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These "misconceptions" don't come from religion. That's a huge strawman, as if you have to believe in a Great Flood to be curious about the nature of consciousn
by jquery 12y ago
These "misconceptions" don't come from religion. That's a huge strawman, as if you have to believe in a Great Flood to be curious about the nature of consciousness, beyond declaring it a property of entropy as if that answers anything at all.
- Retric 12y agoVideo game enemies have a "Mind" they can make predictions, plan, and with reasonable levels of AI even learn. But, we understand what's going on which "Kills" any meaningful debate. Not really understaniding cellular biology and the emergent behavior of the human brain is no reason to assume anything odd is going on either. PS: Ok, there is a reasonable question of how good an AI needs to be before killing it is wrong.
- Natsu 12y agoSo if you were programmed to say this, where and how did the original program originate?
- Retric 12y agoThat's not an answerable question. Making it meaningless. Which electron in you left ear had the lowest energy over the last second? PS: This is actually a trick question as the frame of reference is important.
- Natsu 12y agoI do not agree at all. I think that there must be one (or a few) simplest possible computing systems and that it would be both informational and interesting to figure out the basis upon which biological computing is premised.
- Retric 12y agoThere are lot's of simple computing systems, knowing about them tells you nothing about biological computing. (ED: Sort of, there are classes of computing systems and understanding their limitations has some value.) If for no other reason than the fact you can generally simulate X computing system in Y and Y computing system in X. Let's take a step back and look at flight a much 'simpler' system that we 'know' a lot about. First we looked at birds and insects and thought this is possible. You can get a fairly simple model of how wings work that's good enough to build a basic glider. It's wrong, a much better approximation let's you build high efficiency sub sonic jet's. Crossing the sound barrier demonstrates flaws, but we have yet more models for that. A particle model of an aircraft based on Newtonian physics is even better and avoids those wacky approximations. Unfortunately it's way to complex to use and even worse Newtonian physics is also wrong. QM is better still, but also wrong. A mix of QM and General relativity is the best we have, but again it's wrong. Where was I going with that line of thinking? We might be lucky enough to find a model that's indistinguishable from reality. That does not mean it's useful or even correct. And just because we build something that thinks (fly's) that does not mean it's got much to do with how we think (or birds fly). PS: This might all seem pedantic. But, asking how something works is not an answerable question. Asking for a model of how something works is. But, useful model's often have little to do with reality. (ex: epicycles can approximate any curved orbit to any precision given enough of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle They where effectively taking a Fourier transform of the orbits.)
- aninhumer 12y agoLike all seemingly designed properties of living things, they came about through a process of evolution.