My point is that "a formal framework and accredited degree program" and "home study" are not mutually exclusive. You can't argue against this successfully, because I have an example of a real-world, respected, degree-awarding home-study institution - the UK's Open University.
Your fiancee can get a Comp Sci degree through the Open University, and she can mix and match courses to suit her particular interests and strengths.
My experience is with their maths courses and a Digital Communications course. The materials are very good as is their study support. It can be hard work though as you have to discipline yourself to study, you can't just go with the flow like I did at school and "scrape" good grades by virtue of having sat in the classroom and paid some attention.
My only gripe is with their Windows-centrism. For maths courses you have to use MathCAD which I have found does not run under WINE very easily or well, and a lot of their multimedia courseware in the digital comms course was Windows based (though IIRC WINE handled it quite well).
You think? Like, a "cat room" is a really sensible idea. And what's with the rounded doorways? The place looks like Windows XP, i.e. infantile. The beams are just eyesores.
No "formal dining room" is wanted; but there is a "dining room"... huh?
I could go on about the impossible requirements, like no repainting ever and a maintenance-free roof "for the life of the house" - sure, if the life is only 100 years that might be possible...
I mean, I like Dilbert and fun things and stuff but don't hold this house up as an example for housebuilders.
The absence of consciousness in any non-biologicals discovered so far does not prove it's impossible for non-biological entities to be conscious.
Hey, wait a minute. I didn't claim that consciousness is absent in any "non-biologicals"; furthermore I note quite clearly that it's impossible for us to tell whether it's there or not, and I proposed the possibility of a beach and soil being conscious.
You're attacking a strawman. My claim is that it's reasonable to assume that beaches and soil are not conscious because they are so unlike us. Not that it's proven; I claim it cannot be proven.
me: That road leads to humanity's extinction.
you: Howso?
OK maybe not extinction, I grant you. But I would not be happy eating conscious vegetables.
I'm a vegetarian, as it happens, and my stance is derived from my observation that animals are "sort of like us" and are therefore probably conscious. I can't be knowingly party to the mass slaughter of conscious beings with the attendent suffering and objectification which that entails.
My position on vegetables is clearly a compromise. I can very well imagine that vegetables are conscious. However I have to stretch my imagination quite far. Some people don't find it such a stretch (fruitarians, for example) and I can understand, but don't agree with, their position. But this is a compromise I make between me and my environment, and is the core of my moral position.
So, as a vegetable eater, I cannot accept that sand is conscious, or that arrangements of sand could be conscious. To do so would be to spit on the graves of all the vegetables I have eaten.
I think you're assuming consciousness is only an on-or-off boolean state. =)
No, I see it more like a dimmer switch. It goes from OFF to "just on" in one fell swoop then takes a range of values from there on in...
It's not possible to prove the existence of conscious perception because it is a property of me only visible to me. It has no effect on my behaviour. I can tell for sure that I'm not some simulation, but you will never know.
However it's sensible for each of us to assume that consciousness exists in the other, because we are alike, and that assumption brings only neutral or beneficial outcomes (the avoidance of unnecessary suffering by us, and the comfort that we are not alone).
Conversely, any machine we build today is probably unlike us in every pertinent respect. I say probably, because I don't think we know enough about what we are like to draw a certain conclusion.
There seems to be something about biological material which brings consciousness, and it's not the configuration of atoms, because no matter how you arrange charged particles or wavelets or whatever mathematics can describe, they can't consciously perceive, they simply react to forces and whatnot. This does not preclude a different view of matter which includes a conscious component, but that's not what today's science teaches, and that's not describable by mathematics.
Whatever it is about biological material that makes consciousness, will probably remain forever a mystery. In fact it may be that consciousness does not arise from matter, but instead matter arises from consciousness. I think the problem is that hard, and that strange.
Now, to the ethics, if we consider a machine to be conscious, where do we draw the line? If, as I contend, we will never know what causes consciousness, we have no way of knowing whether a stone in my garden is conscious or not. So do we treat all things as our conscious equals? That road leads to humanity's extinction.
Given the complete lack of data, we need to make a reasonable guess. If, as I contend, consciousness is not an emergent property of the arrangement of matter, then things made from what we must assume to be unsentient material (minerals) cannot themselves be sentient. So computers made from silicon cannot be sentient.
I'm not claiming this to be a logically rigorous answer because I don't think that's possible. logic needs facts as input and we have no facts about consciousness other than our own individual experience.
What I do claim is that it is a reasonable approach, and that treating machines made of minerals as if they were conscious, while disregarding the possiblity of conscious beaches and soil, is not a reasonable approach.
People who trot out "emergent behaviour" as an explanation for consciousness either don't appreciate the difficulty of characterising, let alone explaining, conscious perception or don't understand the limitations of "emergent behaviour" as an explanatory tool.
Your use of the word "just" indicates you fall into the former category.
I too hope we can create machines with the reasoning powers of humans, and I see no reason why we won't, but I doubt we can create conscious machines. If we do, it will be based on a new understanding of the world, and not emergent properties of our current understanding.
Wait, I know what you are saying but how do you justify an experiment conducted to find out which patient is more likely to have their medication switched:
* A patient who tells their doctor they are having unpleasant side-effects, or * A patient who doesn't.
An example from TFA.
I mean, there is obvious. Then there is obvious aka a logical deduction.
I don't find a lot to argue with in your post except it's clear my conception of mind is completely different from yours; because my conception of mind includes the fact that we as minds perceive things, whereas software simply processes things.
You view mind as an information system, I view it as a perception system.
Information systems are understandble. Perception systems are not! I have no idea how my mind (or anyone elses!) works, and my claim is that I will never know nor will anyone else, but it's very interesting to explore its properties.
No you're not! There is no change to the atoms, at least not to how many of them there are.
Yes I am. I did not say there was a change to the number of atoms. Note I used the word "configuration", not "quantity". I used that word for a reason. I am well aware the number of atoms does not change according to what is stored on a magnetic platter.
If you can't power a HD on, or put a floppy into a drive, there is NO way to tell what software is on it or even if it has any on it at all.
What is your point? The data stored on a magnetic surface is only readable by using magnetic sensors. The data stored by putting ink on paper is only readable by ink detecting devices. Facts, but irrelevant facts.
Software is NOT a material object, because it can travel at the speed of light.
I already said that software is not a material object in my previous posts. I further stated that software, as we understand it (algorithms, data structures) doesn't exist except as a concept in human minds, with a physical manifestation in the configuration of atoms. Configurations of atoms can change at the speed of light, so I suppose what you call information is what I call configuration of atoms. But what point are you trying to make here?
Information is the product of the mind.
Wait a minute. You were claiming that the mind is the equivalent of software. Can you get back to that please?
Neither of your two given alternatives apply. I am paying for media with a specific configuration of atoms, which is a physical manifestation of the human abstraction that is software, and the right to do certain things in terms of manipulating that configuration. If the disk were blank, or had other stuff on it, then it would be a different configuration and yes, I would feel wronged; but how I feel about not having the expected configuration has nothing to do with whether or not software is or is not an analogue of the mind, which it is not.
Software as a programmer knows it (algorithms, data structures, objects) does not exist in the physical world, it is a human abstraction with real world manifestations.
I can't argue about it being the product of one or more MINDS any more than I can argue that my socks are not the product of one or more MINDS, it has no bearing on the argument.
... the software, which is immaterial, not subject to physical constraints
No, that's not right, because software does not actually exist in the real world; it is, in fact, an abstraction we have about configurations of matter.
A computer program on a hard disk is a physical configuration of the atoms on that hard disk. It's existence is dependent on that physical configuration.
The analogy is flawed. Consciousness, mind, soul whatever you want to call it, has nothing to do with software. The fundamental aspect of consciousness is the fact of perception, the fact of awareness, and software is not aware.
A computer program might store data about it's state but this is not consciousness, or awareness, it is storage, and storage is not perception. This is the great fallacy of modern-day consciousness-deniers. They falsely equate consciousness with memory, or feedback, or particular kinds of configuration of matter; consciousness is none of these things.
Consciousness cannot be explained in terms of mathematics or physics or chemistry because these disciplines depend on reducing what is real to what is understandable (reductionism), whereas consciousness is simply real, not understandable.
No, it is the result of productive human activity directed upon the limited physical resources available to us.
Your attitude makes me angry. You think the world is infinite. I bet you think climate change has nothing to do with mankind's actions. You know, the oil reserves will run out one day, because they are not infinite.
Why do you think people are starving if wealth is unlimited? Because the Africans are lazy?
I often wonder in these massive union/company disputes - does the company ever approach the unions *first* to discuss these kind of issues?
This is your best point. So often these decisions are presented as a "done deal". Why is there no flexibility and room for negotiation? Perhaps the IBM staff would be willing to take a 10% pay cut. I've heard of it happening in other companies (Agilent).
Well, that might have been a point, except IBM is incorporated in Europe too, because it does business here too and employs people here too.
I'm not arguing, for instance, that IBM should not be hiring people in India, or that they should treat their Indian staff any worse. I am arguing that there has to be an alternative to dumping their European staff in favour of Indian employees to acheive cost savings; if indeed that is what this is about.
Show me where I can get 10,000 workers that give the best of themselves to a company instead of stealing office supplies and using the photocopier for personal copies and I'll relocate.
My current employer. I won't name them in a public forum but they are of the size you propose and I have been overwhelmed by the quality of the people who work there. I wouldn't like to work where you are, or maybe you just can't see the good in people.
That's like saying 'happiness is a limited resource', or 'ideas are a limited resource'.
No it's not. You can be happy, and I can be happy, and everyone can be happy, and we can all have ideas, without reducing the ability of others to be happy, or have ideas. Wealth is limited by virtue of us living on a planet of limited resource that's hard to leave. Happiness and ideas do not suffer from such limitations.
So now individuals are parasites on nations?
Some are, yes, what's your point? That none are?
Pursuit of an efficient workplace deserves punishment? Inefficiency will make society better?
At the cost of the host nation, yes. Efficiency at the expense of your friends is wrong. Or perhaps you have no friends.
Slashdot Mirror
My point is that "a formal framework and accredited degree program" and "home study" are not mutually exclusive. You can't argue against this successfully, because I have an example of a real-world, respected, degree-awarding home-study institution - the UK's Open University.
Why she wants to study these things outside of a formal framework and accredited degree program is beyond me, though.
Where does it say such a thing, or how have you come to that conclusion?
Hint: it doesn't, and you're wrong.
Your fiancee can get a Comp Sci degree through the Open University, and she can mix and match courses to suit her particular interests and strengths.
My experience is with their maths courses and a Digital Communications course. The materials are very good as is their study support. It can be hard work though as you have to discipline yourself to study, you can't just go with the flow like I did at school and "scrape" good grades by virtue of having sat in the classroom and paid some attention.
My only gripe is with their Windows-centrism. For maths courses you have to use MathCAD which I have found does not run under WINE very easily or well, and a lot of their multimedia courseware in the digital comms course was Windows based (though IIRC WINE handled it quite well).
You think? Like, a "cat room" is a really sensible idea. And what's with the rounded doorways? The place looks like Windows XP, i.e. infantile. The beams are just eyesores.
No "formal dining room" is wanted; but there is a "dining room"... huh?
I could go on about the impossible requirements, like no repainting ever and a maintenance-free roof "for the life of the house" - sure, if the life is only 100 years that might be possible...
I mean, I like Dilbert and fun things and stuff but don't hold this house up as an example for housebuilders.
157 is prime, and that was from my head. (mind you, it was just an inspired guess...)
The absence of consciousness in any non-biologicals discovered so far does not prove it's impossible for non-biological entities to be conscious.
Hey, wait a minute. I didn't claim that consciousness is absent in any "non-biologicals"; furthermore I note quite clearly that it's impossible for us to tell whether it's there or not, and I proposed the possibility of a beach and soil being conscious.
You're attacking a strawman. My claim is that it's reasonable to assume that beaches and soil are not conscious because they are so unlike us. Not that it's proven; I claim it cannot be proven.
me: That road leads to humanity's extinction.
you: Howso?
OK maybe not extinction, I grant you. But I would not be happy eating conscious vegetables.
I'm a vegetarian, as it happens, and my stance is derived from my observation that animals are "sort of like us" and are therefore probably conscious. I can't be knowingly party to the mass slaughter of conscious beings with the attendent suffering and objectification which that entails.
My position on vegetables is clearly a compromise. I can very well imagine that vegetables are conscious. However I have to stretch my imagination quite far. Some people don't find it such a stretch (fruitarians, for example) and I can understand, but don't agree with, their position. But this is a compromise I make between me and my environment, and is the core of my moral position.
So, as a vegetable eater, I cannot accept that sand is conscious, or that arrangements of sand could be conscious. To do so would be to spit on the graves of all the vegetables I have eaten.
I think you're assuming consciousness is only an on-or-off boolean state. =)
No, I see it more like a dimmer switch. It goes from OFF to "just on" in one fell swoop then takes a range of values from there on in...
It's not possible to prove the existence of conscious perception because it is a property of me only visible to me. It has no effect on my behaviour. I can tell for sure that I'm not some simulation, but you will never know.
However it's sensible for each of us to assume that consciousness exists in the other, because we are alike, and that assumption brings only neutral or beneficial outcomes (the avoidance of unnecessary suffering by us, and the comfort that we are not alone).
Conversely, any machine we build today is probably unlike us in every pertinent respect. I say probably, because I don't think we know enough about what we are like to draw a certain conclusion.
There seems to be something about biological material which brings consciousness, and it's not the configuration of atoms, because no matter how you arrange charged particles or wavelets or whatever mathematics can describe, they can't consciously perceive, they simply react to forces and whatnot. This does not preclude a different view of matter which includes a conscious component, but that's not what today's science teaches, and that's not describable by mathematics.
Whatever it is about biological material that makes consciousness, will probably remain forever a mystery. In fact it may be that consciousness does not arise from matter, but instead matter arises from consciousness. I think the problem is that hard, and that strange.
Now, to the ethics, if we consider a machine to be conscious, where do we draw the line? If, as I contend, we will never know what causes consciousness, we have no way of knowing whether a stone in my garden is conscious or not. So do we treat all things as our conscious equals? That road leads to humanity's extinction.
Given the complete lack of data, we need to make a reasonable guess. If, as I contend, consciousness is not an emergent property of the arrangement of matter, then things made from what we must assume to be unsentient material (minerals) cannot themselves be sentient. So computers made from silicon cannot be sentient.
I'm not claiming this to be a logically rigorous answer because I don't think that's possible. logic needs facts as input and we have no facts about consciousness other than our own individual experience.
What I do claim is that it is a reasonable approach, and that treating machines made of minerals as if they were conscious, while disregarding the possiblity of conscious beaches and soil, is not a reasonable approach.
People who trot out "emergent behaviour" as an explanation for consciousness either don't appreciate the difficulty of characterising, let alone explaining, conscious perception or don't understand the limitations of "emergent behaviour" as an explanatory tool.
Your use of the word "just" indicates you fall into the former category.
I too hope we can create machines with the reasoning powers of humans, and I see no reason why we won't, but I doubt we can create conscious machines. If we do, it will be based on a new understanding of the world, and not emergent properties of our current understanding.
mplayer
Pointless must be a Kiwi euphonism for useless...
No, pointless is standard English for without purpose. No Kiwi about it, and no euphony either, although the idea is amusing.
Surely you have heard, or asked, "What is the point of...?"
PS The word is euphemism.
Wait, I know what you are saying but how do you justify an experiment conducted to find out which patient is more likely to have their medication switched:
* A patient who tells their doctor they are having unpleasant side-effects, or
* A patient who doesn't.
An example from TFA.
I mean, there is obvious. Then there is obvious aka a logical deduction.
I don't find a lot to argue with in your post except it's clear my conception of mind is completely different from yours; because my conception of mind includes the fact that we as minds perceive things, whereas software simply processes things.
You view mind as an information system, I view it as a perception system.
Information systems are understandble. Perception systems are not! I have no idea how my mind (or anyone elses!) works, and my claim is that I will never know nor will anyone else, but it's very interesting to explore its properties.
No you're not! There is no change to the atoms, at least not to how many of them there are.
Yes I am. I did not say there was a change to the number of atoms. Note I used the word "configuration", not "quantity". I used that word for a reason. I am well aware the number of atoms does not change according to what is stored on a magnetic platter.
If you can't power a HD on, or put a floppy into a drive, there is NO way to tell what software is on it or even if it has any on it at all.
What is your point? The data stored on a magnetic surface is only readable by using magnetic sensors. The data stored by putting ink on paper is only readable by ink detecting devices. Facts, but irrelevant facts.
Software is NOT a material object, because it can travel at the speed of light.
I already said that software is not a material object in my previous posts. I further stated that software, as we understand it (algorithms, data structures) doesn't exist except as a concept in human minds, with a physical manifestation in the configuration of atoms. Configurations of atoms can change at the speed of light, so I suppose what you call information is what I call configuration of atoms. But what point are you trying to make here?
Information is the product of the mind.
Wait a minute. You were claiming that the mind is the equivalent of software. Can you get back to that please?
I appreciate the time you have take to reply to my post. I don't have the time to do your post justice right now but I will find it later.
Thanks.
Clearly, what is.
Neither of your two given alternatives apply. I am paying for media with a specific configuration of atoms, which is a physical manifestation of the human abstraction that is software, and the right to do certain things in terms of manipulating that configuration. If the disk were blank, or had other stuff on it, then it would be a different configuration and yes, I would feel wronged; but how I feel about not having the expected configuration has nothing to do with whether or not software is or is not an analogue of the mind, which it is not.
Software as a programmer knows it (algorithms, data structures, objects) does not exist in the physical world, it is a human abstraction with real world manifestations.
I can't argue about it being the product of one or more MINDS any more than I can argue that my socks are not the product of one or more MINDS, it has no bearing on the argument.
... the software, which is immaterial, not subject to physical constraints
No, that's not right, because software does not actually exist in the real world; it is, in fact, an abstraction we have about configurations of matter.
A computer program on a hard disk is a physical configuration of the atoms on that hard disk. It's existence is dependent on that physical configuration.
The analogy is flawed. Consciousness, mind, soul whatever you want to call it, has nothing to do with software. The fundamental aspect of consciousness is the fact of perception, the fact of awareness, and software is not aware.
A computer program might store data about it's state but this is not consciousness, or awareness, it is storage, and storage is not perception. This is the great fallacy of modern-day consciousness-deniers. They falsely equate consciousness with memory, or feedback, or particular kinds of configuration of matter; consciousness is none of these things.
Consciousness cannot be explained in terms of mathematics or physics or chemistry because these disciplines depend on reducing what is real to what is understandable (reductionism), whereas consciousness is simply real, not understandable.
Your "consciousness" is just a simulation playing out in your brain.
Proof that you are, indeed, a copy.
Well done, first truly funny use of above cliches in months.
No, it is the result of productive human activity directed upon the limited physical resources available to us.
Your attitude makes me angry. You think the world is infinite. I bet you think climate change has nothing to do with mankind's actions. You know, the oil reserves will run out one day, because they are not infinite.
Why do you think people are starving if wealth is unlimited? Because the Africans are lazy?
Fucking idiot.
I often wonder in these massive union/company disputes - does the company ever approach the unions *first* to discuss these kind of issues?
This is your best point. So often these decisions are presented as a "done deal". Why is there no flexibility and room for negotiation? Perhaps the IBM staff would be willing to take a 10% pay cut. I've heard of it happening in other companies (Agilent).
Well, that might have been a point, except IBM is incorporated in Europe too, because it does business here too and employs people here too.
I'm not arguing, for instance, that IBM should not be hiring people in India, or that they should treat their Indian staff any worse. I am arguing that there has to be an alternative to dumping their European staff in favour of Indian employees to acheive cost savings; if indeed that is what this is about.
We can't all live off dividends. Somebody has to work!
Better to regulate things so that neither worker nor employer is abused by the other. Otherwise, by human nature, abuse will happen.
But what's your point? You state what is, I state what should be.
Show me where I can get 10,000 workers that give the best of themselves to a company instead of stealing office supplies and using the photocopier for personal copies and I'll relocate.
My current employer. I won't name them in a public forum but they are of the size you propose and I have been overwhelmed by the quality of the people who work there. I wouldn't like to work where you are, or maybe you just can't see the good in people.
That's like saying 'happiness is a limited resource', or 'ideas are a limited resource'.
No it's not. You can be happy, and I can be happy, and everyone can be happy, and we can all have ideas, without reducing the ability of others to be happy, or have ideas. Wealth is limited by virtue of us living on a planet of limited resource that's hard to leave. Happiness and ideas do not suffer from such limitations.
So now individuals are parasites on nations?
Some are, yes, what's your point? That none are?
Pursuit of an efficient workplace deserves punishment? Inefficiency will make society better?
At the cost of the host nation, yes. Efficiency at the expense of your friends is wrong. Or perhaps you have no friends.
Sell your poison somewhere else, comrade.
Let's have argument, not invective. Thanks.