Once the principle guaranteeing my right to life is undermined, that provides precedent for the state to further undermine my right to life. This is already happening with abortion, and euthanasia is merely another step towards the state taking control over an individual's birth and death. If you have any libertarian streak in you, you should be up in arms against euthanasia. On the other hand, if you want others, such as the state, to control the critical portions of an individual's life, then you are the enemy.
That's an edge case that is not worth risking my right to life over. If someone is concerned about that happening to them in the future, they can take proper precautions in the present. We can't make the law cater to every individual's whim, some people will always be unhappy.
Used to be that doctors, who hold control over the life and death of many, had to take the Hippocratic oath that they would not abuse their power. Now the oath is all but defunct, and many medical schools don't even require the oath. With legislation such as this, there is no way after the fact to ascertain whether the patient actually asked for death or not, and even whether the condition is critical is often a judgment call of the doc.
Under the guise of humanitarianism, such legislation removes the checks, as slight as they may seem, that keep a doctor from abusing their power. For a forum that uses the slightest provocation to complain about the erosion of our rights, you all seem remarkably silent about the erosion of your very right to life!
Technically, even with a truly infinite amount of resources, it isn't necessarily the case that all possible results just happen. For example, consider an infinite random walk in 3 dimensions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk#Higher_dimensions
The chance the random walk ever returns to its origin is just 34%, not 100%.
Currently women are not allowed to serve on the frontlines. If military leadership believes letting women serve on the frontlines will cause more military casualties, I'm sure the same reasoning applies to homosexuals.
I believe these sorts of decisions should be mostly left up to commanders who know what it takes to keep their people alive. These decisions should not be dictated by politicians in DC.
From your link:
"It is often maintained that Bruno was executed because of his Copernicanism and his belief in the infinity of inhabited worlds. In fact, we do not know the exact grounds on which he was declared a heretic because his file is missing from the records. Scientists such as Galileo and Johannes Kepler were not sympathetic to Bruno in their writings."
Otherwise it could replicate me. However, I know this can't be the case. Anytime someone tells me they've successfully created a machine to replicate me, I know they're lying because I'm still me. If they'd replicated me, then I'd be the machine. But, blow the machine up, torture it cruelly, give it pleasure unimaginable, whatever. None of that affects me at all.
Then, considering that any truly significant insight I ever have had requires self consciousness, I highly doubt any kind of machine can be truly intelligent.
I wouldn't make the jump from an entity not being physical to an entity being "magical," since the connotations of magical mean the entity defies rational explanation. For example, there seem to be strong accounts of people really having out of body experiences: they learn information they couldn't have known beforehand or learned any other plausible way. There also seem to be rigorously documented miracles.
I would say these occurrences fall in the domain of science, since modern science, most generally, deals with truth we can verify empirically. Sure, miracles and out of body experiences may not fit our current 'scientific method,' since they generally aren't easily repeatable, but that doesn't mean they aren't strongly empirically verified.
Ah, well, my argument is somewhere in between logical contradiction and cognitive dissonance. Basically, I am limited by my imagination; I can't think of any way for there to be multiple, independent instantiations of one person's consciousness without violating the very concept of consciousness. So sure, I am not justified in dismissing AI out of hand, but the thought experiment is evidence against AI in my book. Quantum physics presents an analogous situation. There is another explanation of the slits experiment that is in line with Newtonian physics, but physicists think the current theory is more elegant.
Anyways, if you have a good counter to my thought experiment, I'd be interested in hearing it.
As for the first issue, I go with strong AI not being algorithmic due to mainly to Godel's incompleteness theorem and the lack of any significant progress in strong AI since its inception. As for materialism, it seems to just be a prejudice of the scientific establishment, without any strong proof that I know of. Strong AI seems to be one of the lynchpins of materialism; if materialism can't adequately account for human intelligence, then materialism is a very weak theory.
Of course, there are many other factors that influence my view on AI, such as its theological and moral implications, and how I see my mind working compared with how a computer works. They weight my preference when the possibility of strong AI is an open question, but are less important to me than strong logical or empirical evidence to the contrary.
Thank you, that's a helpful overview of how brains work, something I haven't research much myself.
Anyways, given the presupposition of materialism in your post, I guess you consider my question and arguments loony anyways. If you could explain this too, it'd be helpful. I don't understand why people with a scientific background seem to assume all non strictly materialistic positions are prima facie incoherent.
For the vast majority of intellectual history the exact opposite position has been held: that reality is essentially not physical (i.e. merely matter and energy). Plus, since modern science just flat out ignores any non naturalistic explanations for phenomena, strict materialism hasn't been "proven" as far as I know. I don't understand what it is that has so convinced modern science strict materialism is the only game in town.
I have questions regarding the theoretical possibility of AI. I've asked at proggit, but haven't received good answers yet (see here for my discussion, search for yters), so I figured I'd try here.
1. Given that the CS consensus seems to be strong AI can't be algorithmic, how does modeling brain functions get around this? Plus, what is a non algorithmic method of automation? Isn't automation by definition algorithmic?
2. Strong AI seems to result in cognitive dissonance. Say consciousness is a necessity for intelligence. Say strong AI implies certain information is identical to a specific consciousness. This means the same consciousness can have multiple, discontinuous, temporally synonymous instantiations. This is a logical contradiction per the nature of consciousness (I'll elaborate once someone bites).
Sure, some may say: A) The mind comes from matter. B) Material behavior is necessarily algorithmic, whether deterministic or non deterministic. Therefore, C) intelligence, and consequently strong AI, is necessarily algorithmic. But, that line of argumentation just begs the question. There are no logically necessary grounds that the current scientific materialistic presuppositions are true, so they can't be appealed to in this case. In fact, if my above arguments hold, then the current notion of scientific materialism is false.
And please, if you feel the need to quibble over semantics, don't bother. I'll only reply to people who take my points at face value, or actually need clarification.
Thanks, I thought as much. Has there ever been a theoretical study done to determine if computers can be completely locked down and still usable, so there are no vulnerabilities for the malicious code? Otherwise, once the net becomes super clogged, the spam cartels may start trying to set up deals with the users for better access to their boxes in return for not screwing up their computers as badly.
Why do the grey hat virii have to delete themselves? Since there will be many more worms and such to come, it makes sense to set up a grey hat base of ops on all the computers.
Does anyone make these? I'm thinking of worms that purposefully go out and deactivate malicious worms without trying to form botnets themselves. I've heard of virii deleting each other, but this is still for the purpose of controlling the box.
It's not just the country's infrastructure, it's the military's infrastructure and weapons. First, you have an update of the doctrine that pushed air power to the forefront, where you can even more easily paralyze the military through a big enough systemic shock. Waging war is essentially about logistics. Second, and even more importantly, the more that weapon systems are automated or used remotely, the more powerful controlling the network becomes.
I see this escalating to 'cyberspace' becoming the new major front line, as the sky became with the air force. By the simple fact that it is more efficient and flexible to use automated and remotely operated weapons, especially with an effective AI, the inescapable global competition will push all superpowers to automate as much of their military as possible.
Of course, this escalation will also cause havoc for the traditional power structures, based on weapons that only large scale industry could provide. Eventually, the means of waging war will be in the hands of everyone with a computer and the necessary knowledge.
I do realize that the masses do tend to be irrational and not put a lot of thought into things. But, if God doesn't exist, I don't know I would explain the fact (at least as far as I know) that the vast majority of ancient thinkers were not atheist. People like Socrates, Aristotle, etc. don't seem the type to believe in God just because it made them feel good or because they lack imagination. So, that is why I was saying that just dismissing the belief in God as being irrational seems too easy.
Anyways, thanks for the clarification. I've recently started seeing the arguments for atheism, and I haven't understood why they are convincing. I've found the theistic arguments more convincing, though I am, like many atheists, turned off by lots of religious culture.
Thanks for the response. "Inability/unwillingness to imagine eternal non existence" still doesn't clarify things to me. We all fall asleep and consequently know what it is like to cease being aware. So, it is just like imagining falling asleep and never waking up. Plus, I don't understand why it is a scary thing to think that we will cease to exist, since once we cease existing we stop being scared.
It still seems that the basic assumption in these kinds of arguments is that people just have an irrational fear of death and don't think about it. And again, such a response seems too easy to me.
I'm new to the internet debates on this subject, and I've only looked at the top level posts for this article, so my apologizes if I'm beating a dead horse.
I don't understand why the belief in God would come from a fear of death. At least when I've thought about it, the order is reversed. If there is no afterlife, etc. then death is no problem at all since I cease to be aware of anything once I die. Death is only a problem if I continue to be aware of something bad after I die. So, I only seem to have a rational reason for fearing death if I believe in an afterlife where I could be punished. Similarly, I have no reason to fear anything in life as long as I can escape it all through death.
So, I don't understand the 'God comes from fear of death' argument, besides a glib 'people are irrational' jab. But, that's just the easy way out, since you can just say that whenever anyone disagrees with your point of view. If someone could give me a more rational defense of that argument it would be appreciated.
Slashdot Mirror
Once the principle guaranteeing my right to life is undermined, that provides precedent for the state to further undermine my right to life. This is already happening with abortion, and euthanasia is merely another step towards the state taking control over an individual's birth and death. If you have any libertarian streak in you, you should be up in arms against euthanasia. On the other hand, if you want others, such as the state, to control the critical portions of an individual's life, then you are the enemy.
That's an edge case that is not worth risking my right to life over. If someone is concerned about that happening to them in the future, they can take proper precautions in the present. We can't make the law cater to every individual's whim, some people will always be unhappy.
You've always got that right. It's very difficult to take it away from you.
Used to be that doctors, who hold control over the life and death of many, had to take the Hippocratic oath that they would not abuse their power. Now the oath is all but defunct, and many medical schools don't even require the oath. With legislation such as this, there is no way after the fact to ascertain whether the patient actually asked for death or not, and even whether the condition is critical is often a judgment call of the doc. Under the guise of humanitarianism, such legislation removes the checks, as slight as they may seem, that keep a doctor from abusing their power. For a forum that uses the slightest provocation to complain about the erosion of our rights, you all seem remarkably silent about the erosion of your very right to life!
Technically, even with a truly infinite amount of resources, it isn't necessarily the case that all possible results just happen. For example, consider an infinite random walk in 3 dimensions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk#Higher_dimensions The chance the random walk ever returns to its origin is just 34%, not 100%.
I've heard the protein folding problem is quite likely NPC. How can people with slow brains outperform the best algorithms and computers of our day?
I've seen those militaries overseas and I'm not impressed. I'd prefer we not become like those militaries.
Currently women are not allowed to serve on the frontlines. If military leadership believes letting women serve on the frontlines will cause more military casualties, I'm sure the same reasoning applies to homosexuals.
I believe these sorts of decisions should be mostly left up to commanders who know what it takes to keep their people alive. These decisions should not be dictated by politicians in DC.
From your link: "It is often maintained that Bruno was executed because of his Copernicanism and his belief in the infinity of inhabited worlds. In fact, we do not know the exact grounds on which he was declared a heretic because his file is missing from the records. Scientists such as Galileo and Johannes Kepler were not sympathetic to Bruno in their writings."
Otherwise it could replicate me. However, I know this can't be the case. Anytime someone tells me they've successfully created a machine to replicate me, I know they're lying because I'm still me. If they'd replicated me, then I'd be the machine. But, blow the machine up, torture it cruelly, give it pleasure unimaginable, whatever. None of that affects me at all. Then, considering that any truly significant insight I ever have had requires self consciousness, I highly doubt any kind of machine can be truly intelligent.
I wouldn't make the jump from an entity not being physical to an entity being "magical," since the connotations of magical mean the entity defies rational explanation. For example, there seem to be strong accounts of people really having out of body experiences: they learn information they couldn't have known beforehand or learned any other plausible way. There also seem to be rigorously documented miracles.
I would say these occurrences fall in the domain of science, since modern science, most generally, deals with truth we can verify empirically. Sure, miracles and out of body experiences may not fit our current 'scientific method,' since they generally aren't easily repeatable, but that doesn't mean they aren't strongly empirically verified.
Ah, well, my argument is somewhere in between logical contradiction and cognitive dissonance. Basically, I am limited by my imagination; I can't think of any way for there to be multiple, independent instantiations of one person's consciousness without violating the very concept of consciousness. So sure, I am not justified in dismissing AI out of hand, but the thought experiment is evidence against AI in my book. Quantum physics presents an analogous situation. There is another explanation of the slits experiment that is in line with Newtonian physics, but physicists think the current theory is more elegant.
Anyways, if you have a good counter to my thought experiment, I'd be interested in hearing it.
As for the first issue, I go with strong AI not being algorithmic due to mainly to Godel's incompleteness theorem and the lack of any significant progress in strong AI since its inception. As for materialism, it seems to just be a prejudice of the scientific establishment, without any strong proof that I know of. Strong AI seems to be one of the lynchpins of materialism; if materialism can't adequately account for human intelligence, then materialism is a very weak theory.
Of course, there are many other factors that influence my view on AI, such as its theological and moral implications, and how I see my mind working compared with how a computer works. They weight my preference when the possibility of strong AI is an open question, but are less important to me than strong logical or empirical evidence to the contrary.
Thank you, that's a helpful overview of how brains work, something I haven't research much myself.
Anyways, given the presupposition of materialism in your post, I guess you consider my question and arguments loony anyways. If you could explain this too, it'd be helpful. I don't understand why people with a scientific background seem to assume all non strictly materialistic positions are prima facie incoherent.
For the vast majority of intellectual history the exact opposite position has been held: that reality is essentially not physical (i.e. merely matter and energy). Plus, since modern science just flat out ignores any non naturalistic explanations for phenomena, strict materialism hasn't been "proven" as far as I know. I don't understand what it is that has so convinced modern science strict materialism is the only game in town.
No, I used the phrase correctly. I'm saying that particular argument is circular.
I have questions regarding the theoretical possibility of AI. I've asked at proggit, but haven't received good answers yet (see here for my discussion, search for yters), so I figured I'd try here.
1. Given that the CS consensus seems to be strong AI can't be algorithmic, how does modeling brain functions get around this? Plus, what is a non algorithmic method of automation? Isn't automation by definition algorithmic?
2. Strong AI seems to result in cognitive dissonance. Say consciousness is a necessity for intelligence. Say strong AI implies certain information is identical to a specific consciousness. This means the same consciousness can have multiple, discontinuous, temporally synonymous instantiations. This is a logical contradiction per the nature of consciousness (I'll elaborate once someone bites).
Sure, some may say: A) The mind comes from matter. B) Material behavior is necessarily algorithmic, whether deterministic or non deterministic. Therefore, C) intelligence, and consequently strong AI, is necessarily algorithmic. But, that line of argumentation just begs the question. There are no logically necessary grounds that the current scientific materialistic presuppositions are true, so they can't be appealed to in this case. In fact, if my above arguments hold, then the current notion of scientific materialism is false.
And please, if you feel the need to quibble over semantics, don't bother. I'll only reply to people who take my points at face value, or actually need clarification.
Thanks, I thought as much. Has there ever been a theoretical study done to determine if computers can be completely locked down and still usable, so there are no vulnerabilities for the malicious code? Otherwise, once the net becomes super clogged, the spam cartels may start trying to set up deals with the users for better access to their boxes in return for not screwing up their computers as badly.
Why do the grey hat virii have to delete themselves? Since there will be many more worms and such to come, it makes sense to set up a grey hat base of ops on all the computers.
How can they get so much free music, in Russia?...
Does anyone make these? I'm thinking of worms that purposefully go out and deactivate malicious worms without trying to form botnets themselves. I've heard of virii deleting each other, but this is still for the purpose of controlling the box.
Why'd this get modded up so high? Seems pretty easy to pick apart all the arguments...
I see this escalating to 'cyberspace' becoming the new major front line, as the sky became with the air force. By the simple fact that it is more efficient and flexible to use automated and remotely operated weapons, especially with an effective AI, the inescapable global competition will push all superpowers to automate as much of their military as possible.
Of course, this escalation will also cause havoc for the traditional power structures, based on weapons that only large scale industry could provide. Eventually, the means of waging war will be in the hands of everyone with a computer and the necessary knowledge.
Anyways, thanks for the clarification. I've recently started seeing the arguments for atheism, and I haven't understood why they are convincing. I've found the theistic arguments more convincing, though I am, like many atheists, turned off by lots of religious culture.
It still seems that the basic assumption in these kinds of arguments is that people just have an irrational fear of death and don't think about it. And again, such a response seems too easy to me.
I'm new to the internet debates on this subject, and I've only looked at the top level posts for this article, so my apologizes if I'm beating a dead horse. I don't understand why the belief in God would come from a fear of death. At least when I've thought about it, the order is reversed. If there is no afterlife, etc. then death is no problem at all since I cease to be aware of anything once I die. Death is only a problem if I continue to be aware of something bad after I die. So, I only seem to have a rational reason for fearing death if I believe in an afterlife where I could be punished. Similarly, I have no reason to fear anything in life as long as I can escape it all through death. So, I don't understand the 'God comes from fear of death' argument, besides a glib 'people are irrational' jab. But, that's just the easy way out, since you can just say that whenever anyone disagrees with your point of view. If someone could give me a more rational defense of that argument it would be appreciated.