Matt and Andi, This discussion parallels other discussions in other venues about the nature of our "soul". Everyone was happy with the prevailing dictionary descriptions until computers entered the picture. Then whenever someone takes another technological step toward preserving a person's soul, or toward a machine having its own soul, religious people object, explaining that a soul is something ELSE. This goal has now moved SO far that religious people can't even think of anything that might be clearly beyond technology, except...
I have a religious friend Larry who believes that AGIs are absolutely impossible, for the simple reason that they would have no soul. For Larry, souls are something magical, that bring the spark of life. His view seems to break down in discussions of whether animals have souls, because Larry can't come up with a definition that excludes animals who can understand and appropriately respond to English, yet he firmly believes that animals have no souls. Steve ========================= On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Andrew G. Babian <[email protected]>wrote: > > Let me throw in a different perspective. People use a system of epistemic > feelings in judging how we feel about the correctness of thoughts we hear > and think about. "Truthiness" is a fun example I like to use, but there > are plenty, with feelings like uncertainty, disbelief, familiarity, > probability, possibility. Delusions can happen when the system goes awry. > In this context, understanding is just a feeling we have about some idea, > something about our confidence about our knowledge of the causes involved, > maybe. You can certainly try to find some kind of analogous process in > some other type of putative "intelligent" system that does not use > epistemic feelings, though I would seriously question the value of that. > Maybe a confidence metric. I would be afraid of people missing the point. > And it's things like this where people try to bring "consciousness" as an > integral part of intelligence. > Andi > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
