I don't know some of these guys come up with these almost sophomoric views of this subject, especially Dawkins, that guy can be real annoying with his Saganistic spewing of facts and his trivialization of religion.
The article does shed some interesting light though in typical NY Times style. But the real subject matter is much deeper and complex(complicated?). John From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:42 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Upon reviewing the below linked article I realized it would take you a while to understand what it is about and why it is relevant. It is an article dated March 4, 2007, summarizing current scientific thinking on why religion has been a part of virtually all known cultures including thinking about what it is about the human mind and human societies that has made religious beliefs so common. Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:16 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Relevant to this thread is the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine&; pagewanted=print> &pagewanted=print Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:50 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity This example is looking at it from a moment in time. The evolution of intelligence in man has some relation to his view of deity. Before government and science there was religion. Deity and knowledge and perhaps human intelligence are entwined. For example some taboos evolved as defenses against disease, burying the dead, not eating certain foods, etc. science didn't exist at the time. Deity was a sort of peer to peer lossily compressed semi-holographic knowledge base hosted and built by human mobile agents and agent systems. Now it is evolving into something else. But humans may readily swap out their deities with AGIs and then uploading can replace heaven J An AGI, as it reads through text related to man's deities, could start wondering about Pascal's wager. It depends on many factors... Still though I think AGIs have to run into the same sort of issues. John From: J Marlow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Here's the way I like to think of it; we have different methods of thinking about systems in our environments, different sort of models. One type of model that we humans have (with the possible exception of autistics) is the ability to try to model another system as a person like ourselves; its easier to predict what it will do if we attribute it motives and goals. I think a lot of our ideas about God/gods/goddesses come from a tendency to try to predict the behavior of nature using agent models; so farmers attribute human emotions, like spite or anger, to nature when the weather doesn't help the crops. So, assuming that is a big factor in how/why we developed religions, then it is possible that an AI could have a similar problem, if it tried to describe too many events using its 'agency' models. But I think an AI near or better than human level could probably see that there are simpler (or more accurate) explanations, and so reject predictions made based on those models. Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager... Josh _____ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/? <http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;> & _____ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/? <http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;> & _____ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/? <http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;> & ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=74088569-907e7e
