On Aug 8, 7:18 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 8/8/2011 1:33 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > On Aug 8, 2:21 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > >> On 8/8/2011 6:13 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > >>> The machine doesn't care if it's right or wrong > > >> But my thermostat cares whether it's hot or cold. > > > I see what you are saying, but no, it doesn't care. If it cared then > > it would not have to be programmed or set, it would just try to keep > > the temperature comfortable for itself. > > Since you're programmed to keep yourself alive I guess that implies you > don't care whether you live or die.
We're not programmed to keep ourselves alive, we have to learn how to do that ourselves. There is some vestigial programming from thousands of years of hominid evolution, but that programming is actually hostile to our survival now and we are having to hack into our own diet to keep it from making us obese. A thermostat doesn't do that. > > If it's the dead of winter and > > you don't have it set to heat, you will freeze to death and nobody > > will pay the electric bill and the thermostat won't ever do anything > > again. It has no capacity to understand what it is or what it's doing. > > It has the capacity to understand what the temperature is and what it's > supposed to be. You're just showing your carbon racism because my > thermostat is made of glass and metal. It has no understanding. The only point of understanding is that you are able to use it to make choices. A thermostat is just an electric circuit that opens or closes depending on whether or not a two particular pieces of metal expand or contract enough to tip a mercury switch one way or another. No choice is made. I'm assuming that you're trolling me on this...you don't really believe that a thermostat understands temperature right? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
