for its own sake, not wisdom or science.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoI don't know what else I can write without repeating myself. I already wrote that even under the assumption that intelligence is a purely biological phenomenon, it does not follow that computation can produce intelligence. This isn't a matter of probabilities. We know what computation is, because we defined it as such and such. We know at least some essential features of intelligence (chiefly, intentionality). It is not rocket science to see that computation, thus defined, does not include the concepts of semantics and intentionality. By definition, it excludes them. Attempts to locate the latter in the former reminds me of Feynman's anecdote about the obtuse painter who claimed he could produce yellow from red and white paint alone (later adding a bit of yellow paint to "sharpen it up a bit").
- ACCount37 1y agoWhat. Are you saying that "intentionality", whatever you mean by it, can't be implemented by a computational process? Never-ever? Never-ever-ever?
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoIf you don't know what intentionality is, a commonplace term in the philosophy of mind, then I suggest you take some time to better acquaint yourself with the subject matter. This is probably the major blow against any kind of AI fantasy, and you don't do yourself any favors by wading in the shallows and confidently holding to misinformed opinions. So, one last time. A computer program is a set of formal rules that takes one sequence of uninterpreted symbols and produces another sequence of uninterpreted symbols. Adding more rules and more uninterpreted symbols doesn't magically cause those symbols to be interpreted, and it cannot, by definition.
- ACCount37 1y agoI don't think that "philosophy of mind" contains anything useful for AI development. Most of what I've come across in the field was worthless wordcel drivel, far divorced from reality and any practical applications.
- soiltype 1y agoYou don't know how to elaborate on your claims? > I already wrote that even under the assumption that intelligence is a purely biological phenomenon, it does not follow that computation can produce intelligence. See this demands definitions because I do not understand how you can say this. If intelligence is an emergent property of a physical process then I'd feel insane to assume such processes can only happen in certain meats but never in artificially created computers. I fail to see any way they can be fundamentally separated without a non-testable, immaterial "spirit" bestowing intellect on the meat computer. They're just different substrates for computation. > We know what computation is, because we defined it as such and such. As what? This is the cornerstone of your entire argument and you've left it as an assumption. I can infer you define computation as "those processes which happen in non-biological systems and which do not lead to intelligence." But that would be worse than useless.