On Jan 20, 12:21 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > > " How do you know that rocks fail the Turing Test? > > > > That question most certainly does not pass the Turing Test and for the same > reason that the ancient "ELIZA" psychiatry program that you mentioned did > not; it very soon became obvious how it worked, it took the input "X" and > feed it back in a very limited number of ways, such as "tell me more about > X" or "have you always felt X" or "how do you know X". Such simple behavior > is not a sign of intelligence and will not fool anybody for long. Another > example of this sort is: > > " Why don't you think I am locked up in a mental institution?"
Like you, I am provoking you to ask yourself why you believe what you believe. I'm not intentionally feeding you back your own language, I'm pointing out that we can derive assumptions of sentience from sources other than a formal test of logic. Just as we don't need to fill out a questionnaire to determine whether pain hurts, our definition of intelligence is exclusive of ordinary inanimate objects from the beginning. > > > > If I've made a error about that I apologize. Heh. My asylum is on the inside o_0 > > > " Have you administered such a test to rocks yourself or heard of anyone > > ever actually doing > > that? I understand what you mean, but it's sophistry." > > It's not sophistry to ask yourself why you believe what you believe. I > agree that the idea that rocks are conscious is ridiculous but unlike you I > have asked myself exactly why it's ridiculous and I have a answer; it's > ridiculous because no rock I have ever observed, and I've seen quite a few, > behaves as if it's intelligent. I don't think that you have really asked yourself, you've just made a logical supposition of why it must be the case. If you really ask yourself, you will find that the word intelligence never included the possibility of inanimate objects in the first place. It's much simpler than having observed the non-intelligence of rocks, it's understanding that there is no reason why anyone would need to observe rocks for intelligence because our sense of what inanimate objects are all about does not include intelligence. You don't have to observe that this sentence is written in English, your sense of what the characters are already does that for you. Your observation *that* this is in English or Latin does not give you any ability to read it, it is your capacity to make sense out of - to read the text itself. > > "It's not deterministic if we are the ones doing the determining." > > Then you did it because you wanted to do it and that want is a perfectly > legitimate reason. And you wanted to do it because that's the way your > brain is wired, and there is a reason your brain is wired that way > (heredity and environment) OR there is no reason your brain is wired that > way. OR your your brain is wired to support *your* personal agenda and to reconcile it with the various other hereditary and environmental agendas going on. It's heredity, environment, and choice. They feed back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment and vice versa. Your choice of environment can activate or suppress genetic expression and heredity can influence your choices. > > Of my own free will, I consciously decide to go to a restaurant. > Why? > Because I want to. > Why ? > Because I want to eat. No. You don't decide to go to 'a restaurant', you decide to go to a particular restaurant that you prefer. You are not genetically predisposed to eat sushi over steak. Identical twins are not limited to the same repertoire of restaurants. > Why? > Because I'm hungry? > Why ? > Because lack of food triggered nerve impulses in my stomach, my brain > interpreted these signals as pain, I can only stand so much before I try to > stop it. Of course there are many influences that go into your decision of which restaurant, including convenience, habit, and positive associations with the experience of eating there, but also financial consideration, time and travel constraints, breadth of exposure to culinary variety, implicit memory of family dining experiences, susceptibility to advertising, etc. Being hungry is only part of the mix of sense channels and it does not result inevitably in a restaurant visit. Just because you can't go forever without eating doesn't mean that you can't postpone your response to hunger. You still have some choice as to how to represent all of the agendas and motives that influence you. It can be overridden by compulsion and addiction of course, but that doesn't mean that all of our thoughts and actions are compulsory. > Why? > Because I don't like pain. > Why? > Because that's the way my brain is constructed. > Why? > Because my body and the hardware of my brain were made from the > information in my genetic code ( lets see, 6 billion base pairs 2 bits per > base pair 8 bits per byte that comes out to about 1.5 gig ) the > programming of my brain came from the environment, > add a little quantum > randomness perhaps and of my own free will I consciously decide to go to a > restaurant. Where does the 'own free will' come in and why does it 'not like pain'? Is it the bytes of information that feel the pain, or the nucleotides themselves, or the hardware of your brain, or the environment, or the quantum randomness that actually feel hungry? Or is it just a disembodied metaphysical 'interpretation' that haunts the space in between? My view is that it makes the most sense that the pain and hunger we experience from our body is an amplification of more rudimentary qualities being experienced by the tissues, cells, and even molecules as harmonics of tension and release. It's sort of like a tuning fork ringing out a true note that cuts across the inertial frames to announce a condition. The key principle though is that hunger is not nowhere and it's not everywhere, it is through somewhere - through molecules, cells, tissues, and bodies. These are the vehicles of organic level sensorimotivation. > > "If you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then [...]" > > > > I most certainly do not! We know the universe is NOT deterministic but we > also know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for a > reason OR it does not happen for a reason. Haven't you been arguing this whole time that the universe is deterministic and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)? If you say that everything happens for a reason or not for a reason, then I would agree, although I would say that everything happens for many reasons and somethings happen because we choose one reason over another. > > "If you don't force the universe into a category like that, then you can > > > see the wide spectrum of variation between absolute determinism and > > libertarian free will." > > I know what the ASCII string " libertarian" means, in fact I am one. I think I used to be too. Or was it an anarchist? > I > think that in general people should be allowed to do what they want to do > more often than they are allowed today; Me too, but unfortunately I think that immediately turns into 'whoever takes advantage of their liberty to exploit and enslave the greatest number of other people first, wins'. Basically all forms of government are different advanced stages of (certain) people doing what they want to do and trying to hang on to power through whatever chicanery and terrorism they can get away with. > so I know what "will" means but I > don't know what the ASCII string "free will" means and neither do you. You continue to say that but I don't know why. Didn't I list for you some examples of what free will means? Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of the body. Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life. Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental manslaughter. Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express ourselves in words and gestures. Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or creating new options through insight, imagination, or desperation. > > "Evolution has nothing to say about consciousness." > > > > Don't be ridiculous. You are conscious (I'm pretty sure) and Evolution > produced you If a car manufacturer puts a radio in it's cars, does that mean that radio comes from automotive engineering? Evolution deals with heredity and speciation as a consequence of natural selection. When it is used as a blanket assumption for all phenomenology in the cosmos, it has no more explanatory power than monotheism. , neither you or anybody else has suggested a way it could > select for such a thing directly so consciousness MUST be a byproduct of > something else that it CAN select for. That's a logical fallacy, plus it's a false accusation. I have in fact suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by a chain of recursive qualitative augmentations to sensorimotive-electromagnetism. Detection of detection --> sensation. Sensation of sensation --> feeling ---> perception ---> awareness ---> consciousness. I posted some related definitions today as well here: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/3595431df4eb962f Why must EVERYTHING be a byproduct of something evolution can select for though? Because qualia have no functional attributes, they have no criteria for selection. Pink or sour functions just as well as blue for optical labeling. It's not possible for them to evolve out of natural selection, they are woven into the very fabric of sensemaking, which also does not arise from non sensemaking. It is self selecting. > Now maybe that something else is the > big toe on your left foot and only people with a toe the size and shape as > yours is conscious, but I think it's far more likely that the something > else is intelligence. > > And yes I know, you will say the idea that your big toe is related to > consciousness is ridiculous as indeed it is, but asking yourself why it is > ridiculous is far from ridiculous. > > "Why does size decrease magnificence? > > Is this question really necessary? Decrease Shakespeare's life work until > all you have is the letter "P", the letter P is not a work of genius and > it is not magnificence. I confess that sometimes I get the feeling that I'm > debating with ELIZA. Likewise you could increase quantity of random letters until they fill volumes and all you have is nonsense. Mountains of meaningless data is not magnificence either. > > "Huh? because you think that you can see intelligence and not > > > consciousness" > > Is that point even debatable? Of course it is. It's not possible not to see consciousness. You are living and breathing it every moment. > > "that means that intelligence creates consciousness?" > > > > Exactly, If that were the case then being unconscious should not affect someone's intelligence and someone's IQ should determine whether or not they are conscious. You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are awake or aware. > > "Does that mean that ultraviolet light creates color too?" > > > > No. > > " But you don't know that consciousness is the prerequisite for each and > > > every incidence of intelligence, now do you?" > > I've asked this before but you did not answer, we have never met so do you > think I'm conscious? Meant to say 'you don't know that consciousness is NOT the prerequisite either.' You and every other intelligence is conscious as far as I know. I have no evidence or intuition to the contrary. > > "Evolution does not select for intelligence. It selects for survival and > > > reproduction alone." > > Yes, and everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive > better and have more offspring than a stupid one, If that were true than the overwhelming majority of animals would be very intelligent. The animals which survive best are among the dumbest. Beetles aren't too bright. 400,000 to 1 million species - 25% percent of all species on the planet are beetles, still going strong. Bees and ants are more intelligent but are not nearly as successful. > but Evolution does not > give a damn if its conscious or not. Conscious only refers to human awareness, and evolution certainly does select for awareness. All of those beetles have antennas. Why? To detect and sense. To facilitate awareness to the beetles experience. Intelligence is an offshoot of awareness, a talent for integrating various sense channels and discovering motive strategies. 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.
