If you are a nondeterminist - i.e. a believer in nondeterministic
programming - je t'embrasse. (see my forthcoming reply to Pei).
However, having being thoroughly attacked by Ai-ers including Minsky on his
group, for adopting such a position - on the basis that nondeterministic
programs can be emulated by deterministic Turing machines, and don't really
exist etc. etc. - and also having just been criticised by Pei, who,
offhand, without much knowledge of him, I thought might be sympathetic that
way - I am dubious about your representation of the situation and what
is/isn't antiquated. I suspect, as re Chalemers/Dennett, you are confusing
YOUR beliefs (and no doubt some others' too) about the matter with the
GENERAL or most widely-held beliefs.
Re cognitive science and cognitive psychology, there is one simple way to
crystallise the matter. I contend that the human mind's difficulties in
concentrating are one of the primary, definining characteristics of how it
works, and of how it is actually programmed - and this CONTRADICTS current
cog sci/psych. Show me which section of cognitive science or psychology
deals with this - problems of concentration in relation to the mind's
programming. Or show me any section which deals with nondeterministic
programming re humans. [Cog sci/psych remember, and NOT AI].
Re the situation in AI generally, and people's attitudes to deterministic/
nondeterministic programming and what you say below, please do inform me
more about how different camps think. IF I have understood this right, Ben
and Pei would NOT agree with the sentiments and kind of atittude you seem to
be expressing below. They don't seem to believe that freedom of thought let
alone decision is possible. They would be in an opposite camp, say, to Kevin
Kelly:
What could be more human than to give life? I think I know: to give life and
freedom. To give open-ended life. To say, here's your life and the car keys.
Then you let it do what we are doing-making it all up as we go along. Tom
Ray once told me, "I don't want to download life into computers. I want to
upload computers into life."
Kevin Kelly Out of Control. The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and
the Economic World. New York: Addison, Wesley. 1994
Kevin Kelly said to me, in an email exchange, that he reckoned that some 50%
or more of AI people did believe that robots will be free. Minsky's group
mocked that claim, but then they would. What do you reckon about how AI
people generally stand here?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Loosemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] The Advantages of a Conscious Mind
Mike Tintner wrote:
There is a crashingly obvious difference between a rational computer and
a human mind - and the only way cognitive science has managed not to see
it is by resolutely refusing to look at it, just as it resolutely refused
to look at the conscious mind in the first place. The normal computer has
no problems concentrating. Give it a problem and it will proceed to
produce a perfect rational train of thought, with every step taken, and
not a single step missed. (Or to put that another way - it has zero
freedom of thought).
Completely wrong, I am afraid.
This is a view of "computer" that is so antiquated it belongs in the early
1960's, when people were told that "computers can only do what they are
programmed to do", as a way to reassure them that they should not be
afraid that the computers were really able to think (and were therefore a
threat).
You can program a computer to be deterministic, or you can program it to
be non-determinstic. You choice. Some approaches to AI do indeed take an
approach that would leave the machine with no choices in its reasoning
paths .... but that is only one choice.
It is certainly not my choice, or those of many others. It is important
not to tar everyone with that brush.
Richard Loosemore.
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