The implausibility of brainless minds

[atanu]

There must be a thing to be aware. "Awareness" without a thing isn't a sensible proposition.

So, what you mean is that the THING can be called by whatsoever name one prefers but there is an 'aware thing'.

 

[not nom]

Robots could certainly be "made" to do essentially the same thing, and as in computers that now play chess, do it better than humans.

that's the thing, they can be made to do stuff. computers playing chess ARE essentially humans doing the playing..

 

[PolyHedral]

So, what you mean is that the THING can be called by whatsoever name one prefers but there is an 'aware thing'.

No, awareness isn't a (physical) thing on its own. It's a property of physical things.

that's the thing, they can be made to do stuff. computers playing chess ARE essentially humans doing the playing..

except for the fact that the computers can beat all humans on Earth.

 

[not nom]

except for the fact that the computers can beat all humans on Earth.

yeah, and? what it is/does, the algorithms invented and tweaked by humans it ultimately consists of, matter more than the pop (mis)understanding of it.

if you set a ball on a slope, the fact that the ball rolls down the slope is your doing so to speak, the ball doesn't "do" anything. it certainly doesn't know it's "rolling down the slope", and has no opinions of it. likewise the only reason deep blue makes good moves is because humans determined that winning a chess game as a desirable situation, and came up with algorithms which perform better than others.

just because you don't see the human pilot, or don't look at the source code of the autopilot, doesn't mean "that plane is doing stuff". it might seem that way from far away, sure -- so what?

playing chess really well, or converting structured HTML into structured plain text and doing searches against that database (google, the learning entity, heh), has so precious little to do with AI or consciousness. it's mostly just sheer speed and amount of memory.

 

[PolyHedral]

yeah, and? what it is/does, the algorithms invented and tweaked by humans it ultimately consists of, matter more than the pop (mis)understanding of it.

if you set a ball on a slope, the fact that the ball rolls down the slope is your doing so to speak, the ball doesn't "do" anything. it certainly doesn't know it's "rolling down the slope", and has no opinions of it. likewise the only reason deep blue makes good moves is because humans determined that winning a chess game as a desirable situation, and came up with algorithms which perform better than others.

just because you don't see the human pilot, or don't look at the source code of the autopilot, doesn't mean "that plane is doing stuff". it might seem that way from far away, sure -- so what?

playing chess really well, or converting structured HTML into structured plain text and doing searches against that database (google, the learning entity, heh), has so precious little to do with AI or consciousness. it's mostly just sheer speed and amount of memory.

This entire post applies exactly as well to humans being programmed by the laws of phyiscs, you know. :help:

 

[idav]

This entire post applies exactly as well to humans being programmed by the laws of phyiscs, you know. :help:

It is true we are just sophisticated machines, "built" rather poorly I might add.

 

[idav]

firstly, a lot is still lacking, secondly, sophisticated programming essentially means the illusion of AI, not AI.

Just like we have the illusion of being intelligent.

again, notice the difference between "learning" and "made to learn".

There is no difference. We have a set of instruction that determined our own programming through our DNA. Doesn't matter if intelligence made it or not.

yes, you can define parameters of success and then throw just about anything at a neural net. but without that, nothing happens. and with it, still nothing remotely interesting happens.. and that's not for lack of people trying real hard.

Nothing happens without some programs analyzing the data and actually doing something with it.

it's because we're only still taking first steps I think. we're far from "there", we're not even anywhere where we could say what "there" would look like. we don't even understand consciousness in humans.

Why is it that we have to achieve human intelligence to have achieved anything at all. Setting the bar a bit high aren't we?

no, we're just making tinkertoys which seem to have their own life, but don't.

It remains to be seen what exactly makes life different from non-life.

we already have that. it sits there, more or less idly, waiting for user input. all that computer activity? ultimately the result of user input.

That is why we program things to work autonomously. The less user input needed the more independent. Even we need input from our own system to function.

calling software a "bot" doesn't make it do anything fancy. notepad.exe is a "bot" that can analyse and display ASCII files, as well as manipulate them. woo!

There are bots that can go through the internet and analyze and categorize how what people think and what knowledge we have. There is even a program that could go through this forum and tell us how people feel about religion.

entity: "something that has a real existence; thing" huh

A being even, more than just a thing.

 

[atanu]

Just like we have the illusion of being intelligent.

And with an ability to know that illusion?

 

[not nom]

idav, before I reply to you more, I'd like to know if you ever programmed a single line of code.. ? or hey, how about sources? where is that bot that can scan the forum and assess our invididual levels of knowledge accurately? do you know what a neural net is, and how rigidly defined input and output are? a while ago I've read it's possible for a neural net to detect schizophrenia on CCTV cameras just by how individuals walk -- I don't know if that's true, don't recall the source, but it'd be hardly surprising, and hardly impressive. we just anthropomorphize what we come up with. well, the users do, the creators not so much, because they know what they're actually doing.

 

[PolyHedral]

And with an ability to know that illusion?

Yes. Self-reference is really easy to compute, it turns out.

 

[idav]

idav, before I reply to you more, I'd like to know if you ever programmed a single line of code.. ?

Yes I do a bit of that in my employment but I mainly work with databases.

or hey, how about sources? where is that bot that can scan the forum and assess our invididual levels of knowledge accurately? do you know what a neural net is, and how rigidly defined input and output are? a while ago I've read it's possible for a neural net to detect schizophrenia on CCTV cameras just by how individuals walk -- I don't know if that's true, don't recall the source, but it'd be hardly surprising, and hardly impressive. we just anthropomorphize what we come up with. well, the users do, the creators not so much, because they know what they're actually doing.

Here is a reference to what I'm talking about. I'm aware of the potential of networking which is why I brought it up.

Sentiment analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[crystalonyx]

that's the thing, they can be made to do stuff. computers playing chess ARE essentially humans doing the playing..

Not at all, computers do not "think" like humans, they are programmed to approach any task logically and exhaustively; with enough memory and CPU power they can be made to outperform humans in many areas.