On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 4:02 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, May 1, 2013, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >> > Artificial neural networks have been trained to fly planes, invest in >> > the stock market, converts speech to text, recognise handwriting and so on >> > and so on. > > > True. > > >> >> > For most of these cases, nobody understands how the network works, they >> > only understand how they created the necessary >> conditions for a certain behaviour to emerge. > > > Also true. So you know that under certain circumstances shit happens, and > that's all that you need to know if you're just interested in how, but not > if you also want to know why.
Things like Hebbian learning and artificial models of neurons have explanatory power (even if too simple when compared to reality). This is the sort of thing that is plausibly encoded in the DNA, not the precise wiring. For our monkey brains to be able to even grasp the why, we need to understand the interplay between different levels of abstraction from the molecular to the social level. The explanation is transversal to these layers. Trying to figure out the precise wiring has less explanatory power. We can try to understand how a dozen neurons can self-organise into some useful behaviour, and how that algorithm can be encoded in something like DNA, and how the dozen neurons can be transformed into a human brain by iterative improvement at the genotypical level. > So if you just wanted to know how to make a AI > you could reverse engineer a human brain, you might not understand why your > creation worked but that wouldn't stop it from working. I think it's more feasible to try to reverse-engineer the morphogenetic algorithms encoded in the DNA. We would still not understand the creation, but would have a greater chance of success, and we would understand how to create the conditions for our creation to grow. Fully understanding a developed human brain would require understanding an absurdly huge graph of interactions that extends in space across the planet and in time all the way back to the first organisms. >> >> > The first activity [science] offers public rewards > > > It helps you figure out how the world actually works not how you wish it > works. There is an internal world that is only accessible to me and that only I can observe. > And because what you've discovered is not just true for you but for > the external world too I'd be interested to hear what you've found out. I guess that's the appeal of art. Some is interesting, some is boring, according to taste. I, for example, love David Lynch's films, which are produced precisely by a process of "diving inside" and trying to bring something to show for it. > >> >> > the second only offers private rewards. > > > Well, I suppose navel gazing might lower the blood pressure in some people, > but don't expect it to teach you anything important about the complexities > of reality, otherwise you'll be as disappointed as the last hundred > generation of navel gazers have been. I haven't been disappointed so far. Maybe frustrated sometimes. > And navel gazers turn into total bores > as soon as they open their mouth because even if they really have found > something it is only true for them. That's a risk of course. David Lynch agrees and preferes not to talk about his films. Some people are good with words and are able to produce interesting art in that medium. >> >> > You freed yourself from the dogmas of Christianity but not from its >> > morality. > > > Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that > one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. I'm simply pointing out that you may be under the influence of christian morality even though you reject christianity. This is not surprising, we grew in a western civilisation that was greatly influenced by christianity. In this case I believe you are being puritanical because you believe that certain pursuits are not worthy because they do not contribute to the material common good. This moral value is not exclusive to christianity, of course, but given that your name is "John Clark" I would bet that that is where it originates from, in your case. >>> >> if you are a logical man then your doubts about the consciousness of >>> >> a intelligent robot would be no greater than your doubts about the >>> >> consciousness of your fellow intelligent human beings; and lets face it >>> >> as >>> >> a practical matter those doubts must be very very very very small. >> >> >> > From a Bayesian standpoint, we are disagreeing on the value of a prior. >> > This has nothing to do with logic, we just place different bets on an >> > unknown. > > > I don't understand, are you saying that you actually believe that it is > likely that you are the only conscious being in the universe?? I believe it is likely that consciousness is the fundamental stuff, and that this stuff is the same for me and for you. > >>> >>> >> If you believe that intelligence and consciousness are unrelated then >>> >> logically there is no alternative, you must believe that Charles Darwin >>> >> was >>> >> wrong. >> >> >> > That doesn't follow. > > > Like hell it doesn't!! You know for a fact that Evolution produced at least > one being (and probably many billions) that was not just intelligent but > conscious too, and there is absolutely positively no reason for Evolution to > do that if intelligence and consciousness are unrelated. Evolution provides a compelling explanation for how intelligence originated, but it does not provide any explanation for how consciousness originated, so it is perfectly reasonable to be agnostic on the origin of consciousness while accepting Darwinism. For example, someone might come up with a theory that is more general than evolution and also explains why evolution is a good approximation for a subset of reality -- like what happened before with Newtonian physics and general relativity. >> >> > I believe that human intelligence is a product of Darwinian evolution >> > and I'm agnostic on consciousness. > > > Then what I said before was entirely wrong, your views are not even close to > being self consistent. > > John K Clark > > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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